Grown out of playing games

Maybe you're just playing wrong games

I can easily relate. Only game I have played in the past fifteen years is Starcraft 2.

I even have an XBox One (mainly for dev purposes) and have probably spent 10 minutes in total playing it. Even have games still in their shrink wrap.

I can absolutely agree. Me & my friends just talked about that, feels like the Game Industry is running out of ideas. Everything just plays similar.
They constantly improve in graphics (which is cool, I really like nice graphics) but it feels like they're going backwards in creativity & gameplay.
I bought a ps4 2 years ago & have only played a few hours since.

I don't play many games because I don't have any free time any more

When I do manage to find a spare hour, I usually play a multiplayer game online with a friend to slightly count towards my social needs too...

My tastes have definitely changed - I used to love extremely long / slow single player games where you might waste an hour simply planning what to do next, (fallout, elder scrolls, flashpoint/arma campaigns, original R6, etc), but now prefer refined repayable multiplayer modes that are easy to fit a known experience into a particular block of time (starcraft, arma multiplayer, R6 siege, etc).

4 hours ago, grumpyOldDude said:

But playing games, these days (unlike over a decade ago) genuinely bores me to death.

Yeah, me too. But i'm not sure if it's my age or the current state of games.

I've had a similar time 7-8 years back, then i've discovered the game Penumbra (predecessor of Amnesia), and this game was so awesome i really gained a lot of motivation again.

At the moment there are quite a few games around that i think are very good, but nothing stands out. It has always been like this - mostly. The best times are when there is a leap in technology that pushes new ideas / genres, but what could come up next? VR alone seems not quite enough.

But younger people seem to be still excited about games. They dress like Overwatch characters, football players do a Switch pose after a goal... Seems there is more interest than ever, although we've had games that were so much better in the old days than actual ones, right?

However, if i play games they constantly appear too big and too complex for no reason. Boring huge open worlds, pages of UI to level up your character, dozens of things you need to know. This is true not for all but often for very popular and sucessfull titles. I totally do not understand how people enjoy this and have enough time - this is where i really feel old

Maybe it's just you grew out of your old thing and haven't yet found your new thing (after all, people change). Maybe it's because the industry has stagnated and the same old same-old gets a little tiresome even if it puts lipstick on and offers to wear something silky.

I've been playing games on computers since the 1970s when I was first exposed to Colossal Cave. I have gone years without playing anything, then some new tech comes along to enable newer experiences and I'm back again. You can hit burnout though, and need to rest and recover.

Like most entertainment industries, there are exploitation phases and exploration phases (eg. the Disco and the Postpunk phases in the music industry of the late 1970s). Right now, the games industry is definitely in an exploitation phase in which clones of past successes are released by cynical entrepreneurs to milk the market while they can. Just wait, he pendulum will swing and some indies will start exploring new and exciting ways to make the computer entertain you anew.

Mean time, put down the controller and do something else for a while. A break is as good as a change.

I am quite of an oddball like yourself. I don't own any modern console. Last one that I am still using is a PS3 for Netflix and media center. My laptop is running Linux. So I would only play mobile games now, but even that is limited to one game at a time. If I got into a game, I would endlessly play that game for a few months straight, and really get into it. But once I quit, I delete it and never look back. Right now I am playing none, and the bar is set pretty high for me to get into any game now.

I am somewhat jealous of my gamer friends, or reading the threads on /r/gaming. I can't seem to get into it much because most games nowadays are quite demanding of your time, and also money thanks to freemium and DLC. Yet, somehow they still find that joy of gaming.

I can rarely get into games these days. I enjoy thinking about what my game could be then actually seeing what other games are. Maybe twice to three times a year I'll lose a weekend or maybe even a week to a game.

Hmm, I still do waste a fair bit of time on Games, though not nearly as much as I used to and I tend to play a lot less games.. like at the moment for the past few weeks I've only really played Rimworld and PUBG, most of my time is spent working though.. and then I get home an just wanna sleep

But yeah, my desire to play games is much less now as I struggle to find a game that really like captivates and keeps my interest

I guess I'm sort of similar but also not at all. I definitely spend a lot of free time making games (or at least game-like demos) and very little playing them, but I can't really say I feel like I've grown out of games. When I do play games, I mostly play really old games (which are exactly the one's I'd expect to grow out of) and the occasional weird horror game.

I do spend a fair amount of time watching newer gameplay videos on the internet, which I prefer for a couple of reasons. It's a good way to appreciate the design, artwork etc. that I'd probably miss if I had to focus on actually playing the game. I'm also just not any good at playing modern games, so watching someone else play means I'll get a better sense of the pacing/story than I would by fumbling through it awkwardly.

That said, I am a bit confused by the appeal a lot of these giant open-world games that seem to be especially popular now. I feel like I typically prefer a more curated, finite experience, whether that's in terms of story/progression or the gameplay itself. A lot of open-world games don't really seem to be about anything, and I'm not convinced they're worth the time investment if there's not really any kind of payoff or development.

EDIT: And yeah, Sega Dreamcast is the most recent console I own. I've got a nearly-complete collection of classic Sonic games, though, including all of the 8-bit ones* and I play them fairly regularly.

*Up to 1999 and not including arcade games or games where Sonic isn't a playable character. Beyond that, I think I'm only missing one of the two Sonic Drift games, Sonic Labyrinth, Sonic Gameworld (I've got Sonic Schoolhouse, though...), and Sonic Eraser, which is definitely a thing I just found out existed.

As I mostly write engine, I love to search for new solutions and bugs in games to inspire, implement and omit this second. But after playing few hours I get bored, there is too much effort to get into story.

I get like that from time to time, but then I find a game that's exactly what I wanted to play and get sucked in for 300+ hours. Most recently that would be halcyon 6/paladins/shores of hazeron.

There is not fast enough delivery on new concepts and ideas and games take months or years to develop by which time they have lost all their value or original ideas and you have to pay just for the slightest things. If you ever play any free games or see something you like in a game but just for a second you know what I mean. Games are trivial nowadays and the money you pay might just be for that little kick that you then throw away and don't bother with anymore. Did I enjoy all three StarCraft II games I bought? I did get the intended kick and only after seconds of buying them. Games are meant to just fill up surface area on a shelf. If I were you I'd just make games free. I don't think it's art worth paying for. Games are needed for energy and motivation like music I think. Games are stylish meaning or conceptual exploration for forms.

That is, I wouldn't make anything free. I think everybody can make stuff to sell. But personally after that I would rather make free stuff. I would charge if I came up with anything. But I would rather create more value and get more people to like me and get money that way by getting mysterious patrons that funnel money into you. Because expecting people to pay you is ridiculous. People that don't have money.

I've never been much for AAA games. They all seem like bland rehashes of well tried game features with trope filled mildly interesting stories to me. But I guess that is what you get when you need to feed a hundred people, and need to make well informed choices and play it safe.

Small game studios and one/two man teams foolish enough to try new ideas are where it's at

I try to buy a few of those every month, to support them, and sometimes you find a gem worth spending a bunch of hours on.

I only have a few hours per week available that I could play games, not the many hours of free time I had when I was a teen.

Most of the games I play these days is not because I want to enjoy them, instead I have very specific, focused play which feels more like a study because I need to stay current and relevant. When a sufficiently important game comes out I will study it for the hours that I need in order to understand what people talk about, then move on.

I have not played games for a long time. The last game was Dead Space.

I am totally the opposide in that field. I play games a lot, even AAA ones - except for military shooters which i totally hate (COD, BF etc.), but i dont play any multiplayer or online games - just single adventure or jump and run games like Uncharted, Tomb Raider, Ori and the blind forest, Song of the Deep, etc. which i enjoy a lot.

Also there are few games out there which touched me emotionally very hard, like Beyond Two Souls and Life is Strange.

But when it comes to game development, its the opposite: I totally suck at it and lose motivation and get bored very easiely. Its not because i dont know how to make a game - as a matter of fact i am decent programmer with over 25 years of programming experience and made a ton of stuff, including some game-like prototypes. It just seems i still havent found my way how i can enjoy it on a constant level.

41 minutes ago, Finalspace said:

But when it comes to game development, its the opposite: I totally suck at it and lose motivation and get bored very easiely. Its not because i dont know how to make a game - as a matter of fact i am decent programmer with over 25 years of programming experience and made a ton of stuff, including some game-like prototypes. It just seems i still havent found my way how i can enjoy it on a constant level.

I suggest you try to do some research - working on things that are still unsolved. Personally i work on a self balancing ragdoll as a toy project and i enjoy this a lot. It's exciting and motivating. After i made some progress i get back to the boring stuff.

41 minutes ago, Finalspace said:

But when it comes to game development, its the opposite: I totally suck at it and lose motivation and get bored very easiely. Its not because i dont know how to make a game - as a matter of fact i am decent programmer with over 25 years of programming experience and made a ton of stuff, including some game-like prototypes. It just seems i still havent found my way how i can enjoy it on a constant level.

I suggest you try to do some research - working on things that are still unsolved. Personally i work on a self balancing ragdoll as a toy project and i enjoy this a lot. It's exciting and motivating. After i made some progress i get back to the boring stuff.