A few days ago, watching my children in the living room, I had a sudden, powerful realization that sent a pang through my heart and made everything click.

My son and his friend were glued to Minecraft, laughing hysterically after getting ambushed by zombies in the dark and losing all their loot. “Noway! Wait, save me!” they screamed in pure joy. Meanwhile, my daughter was opening Roblox, completely immersed in a chaotic world that, through adult eyes, looked like a glitchy, unpolished mess, fully enjoying the simple act of “just gathering” and showing off her avatar with someone she had never met.

What they are bathing in right now is the exact same thing we used to consume so ravenously twenty years ago: that authentic, hand-crafted, unfinished vibrancy of being connected with someone else.

Watching their radiant faces, I quietly realized the true nature of the emptiness I had been feeling toward modern gaming.
What we have been searching for all this time was not the game data itself, but the remnants of that “vibrancy.” Sadly, the Japanese gaming scene is currently trapped in a tragic loop, having sacrificed that very vibrancy in exchange for sheer convenience.

The Overwhelming Emptiness of Gaining a “God’s-Eye View”

It all started when I built a private server (emulated server) on my local PC for Ragnarok Online (RO), the game to which I dedicated my youth.
The nostalgic theme song of Prontera played, and I became the “God (GM)” of that world. With a single command, my base level jumped to 99, and the ultra-rare cards that used to take months or even years of grueling effort to farm appeared instantly in my inventory.

However, skipping all the restrictions and jumping straight to the “end result (reward)” brought an overwhelming sense of emptiness that rushed over me with terrifying speed.

The true essence of a game’s fun lies in the process of overcoming “inconveniences (restrictions)” through effort and ingenuity. The human brain is wired to feel zero value in rewards it didn’t suffer for. To make matters worse, the crossroads of Prontera, once bustling with life, was nothing but a silent “ghost town.”

“Then should I just go back to the official live server?” The answer is a resounding NO.
To survive for over twenty years as a long-running MMO, the official live server has mutated into what can only be described as “the biggest emulated server run by the publisher itself,” pushing power creep to its absolute limit. The old-school grinds have all been skipped, throwing players into the end-game content within a few hours, leaving them in an entirely different game filled with pay-to-win gear and numbers dealing hundreds of millions of damage.
No matter which door you knock on to reclaim your memories, that gentle, slightly inconvenient, and vibrant Prontera of the past no longer exists anywhere.

The Tragic Reality of the 2010s: How ToS Proved Modern MMOs Are “Dead-Ended”

“If that’s the case, we should just build a new game that replicates those good old, inconvenient mechanics using modern technology.”
Thinking exactly this, old-school gamers went wild in the mid-2010s when Tree of Savior (ToS) was announced. With the creator of RO involved, it launched with immense global expectations as the spiritual successor, proclaiming that “the dot-art, quarter-view MMO of those days is back!”

However, the history of ToS ended up proving a brutal reality: “Even if you release an old-school game today, modern players simply cannot keep up with it.”

In its early days, ToS deliberately recreated that “good old hardcore grind.” The required EXP was insane, and if you messed up your stat or skill build even a little, your character was permanently ruined. The players who rejoiced at launch saying “This is it!” started burning out after just a month, their brains—conditioned by modern, frictionless games—screaming in exhaustion. “It’s just too brutal to log in for two hours after work and make zero progress.” Modern adults no longer have the “time and mental stamina” to enjoy inconvenience.

Furthermore, we were already living in an era where Discord and social media were the norm. The environment the game provided—”It’s a tough world, so talk to each other in town and help each other out”—was bypassed as players connected with their close friends in private voice chats. Public interactions failed to form, and the community became insular at lightning speed.

Ultimately, to survive, the management had no choice but to adopt the same life-support measures as mass-produced mobile gacha games.
It shifted into a routine where you log in every day like a robot to clear “dailies and dungeons,” and the gear you worked so hard to craft becomes obsolete in the next update, forcing you into a vicious cycle of “end-game gear progression.” The moment the game adopted that system, the heartbeat of what we loved about MMOs stopped.

The towns that were once overflowing with players were left with only two or three idle, away-from-keyboard characters. PvP content couldn’t even trigger due to a lack of players. For anyone who knew the golden age, seeing the remnants of that once-vibrant energy rotting away in a ghost town was deeply heartbreaking.

The Brutal Business Background behind the “Mutated Hyper-Inflation” of Japanese Games

Why did both the official RO and ToS have to destroy their own legacy and transform so drastically? It comes down to the brutal business realities faced by the Japanese online gaming market.

1. The Shift in Players Toward “Time Performance” (Time-Efficiency)
   The students who used to have infinite time are now adults in their 30s and 40s. Chased by work and family, no one would return to a game with a grueling grind where you shave out 0.1% of EXP per hour. The publishers had no choice but to make the game hyper-fast and user-friendly—effectively turning it into an official emulated server—so busy adults could catch up in their limited time.
2. The Death Spiral of Gacha (Microtransactions) and Power Creep
   In an era where monthly subscriptions are no longer enough to sustain a game, publishers must constantly sell “new gear that is stronger than the last.” Because bosses get melted instantly, the developers skyrocket the bosses’ HP into the hundreds of millions, and then sell even more broken gear to counter it. This loop completely obliterated any semblance of game balance.
3. Turning the Past into Trash to Bridge the Gap Between Vets and Newbies
   To allow new players to catch up with veterans who have put in thousands of hours, the publishers used a radical treatment: making the journey from level 1 to 99 completely meaningless—an afterthought passed in the blink of an eye—and forcibly moving everyone to the exact same modern starting line.

Splatoon: How Maturity Breeds Toxicity

This loss of vibrancy due to optimization and maturity is not unique to MMOs. Splatoon, which launched on the Wii U in 2015 and became a massive cultural phenomenon, has followed the exact same tragic trajectory.

During the “genesis” of the original game’s launch, the atmosphere was incredibly radiant. No one knew the “meta” or the “optimal strategy.” Just rolling a paint roller across the floor was exhilarating. Whether you won or lost, it felt amazing just to experience something so entirely fresh, and sending a quick “Nice!” to your teammates was enough to make your day. The entire world was wrapped in a beautiful blanket of “ignorance-fueled validation.”

However, as the series progressed through Splatoon 2 and 3, the collective knowledge and skill level of the player base became deeply optimized.
The internet became flooded with “best weapon tier lists,” “the correct opening moves for this stage,” and “how to avoid being the dead weight.” Everyone was drilled on how to play efficiently just to win.

As a result, what was once a gentle, joyful battle of splashing ink transformed into a stressful, toxic battlefield driven by “blaming teammates for not playing correctly,” “looking for scapegoats,” and “feeling like losing is a complete waste of time.” Even as Nintendo adds new stages and weapons, the无邪気な (innocent) and festival-like excitement of the original game can never be recovered, simply because the players themselves have become too mature.

The “Miracle” of Around the Year 2000, When Even Mobile Emails Scarcely Existed

Looking back, the arcades around the year 2000 were also sacred spaces where excitement exploded precisely because of their inconveniences.
This was the dawn of rhythm games like beatmania and DanceDanceRevolution. It was an era before smartphones and social media, when even mobile phone internet and emails were barely starting to spread.

Because you couldn’t connect instantly online, players gathered physically at local arcades and connected through a single physical notebook left by the cabinet. People wrote down strategy tips in handwritten letters, and spent late nights engaging in trial-and-error discussions on primitive bulletin boards (BBS) hosted on personal homepages.
If a rumor spread that “there’s a monster player at that arcade across town,” gamers would literally take trains to make a pilgrimage just to catch a glimpse of their god-tier plays. Crowds would form around the machine, gasping in awe, and spontaneous applause would erupt when a legendary score was achieved.

Today, however, if you walk into a “clean and brightly lit arcade,” 90% of the floor is buried under crane games and medal machines. The sections for video games and rhythm games—which don’t pull in a high enough “income” per minute—are pushed into the dimmest corners or are completely non-existent from the start. Arcades have transformed from a “sacred community hub” into a “merchandise store” designed to extract cash efficiently. The personal blogs documenting “arcade pilgrimages” have vanished entirely, simply because the quirky, independently owned arcades worth visiting have gone extinct.

The Loneliness of Being Connected Anytime, Anywhere, with Anyone

You might think, “But we have online matchmaking and subscription-based rhythm games now.”
Yet, even here, the exact same structural dilemma rears its ugly head.

From the comfort of your own room, you can play thousands of songs for a flat fee. You can match with rivals across the globe at any second.
On paper, it is the perfect utopia. But the moment you boot up the screen alone in your room, you are hit by the exact same “overwhelming emptiness” as when typing that GM command on a private server.
The moment the effort and cost of obtaining something drops to zero, the value of a single song becomes infinitely light.

• The Past: Costly, inconvenient to travel, and starved of information. But it had “places,” “people,” and “heat.”
• The Present: Cost-free, no need to leave the house, and infinite information. But it has only “screens,” “numbers,” and “solitude.”

The opponent displayed on your online match is not a living human being; they are just cold, sterile score data. There is no thrill of watching the player’s hands on the cabinet next to you, nor is there that emotional catch-and-ball after a set: “Wow, that run was insane!” It is merely a lonely sport where you quietly shave off numbers against pro-level players who have optimized their finger movements over a 20-year history, handled completely by an automated system.

The system is undoubtedly a “perfect, streamlined answer” for modern convenience. But the messy, warm, inconvenient margin of community—the very place where humans feel the greatest sense of belonging—has been scrubbed away completely.

What We Truly Lost

Whether it is the heavy monetization (P2W) of mobile games or the hyper-optimized, toxic competitiveness of modern multiplayer titles, the gaming market today establishes a “correct answer” far too quickly, accelerating every world into an intolerant environment.

For those of us who skin-shared the “vibrancy of the genesis”—an era where everyone was equal because no one knew the right answers, where people were tolerant, and the entire world was bursting with raw energy—modern gaming can feel suffocating and terribly faded.

What we lost was not the game mechanics, nor the evolution of pixel art.
We lost that era itself.

From the living room, I hear my son and his friend bursting into laughter once again.
Inside that “paradise” that has vanished from the adult world, they are currently living the absolute best days of their own gaming genesis, running wild through a digital world.

Stopping my futile attempts to chase cold numbers on a screen, I turn around and softly smile at the noisy, joyful sounds of their laughter.
Perhaps witnessing our children entirely immersed in that genuine vibrancy is the last, slightly bittersweet, but most gentle way left for our generation of gamers to truly enjoy video games today.