Gamers who have gamed for a long time

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.

amio,

Yes. I've never had a super easy time getting into new games, and for the past several years I haven't seen one thing that's even slightly interesting. Depression is a factor, but also a lot of new games are straight up dog shit. I tend to fall back on retro gaming. I think I have 90 minutes played in Starfield and that's the only new game I played for the past several years.

ClamDrinker,

Yup. Used to be it was quite easy to find the games that were worthwhile to play since there was very little for profit games and not too much choice. Nowadays only if I hear from people I trust to have a taste for the games I want to play will I actually get excited. Its just easier to go back to classics because you know you’re going to have a better time than most things you buy new.

Always on the look out though, gems are still being produced, they just became a lot less findable.

Zarxrax,

I feel like a lot of games these days make it difficult to get into, ironically by trying too hard to make it easy to get into, with excessive tutorialization. Part of it might also be the types of games that you like. For example, I want to play a game to have fun and challenge myself, not to sit around watching a story play out for a half hour while I walk around doing nothing. So the majority of popular games that people are always talking about are the kind of games that I would absolutely hate. I want to just jump in and play. The new Super Mario Wonder game is a pretty good example of something that just gets out of your way and lets you play the game, so I have been enjoying it quite a bit for the past few days. The recent F-zero 99 is also an enjoyable racing game for me, for the same reasons. I have also been getting into fighting games more in the past few years, so I’ve been playing Street Fighter 6 a lot.

So the most important thing I have learned, is that I can no longer just look at which games are considered “good”, because in many cases I’m going to hate them. When I was younger, I would love just about any of the popular games. But now, I know what I like, and that’s what I gravitate to.

chilicheeselies,

You are just getting older. You cant expect to keep doing the same thing over and over and get the same high from it. Chasing the dragon. You need to include fresh, new experiences to liven things up. You’ll always ennoy games to some degree, but you will never get the aame satisfaction from it that you did when you were tounger and it was fresher.

_pete_,

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.

PrincessLeiasCat,

Been looking at Cyberpunk. It’s good?

_pete_,

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.

PrincessLeiasCat,

Thanks! Glad to see you like it!

MightyWeaksauce,
@MightyWeaksauce@lemmy.world avatar

I think the prevailing response here appears to be that as you get older you just don’t have the time like you did back in the day and so it’s harder to get into games. I think there’s truth to that but i wanted to point out something else. When you get older most people tend to do less NEW things and instead get more comfortable with what they know. Old people don’t know what’s going on in music, or art, or cinema, or even science because you find a world view that works for you and you stick with it, it gets comfortable.

When you’re younger you are more likely to give a fair shake to that new music genre or video game because you have so little to judge it against and you’re thirsty for new experiences. Not so much when you get older, people stop experimenting with NEW in favor of reliably good. Maybe use that perspective when looking at a new game or a game that you own but have never gotten into.

I have owned Rimworld since 2019 I think but I never got past the tutorial until recently. For some reason it all clicked and now I can’t stop playing. I think part of that is because it is so NEW to me, I haven’t played anything like it before so I can get swept away by it. Hard to do that when you’re playing your millionth FPS or open world slog.

Also playing with friends helps a lot. My significant other is a new convert to video games and it’s an absolute blast introducing them to new content. I had no need to go back and play Stardew Valley again… but it sure was fun lol

Valmond,

I did video games professionally for ten years (grew up on the ZX81, C64, Amiga) and since then I have a hard(er) time because the only things that changes in new games is :

A) better graphics (potentially)

B) The back-story

I don’t really care for A, and for B it’s kind of scarce… I only need to save the world of kill the dragon so many times.

I did a 180 and learned chess which I feel wildly rewarding!

I’m also making a “slow game” (12 “action points” every like 12h, fantasy settings) that you can play for 5 minutes a day, but can be really immersive (it’s text only).

I don’t really know what I wanted to say here, but I too hope I’ll find some new breathtaking game :-)

MDKAOD, (edited )

There as a brief period in the early 00’s where this kind of browser game was prevalent. I can’t remember the names, but same concept. They were perfect for lunch period, issue commands, and hope you made the right choices when you logged in the next day.

Valmond,

Ah the time before the enshittifycation. Maybe I should really finish the game … I’ll try :-)

MDKAOD,

Found it, and apparently it still exists: www.planetarion.comThe universe ticks every real world hour.

Valmond,

Hah excellent, I did never play that specific game but some that were quite similar :-)

There were loads of people trying to make those too, with wildly varying degrees of success :-)

LongPigFlavor, (edited )

When I was younger, gaming was all I did as it was my only hobby and I didn’t have many friends. I’d play the same 5-6 games since my catalog was small and my folk weren’t keen to buy more. I didn’t care much about graphics, performance, or length. I was also more of a completionist, searched for collectables, completed challenges and time trials, and completed side quests. Nowadays, I have a larger gaming library. I own hundreds of games on Steam, but I’ve hardly played a handful of them. Over time I’ve realized that I play games for killing time more than anything else. I’ve become more conscious of how I’m spending my free time and now I spend my free time doing other things.

Ghostalmedia,
@Ghostalmedia@lemmy.world avatar

The older I get, I find that I tend to default to two things:

  1. Games that I’ve played before that help me turn my brain off. Kind of like a form of meditation.
  2. Games that have a mechanic or a story that is genuinely new or engaging.
elvith,

For me, I’d like to add “games that let you set your own pace and objective and let you achieve things your own way” (obviously something like Minecraft, but I also enjoyed Tears Of The Kingdom because of that)

Or, if multi-player: Be co-op, make me do some crazy shit and make me laugh (e.g. Human Fall Flat)

PraiseTheSoup,

I’m playing Tears of the Kingdom now and it’s the only game that’s kept my attention since Dark Souls 3. I am not generally a fan of open world games. Even as a huge souls fan I didn’t really care for Elden Ring. But this Zelda game is incredible. There is so much more going on than I expected and it is just plain fun.

Globulart,

It’s probably the game which has distracted me the most from my current objective.

The number of “ooooo what’s that?” moments that derailed the next couple hours entirely was massive.

Maybe my first oblivion playthrough comes close but not much else.

Grofit,

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).

PrincessLeiasCat, (edited )

Same. 100%. I don’t love it though, tbh. I’d love to get immersed in something new again.

And MP has always been toxic, but goddamn…as a woman you just get sick of some of the shit you hear. I have to straight up turn text chat off, and it’s rare that I go on mic chat even though good communication would help a game so much.

hperrin,

As I’ve gotten older and more busy, it’s been harder to get into games. I can’t play 4 hours a day any more, so the game has to fit into my schedule. Plus a lot of games take like 60 hours now. I liked Stray a lot because it was fun and I beat it in like 3 hours.

So yeah, I feel pretty much the same.

paddirn,

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.

TheDarksteel94,

The older I get the more I know what kinda games I’m into. So everything else I try to play just feels boring very quickly. I get bored very quickly in general if I don’t keep a game fresh for myself by, for example, mixing main and side quests instead of doing just one for hours.

I’ve also had times when I didn’t play any video games at all and just watched YouTube all day. And sometimes I felt like I played games just because I didn’t have anything better to do.

At the moment, I basically just play Cyberpunk and Battlebit, because both of those offer various ways of approaching encounters.

A_Random_Idiot,

Yeah, I’m the same way.

because I have massive, chronic depression. I find no real joy in playing new games with rare exception (Starfield was one, at least, until I got into playing it and realized how bad it was…), for the most part, and prefer to wrap myself in the comfortable known of a select few games, and even those I cant sit and play for a very long time before all drive disappears.

You doing ok, OP?

all-knight-party,
@all-knight-party@kbin.run avatar

I think something people haven't mentioned yet is that games are so much a digital media now that where I used to be able to keep infinity games at all times in a CD book, I now have to selectively decide which games get to occupy my limited hard drive space, and installing a new one means uninstalling another, and waiting to redownload it, and between my limited drive space and less than amazing network speed, those can absolutely influence what I'm able and willing to play at any given time.

It's more logical to keep ten games I know I like installed rather than choose one of those to cut off in place of a new unknown quantity.

Also, compared to other major sentiment I see in this thread, I actually quite like tutorial sections of games. I'm often very interested to see what the game itself has in store in terms of exactly what mechanics and systems it contains and how they execute them, and how that stacks up compared to reviews or word of mouth, which are often vague, biased, or missing portions of the experience.

After I fully understand what a game is trying to do, I fall off the wagon often times as it sinks into a routine instead of a novel learning experience, or maybe I actually love it, but standards continue to increase as more and more novel ideas and fusions of genres are created and become existing products. It becomes more difficult to make something that's not something you've already done, but slightly worse or only slightly better.

I still "get into games" plenty, but it doesn't happen quite as often, and it's the "sticking with" them that becomes more desired and elusive.

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