All entertainment fills a need in your daily life. It only makes sense that the need changes as you grow older.
When I was younger, I was poor and had something to prove. Thus, I loved big games with hundreds of hours of gameplay, grinding for the best bobbles, and competitive multiplayer experiences.
But as I get older, I don’t care about any of that anymore. What I need instead is a way to relax within my short gaming windows, to have unique experiences, and maybe have a sense of control as my life gets more chaotic. As a result, I’ve tended more towards shorter indie titles. But also towards non-gaming things like travel, gardening, and crafting hobbies.
We spent so much of our lives building our identity around a single hobby - gaming. And maybe that was a mistake. So many of us end up sliding away from gaming as we get older and that change is okay and even expected, that shouldn’t give us an existential crisis.
Your identity should reflect the person you are, not the thing you do.
Getting old is strange. I keep trying to go to house or techno shows in the basement of restaurants or other weird places, convinced it’ll be a great time because I used to enjoy it. My knees hurt and I’d rather be home most of the time. It’s okay for things to have a beginning, middle, and end. Also, not to be nitpicky but just because I think it’s a fun word: it’s “baubles”
With some of the really good games that have come out recently, I’ve learned it really isn’t just me not having interest/motivation. It is, in fact, that most games just fucking suck now. 🤷🏻♂️
AAA titles are mostly re-optomized towards selling you more of the game, by withholding that game’s content and reselling it for more than they would’ve gotten.
This is partly a side effect of game value being mostly stagnant for years but also just greed in general.
Indie games have been a huge boon for me due to that, no bullshit, just a game; a fun game.
Literally, indie titles and games made by smaller companies (AA titles like Dishonored) have been the most fun for me to date.
Looking at what games I’ve always liked: this has always been true. Back in the 90’s, most of the big companies now were like 4 dudes in a garage and they had passion.
Now a lot of the names I once respected are scam artists and jackasses and a lot of the companies sold to bigger companies who then gutted them, stripped the IPs they consumed of any value, and turn greatness into shit.
This isn't unique to video games*. It can happen with anything that you spend a ton of time on, and either burn out on or start to develop more refined taste in. I've had it happen with:
novels
board games
movies
people
You start to see patterns, tropes, or just plain get burnt out on something. It's a sign you either need to take a break, or that your tastes have simply become refined enough that you require a higher bar to find something interesting.
I'm in my 40s and definitely don't play games as much as I used to. But there are still times I get sucked in and have a great time. Most recent example: Cosmoteer, a spaceship building game with loads of freedom and creativity. I'm also looking forward to the Factorio DLC and the Dyson Sphere Program combat update.
Edit: case in point that I can still get excited about games: I finally tried Shadows of Doubt and, wow, what an interesting game. It's like a Deus Ex shadowy sneak-around world with detailed voxel simulation.
though the enshittification phenomenon is a real thing, and why people should play more indie games
I had stopped gaming for about 5 years to focus on my career and starting a family. I’m now turning 40 this year and have been dabbling with games again but nothing really stuck until I started the Trails in the Sky trilogy. I ended up playing it a few hours every other night. Something about it was so refreshing that I’m now about to wrap up the 3rd game.
Like others have mentioned, perhaps your mood or perspective changes as you get older and it’s just about finding the right game to play.
Nearly an empty nester, I got back into it with diablo and am surprised it’s not affected my marriage. She’ll just sit next to me and do her thing on phone/tablet.
My favourite for the last few years has been Stormworks. It lets you build a lot of various vehicles with a lot of creative freedom. You can use out of the box controls, get a bit more advanced with the in-game microcontroller editor or go even further with lua scripting. I dove in blind and love it. Then there’s transport, logistics, rescue, research etc. missions to complete.
Others I have played before are Scrap Mechanic and Besiege which are a lot more lightweight and easy to get into, but with less advanced building possibilities.
Factorio comes to mind. More of a factory builder, but I’d describe the gameplay as being a lot more about designing stuff and figuring out good solutions. If you have ever felt a slight bit of achievement after getting something to work in a programming language or some engineering discipline, this game will be like crack for you! And I do mean that literally. I spent 50hrs within a few weeks on it, loved it, couldn’t stop thinking about it, felt like it was better than socializing and then realized that it took me months or years to get to the same playtime in any other game I own!
When I hear this, I wonder if people are playing the wrong types of games for them. Most AAA games have great graphics and cutscenes, but the core gameplay loop is just tedious and feels like you’re following a GPS from chore to chore. I don’t fault anyone for feeling bored with 10hr interactive movies.
I still love games that challenge me and offer a real risk of failure, for example. If there’s no chance of losing, then beating the game just feels like “finishing” it, like how you would describe a movie or TV show. I’d get tired of that too.
Yeah that‘s my point as well. I play games on the lowest difficulty possible because after a day of work I do not want to be grinding during my free time. And even on easy mode it‘s sometimes just too tiresome.
Like I love Minecraft but I will explicitly play to have fun and build things, my building resources come from what I gather around my area, you’d never catch me using concrete as a primary component in my builds for example.
But MMO level grind? Never. I just want games that respect my time
Exactly. If I’ve got time and energy to play something, it’s going to be for the experience. Not to die repeatedly until the bossfight is ingrained in my memory and I hate myself.
Yeah having the time and energy to log on every night and play games is something I constantly daydream & fantasize about, but when I rarely get an opportunity to do it, it’s extremely hard to enjoy it because I know I’m not gonna get another chance again for who knows how long. My enjoyment is directly related to looking forward to the next time I’d be able to continue what I was doing in game.
This is why I bought a steam deck and have accepted joy in Stardew Valley.
I never thought it’d be like this though. I thought that video game would literally stop being fun. Like I’d grow out of them or something and not find them enjoyable anymore.
But that’s not it. They are still fun and enjoyable. What I didn’t expect was that my mind would be so full of responsibilities that it would just be impossible to enjoy video games. As if there just isn’t enough room in my brain.
I’m sitting there trying to play but I’m just thinking about all the things I need to do tomorrow. Or this week. Or this month.
There is just too much to think about that I can no longer enjoy not thinking.
I find that a lot of the time what prevented me from enjoying video games was a sense of obligation, especially if I had a backlog. Ever since I got game pass I have basically allowed myself to start and stop games whenever I please. I just follow my gut. And let me tell you, my enjoyment has skyrocketed. Now, after a few years of doing that, I picked up BG3 and that massive flame has returned in an incredible way. I say this as somebody in their 30s with children and a full-time job. I really know what you mean by responsibilities clouding your enjoyment. But if you just stop treating games like an obligation and only play what you want when you are really in the mood instead of carving out time and forcing yourself to do it (especially particular games) it is remarkable the difference it will make.
What’s bonkers is that you can play it on so many platforms. They’re dropping it natively for Mac OS next month even, if you can believe it.
I’ve been playing on GeForce now via Steam and it has been a remarkable experience. It feels like I’m playing locally in a way xCloud can’t reach yet. I also tried it on my deck for the first time last night and it plays pretty dang well. I get about 35fps and the battery is ripping through (I got like 1hr45min), but they optimized it well, it looks pretty good, and frankly 30+fps is perfectly fine for such a slow, methodical game. People get way too precious about 60fps.
That deep fear of being homeless and hungry if shit goes sideways irl really takes the punch out of how much I give a shit if a sparkly pixel on my tv screen falls off a ledge or whatever.
I stopped being as interested in video games and gravitated toward board games. It’s an activity I can do with friends around a table instead of sitting alone staring at a screen. And the same puzzles are present in board games plus you get the social aspect.
I gravitated toward pen & paper rpgs. I don’t get to play as much as I’d like to, but when I do it feels great to play whoever I want and to do whatever I can come up with, with my friends.
And after listening to the “Sounds Like Crowes”-podcast, even RDR2 feels shallow and limited to me. So if I play something on my computer, it’s some quick 15 minutes of Brutal Doom or some arcadish indie fun.
Playing on easy instead of challenging yourself just go get through it is making the games worse for you in my opinion. Edit: This was a bit heavy handed, easy mode is fine I just meant to suggest harder difficulties
Weirdly I enjoy playing most games on hard or higher despite not having a ton of time. A level a day, of even every other day is fine. The game can wait for me especially in single player.
I get your point but at this point I get more satisfaction simply progressing and completing rather than overcoming harder difficulties. It’s a trade off I guess but I have a huge anount of games I haven’t even played so I guess It’s quantity over quality given my free time and that’s ok, I can change the difficulty back at any time but yes, I’m sure it impacts the enjoyment from the gameplay itself.
For sure, also I didn’t mean to so heavily handed state “playing on easy is the problem”
If you enjoy easy mode then by all means go for it, I didn’t mean to sound like a “Easy mode is for chumps” type of person, just in my own personal experience I’ve found higher difficulties/challenging games are more fun for me.
Especially for games with strong story elements, sometimes hard gameplay sours the experience. Just like strong story sometimes ruins games with great gameplay…looking at you DOOM Eternal.
Anywho, my only other suggestion would be trying different games you’ve never tried before.
Enjoy Indie Rouguelikes? Try a puzzle game, enjoy puzzle games? Try an arena shooter, enjoy survival? Try a horror game, etc. (I especially recommend horror, even if you suck with horror you can argue that’s a new feeling you don’t feel playing games, and overcoming the fear is a whole new dynamic should you experience it)
Niche genres that build skills as well, like rhythm games? Muah. What a breath of fresh air from the constant “run through hallway, shoot bad guy” routine.
Playing on easy instead of challenging yourself just go get through it is making the games worse for you
This definitely depends on the person, I love when games have easy modes. Games can really make me anxious and stressed, so being able to lower the difficulty improves my enjoyment immensely. Don’t get me wrong, I love challenging games too, but that challenge can ruin it for me sometimes too - especially if it’s a single player story mode.
For sure! I said that a bit too bluntly and blanketed.
Old games especially are nice when it comes to difficulty. I will NOT play Half Life 1 on Hard, enemies just take too many bullets and that’s not fun. I always find modern action games are more dynamic and you can think smarter making higher difficulties encourage creative gameplay. But obviously I get that it’s not for everyone.
Sometimes I have to switch a difficulty a touch lower because I’m trapped in a horrible section or somehow ended up in a death loop, so I’m not bashing it at all.
Also RTS games for me I’ll generally avoid the hardest difficulties, but for skill based reflexive games? Gimme Nightmare :)
but for skill based reflexive games? Gimme Nightmare :)
Agreed 100%. I played Beat Saber for the first time this weekend, and had to jump up to hard mode because the easier levels were so dull. Those types of games definitely are the best example of ‘if it’s too easy it’s boring’
Pretty sure I’m in the same boat. Literally nothing is enjoyable anymore and I have 0 motivation to do anything “productive” after work since it’s all just more work…
My friends must think im nuts when they see me bounce from game to game to game within 1-2 hours because nothing keeps my attention lol
This has been me the majority of the time since about 2020, which I chalk up to depression and more recently suspecting that I have ADHD (I know self-diagnosing isn’t cool, I intend to explore this more formally eventually, but I have many reasons for suspecting it in general). Sometimes it’s bad enough that if something doesn’t grab me in 5-15 minutes, I’ll bounce off to something else and probably repeat the cycle a few more times before giving up and doing something else instead.
I find that I can’t really play modern games at all anymore. They just feel like work and are more concerned with monetization rather than being enjoyable to play. Modern experiences feel so hollow to me now. I miss when the main draw of a multiplayer game was feeling your skills improve rather than spending 100+ hours to get some skin from grinding out a battlepass. It feels like a chore. I fell off of TOTK in May and apparently haven’t been too eager to return to it. I’ve been doing a decent job sticking with Mass Effect lately though. Helps that it runs perfectly on Steam Deck so I don’t always have to be on my PC. It’s my first time playing ME1, which helps. We’ll see if I can stick with it through 2 and 3, which I played many years ago.
This has also led to me drifting apart from many of the people who I previously considered to be my friends. Most of them barely leave the house anymore and only hang out and communicate on Discord, which I am barely on anymore due to my general lack of interest in games lately, my general disinterest in modern games specifically (which is all they play), and my disinterest in participating in more voice calls after being in Teams calls during the workday beforehand. They also have significantly more free time than I do due to almost all of them being single, so the rare times I have tried to play anything progress-based with them has been a bust because I inevitably fall behind. It’s unfortunate to drift apart like that, but it took longer than it should have for me to realize that we probably weren’t actually that close if me losing interest in games is all it took for them to cut me out. Oh well.
It’s cool and useful as a starting point. The main thing is to be authentic and say it the way you said it: That you suspect it.
I know a few people on the suspectrum, and it’s fine as long as you don’t try and claim that you most definitely have the thing and that your self diagnosis is valid/means you should have access to healthcare/etc.
Thanks, I appreciate your perspective, and I’m glad to hear that I’ve been handling the communication aspect of it properly - I’ve never used my suspicion as an excuse or justification of anything, so far I have just told a few trusted people that I suspect I have it, basically like I said here.
I have experienced several financial rough patches in the past year (job loss due to my employer shutting down, for example), but now that things have seemingly stabilized, I hope to begin pursuing a formal diagnosis soon, and I look forward to doing so! Thanks again.
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