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.

XEAL,

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.

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.

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?

houseofkeb,

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.

CrabAndBroom,

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

houseofkeb,

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.

chilicheeselies,

The tutorial thing is huge. What a fucking slog getting through the tutorial. I hate witcher, 2077, etc for this reason.

justlookingfordragon,
@justlookingfordragon@lemmy.world avatar

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.

houseofkeb,

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.

TrenchcoatFullofBats,

Yeah, the bar for should I buy this game is higher when you’ll be giving up sleep and/or rent money if you want to play it.

That being the case, truly excellent games can still clear that bar; ToTK easily siphoned a few cumulative months out of me, despite, well…gestures vaguely at everything.

I still have no desire to do the final boss fight at the end, though.

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.

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.

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.

Maajmaaj,
@Maajmaaj@lemmy.ca avatar

It’s easier when you are single and refuse to have kids.

BeardedBlaze,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

Or if you get your kids into gaming.

Maajmaaj,
@Maajmaaj@lemmy.ca avatar

https://lemmy.ca/pictrs/image/23029ec6-7895-44d3-9cb4-4db951566886.png

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.

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.

azn03,

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.

Nawor3565,

Yup, this is the real reason. When you’re a kid/teenager, you don’t realize just how much free time you have to spend on stuff like video games. Then you become an adult and have way more responsibilities, and suddenly video games just aren’t as appealing as a time sink as they used to be.

BeardedBlaze,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

Lol I’m in my 40s, and play with guys same age as me up to guys in their 60s. Just because you don’t have the time, doesn’t mean all adults don’t.

Rhynoplaz,

That might not be the flex you think it is…

BeardedBlaze,
@BeardedBlaze@lemmy.world avatar

What flex? I’m simply stating that he doesn’t speak for all adults. Once my kids were old enough to hold a controller, I got them into gaming. All 3 are teenagers now, and I love gaming with them. One of the few hobbies where age really doesn’t matter.

Edit: spelling

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

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.

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.

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.

  • All
  • Subscribed
  • Moderated
  • Favorites
  • •
  • asklemmy@lemmy.world
  • localhost
  • All magazines
    •
    Loading…
    Loading the web debug toolbar…
    Attempt #