I’ll continue to recommend an app called Improve the News. It’ll let you filter things, but more importantly, shows you the source of articles, and explains different angles at the end of articles. Really well done.
www.allsides.com does this too. It’s not perfect, but it does a decent job at showing multiple articles about the same current event and tagging them based on how left or right leaning the article is and then describing the difference in coverage from each side
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.
Pittsburgh has three major parks in the city limits - Point State Park downtown, which is a small area that hosts events, Schenley Park which has plenty of hiking, biking, and fishing, and Frick Park which is massive and allows you to get lost in the forest in the middle of the city. It’s a great way to get out of crowded areas without traveling.
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.
I’ve recently completed Metro Exodus, DLCs included. I have most of the achievements, but it don’t feel like getting the remaining ones at the moment. Before that I completed all of the Halo games compatible with the XB360, on coop.
I feel lost. I don’t really know what to play now.
I went back to playing some Insurgency coop, but it wasn’t even too engaging before.
I often stared blankly at my staggeringly huge game library and lost all interest to play. And instead ended up playing something not too heavy on the brain that I have known for decades and perhaps even watch Netflix on the side. (Like Diablo.)
While researching online I stumbled upon the phenomenon of decision fatigue and it changed my gaming habits and even other parts of my life. I probably understand the concept incorrectly but for me, I apparently tend to avoid decisions all together when there are too many options which leads to heavy procrastination. Doesn’t matter if it’s too many tasks on my list, too many letters on my desk or too many games to choose from.
I Marie Kondoed my gaming library and now it’s a fun activity again!
btw I am a gamer for over 30 years and my library, including all gaming platforms and consoles, has about 2000 (two thousand) titles
Old man with only, compared to you, 394 titles in the steam library.
I had a similar experience.
My solution was to categorize my steam library with custom categories.
The most important category is the “Trash” category to remove the “clutter”. “Dead” games like Artifact and trash from bundles from steam sales.
Now I have my library sorted and want for example to play a soulslike I just look into my library in the category “soulslike” and can choose from the games I’ve sorted into the category.
I wish this would also be possible for streaming platforms as their standard categories are usually redundant to give you the feeling that their library is bigger than it actually is.
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.
@pdxfed
I also love Skyrim and fallout 3 they are some of the best games even today but I didn't finished them yet.
I just finished cyberpunk after 170 hours and It was so good that i am starting it again from scratch.
asklemmy
Oldest
This magazine is from a federated server and may be incomplete. Browse more on the original instance.