do you find it difficult to get into games? I’ve got Epic Games and Steam Games libraries chock-full of classic top-tier games along with many other newer games like Stray or 2077, and a bunch of indie titles. I just can’t be bothered to download and install them, much less try to get into the characters and storylines. Used to be I couldn’t wait to see what happened in the story, what new items you could collect, what new worlds the developers had created. Not anymore. I return to playing the same franchise for a quick FPS match or three and then I’m done.
Same here. Time is just more valuable now. Hopping into a few quick rounds just feels easier than starting something up and getting halfway through the beginning tutorial, before being interrupted by the kids or wife, and then feeling like you just wasted the hour or so you had to spare, because you didn’t even start playing the actual game yet.
Yup, the only game I play right now is factorio and that was a mistake. Staying up after the kids fell asleep and magically it’s 4 hrs later. PC broke and I’m finally getting proper sleep. Should have stuck with slay the spire and other 1 hr run type games
Exactly. I know I only have like an hour tops before need to do something and it’s just not enough time to truly immerse myself so I end up not even want to start the game.
Now I’m wondering when I’ll be 50 and the kids will be gone and have time again to play 8-10 hours straight. Maybe then.deleted by creator
The older I get, I find that I tend to default to two things:
- Games that I’ve played before that help me turn my brain off. Kind of like a form of meditation.
- Games that have a mechanic or a story that is genuinely new or engaging.
Same as above, as a kid (80s) games were new and interesting, even shovelware games you would get for free on C64 mags were interesting.
Over the years games have just become more and more streamlined, and action focused, it’s basically like Hollywood now where they just churn out nice looking mediocre films to make money.
The 2nd point though js why I responded as I really agree with the point on something new being what makes games interesting now. They don’t even have to be amazing, just offer a new experience.
For example when Dayz came out, that was a nice breath of fresh air, every time I loaded up the game with friends I never knew what was going to happen. Same sort of thing with Phasmophobia, was genuinely amazing for the first week we played it, just nothing else like it. Now you can’t move for DayZ style games or Phasmo ripoffs.
I am bored of playing the same sort of stuff, like I’m bored watching super hero movies, I want new experiences (VR has some good experiences).
My tastes have definitely changed.
I’m old and I’m busy. I don’t have time for fetch quests that are uninspired time sinks. I don’t have time to play through a game with janky mechanics just for a few bright spots. I don’t have time to farm repetitive shit just so I can do X thing.
I’ve found that most AAA games care more about the time you spend playing rather than whether the game is fun or not. Diablo IVs rapid fall from grace is a prime example of this. This will not stop; it is the end point of the business model. A fun game that people sink 40 hours into and drop is much less profitable than a mid-game that demands a perpetual 10 hours per week.
Others have already hit on it, but my best gaming experiences in recent years have been games that I didn’t buy on release and only found through online word of mouth and hype.
Years ago I made the decision to never play a game on launch, never buy a game full price, never play a game just because it was on the online buzz.
I decide what to play usually days in advance, carve out a chunk of my recreation time to explicitly play, as if it were going to a movie or a party with friends. It’s like a date with the game. I block a couple of hours to it. If the game is good, it will get a second date, if it bored me, we would break up.
I don’t buy on sales pressure either. If I decide I want to play a game, I would wait to buy it on the historical cheapest price. Only then would the game get schedule time to get played. That keeps the FOMO away.
It has made gaming super enjoyable and no longer the dopamine chase that publishers want to make to milk the most money out of me. As a result I usually enjoy my time way more, play older games more frequently, not out of nostalgia but because I never played then. I also spend less money, which lowers stress and anxiety. As a result I haven’t played a AAA game in a long while.
Time is scheduled for a game on what I’m interested in right now. But since the decision is always for a time far away in the future (up to a week in advance) I can make a more directed and intentional decision. Some weeks it’s thematic, some weeks it’s just genre based. Some weeks are retro. Some weeks are for comfort. All with small and concrete goals for each.
Yup. Just finally played through Skyrim, and starting fallout 3. They’ve been fun. Honestly didn’t game for the better part of the last 15 years, work and kids. Sunk hundreds of hours on Skyrim now done, fallout totally different and a predecessor yet familiar.
I go by the same rule, basically if people can still play and talk about something 10 years later it’s actually good.
Sorry op, your inner child is dead. Time for sudoku in a rocking chair.
You might be right. Except I don’t like sudoku.
Sorry OP, your inner grandparent is dead. Time for seppuku.
I’m not that old, ffs. lol.
Had to Google that one… Funny shit. Thanks, I needed it.
I think there are a lot of reasons for this, but I’m in the same boat.
- Most games tutotialize you like you have never played a game before
- “Cinematic storytelling” is everywhere. I turned off the dialogue in Need for Speed Unbound, and the game is wayyyy more enjoyable without it. And its…a racing game.
- There just are more games. Used to be I’d bring a physical copy of a game hope, and that’d be my game for a bit. Now I have thousands of games accessible at any moment. It’s hard to wait for a game to “get good” when I know that.
I’d also say that I feel no need to complete games or get further into them at this point. Especially seeing how people said Starfield is best in new game plus or whatever, that game barely has legs to stand on in a first playthrough. It’s not worth it for me to play a game for 60 hours for it to maybe get better, and I tend to know when I’m done with a game early now.
100% agreed with all of these, but I would add one more factor: Limited spare time.
When I was a kid, it was a lot easier to spend a few hours in front of a console undisturbed, immersed and focused on the game. When you’re an adult and come home from soul-crushing work, hungry and exhausted, then your last bit of energy goes into household, pets, chores, family and the like and then it’s late at night already and if you don’t go to sleep soon then the next day will be worse. Where and how do you cram a couple of consecutive, undisturbend hours of playtime into such a schedule?
If a game isn’t immediatly interesting, fun or otherwise a good reality escape, it is not worth sacrificing time on it when you have to strictly ration your limited amount of spare time already.
Yeah totally. I’ve noticed everyone’s bandwidth dropping as capitalism worsens. It’s even more apparent when every live service game wants you to treat it like a job.
Agreed with your last point. I’m at the point where I can call how much is enough for me for any given title, and it makes me a lot happier than feeling obligated to finish games I don’t enjoy.
Yeah for me it’s the sheer number of games, plus the increasing enshittification of games and just being older and having less free time. I literally have like 200 games I’ve got for free across various platforms, so if I fire one up and it’s clearly not finished, or it’s immediately trying to sell me stuff or even if it’s just a bit boring and annoying I’ll dump it immediately and move onto the next one.
Whereas when I was a kid I had a SNES with about 10 cartridges and that was it, so I played the shit out of those even when they sucked lol
I know right! Every time I come back to a game and they’ve changed every thing about it again I wonder why I bother. I think that’s part of the reason Melee has survived for so long, the community establishes the meta more than someone whose incentive is to keep selling you things.
The tutorial thing is huge. What a fucking slog getting through the tutorial. I hate witcher, 2077, etc for this reason.
Yeah, it’s called clinical depression, it’s entirely normal, happens to everyone. 🤷♂️
One can not have depression and still not be into games anymore.
Must be a tumour, then. 😞
It’s not a tumor! Not a tumor, at all.
I’m nearly 40, been playing since the old Commodore 64 days.
I’ve always loved games, but with a wife and kids I don’t have anywhere near as much time as I used to with them, which means I think quite a lot about what I want to play in the 6 hours or so a week that I can actually do it.
I feel like I’m in a minority in that I still love much of the AAA stuff - Cyberpunk and Baldur’s Gate 3 is my jam right now, I might get Spider-Man 2 when it drops in price a bit and I have more time.
I love indie games too but I don’t always have as much time as I want to invest in them, I did get through Bombrush Cyberfunk recently and it scratched a Jet Set Radio itch that I had long forgotten about.
So yea, I still love them but it’s partly because it’s just always been my hobby.
Been looking at Cyberpunk. It’s good?
It is!
I picked it up at launch and it’s improved quite a lot over the last few years, better combat and skill trees, fewer bugs, better cops, the world is beautiful and the quest design and performance animation makes Starfield feel pretty antiquated.
It’s still not perfect but I’m on my second play through and I’m still having a good time, I’m very excited to see the new stuff in Phantom Liberty too.
Thanks! Glad to see you like it!
Not at all. Stop trying to play AAA bait and just look for fun instead. I’m having a blast with Dead Cells, I think the demo for Balatro (poker roguelike) is still available, if you prefer 3d survival, Valheim is a great pick, etc.
I’m happy enough to spend time and energy and get into new games. The difference is my standards are WAY higher than when I was younger. I’ve played so many games that it’s hard to impress.
It probably has something to do with you growing up… Priorities change (not for everyone ofc) and taste as well in terms of fun. Accept it, don’t judge yourself and just go with the flow. Don’t force yourself to do something you don’t enjoy, time on this Earth is limited!
It can go both ways though e recently picked up reading manga again after a 7 years hiatus and I am enjoying it better than before!
Yep. I’ve never left Counterstrike and with CS2 that came back, friends from when I played when I was in college have come back to play so we’ve been playing. Story wise, I could get into it but there just isn’t enough time and what time you have you’re going to sacrifice sleep.
It’s all about getting old.
Same, I find I’m super picky with games now, and have a hard time finding new stuff. But I’ll go back and play stuff from when I was a kid for the 17th time no problem.
For the past few years I’ve been trying to go through my Steam gaming collection chronologically, in order of release date starting from oldest games. I’m trying to at least go through and have no unplayed games. After dozens of Humble Bundles and ~20 years building up my collection, I’ve got hundreds of games I haven’t even touched yet. Sometimes I’ll be interested in a game and play for awhile, sometimes I’ll play for 5 minutes, get bored and uninstall. Doesn’t matter, as long as I can check it off as “played”. Sometimes I get sidetracked by a newer game that comes out, or by physical board games, or by just life in general, but I still have that goal in mind to try new things, I at least have that if I don’t feel like playing anything else.
Last year I made a vow to put at least one hour into every game in my steam library (except ones I’ve played before or didn’t work).
I had about 120 games to get through. It took me most of the year. I ended up playing some “hidden” gems I’ll never forget ( Torment: Tides of Numeneria was a notable great).
Did I play Skyrim too? Of course. But I also got addicted to Risk of Rain. Were there some stinkers? Absolutely. But for every Dev-Guy (bad) there’s a DiveKick (good). For every Serious Sam 2, a Warhammer 40k: Space Marine.
Some of my most played games right now are Into The Breach, Slay The Spire, and Vampire Survivors - none of them are complicated. They all respect your time.
I think what it is is the immersion. You know you’ll be interrupted before you’re “done” so you can’t let yourself mentally wander off into the world.
So, play a game that respects that limitation.
