What have your experiences been with losing interest in video games as you get older?
I came from the generation that played obsessively through middle and high school, and there’s a part of me that really misses when I’d be able to absorb myself into a video game for weeks at a time.
Now that I’m a working adult, it’s a bit more difficult to convince myself that spending all day playing a video game is worth it as opposed to doing chores, practicing some more “productive” hobbies (art, exercise, cooking) or socializing. Part of it also seems to do with the fact that when I do get fully immersed into another video game and spend hours and hours playing at a time (thank you elden ring), my standard for dopamine seems to increase, and I’m not as interested in reading or playing music when I could get that instant dopamine hit from playing a video game, if that makes sense. The games I tend to play now lean towards relaxing/cozy games, generally offline games I can play at my own leisure, where I used to be very into the Overwatch/CSGO/Call of Duty scene.
I’d really love to hear how other people have experienced this, if at all, or what your experiences have been. Have you noticed a shift in the types of games you play? Do you specifically try not to play games to keep a healthier balance with your other obligations and hobbies too?
I find that I just have a lot less patience (and that's ok!) Many games take a lot longer to "get to the point" than any other medium. Red Dead Redemption 2 is great but it takes like 100 hours to tell a story that ultimately falls short of a lot of the revisionist westerns that inspired it in many areas other than immersion and atmosphere. Not that it's not worth playing! Only, I think to stick with it for so long you really need to buy into the world and gameplay and understand what you're getting into. And lately I find myself choosing to bypass more sprawling experiences for more focused and shorter games, only rarely diving into a bigger 50-100 hour triple-A project when I feel it's doing something novel and unique; your Control or your Returnal or your Death Stranding. And even then, I try to break it up into shorter sessions and make sure I'm engaging with other art at the same time.
Same. I got about halfway through Valhalla before I tapped out. I tried, but the game is just too much filler.
I've found myself gravitating towards shorter indie style games. Ones that can be beaten in a few days rather than a few weeks. My ability to sustain really comes back to how interesting the primary gameplay loop is. Shorter games don't need to hold very hard but big AAA titles have to really earn those hours.
One thing that has helped is admitting when you're done with the game. I'll sometimes go watch the end cutscenes or a story recap just to finish out the story so I can stop worrying about it.
Making sure your game time is filled with only good experiences instead of chores makes games fun again. We already have too many chores in our lives, no need to grind out some more.
Valhalla was the straw that broke my back, too! I played every Assassin's Creed throughout high school and college and loving a lot of moments from those games, even the bad and broken ones. At worst (I thought) they were something to do. But when Valhalla came out and I played through it in a couple weeks I remember sitting there, having completed the last mission, and thinking, "that was the biggest waste of time I've ever experienced." And I have hundreds of hours in Red Dead Online, so that's saying something.
I'm glad to read this, as I've bought a lot of the now-discounted AC series on Steam. Are there any that you'd absolutely recommend skipping (beyond Valhalla)?
As someone who also played Valhalla and knows exactly what @Evie is talking about, I don't think I would recommend skipping Valhalla entirely. It is (imo) a really fun game and story, but just go in knowing that once you've done the usual grind-until-you're-at-a-comfortable-level-to-not-die-too-often, the side quests are almost completely pointless in the scheme of things. It is not the game to be a completionist on.
I played it for like 130 hours and still had tasks left, and they were still releasing content! I mean, props to them for putting so much into it, but as a player with limited free time it was exhausting to try and 100%.
Edit: As far as recommendations, the overarching story kind of fizzled out around game 4 or 5 I think. For those first few, it was important to play them all and in order if you cared about the frame narrative, but outside of that I would just pick the ones that look interesting to you. I really liked the ancient world ones (Odyssey and Origins) and I actually really liked the combat in Valhalla, but I also like to stress-massacre and not be forced to be stealthy all the time like the first several games. Not everyone likes that.
The one game that I would highly recommend though is Black Flag. It is so much fun to be a pirate assassin.
Yeah. AC 1 is really only interesting if you're a big series fan and want to see where it all started. AC2, Brotherhood and Revelations are generally worth playing. AC3 is borderline; the story is pretty circuitous and many of its ideas would be executed better in AC4. AC4 is absolutely worth your time; the story is the high point for the franchise, even if it is infested with boring missions. AC Rogue is just AC4 with a bigger map and a worse story; very skippable. AC Unity is great fun; some of the best gameplay the franchise has had, but somewhat badly written. AC Syndicate is structurally identical to Valhalla (if less bloated) which is not conducive to good storytelling; it's a lot of fun at times but I don't recommend it. AC Origins, the first AC RPG, is also the "best* AC RPG imo. Relatively focused, with excellent mission and combat design. The lead actor Abubakar Salim carries the story with his performance. A lot of people love AC: Odyssey but I don't really recommend it. It's almost as bloated as Valhalla, can be quite grindy, and is in a lot of ways a downgrade from Origins. Its fans will praise the expansive, beautiful map, the accessible yet deep implementation of RPG mechanics, and some even like the story. Overall, which ones are worth it to you will depend on your tastes. Nothing wrong with trying a game and then putting it down after an hour.
It can be hard to walk away from a game, especially when you've put a lot of time and energy in, or have enjoyed it, but yeah, it's important to know when to quit.
Last year I was really enjoying FF7 Remake but had to put it down after progressing most or all of the way through Shinra Tower. I felt bad giving up when there was probably only one boss left, but I was just losing my patience with the game and needed to move on.
This year I finally watched the rest of the game on YouTube and came to find there were like seven boss fights left! I couldn't believe it! Couple that with the fact that the ending made no sense to me and I'm very glad I walked away when I did.
I haven't played Valhalla, but I do play longer games. I played Odyssey and had a great time.
I used to really struggle with longer games, particularly anything RPG. I would jump around from game to game to game so it was harder to ever make progress or finish a longer title. A few years back I started maintaining a spreadsheet to keep track of games I play. What I do is I very intentionally say to myself "I am going to play X game", and I limit myself to a few games at a time (typically I try to do 1 per system but it depends). A game goes into my rotation and I play it until I either finish it OR I deliberately say "okay, I'm bored of this/need to take a break from this" and I change it from "playing" to "saved". That way I can also keep track of games where I have saves, and sometimes I'll leave a little note indicating where I am. For example I had to put a pause on Sekiro because I broke my arm and literally couldn't play it, and I have never gone back to it, but I have a save and a note indicating the last boss I finished in case I decide to go back to it.
But one thing I find really important is to space out the big games. I never play more than one "big" game at a time, and pepper shorter games in between. To me, "big" would probably be like >20 hours to finish, maybe even less.
It used to be that I found it impossible to beat most games that were like 40+ hours long (mainly JRPGs would be my example here, I hated JRPGs because I'd never get anywhere in them and had finished very few of them). Making sure to play shorter stuff in between has helped me get through the longer stuff because I'm not just burning out on it. And sometimes I get really into a longer game and just want to play it nonstop, which is fine if I'm having fun (I've been playing Tears of the Kingdom tons recently).
I don't like to do this personally, but I don't think it's a bad idea if you know you're never gonna come back to a game. Certainly it never hurts to admit you are done, whether it's "for now" or "for good". No use grinding through something you don't enjoy.
I will also say as I get older, I typically have more fun with games that focus less on story and more on gameplay. I find myself going back and playing a lot of arcade-style games, a lot of handheld games. I enjoy SEGA titles more now than I ever have because of their arcade-design philosophy... they're often just pick up and play, and have fun. What I really don't like is hours of tutorializing.
I also have a spreadsheet but I started using Backloggd for the same purpose. I like seeing a visual representation of my library. I use all the base features (backlog, playing, wishlist) but I also make custom lists (like JRPG) so that if I'm in a mood for a particular genre or play style I can find a list and see what catches my attention.
I haven't tried Backloggd but I've used other sites, I just like being able to super easily manipulate/filter my list in Google Sheets tbh.
I don't have games listed by genre which is one gap I guess. I didn't bother because while many games slot into a genre nicely, some don't or straddle multiple which makes it more complicated.
One other thing I'd like to add is an expected completion time from HLTB, but setting something up to scrape that and automatically put it into the sheet is above my pay grade.
One other thing I did do was create a separate sheet specifically filtering to show series I'm interested in playing and all the games in them, and then just knocking games off as I play em.
Haven't played this one but it sounds a lot like some of the other games I've tried and failed to get into the last few years. I'm not even that old - turning 30 next week - but I already just do not give a crap about games that are 50% cutscenes and 50% actual, you know, playing the game!? I understand this is a minority opinion though, and that most people love the more cinematic experience. I just really do not care for it though. I want a hands-on experience, not stuff where the controller gets put down for long periods of time at a time
Genuinely, I love a lot of cinematic games, but you can definitely take it too far. Hideo Kojima's games often have these interminable cutscenes. But the worst offender I know of has to be Quantum Break. Half of that game is an entertaining, flashy third person shooter with some interesting ideas. It's nothing mind-blowing but it definitely works. But after each level, you have to, literally, drop everything and watch a thirty minute episode of a low-budget TV show. These episodes contain smatterings of important plot information but are by and large irrelevant to the rest of the game and, iirc, are unskippable. There are four of them, but it feels like there are forty. They are uniformly awful. I can never get that time back.
In the case of RDR, the cutscenes are usually short and built into missions, but what takes time is travelling around, usually on horseback, and side missions, hunting and anything else that isn't directly contributing to the story.
I think age is less of a factor than life phase, as young professionals and young families time is a premium and I rarely get more than 2 hours straight to play a game, so slow games just can't make the cut.
RDR didn't hold my attention. And the controls/feel of the game make it obvious that it's a console port.
I agree on the cutscenes part. Virtually every game that I have to sit through endless video dialogue sits unfinished in my library.
I shared this feeling, I love RPGs, but with the decreased free time of adulthood the idea on how long they are made me hesitate to start one up. I'd play games like Overwatch where I can get a match done and stop whenever.
A few years ago I ended up forcing myself to play one and I regained that love, after a few hours I was having fun, and it made me re-think what my free time was to me. I have fun playing RPGs, so the hours aren't wasted.
I hadn't played a single-player game in years, but my friends tried really hard to get me to play The Witcher 3. For months. I told them I would probably get bored, but they insisted that of all single-player games, this was the one I had to try. So finally a couple months ago, I gave it a try. And I was extremely impressed. The graphics are amazing. I've read all the books, and they really did bring them to life. The characters look awesome, great voice acting, etc. The only complaint was that the combat was kind of uncomfortable and kind of forced me to roll around a lot (since you can't turn quickly), but that was OK.
Then I go into some bar, talk to an NPC and suddenly I'm being taught a card game that's already deeper than a game I want to play at all. And that was it. That's when I realized I just can't get into these long ass deep single-player games anymore. Sure the games awesome, and yes I'm sure the card game is entirely avoidable and that's an absurd reason to quit. But then there's the crafting, and the picking my spec, and the side quests and the exploration and... Maybe it's just my mindset at the moment, but I just never seem to find a time where I want to commit to that. I will probably will try it again some time though.
Then the CS2 announcement happened, and for some random reason I suddenly remembered that I'd never beaten Half-life. I've always wanted to beat it just for posterity's sake, but It was one of those games I just never had the patience for as a kid when I tried it. I always got stuck then gave up. But I was bored. I wasn't really playing anything else at the time. So I figured ey, I've always wanted to conquer it. Sure I'll probably marvel at the old design and then get bored, but why not check it out?
I figured I'd give the old game its best shot, so I downloaded Black Mesa and loaded it up. And I was sucked in almost immediately. I didn't understand what it really was until I played it the first time as an adult. There's no special items that have their own menu, no crafting, no cut scenes, no explanations, no quests to read through, no ability points, no mini-games. And its not just a DOOM style shoot-em up either. It's got complex puzzles that you don't even realize are puzzles at first. It has environments that just have to sit and stare at sometimes before you can figure out what to do. It's just you and the game environment. You find characters, and they talk to you IN-GAME. The story progresses LIVE as you play. There's no giant open world. It's a linear story, and you're fully immersed in it.
I don't know if that's the only reason, but there was just something about it. I could just play and I never got that daunting feeling like its gonna take forever to get to the good stuff. The whole thing was good stuff! I ended beating Black Mesa and the rest of the Half-life series for the first time and it was so much better than I ever imagined. So at least for me, it might just be that I don't enjoy current game trends. Or more likely, I just haven't tried one I'd enjoy. But there's definitely something to say for a game that doesn't have to be a massive universe that you're partaking in.
FWIW yes, you can skip Gwent entirely. You must play that single match. I played a few but I felt it was detracting me from the game I wanted to play, and that game was already too big, so I ignored Gwent. I know a lot of people did that. I'm sure some people were the exact opposite and spent hours upon hours playing Gwent without ever finishing the base game. :)
No doubt about it lol. I definitely have friends who are the type to just 100% every game and they absolutely love it and that's cool. Even at the time it felt like I was being kind of ridiculous, but it immediately reminded me of Blitzball from FFX and it just felt like "nah, I'm good right now". The game is extremely impressive and the gameplay itself was fun, but of the first couple hours it felt like about half was cut scenes. At that point - for a single-player game - I'd rather just watch a show or listen to the book while surfing in CSGO or playing some little rogue-lite I don't have to actively think about. But that's just me, and that's just one game that I gave up on early. I concede that I've barely tried any AAA single-player games in years so any judgments I make about a genre would probably be dumb.
It's funny you say that. Portal 2 is one of my favorite games of all time and one of the few single-player games I really got into in the last 15 years. Shadow of the Colossus was another and that was probably the best game I've ever played. But I never played Portal 1 until after I finished all of Half-life and I loved the absolute shit out of it.
Have you noticed a shift in your game interests as an adult? When I was a kid it would never happen but as an adult my friends and I will frequently join a call together and decorate a house in Sims 4. For someone who used to be chronically on FPS and competitive games it’s a wild shift.
Exactly how I feel! In addition, I feel like I just can't anymore with games that require me to learn their convoluted systems that have been gamified to steal my attention in every way possible -- except it has the opposite effect on me.
I completely upgraded my computer, from my mouse to my monitor, just so I can play Diablo IV without compromise but as soon as the campaign ended, I hated the game. Not only it's famously a grind game where you have to play hours after hours to get a chance to loot the item you're looking for, but it demands you to read and learn about many gatekeeping systems that are there just to keep you playing more.
The campaign was nice because I knew what to do and the game gave me enough freedom to do what I wanted to do without following some rigid order, but after that ends, it literally doesn't guide you and you inevitably resort to reading some guides on the internet which I just don't have time for.
Why can't I just kill some stuff with big numbers popping on my screen without worrying about what spec is the flavor of the month and what items are best in slot or whatever?
Without any real evidence, I get the feeling that people play a smaller selection of games for longer these days. At least from my childhood, games you'd get on platforms like the Nintendo DS were small, somewhat casual, and done after a few hours, so you'd buy lots of them. But now it seems the average gamer picks a few games they love, and then plays them for 1000+ hours over a decade.
I think so, too. I am certainly like that. What I wrote in the comment you were replying to is the main reason. It just seems harder to get into games these days, because they require more investment than the time you put into actually playing the game. So I go back to games I'm familiar with. As long as they still have sufficient entertainment value, I play the game instead of learning a new one and call it a day.
I would like to take this opportunity to plug the weekly thread I just started reviewing short game jam games. I am a big believer in the idea that playing short games that give you something to think about is the most efficient form of gaming in terms of both hardware cost and player time.
RPGs having "80-100 hours of gameplay!" advertised on the box was great when I was a kid and got maybe 3 new games all year. Now that I have more money than time (and energy), I'm interested in more concise experiences that cut out a lot of the grinding and fluff. I pick up and then drop games easily now, when I'd spend a lot more time struggling through hard or boring bits as a kid. And yeah the urge for cozy games is strong. I go crazy for farming, home decoration, and fashion elements lol.
For some games I find myself just watching a playthrough in the background while I do chores or something, and that satisfies my curiosity about it.
"Childhood was having all the time in the world to play games but no money; adulthood is having the money to buy them but no time"
I relate to this. I've specifically told friends that games that advertise "100s of hours of gameplay" is almost strictly a downside to me. Middle school through college PepperJackson loved those kinds of RPGs, but I have dissent priorities now.
I'm very happy these games exist for those who can enjoy them, of course.
The BS with that "100 hours of gameplay" is over half of it is grinding collectables, completing challenges, and radiant/procedural quests which suck all the fun out of the game
I forget the exact quote but
this is me right now trying to get through Ghost of Tsunima
Anno 1800 so needs this. The game has grown so massive it's impossible to keep up with what you're doing, especially when you're playing sporadically with weeks of inactivity in between sessions.
I'm 35 next month and I still game a lot.
But, the types of games have changed drastically. I now play city builders, sims, RTS and RimWorld type games more than I do any other genre.
It's not that I couldn't keep up with fps (for example), it's that all the communities are so painfully competitive now. I used to be part of =THB= in the CoD4 days and we had a zombie server that was amazing fun. It felt like it couldn't be competitive and was just a lot of guys and gals shit talking on Vent whilst we slew zombies.
But fps is different now. It's all p2p and is really difficult to build a community around.
So I stick to single player games more.
I've been trying to wrap my head around the "don't you have a life to live" aspect lately. What else would I do with my time? I had nothing planned this past weekend so I played RimWorld happily. I read some books morning and evening and tended to a garden I have, then gamed. There's nothing wrong with that at all.
I am with you.
Cities, Factorio, Timberborn, Rimworld are all given.
But puzzle games are also fun, I love(d) SHENZHEN I/O and Exapunks. And they are great learning/teaching aids.
Story rich games can be fun too. Horizon and Detroit to name a couple.
It's funny but I also played less in my mid twenties then picking up again in my mid thirties. I think it's me being married and all, generally just leading a quieter life. I still enjoy cooking, sports etc but for me the few hours at night people usually watch TV, we game. And that's a very fulfilling thing to me, it keeps my brain active. The indie scene is fantastic nowadays.
I made an effort to find games of genres I don't really play (even as a kid) and give it an honest go. I found things like Dead Cells and Hades that way. And I even play a shooter now, have you heard of Hell Let Loose? It's much more cooperative and there are many many clans if you want community. Honestly the game isn't in the best state at this particular moment if you look at the reviews and that's mainly because of the recent change in developer and the growth in player base. But under all that I've had some fantastic games where you actually have a purpose more than just aiming at heads. There are more games in this genre like Squad and I think those are more catering towards the older crowds.
This really sums it up for me. I'm married, busy job and I've got some hobbies outside of gaming that I happily partake in. Then I've got my in-home hobbies, Gaming, Books, Writing...
I think you've just really helped my mental health with this actually with that one paragraph. Thank you.
You're welcome. Yes it's that nagging feeling that video games are for children or people wasting their life isn't it? I know that one, it's what we've been told. I just stopped believing that because at least I'm using my brain in a lot of the games I play in one way or another, which is way better than just soaking in the pulp that's on tv most of the time.
If you liked Hades, did you try Transistor or even the good old Bastion? I love the difficulty adjustment via challenges in Bastion. And Transistor semi-turn-based combat was just super fun.
Oh thanks for the reminder, I actually have them in my library but they got buried in my backlog. Should definitely give them a go.
That’s how I feel too, city builders scratch a certain itch that I didn’t really care about as a kid for some weird reason! And I completely agree about shooters now too - I had a ton of free time during COVID and picked up MW2019 to play with friends. It was a blast but also it felt like there was a constant pressure to need to keep playing and practicing. When I play Cities the only pressure I have is to learn traffic patterns lol, much lower stress
I've always been into the city builders, even when I was younger.
For shooters though... BattleBit Remastered came out a few days ago and its a blast. One guy on Reddit put it basically like this: nobody really cares that much about winning, everyone is just enjoying running around shooting stuff and blowing shit up. Or this players story of his heli pilot.
It feels like a lot of folks do though? I used to have an absolute blast in COD4 in my clan, it was about shit talking and slapping each other around the head in FFA.
Well ya, people are trying to win but its not over competitive. I dont feel like I'm letting the team down by not doing well.
I was the same way, starting in college adult responsibilities started making video games feel trivial, until finally I just lost interest in them completely. Even through the pandemic, I wasn't able to rekindle any meaningful interest in them. But I think that changed with Breath of the Wild - I started playing it this year (before Tears of the Kingdom released) and for the first time in years I felt that same sense of joy that games used to have. Maybe it's the nostalgia of playing a game that traces back to the games of my youth, but I really found BoTW to be incredibly deep and engrossing in a way that no other game has felt since the Wind Waker came out for Gamecube.
Upon reflection, I think that a major part of the appeal of video games is their ability to expose us to novelty. As children, we don't have enough life experience to measure against video games, and so the novelty bar is lower for us. And I think that developers target that market because it's easier to make games with less novelty. As we reach adulthood, we have a broader perspective and realize that a lot of games, even high-budget games, were never novel to begin with. But that doesn't mean we as adults can't enjoy any games, I think it just means that our standards are significantly higher. It takes a fair amount of work to identify those truly spectacular and novel games, like BoTW and (from what I've heard) ToTK.
Novelty plays a big part in it. So far as childhood experiences go, I fell in love with Botw because it reminded me of my childhood adventures with my father in the Gila Wilderness. So while I agree that games can expose us to novelty ideas, it can also reinforce our nostalgia if we had such experiences.
Also, riding a horse in botw/tears captures quite well the majesty of horseback riding irl. Also archery. Try them if you can.
I'm particularly conscious of this with "grindy" games, anything that's functionally story-less and the whole experience is about a gameplay loop of "make the numbers bigger so you can do more stuff that makes the numbers bigger."
The thing that really hooked me recently has been the Yakuza games, because the stories are so whacky and entertaining. Games like that, which have some narrative experience to offer, or stuff like puzzle games that feel satisfying to figure out, I can still play. But when I get into anything that's really just about that numbers-based endorphin loop, I feel bad for spending time on it.
There are just things that I could spend time on that would have a lasting result. I mean, my old MW2 stats don't mean shit to me now, but the couple short stories I've written mean a lot. Now that I don't have much free time, I can tell you for sure which I'd rather spend time on. Writing doesn't give me the same moment-to-momeny endorphin hit of gaming, but if I'm going to spend weeks or months of what remains of my precious life grinding, I'd rather have it mean something to me when I'm looking back on my life in ten or twenty years.
I used to love Star Trek Online, but once you got through the episodes, all there really left to do was grind the dailies for a month so you can unlock a slightly better weapon, and then grind dailies for another month to get a slightly better weapon. Then grind the daily "summer" events to get...a unique it slightly equal piece of equipment And then go back to regular dailies until you got all those weapons, then they release the new set of rewards for the next set of dailies.
Yes, I've been a yakuza evangelist since I played zero. It's such an incredible depiction of strong willed and emotive characters being tossed into the fire and stirred about.
I find a lot of the popular, modern games these days try to lean into the 'grindy' theme very hard. You point on puzzles is interesting -- I appreciate games that can pull off the 'simple to learn, hard to master' theme well, especially when you feel like you're flexing your brain by doing so (i.e. chess, go). Modern games want to keep you hooked or keep you paying. They want to you feel like when you walk away, everyone else is only getting better and you're getting worse, so better get to grinding.
Life's short and there's only so much time. Would rather spend my time mastering a skill that I want, instead of one dreamed up by a game studio.
I don't feel like I've lost interest in games themselves, it's more of the gaming industry has turned me off with microtransactions and always-online games as a service bullshit.
Single player games that don't have any of that are still pretty great. Everspace 2 has been taking up a lot of my free time recently, keeping in mind that things like exercise and spending time with family don't count as "free time" - they're responsibilities. I probably get in 2 hours of play every other day, which feels like more than enough. I guess that's in stark contrast to the bad old days of warcraft 3 and CS when I could play easily 8 hours a day without breaking a sweat.
I feel you, but I still find it's a bit of both being turned off by the industry and just not loving games like I used to. When I am playing something these days it's almost always something older I grabbed off of GOG, something that genuinely piques my interest (these are rare), or something that manages to ride that line - Dusk and HROT are the first examples that come to mind. A bonus is getting more life out of my aging PC instead of feeling like I need to drop $1000 to upgrade.
I've struggled to accept two things in the past couple of years:
It's okay to have unproductive hobbies. I didn't play any games for a long time because I had an existential crisis and became convinced I was wasting all my time. Humans have no obligation to spend their time being productive.
It's also okay for your interests to change over time. You're not betraying yourself just because you don't like a thing you used to like.
As I've gotten back into gaming recently, I've found that I do still really enjoy big open world RPGs. I just skip all the little "hi I know you're in the middle of literally saving the world but can you go get me a potato?" filler side quests and focus on the actually interesting thing. The game winds up being a lot shorter, but the time I do spend on it is a lot more fun.
"Humans have no obligation to spend their time being productive" is said so much more succinctly than what I was trying to express in my own reply to the thread. Thank you for those words, they really resonate with my point of view.
Funny, I started doing the opposite! I used to struggle to keep up with better gamers than me (literally everyone but let's not talk about that...) so I felt like I had to rush leveling. I'd used guides and maps and get things done as quickly as possible. Weirdly it even bled into my single player games. But these days I step in and start poking around to see what's down a dead end road, or backtracking to try each route, or even just saving before starting dialogue so I can see what the options are. I enjoy finding secrets and weird little side quests. And the longer I take the more value I get out of a game before needing to find something new (or new to me!) to play. I was actually quite annoyed when I recently downloaded WoW again after a several year break and discovered they've changed the way monster levels work, so that even the beginner levels are going to be a grind every single time. OTOH I've recently picked up Minecraft and Stardew Valley and goddamn, those games are really just everlastingly replayable, particularly with all the mods available. They really started me down the road of trying a lot more indie games.
Mid-40's here. Friends and I gamed on the Apple ][ back in school, then the 386, Pentium and so on and on. A lot of games don't interest me now, but when I do find a game that interests me, it's usually built on a world that feels alive (procedural or artificial, I don't really mind), so that I'm a small part of some larger place. Think anything from Cyberpunk and Minecraft, Truck or Train Simulator. I enjoy MMO's like Lord of the Rings Online and Star Wars The Old Republic for similar reasons.
I guess that I'm not losing interest, but I'm definitely more particular about the games that stay installed.
I used to play plenty of Pokemon, but "fell out of love with it" as someone else put it recently. As an adult I usually just stick to games I can pick up and drop without that huge time commitment and energy commitment, so rpgs with big stories are out. So if I do play a game these days, it's like Mega Man, Smash bros, Mario kart, that's it really.
I recently devoted plenty of time to Zelda Tears of the Kingdom, but that was after the 6 year prep of knowing I'd dedicate all that time to it. I wouldn't do that for any other game. Nothing else really piques my interest and i don't have time/energy for much else anyway.
I’m having a great time with the new Zelda. Taking my time and only about 3/4 through. I’ve pretty much played every single Zelda game created, and I always set aside time to do so even these days.
For me, Twitch have been the gamechanger in terms how I interact with video games as I get older. It scratches the video game itch + parasocial aspect without having to actually grind through games myself. Speaking as someone who have spent countless hours in TF2, DoTA2, and COD, I no longer want to grind through rounds after rounds of game (or deal with the toxicity).
The other gamechanger is the Steam Deck. At any moment I have access to every console game before PS3 and can run just about any AAA PC game. What little time I get is spent playing Advance Wars and the Mass Effect trilogy on it.
I used to share that same sentiment with Twitch, but when they adjusted their ads by showing preroll ones even though you have Prime Gaming, etc. it sucked all of my desire out of watching on that platform. I've since just used Youtube. You still get the game itch, but you don't feel like you're a part of it as much as when it was live on Twitch.
Like in many of the other comments in here - I rarely play super long games anymore, and I've definitely stopped playing online because it takes too much time to be good at it, while free time is missing nowadays.
The biggest thing for me though, was buying consoles. A couple of years ago I've stopped playing PC games almost entirely for a long time, because after finishing work and closing my laptop, I didn't want to spend any more time on a computer, it was tiresome. Then, after buying a console, it became fun again, as I could leisurely sit down on a couch, and nothing else was bothering me in the background, or reminding me of work.
And finally, after getting a Steam Deck, I could play my PC games library again as it's easy to treat it fully as a console too
I'm in a similar situation - my personal PC shares a desk and peripherals with my work setup after my job switched to being primarily remote, so it's been increasingly difficult to want to spend even more time in the same chair. The SteamDeck has been an amazing companion in both playing new games as a parent - the ability to pause any game and walk away is incredible - and in helping me try out games I'd never have given a second look (Spiritfarer was so much more enjoyable that I expected!).
Similarly, I don't have the time, patience, or skill to get into games that expect you to "get good" and have punishing difficulty levels. I have a limited amount of gaming time and I'd rather not spend it frustrated.
I'm 28 and I find myself usually pretty bored with video games. I have a few theories on why as you get older the desire to game tapers off.
Now with all of that said, I think the bright side of this is that there are people who make games that feel this exact way, so they begin to create experiences that avoid many of these pitfalls. I've loved seeing this wonderful array of complex and tight-looped games we've been getting.
I play just as much now as I did as a kid, maybe more.
I became convinced that the "I should be being more productive" thoughts in my head are not my own actual beliefs or desires but instead were instilled in me by societal expectations and pressures that I simply decided I'm done caring about. I have no issue with deciding to just play something all day if that's what I want to do. I'm only interested in a life where as often as I can, I will just do whatever I feel like. If I can keep the bills paid and the ship afloat the rest of my time is mine, guilt-free. I don't necessarily feel like it has to come at the expense of my other hobbies though. If I want to go play some guitar or something I just do that instead. I have goals in my hobbies for sure, but moment to moment I want to just follow my whims.
Getting bored of a specific game or genre for a while just seems natural, and burnout when pushing against difficulty or some form of skill improvement is natural and needs to be managed as well, but for me that comes to just not doing it if I don't feel like doing it.
Between 20 and 30yo I've had a lot of media burnout with just the excessive volume and extreme tempo of new content. On top of games, in my free time I enjoy Books, movies, music, TV/Anime, YouTube and podcasts all while making time for family, friends, hobbies and personal projects.
Each time that burnout hit, I've needed to dig deeper and deeper into what exactly I enjoy and what turns me off. With so little time, it'll be a waste to put up with crap when there is an endless supply of alternatives.
I suggest occasionally taking the time to play a but with a critical mind. Take written notes and break down the positives and negatives as they occur. Are you connecting to characters, plot or setting? Do you feel accomplished through optimizations and improvement? Do you enjoy developing through stats and abilities or discovery and knowledge? How do you feel about storefronts and battle passes? Take it as far as you like. Sound, UI, AI, reload animations, menu transitions.
May seem tedious but putting your thoughts and feelings on paper allows you to differentiate between what you want and what you think you want.
On my last check, discovered that I currently enjoy liner experiences, steep challange curves, interesting or polished controls, deep systems and fun characters. There's no brainers like RE4R, Returnal and new Zelda. But I've also started dipping into rhythm Games after HiFiRush, tactical PvE shooters like Ready or Not, realistic flight sims and high stakes life sims (zomboid and qud). All games I wouldn't have considered a few years back. But I also can't stomach some of my old favorites anymore like Hollow Knight, Pokémon and most PvP games but I can see how some of those minor annoyances ground away at me over the years.
Combined with just ignoring the hype machine, branching out occasionally and knowing when to step away I've had a pretty healthy relationship with gaming.
I like the more methodological approach to games, it seems to view them more as art forms rather than just colorful shiny toys. Your third paragraph is very much something I consider when I play games, where it feels like what I’m doing makes sense, the world around me is well crafted, etc. I played Elden Ring and found it to be the exception to my usual rule about super long difficult games solely due to how cohesively the world and art design fit together. Similarly with RDR2, when you have an amazing story within a beautiful world (the amazing ambience of walking through a forest for example) it feels like it becomes immersive unlike anything else.
Mid 40's here, and I have been playing games fairly regularly for 40ish years, my mom (who is a boomer heading towards 75) is right now super excited about the new Mario game and Pikmin 3, she has beat every single Mario game that has ever come out (on Nintendo systems at least), and I got a lot of that and she enabled me from a very young age to figure out how to work gaming in my life.
So, while I will still play the big "tentpole" RPGs my main games these days are "roguelike". I've really found the gameplay loop of doing a thing for half an hour or so, finishing the game/level/map I can get some things to make the next run harder/easier/different, which I just find super compelling. I've really moved into games that "play" time is only 15-30 minutes per session, but each session does a "thing" and over time you complete the game (except Slay the Spire . . . DAMN YOU SLAY THE SPIRE) but some good recent games that people tend to be aware of are Vampire Survivors, Peglin, Monster Train, and Darkest Dungeon.
That sounds very familiar. I’m also mid 40’s and have gone through a number of phases in the last 15 years.
When my eldest was born, I was mostly playing XBox 360 games. He would nap a couple hours in the afternoon, which gave me plenty time to play mostly GTA (offline), RDR (GTA with horses), Skyrim, Fable and Forza. It could be sessions of 30 minutes or 3 hours, but those are easy games to interrupt.
After doing this for 5 years, my second kid was born. I kind of lost interest in gaming for a bit. Too much work and other stress going on. There were also no new titles I was particularly interested in, so I stopped playing. I did play some mobile games, but I never found that very satisfying.
Then my eldest became old enough for their first console: new 2ds xl. Already an old console on its way out, so getting second hand games was very easy. I decided to get my own 2ds so I could play during my commute. Super nice games, I really enjoyed them.
Now the two kids are old enough for a proper console, so we have a Switch. I think it’s perfect for kids because the games are high quality and not too heavy on violence. I’ve been making more time to play also. I’ll allow myself to really get into a game, sometimes playing the entire evening after they’ve gone to bed. It’s great to be able to get into the larger games like BOTW, which took me about 1.5years to finally finish.
I was gonna bring up roguelikes and Slay the Spire myself! I feel like this genre is really good for the "gaming burnout" that I've been getting, I've been investing a LOT of time into roguelikes in the last couple of years. As some of the above comments have mentioned, modern games have a really long "spin-up" time, where it's easy to lose interest but roguelikes and rogue lites are inherently fast to get into the gameplay loop, by definition!
I finally "beat" Slay the Spire this year, A20H on all 4 characters, and I'm still playing the game to make fun new decks. (Shoot me a message if you ever need advice, I loveeee talking StS)
Oh, I'm 3 of 4 A20 (defect is A17) and I know what I need to do for the last, it's just playing and getting close to the right setup. What keeps me going in StS is all the addon stuff, lately I've been having fun with the new releases in Downfall, and all the extra characters (favorites are the Servent and the Empty).
But right now on my "playing a lot" list are Inkbound (from the Monster Train people) and Soulstone Survivor (yet another Vampire Survivor clone, but it's pretty and has some pretty deep progression . . . which is fun).
I just realized your name, were you active in the Slay the Spire subreddit? I remember seeing someone with a similar name! It's funny because I'm having a seperate conversation in another thread right now talking about how I don't like any of the extra modded characters as much as the base characters. I've never tried the Servant or the Empty though, I'll take a look for next time!
I haven't heard of Inkbound, though I did really like Monster Train! Is it any good?
Inkbound is really fun, I've also not even touched on the depths it has. And yeah, I bounced around the subreddit (not anymore those comments should be gone).
I get the modded characters, some are just terrible fan service for anime that I don't watch (which the servent is, but I like the play style) and Downfall is arguably as good as the base game. But there was also a pretty big dry spell for me (I didn't "enjoy" Hades like I was apparently supposed to) pre vampire survivors but still in covid lockdown that got me going down the mods in StS pretty hard
I saw that it's always online, maybe i'll try it! Thanks for the recommendation!!
Hades is one of my all time favorites for sure! Though even though it's a roguelike I don't think it's fair to compare it to slay the spire, I feel like if the gameplay doesn't resonate with you then you probably won't like it.
For me it varies up and down.
In general, sure, I lost some interest in many games. I have money now, but my time is limited. So now I am more on a "no bullshit"-rule, and I don't mind dropping games after short playtimes or skipping hyped or big games entirely if I suspect component X, minor as it is, would annoy me.
This feeds into my personal reason for basically no longer looking at games rated 8 or lower (on a conceptual level, not actual ratings): I won't have time to finish all the 10/10s in genres I play, I barely get to dip my toes into 9/10s. No chance in hell I got time to look at 8/10s.
From this springs a fair few interesting side-behaviors, and this feeds into the "losing interest"-part: I have a cyclical nature to my gaming. After a few months of a lot of gaming, usually centered around something "big" (like Zelda:TOTK releasing or FFXIV getting a big content update), I cool down and spend a few months playing board games more again, or reading more or so. I still play video games, but it's all DRG with friends or the odd indie I want to look at more for its concept than the actual game.
And then it repeats. I don't need games to fill my spare time (even though it increased a lot after my ex moved out, sure), and I don't have time or patience to get through "bullshit" like most open worlds or AssCreed's endless filler collectibles. So I just don't play that any more.
I think the “no bullshit” concept is really a great way to go about it. Someone else made a similar point that so many games now try to artificially lengthen your game time without adding meaningful content to do so. It’s led to me shying away from the AC Valhalla’s of the world and also led to an appreciation of non open world games, where when I was a kid all I wanted was an 80 hour open world game!
I find it easier and easier to put off playing until I realized that I haven't played for months. and also I've been less interested in playing RPG games because I couldn't track or remember my quest due to the reason stated above. I gravitated more and more to casual games where it's just essentially pick-up-and play style.
Also, i give myself a time limit in playing, so I could divide my time between productive time and play time. So in a span of 1 hour or 30 minutes, I couldn't see myself enjoying if it's an RPG game, since I may not be able to finish 1 quest in that time, and it will become a nagging bother to me that it feels like I made no progress in the game and no satisfaction will come of it.
I went into adulthood with the specific intention of being able to play games. I'm able to balance 'adulting' chores with sparing time for my main hobby. So in that sense, there has been no loss of interest. What I do encounter is playing too many games one after the other tends to get tiresome, and I often find it nice to do a 'filler' hobby in between, like reading or coding.
The type of game does tend to make a difference as well, I think you might have found this too — online/multiplayer games are too stressful and are chores unto themselves. Single player games are 'me' time and it allows you to play how you want, a lot less stressful.
I've encountered a variant of this problem. It's not that I have lost interest in video games, it's more that I require a shorter-feedback loop and an intrinsic social component to my games.
When I was a kid, I put an absolute ton of hours into Morrowind, Neverwinter Nights, etc. As an adult, I find that I just don't have the stomach for long-form story driven games like RPGs. I really want to explore through a character but I just can't invest the time.
However, I do really enjoy games that give me teammates, have tight gameplay loops, and that I can drop in and out of. Teamfight Tactics, Battlebit, Deep Rock Galactic, Back4Blood, Phasmaphobia, etc. I also used to be VERY into dota2. These are games you can sit down and chip an hour or two off of your night with a group of strangers.
I also enjoy base building games like Stardew Valley, Sons of the Forest, Valheim when I can get some friends together to do it because, again, I want my games to be a social experience.
I've definitely gravitated more towards story-focused games, single or co-op type games or ones that are easy enough to pick up and put down. I don't have the time or frankly willpower, to practice hours of Overwatch or CoD anymore. Even if I do play something like Siege for instance, its just to have a beer and relax with similar people, not focusing on my mouse DPI and twitching in ranked. 20 hours a week as a college student isn't the life for me anymore.
I find that it gets a lot harder to find a game I really like. I used to be able to play a game for hours and hours but these days that's rare.
It starts feeling like I've seen it all before. Rarely does a new game pique my interest because they almost always do the same thing that dozens of others have done before. All AAA games are basically a mashup of elements from games that came before. There is also too much bullshit in modern games that really annoys me, like the LiVe SeRvIcE games, battle passes and macrotransactions. You never get the complete game anymore, it's cut up into pieces and sold piece by piece.
I also can't be bothered to play games on high difficulty anymore. I used to be a glutton for punishment but I just don't have the patience anymore.
It's kind of ironic though, I used to lack the money to play all the games I wanted. Now I have the money to play everything I want to but I just can't be bothered. Somehow I keep chasing that feeling from when I was younger, when I found a really great game I could just play forever… Most games I buy go unfinished sadly.
A whole bunch has changed about how I interact with games really:
First, no multiplayer at all (apart from local, which happens very rarely). Multiplayer games are some of the most toxic experiences I've ever had, and I realized that I want to play games to have fun, not be made to feel bad by various dickheads squealing down a mic or typing slurs in chat.
Second, no massive time commitments - unless it's a very specific exemption that I've prepared for (like Tears of the Kingdom, which I knew full well I was going to spaff 3 weeks of my life into and prepared accordingly). I have other stuff I want to do, mostly hobbies that produce something tangible when I'm done with them, so I'll always prioritize those. If it's not something that can easily be picked up and put down, I typically don't really want to invest any more than 20-30 hours total.
Lastly, and probably most strangely, I tend to be a sucker for remaster games these days. I already know I'm not taking a gamble on something that might turn out shit - these games are known quantities, I know I enjoy them, and having played them before I know vaguely what I'm doing and can mostly just switch off, relax, have fun and breeze through them. Metroid Prime remastered was great, also enjoyed the Spyro/Crash remasters greatly.
It's not so much losing interest for me as it is losing the ability to dedicate as much consecutive time to gaming as I used to. Which means the kinds of games I can easily play has changed. I have kids now, so I can't commit to something that's going to take 30 uninterrupted minutes because I rarely have 30 uninterrupted minutes anymore. And games where leaving mid-dungeon/quest can mean lost progress are the worst for this. My play through of Diablo IV, for example, has been VERY frustrating and mostly relegated to after the kids are in bed. Which is probably for the best given the subject matter....
So instead I've been favoring resource management games, simulators, casual games, and open-world games. Super easy to hop into them, play for a little bit, then hop out.
I've definitely gotten less competitive as I've gotten older tending to more story games or cooperative games. I still play League of Legends with a core groups of friends every week or so, but we only play a casual mode, ARAM, together. My gaming time does wax and wane. When I find myself losing interest in gaming I typically get back to building and painting Warhammer models, as my backlog is too large. Sometimes I shift more to reading, mostly nonfiction.
I am hyped for Starfield though, so I expect I'll put a bunch of time into that when I can after it releases. I really enjoyed Darktide for a while when it released last year but the unfun gear mechanics made me pause it and I haven't gone back since. Every now and then, I get an itch only Star Citizen can scratch and I'll play that for a few weeks.
Buy a PSone with the little screen you screw onto it and just sit it on the floor or something
For me a big turn off is story based games which are inexplicably open world. There are some exceptions (Spider-man) but games like ‘Control’ have no need to be open world! I don’t want to have to work out where to go next or hunt for collectibles, the story is interesting just let me experience it with some fun gameplay.
Naturally this is different for RPGs And the like which benefit from being open.
I used to live for long, sprawling RPGs that required at least 100 hours of play time. But as I get older, I started to develop a bit of a hesitancy to starting them. I still love them, but play them less. Not quite sure why, but it does mean I squeeze in more shorter puzzle style games as a "recovery" game after finishing a long RPG.
Also I have less patience for games that are just annoyingly difficult like the Dark Souls series. I don't really have the patience to try the same boss dozens of times and if you're going to kill me with two or three swipes while I have to toothpick away at a boss' health for hours, I'm out.
And finally overly complicated games. RDR2 dampened my enthusiasm considerably with all that horse management stuff. I felt that there should have been an option to use an RDR style horsey.
That one also committed another thing I really start to dislike: a long, in game, tutorial missions. Give me a practise arena, but don't dump all that stuff on me during a 30 minute mission. I sometimes have weeks or more between gaming sessions, and I forget things. If I have to run a 30 minute mission to refresh my memory, I'm not likely to pick it up again.
I think these days I struggle to find any AAA games that really captivate me. I'm tired of microtransactions, "DLC" that really should have been part of the main game, episodic release formats, purely online play, subscriptions, etc. The continual chase for more realistic graphics and bland UI/ HUDs put me to sleep too.
I'm still finding lots of enjoyment in smaller releases with more distinctive aesthetics (Lisa the Painful, Return of the Obra Dinn, Baba is You, etc.) or some of the older classics. Some of the bigger remasters like Metroid Prime and Spyro have been nice but other rereleases like FF7 lost too much of the charm for me.
Now in my mid-30s, I’d say the main things that’ve changed are that the activation energy required to pick up a new game has increased substantially and that my interest in serious competitive games has dropped through the floor. And yes, less time is spent playing games.
I never stopped enjoying games, but while I’m playing there’s this little voice in the back of my head nagging me to be a responsible adult and go find something marginally more productive to do, even if everything is sorted for the moment.
The activation energy increase is probably the one that’s most actively annoying, though. It’s what’s responsible for my game backlog growing so long… if I start a game I’ll usually finish it, but starting is the hard part because at the end of the day when I’m most likely to have time to play something, I’m too mentally tired to want to. Weekends aren’t much better, with how I’m about ready to try a new game on Sunday evening right as it’s time to prepare for work on Monday and wind down.
I can’t see myself gaming like I did as a teenager unless I somehow find myself not needing to work for a living, or maybe if playing games becomes my job.
I completely agree, it’s hard to sit down and actually begin when I know there’s many more useful things I could be doing with my time. I had a year-ish of gap period during COVID between uni and beginning my
job and played 200 hours of red dead 2 and loved every second of it, but as a working adult it’s hard for me to convince myself that embarking on a 100 hour game, 1-2 hours per night, is worth the time investment. Do you find you play smaller games still? Something like city builders or farming sims?
I've never had much of an interest in sim type games. Closest thing I've played in the past year or so that matches that description is Valheim, which has a similar survival-exploration-builder vibe as Minecraft.
For me it was more the change in gaming landscape. From the hyper-grindng of MMORPGs, to the radiant/procedural quests of RPGs, requiring absurd levels of collectables and aggravating challenges to 100% a game, needing perfect split-second button combo timing, or mind-numbing levels of resource micromanaging to complete a game...sometimes I just want a game I shut my brain off to play.
As I have gotten older (I'm 40 now, been gaming since I was a small child in the nineties) I have learned that most games are not for people like me any more. I don't care for multiplayer or things that want you to log in on a daily basis like it's your job. I don't want gambling mechanics or DLC. I just want to pay up front for an immersive single player narrative experience.
These games still exist, but they are being released less and less frequently, and are often now the only found in the multimillion dollar AAA world. Things like Red Dead Redemption 2, God of War, the Mass Effect trilogy, etc.
I have also lost interest in most first-person shooters, which is kinda sad as I grew up playing Doom and Quake, but most of them nowadays want to be the next big multiplayer thing, which I'm not interested in.
My biggest issue is that I have always had an odd taste in games, and have always preferred mechanics over graphics or story. Many games seem to put too much emphasis on story IMO, to the point where they feel almost like interactive movies.
I prefer a game with many "simple" mechanics that end up coming together as a whole to lead to more complicated mechanics. I also mostly prefer multiplayer games. Projectile physics instead of hit scan for bullets/rounds also adds more fun IMO. Examples would be:
Most games coming out now just don't have the in depth movement, or attack and defense mechanics these games do. It's like having to spend hours upon hours "gitting gud" is too much to ask anymore.
I am looking forward to seeing what the new Marathon exfiltration game will be like.
The games I like to play shifted away from strategy and role playing to something that takes a few hours at most… actually a game like Superhot is what I would call my favorite type now.
I still occasionally play games that would take several days to finish, but apart from not really having the time, I also don’t have the willpower to do it. I played Witcher 3 for over two years, with huge month-long breaks in between and that’s how I am playing Cyberpunk and Breath of the Wild now.
Honestly, I suspect a lot of older gamers feel this way. There may be a big market for short 1-5 hour and less expensive highly immersive games now. It would be like a good tv show or movie.
In my case it's this: I got to know what I like, and I lost any tolerance for a fresh coat of paint over an old gameplay loop.
Many triple A games are aiming to give you that familiar feeling, with familiar game concepts, and it feels tired to me now, I've seen it all before, so I tend to play indie games with something different to offer.
On the other hand, I'll also gravitate towards more complex gameplay, since it can be very rewarding to finally master something truely complex. This isn't something I notice with my other gaming friends, so I wonder if that's just the style of game I like? Sims are something I've enjoyed most of my life.
My interest in games had ups and downs. But a common trend is that I now prefer slower paced gameplay than in my teens. No more shooters or high pressure RPG combat for me, it's mostly turn based stuff now. The game can be many hours as long as it remains engaging throughout.
Before I could even hold my head up, my grandpa would sit cross-legged on the floor and sit me in his lap while he played the original NES Link and Zelda games. Later, he created a competition among all of the cousins on who would die the least in Link to the Past. From there I picked up Metal Gear Solid and any RPG or racing games (Gran Turismo to be specific) I could get my hands on. Then the stories in RPGs fell to shit and GT didn't have a full release forever. I lost a lot of interest and didn't want to spend money on more crap games.
However, I'd seen a lot of posts recently of great games. And now I can happily say I've beat Outer Worlds as of yesterday. The story was great and I got really immersed in it. If Parvati needed anything for Junlei, I'd drop everything for her. Never felt that accomplished in a game before.
I've played Outer Worlds many times and ditched most of the companions (Max especially, I just started avoiding him altogether from my second playthrough on!) but Parvati will always, ALWAYS, be on my damn ship and half pushed/half dragged into a relationship with Junlei!
I absolutely loved when my options to silently encourage her or nudge her, like, you can do this. It was seriously like watching a flower bloom.
Yup! Although I was more the rough and tumble friend who was like HAVE YOU TRIED SUBSTITUTING COURAGE WITH ALCOHOL TODAY? But that's the beauty of her character - she loves you if you're the warm and gentle friend with a heart of gold to match hers, but she loves you just the same if you're a boisterous loudmouth with delusions of grandeur and a penchant for things that go silent-boom (I heart whisper quiet muzzler kits on grenade launchers almost as much as I love Parvati). And throughout, while she's happy to listen to advice or encouragement and is always interested in learning from others, her own core character never changes. Even after being beat down her whole life in that soul sucking cannery, she has still retained her beautiful sense of self. Even though she's constantly awed by the people around her, she doesn't try and change herself to be them.
Yep, and I loved how she started off so shy and stuttering her words, but eventually turns into a confident badass that you don't want to be on the receiving end of a hammer to the face.
I used to play FPS competitively in the 90s/early 00s. I had very little interest in other types of games and from the moment I had internet I was playing Quakeworld/Quake2/Quake 3/Counterstrike online pretty much exclusively with the only other games to even remotely capture my interest being Bullfrog's excellent 90s games and the Rollercoaster Tycoon series. I had a Playstation and a good selection of games but that system never came close to capturing my attention as much as the PC since it could not offer what we were doing using the internet. Notable exceptions that got a lot more time than others are probably FFVII, Gran Turismo, Bushido Blade and the Tekken series.
I think I fell out of FPS gaming as I left high school though, my habits changed and I even moved away from desktop PC's/keeping up with hardware requirements and FPS gaming was pretty much the driver of hardware sales in the 90s and 2000s. I bought a laptop, I didn't want a desktop PC anymore and while gaming was perfectly possible on laptops even then I just lost interest.
Nowadays I doubt I could keep up in a modern FPS, maybe if I focused and re-learned a lot of stuff but I think I'd struggle to re-find what I loved most about that scene in the 90s particularly. The internet was new and we had found this amazing application for it with a hugely competitive 'scene' and a lot of community events etc - in the UK there was excellent large lanparties where you could meet players from all over the country for example. I'm sure good communities for multiplayer games do still exist but like with so many things involving the internet they have evolved, I'm shocked at the toxicity of modern games but it seems to come with the territory, encouraging community doesn't seem like a priority any more and to be fair it wasn't back then, we just built them because the internet was still pretty novel and that was just how things were done. Voice chat was only even a thing towards the end of the time I was playing and even then was pretty much always kept in-team and used strategically, we had no reason to want to speak to our opponents.
My gaming these days is very calm and not even really gaming at all, I just like building in Cities: Skylines. Not playing it as a game, just as a sandbox. I guess I got old.
I've reached the pathetic stage of only having interest in occasionally purchasing games but never playing them for more than 45 minutes.
I'm approaching 40 and I don't live in the same city as most of my gaming friends now. My gaming experience has evolved into spending time with them regardless of the game. Especially games that we can play together but we can also progress individually. Valheim recently, Diablo 4 currently. I don't mind the hours or the grinding as long as I can be in chat and we can spend a few hours enjoying something together. Single player games have been few and far between. So I guess the social aspect and community is a priority over actual gaming experience. Also, fps is definitely losing it's luster. Saw a few comments already about that and couldn't agree more. Everything is so sweaty and I'm far to casual enjoy the experience at this point. We had 100's of hours into Apex but finally couldn't take getting steamrolled in every lobby lol.
Turning 50 soon. Always been an First Person Shooter kinda guy but it's become more and more difficult for me to find a game I can really get into like I used to.
I'm just not interested in grinding, loot boxes, cosmetics, etc. I just want to jump on and satisfy an adrenaline rush, not spend hours searching for something or other.
Halo was my thing for a lot of years but Halo Infinite was such a huge disappointment I switched back over to Call of Duty. I am enjoying Modern Warfare 2 but wish players talked more and tried working as a team.
I often only have an half hour or at best an hour in me for gameplay in the evenings. I find I just have other things I want to do and time is such a valued currency these days.
I hate how corporate gaming design and development has become over the years. I miss the days of Doom, or HalfLife where it seemed that developers were more interested in pushing the boundaries of gaming than rolling out micro transactions. The gaming industry used to be so punk rock and now its like, I dunno, bland, forgettable top 40 pop tunes.
And I often get a game like Elden Ring which I can recognize as a great game for other players and yet I can't really get into it the style of gameplay. I have become so incredibly particular about games and gameplay as I get older. And there seems to be less and less good choices out there for someone like me.
I don't know maybe I need to abandon Xbox and consoles in general and get into PC gaming and Steam and all that. Maybe I would find that more appealing.
But I really do hate all the grinding, loot boxes and so forth. I tried Destiny and it's sequel for a while but found it just kind of silly with how overpowered you are and all the wandering around.
I was so certain that Halo Infinite was going to be my go to game for years but it's embarrassing how underdeveloped that game was upon release. Which brings up, another thing I can't stand, games being released prematurely with pretty major flaws. I mean there have always been bugs in games, it happens. But this mentality of getting the game out there ASAP as a cash grab and fixing it later is a terribly common practice these days. I can understand gamer's frustrations these days with stuff like that.
I found a new love in Doom/Doom 2 with programs like Zdoom and a few others because of mods/total conversions. Brutal Doom is one of my favorites, and it's compatible with the vast majority of WADs. I've been playing a 'Compendium' WAD that has a collection of close to 50 WADs that are all pretty good and fun. I like that since it's Doom it's an instant pick up and play for a short time kind of thing, and the mods allow mouselook and you can tweak the difficulty too.
I just turned 39 and I've just discovered video games that I enjoy!
I played a few games on the SNES and N64 when we were kids but not much. My hand/eye coordination isn't great and I get frustrated because I die so easily. But I've recently discovered cozy games and they are right up my alley! Chill, calm, can't die or death doesn't effect anything, stress free gaming. I started our with a Switch Lite and recently upgraded to the OLED Switch. I think it's funny I'm getting into gaming at almost 40, but I'm loving it! I have something a little more engaging than just TV to relax with at the end of the day.
I definitely game less. But I also lost interest in all of my hobbies, so I talked to my doctor. Depression is a rat bastard. Couple that with the trend of micro transactions and unfinished releases I've turned exclusively to the patient gamer status where I pick up games much later after release. Usually a GoTY editing with all dlc and a finished product. But even then I lean towards indie titles and lean on my NES and SNES collection.
Currently 42, been playing games of some form or another since my digits were capable of mashing buttons on a controller.
I think a large chunk of my video game burnout/boredom is due to the law of diminishing returns on Moore's law. Growing up there were crazy jumps in technology. I started with stuff like Pacman and Frogger and eventually landed on stuff like Skyrim VR. Things got so much better at a dizzying pace that even if a game sucked it probably had graphics or some other technology that was unheard of a couple years prior which was enough novelty to suck me in.
These days it feels like the only thing improving at that pace with each new generation of games are all the different ways we can be nickel-and-dimed with DLC and microtransactions.
Don't get me wrong, games in 4K do look really nice, but there's no point to it of the game is boring or frustrating.
I used to be a pretty hardcore gamer up until my early twenties. Then something flipped in my brain and told me it's kind of a waste of time and I should be doing something more productive. Nowadays, I like very casual games when I have time to kill - think like solitaire, simple platformers on my tablet at most. They don't hold my attention like they used to.
For me, I had to come to the realization that I wasn't growing out of video games as a medium, I had just outgrown the games the gaming media hype up. It had been brewing for a while: I enjoyed playing Uncharted 2 when it was released, but could hardly get though Uncharted 4. I found the new God of War kind of boring. What really nailed it for me was seeing so many people talk about how much they loved the Guardians of the Galaxy game while I didn't even get two hours in before calling it quits. I realized that every triple A game was basically giving me the same experience, and it was boring.
But games that give me a fresh experience? Or something old that I wasn't able to get into in my youth for whatever reason? That's what I've been enjoying. Dark Souls, Slay the Spire, Return of the Obra Din, even goddamn Tetris. Just something that feels like a game instead of a movie with gameplay elements.
I am in my thirties and used to game for hours every night - mostly playing multiplayer games like Starcraft 2, LoL, CSGO, Valorant, and Destiny2. Now I find I just do not have the time to keep up with the competitive curve of the game.
I used to be quite good at all of them, peaking at Diamond in SC2, LoL, and Valorant - but that required a lot of time investment that I just don't have anymore. Now playing those same games feels like I am "losing" since I can no longer play at the level I once did. As such, I've moved into the more casual and singleplayer gaming space.
My biggest frustration that really ruins modern gaming for me is games not respecting the player's time. I understand that a 50-100 hour game is attractive to many players but I feel like almost every AAA game now thinks it needs to be some sprawling 50+ hour grindfest. I absolutely adore a 5-10 hour tight experience that I can knock out in a few weeks or perhaps even a spare weekend - but those experiences are few and far between now.
I also feel like gaming feels like a bigger and bigger waste of time as I get older - probably due to more pressure and competition for my time as responsibilities increase.
I haven't played a story heavy game in years. I have found simracing to perfect for my life with job and kids. Just 30-45 minutes for an online race is great for having a very focused, intense and fun gaming session. I don't need to keep track of quests or read up on strategy guides. Just jump in and race. For something more casual, I can play Mario Kart with my kids.
Also, interests come and go. There have been times I played a lot but then felt like after time that it became something I had to do. I liked the idea of gaming more than actual gaming. Then it is best to take a break and spent time with another hobby. Then the gaming interest can resurface at some point.
The last 10 years or so, it's been pinball simulators for me on the PS4. I play them standing. I haven't played much else for any reason, except for some phone games.
I used to play a lot of Mario stuff.
I'm ~30 and still game quite a bit. similar to what this commenter said I find myself having way less patience for grinding and long stories. I also just haven't been able to get into RimWorld, dwarf fortress, factorio etc.
Instead my gaming has evolved into really enjoying communities with regularly scheduled play times, for example I'm raid logging in a semi hardcore classic wow guild and still play league with friends occasionally. Its great because I have set times to play and I spend the rest of my time with my family.
This is why I love playing Atari 2600 games. I can jump right into a game and back out. I don't have to devote days to beat a game and know that I have to complete something before I can move on.
My wife just bought Tears Of The Kingdom for me. I still haven't completed Breath Of The Wild and fell wrong for starting Tears knowing that means I'll be giving up on Breath.
I'm 43 and probably haven't gamed with any regularity since 2010. I still keep my eye on new games and tell myself regularly that I'm going to pick one back up and play, but I'm just too busy with work and kids. If I were to pick up a game then something else would have to get cut and I just don't have anything right now that I'm willing to cut. I value my reading time and my guitar practice time too much and that's where I spend most of my 'free' time.
I really feel this. Back when I was a teenager I'd obsessively play PVP games like Team Fortress 2, CS:GO, Overwatch and Fortnite. But one day in Overwatch I was thinking to myself while extremely angry "Why do I even play these competitive games if I am not having fun". Every since I've sworn off competitive gaming and just play mostly single player and co op experiences. I game a lot less nowadays but sometimes a game gets me hooked again and I'll play it fully (currently Fire Emblem 7).
But the majority of games i play nowadays are just out of boredom and as filler for me that is currently Rocket League and Mahjong Soul (yes I know haha). I always feel bad when I play games like these though as I feel like I haven't been productive
It's interesting to see what different people have to say here. My youth didn't involve a lot of console gaming. My siblings and I had an N64, but I was mostly content to just watch them play. Same really at my friend's houses, where I'd be happy to surrender a controller to someone more interested in playing than I was.
It wasn't until high school where a friend got me into TFC and CS1.6 that I really became a gamer. And for a while I did play a lot of those two games in particular. That phase of life was short lived though cause I got a job and moved out of my parent's house young. The next few years, say from 16-25 or so I didn't play games at all. I worked, traveled, and eventually came back to school. The whole period was just too busy.
When I started grad school I diddled around with TF2, roller coaster tycoon, and some other nostalgia, but still really didn't have time for it.
After grad school and once I had a proper job I got into indie games like The Witness, Meat Boy, and other fun stuff, but it still wasn't big in my life. When I met my future wife and showed her the puzzle games and stuff I liked, she encouraged me to buy an Xbox One, fallout 4, and boy oh boy. I loved it. Blew my mind. Played RDR2, The Witcher 3, Skyrim, and started getting way into RPGs.
Then we had our first kid. Soooo now I'm back to not gaming as much since, well, working full time and parenting is pretty time consuming. I did get into fromsoft stuff via jedi Fallen Order, and played Elden Ring in the moments I could find. Now I game when I can, mostly all on console for simplicity. The single most precious feature for a busy gamer dad like myself is a freaking pause button. I love fromsoft, but loathe the lack of a pause when playing offline. It should be there imo, but alas.
Right now I'm working through jedi Survivor, Forza Horizon 5, The Last of us Part 2, and Sekiro. Sekiro is Def my favorite at the moment, but when starfield comes out I'm probably going to fangirl over it pretty hard.
Being so very out of the loop for so long made games seen AMAZING when I got the Xbox. Things had come so much further than I'd ever imagined, and good games these days are truly the most impressive media out there. Story telling, pure drama, immersive action and world building are all shocking to me. I can wait to share this passion with my son, but in the meantime there's money to make and diapers to change.
So mine is a weird situation where I “grew out of” video games when I was 13. I was obsessed with video games when I was younger, even though my mom couldn’t/wouldn’t buy them often.
I ended up selling my Xbox when I was 14. And since then I haven’t really played. I started getting into movies. Movies were cheaper (or even free considering I could torrent movies easily but video games took more effort to do so). So I spent all my time just watching movies instead.
In retrospect, I was never good at video games. I always lacked the patience to do them. Any attempts since to play video games haven’t lasted. I get bored pretty easily (because I’m so bad). That’s something that always got me, that you have to be at least somewhat decent to enjoy games.
That being said I did enjoy some of the games I did play and complete. The Last of Us, Tomb Raider, GTA V. But I’ve never gotten the feeling to pick it back up as a hobby. Even with something that looks cool, or that I would have loved back in the day like Hogwartz Legacy.
It's that my interest has become much more intensely focused on the nuts and bolts. I've gotten much more interested in how games are put together, who makes them, etc, and keeping up that sort of focus means I have to stick to a single title for a while.
The visceral feeling of playing has become much more important too. Like the time is more precious, so the game really needs to be hitting something hard for me to stick with it, and feeling good in the hands can mean spending more time than I otherwise would with it. I also, stopped really trying to finish them. Sometimes I do, most of the time no, and I don't feel bad about it. Feeling bad about that would mean games have become work and I refuse to make that connection lol.
More practically speaking it takes the shape of really devoting my attention to one game at a time, and I'll listen to what others have to say about stuff I find interesting while I'm doing that.
41, it's definitely changed over time, just because of the vast breadth of games out there. I find myself not really following big names so much, more just in passing. Whereas when I was younger I remember big name games just dominating everything for months at a time, but there's just SO MUCH out there now that it's impossible to stay on top of everything if you're just a filthy casual. I've moved on from most FPS, RTS, and grand adventures games and just go for smaller platformers or games with some sort of unique gameplay, or games that give the player a greater amount of freedom. I also have a huge backlog of unplayed Steam games that I'd like to some day get down to 0% unplayed (thank you HumbleBundles).
Just due to life responsibilities, my gaming had gone down quite a bit since it's heyday, but I've found myself getting back into it more after having gotten a SteamDeck, but also some of my kids have started getting into Minecraft, so I'm playing alongside them, watching them grow digitally. Which has also gotten me into some modded Minecraft now, which I had always avoided before because how annoying it was working with mods. It's definitely gotten a bit better than I remember it.
I still game as an adult, but everyone's different. I don't think gaming or enjoying game should be a must-have or must-do for everyone. If you yourself don't feel like it any more... then just don't? Or just explore other genres and types, in the hopes of finding something that would appeal to the older you. I know my taste in games has changed over the years. I am a lot more interested in realism now, and am turned off by arcade-y aspects of games.
I pretty much only play mobile games that I can do when time allows wherever I might be for whatever time I might have. PC and console games require too much of a time commitment.
That doesn't mean candy crush. For example, I play star wars galaxy of Heroes with a guild and do guild events and raids. For the most part it requires time in 5 minute chunks. Sometimes I have a half hour, sometimes I have 5 min.
I hate to say it, but the vast majority of gaming I'm doing these days is mobile gaming... often based on the ads I see in other apps. These games end up having short rounds, so I can quite pretty quickly.
As you put it- you get older, become and adult, and have responsibilities that take up your time. I'd love to put more time into my beloved console games... but then you're looking at a few hours disappearing, and I have other things I should be working on instead of the games.
As I've gotten older (mid-30s now), it's not so much that I feel like I shouldn't be spending my time on games, and moreso that things that didn't feel like chores to me when I was younger definitely feel like chores to me now. Keeping up with gear upgrades in most MMOs (I do play Guild Wars 2 and like that it's more about horizontal progression), grinding to complete dailies or collections or achievements, feeling like I need to min/max to keep up... I already have a full time job and house chores, I don't need the things I do for fun to give me chores, too. I'm more interested in the story than anything else: a game either needs to have a compelling story, and/or be casual and relaxing enough for me to pick up and put down whenever I feel like it (possibly with months in between, because I burn out on particular games sometimes and need to take a break).
I hate to say it, but I've had a pretty negative experience with GW2 gearing over the long term. People always say you can step away from the game and then come back and your gear remains relevant, but I find just as often I come back and there's been balance changes and even if I'm using the same gear prefix stats, maybe my runes need to change or maybe I need a different ratio of assassin's to berserker's slots to Crit cap my power set, or a new expansion dropped and there's like 6 new prefixes and some build switched to one of them or a new build emerges, and each subsequent expansion's gear prefixes are progressively more grindy and annoying to access, even at the exotic quality (sometimes to the point that it feels easier to make an ascended piece and do the stat swap mystic forge recipe on it)
Everything about the actual horizontal experience in GW2 feels like it's designed to funnel players into wanting the convenience of legendary gear for the easy stat swapping, and going from exotic/ascended to legendary feels like a vertical step, frankly.
Ironically it's more frustrating and has negatively affected me far more than the gearing in the vertical progression game I play, where things are simple, the base ilvl to access content is very accessible, and typically within each gear tier's content cycle balance changes don't really change your gear selection. It's a simpler game in gear terms but ironically the experience of keeping up to date isn't actually as bad as GW2 the horizontal game.
As many people have probably said, my interest hasn't gone down but my stress and responsibilities have certainly gone up. I'm not able to get completely lost in long-form games anymore because I'll play for an hour or two at max and then I just have to move on to something else because...well there's just so many things to do these days. The desire is there, but even if I have a free day it's hard to just play a game for hours and hours because it inevitably will get broken up or I expect it to and so I never get too engrossed. You start training yourself away from playing too much.
Shorter games, run-based games, or multiplayer is what occupies me more just because it's easier to justify, "Oh, I got an hour that's like 4 Apex matches!" instead of trying to get into some deep long game.
I wish it wasn't so because I do love to get lost in some RPG or whatever. The most recent game I was able to just sit down and enjoy long-form was the Mass Effect trilogy remaster...but I kind of forced it just because it's one of my most favorite franchises ever so I just made time for it.
I play a lot of games that can be done in half hour sessions. I will get on my PC for a few games of CSGO here and there. I also like to play Tetris99 on my switch when I have a few minutes to spare. I bought an RG351P retro handheld a couple years ago and I'll play some retro games on that as well. As a lot of other people have mentioned, I just don't have the time anymore. I have to plan ahead or seize moments of opportunity.
I got addicted to Pokémon Go. In some aspects, it is still gaming. However, the motivations and internal experience of going out to catch pokémon are vastly different than sitting down to play video games.
I think Pokemon Go is interesting, it is still gaming but at least it gets you walking and healthier unlike some other video games.
As I have grown older I just feel guilty playing games all the time. I just always feel like I should be doing something else. When it comes to other fun hobbies I don't feel this way. I guess because modern games today rarely have endings like League of Legends or Dead By Daylight.
I guess as I am growing older I have come to realize time is better spent somewhere else like working out, talking to my family, reading, learning etc.
Echoing many other comments here, but I feel very similar to a lot of them. I just don't have the patience, mental energy, etc. to invest in really long story-heavy games. Occasionally I can, but increasingly I go for things I can have fun with in shorter bursts.
I still aspirationally buy a bunch of long games, that I've yet to play, so my collection keeps growing and I keep avoiding them.
For me, the hard part is that I have seen a lot of stuff already. Take Hollow Knight--it's an amazing game, but there have been lots of Metroidvania over the years. It's fun and all, but it doesn't scratch an itch because that itch was scratched years ago.
I still love games but with constrained time and more resources they slip below my opportunity cost curve. Others have mentioned more life experience being part of what has diminished their engagement. This isn’t the case for me because even a couple years ago I could still sit down and play through a game pretty easily. Now I find it difficult because my time is more constrained and I have the means to engage with my other interests. On the flip side my friends who still game a lot play games as their primary hobby. I don’t think they are less experienced in life they just chose to spend their time in a different way.
Games fill two roles for me: personal time and socializing.
For personal time I’m more likely to drive one of my cars in the mountains than start up a racing game. Likewise RPGs draw me in less because my job often feels like an RPG. Modern shooters are rent seeking skinner boxes that I just can’t stomach playing solo. The games that stick with me are small indie titles with interesting mechanics/gameplay or something like Diablo IV that gets to the point fast with an aesthetic and story.
Socializing is the primary reason I sit down at the PC. My closest friends have ended up scattered across the US. Playing a game is how we get together in discord to chat.
Time management. There’s a lot more I have to do in a day. I used to stick it on the hardest setting and complete everything in a matter of days, now it’s usually stuck on easy/story mode and I chill out for 45 minutes before supper.
I used to play all sorts of games when I was younger, mario to gran turismo and lots of RTS. Then I start playing online FPS games and that totally changed the types of games I played. I couldn't get into single player games or other genres again really, I've tried. Now at almost 40, 97% of my gaming is just CS:GO and CS2 (luckily got access!). Other 3% is Halo or Battlebit these days. I think what I found is that with CS I always feel like I am learning. After a play or clutch attempt I immediately know what I could have done better or differently to hopefully achieve a better outcome. I really do think the split second decision making and understanding the game, all the moving pieces at once which I keep track of in my head in a round has helped me in other aspects of life. I learned to be able to track a developing situation with ease and stay calm, I worked in operations. My will to game really hasn't faded to be honest just the lack of care for anything but CS. I've been trying to dissect that but I can't figure it out, it is a bit of nostalgia to CS 1.5/6 days in public servers to familiarity to the competitive nature. I can keep up with much younger gamers still as I have so much knowledge of CS but have certainly fallen off a bit as I don't spend 12 hours playing, maybe once I start fading I'll move back into other games again. There is just something so satisfying with how CS plays to me. It also helps that I am currently single, when in a relationship gaming most certainly takes less importance or other types of games if they are into games. Not many women are into CS lol. I do wish the community was less toxic, but that will likely never change in such a competitive game.
This post makes me want to think about this a lot more in my personal life, gaming is a great past time. I'd rather game than watch TV but I could certainly play a bit less and focus on more productive tasks.
As I get older, I get more and more jealous of my time and my desire for competition goes down.
I can't commit to an all-weekend gaming marathon like I used to, I've got stuff that needs to get done. So instead of spending 6 hours trying out a game because it looked cool, I took a laser-focus on studios and genres that I know I enjoy and watch for specific titles.
I've also replaced a lot of my gaming time with DnD material, which I find more rewarding as well.
I grew up with the NES as a kid and the older I get the more I find myself going back to that type of gameplay. I don’t have patience for 120 hour, open world adventures anymore, I don’t have patience for 25 minutes of cutscenes, and I don’t have any desire to play online. I want to essentially turn a game on and be actually playing it almost immediately.
I'm in a place I never imagined I'd find myself (married, 2 kids, dog, house) so the shift in gaming habits has been quite profound! While I sometimes lament the inability to dedicate a full weekend or evening getting lost in a game's world, I have managed to capture some of that magic -- albeit in a micro doses through mobile gaming. Since the kids came onboard I've turned to Apple Arcade since I know I won't have to worry about ads or IAPs. What I'm missing from my competitive past of LoL, SC, TF2, CS, etc., I feel I'm making up for by enjoying the co-op experiences with my preschooler and getting to see and re-live the fascination with games through his eyes.
As far as my own adult gaming, I'd like to say it's dormant outside of iOS games -- at the moment I don't even own any consoles -- but it's something I enjoy so I wouldn't be surprised if I picked it back up when the kids are a little older. At the moment there's just not enough time once all the household and familial chores are done, and games aren't the only casualty. Between all the acclaimed TV series, films, books, music, news articles, podcasts, sporting events, social media chatter, etc. it's tougher than ever to not feel like you're missing out on something. And yet, I still haven't found any bit of media consumption that feels better than waking up after a good night's rest, so there's that copium.