Falling out of love with gaming

Yep.. I find myself playing a game for 1-2 minutes then stopping because I just feel disgustingly bored right away. Now I'd rather spend my time reading about or doing my other hobbies. And if I need some relaxing entertainment I'll pop in a movie or read a book.

Sucks because I really want to be in love with a game but nothings doing it for me anymore. I just cant do the grinding and questing anymore, it feels like work.

penalty_sl said:

Sucks because I really want to be in love with a game but nothings doing it for me anymore.

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Basically this. I *want* to want to play games, but just nothing keeps my attention or interests me. (God I feel old for saying this...) Also, a lot of times I feel I just can't be bothered to 'learn' how to play many newer games. They try to add so many features/abilities/whatever, that with my limited play time, I feel like the first 20 minutes of every play session is me re-learning how to play the game; what buttons do what, where in the story I am, what my goals are etc. And the problem only compounds itself as the further you get in a story, generally the harder it is, which makes it more difficult to relearn to play. Due to this, the only games that tend to keep my interest are simple games with the 'simple to learn, hard to master' mentality. Puzzle games etc on my phone. I think I've logged far more hours into my phone this year than all my playtime on consoles/PC combined.

I'm now 33..... since UO --> EQ (#1 server guild) --> Classic WoW (#1 server guild) I havent found anything that even remotely holds my gaming interest. I screw around on Project1999 but I'm very casual. The MMO industry sucks, and other games arent worth the money to sit on my shelf after 2-3 sessions.

I am holding out for EQ Next.... but its more than likely going to suck (its going to be typical SOE after all). I hope I am wrong, but thats probably the last game I'll look forward to / play.

I have the same problem. Mainly because I started with all the good games around 13 playing EQ1, Counter-strike, TFC...basically all of the good multiplayer PC games. To this day I have yet to find a game that grabs me as much as those (WoW did for about a year) but since i'm 24 and work, go out, etc... I barely play at all anymore. Maybe Half-life 3 (lol) will bring me back.

The games have gotten worse, but I think the real problem is the environment at this point.

Instant information spreading with no mystery isbadfor video games across all genres. Stuff like youtube/twitch.tv and so forth has a way of breaking down games incredibly quickly. Long gone are the days of playing in one ofhundredsof small sub-communities and being blissfully unaware of how good/bad you really were. Gone are the days where you had a large amount of time to explore the game and figure out cool tricks/secrets that other people in your group might not know. Games are figured out and broken down at a lightning fast pace today, and it really has the unfortunate side effect of homogenizing the player base in every game. This has serious negative effects on every game genre imaginable.

Games that wereawesomeat the time like UO/Everquest/SC:BW would have been far less fun for the average player if information sharing was at the level that it is today. A collection of people all having competing ideas on how best to handle the game (with some being massively out of touch/misguided) is in general way more interesting/fun to interact with than a collection of people that are all doing the most optimal thing at slightly varying degrees of efficiency.

Honestly, guitar has almost entirely replaced gaming for me. I'll still pick up a game every once in a while, but I'd rather pick up my guitar.

I'm playing through Guacamelee on and off right now, and I play, oddly, NBA 2K13 from time to time, but that's really about it. Big long games just don't hold my interest anymore. I have Tomb Raider, Bioshock Infinite, Far Cry 3 all sitting like 3/4 finished and I just have no momentum to complete them.

I feel like have been fighting an addiction to games for my entire adult life. Anytime I get interested in a game it affects my work. I spent 1000+ hours in 2012 learning how to get decent at Dota 2 instead of working the number of hours at my job (online poker) that I should've. In 2011 after I had a nice tournament score I immediately squandered all that momentum by spending the next two months building a base from scratch in Haven & Hearth, only to finally get murdered and snap me out of that funk. Before that it was Die2Nite, before that it was Aion, before that it was... sports betting (not a game, but a distracting hobby that completely immersed me). I squandered the first half of college on Ultima Online, the second half on Quake 3 and Counter-Strike. It's ridiculous to think where I might be if all the energy I put into gaming had been put into something more productive. Whenever you quit a game (really quit it), a day or so later you realize, "Wow, I spent a lot of time thinking about that."

At the start of 2013 I told myself I would retire from games until I was a big success and had the financial freedom to devote a lot of time into gaming again. I'm guessing some of you in the computer programming field are already closing in on that point. I picture myself working my butt off, and then in old age playing some slow, strategical game like EVE Online, and having a ton of fun/influence there. For a few months I was able to work, exercise, have a bit of a life, and occasionally play a single player console game. No commitment whatsoever as I drove around Liberty City crashing into things. Didn't touch Dota 2. I actually made progress in life! Wow, what a complete non-surprise.

To celebrate my success, a week or so ago I took a sniff of Dota, and this is how the rest of the week played out: grind the hell out of Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup for a few days, then see if I could get Salem (the grindiest permadeath MMO known to man) working, and binge on that for the last day and a half. Haven't played a hand of poker since Wednesday (and I normally play every day).

If I won Powerball, I am pretty sure I would dive into whatever multiplayer game is most fun and commit tons of energy to it. Falling out love with gaming? I wish I could be so lucky.

It's because aside from graphics games have barely evolved. COD MW 1 was the last 'Great' shooter. WoW was the last 'Great' MMO. Everything after that has been the same old shit. Minecraft was a huge step in the right direction but companies are too chicken shit to invest big bucks into a triple A "Minecraft" type of game.

Devs used to control gaming and its creative future now men in suites control gaming.

Borderlands 2 and Bioshock Infinite were good!

I've found solace with League of Legends. It's faceroll easy to pick up the rules and fills my need for cooperative play, competitive play, neckbeard optimization, and desire to climb ladders and constantly improve at a game.

My biggest annoyance is that the community is the worst mixture of old b.net forum trolls and raging tryhard children. Dealing with that has made me a better person.

Also I will add that now I work on a computer literally all day programming, the last thing I want to do at the end of the day is do more of that.

Very similar here for me as well. Most of these games that come out are just not that good. Skyrim was the last modern release that really sucked me in. The last 2 MMOs I still play and enjoy are DDO and Vanguard both with their own set of problems. I thought WoW was really great through BC and maybe WOTLK but when they made the talents change I just won't ever go back. Perhaps honorable mention to RIFT although it was way too short leveling resulting in another "lobby MMO" and they really screwed that game up trying to do a PVP and PVE game and balance it... to hell with that crap.

The shift in the industry toward casuals has caused me to have few modern titles worth playing. As a result i have gone back to resurrect games like Neverwinter Nights 2 ( and expansions ). I have probably logged 200 hours or more in nwn2 and expansions since January

In fact, those interested in this might want to to check out this thread.
http://social.bioware.com/forum/1/topic/167/index/3120312/47.. baldur's gate remake mod for nwn2 ! I have played other nwn2 mods and they are fantastic and of course, D&D 3.5 is great for me as I love the complexity, options and depth.

I think with age our time has become more valuable and many games are either a waste of time or become such disappointments that it gives us buyers remorse. It's quality, it the gaming community, it's the good ole days, it's so many things. Until the give us something that gives us a decent balance if something old and something new, it's not going to work.

Oh, and I'm tired of companies attempting to capitalize on IP's I love and appreciate and crapping all over them. You think at what's happened in 3-4 years... Star Wars, Sim City, Diablo were all destroyed. If EQNext goes under, what's left?

There's no pride of artisanship left amongst the major developers, just pursuit of the profit margin. They've all become soulless corporations that make games exclusively for money, not for the love of making games which incidentally pays well. It really shows in the games they make.

I recently had this, where every game I played wouldn't keep me entertained at all; I just couldn't focus on any game.

The thing that got me out of that "slump" was honestly getting a 3DS, like every game I've gotten recently has made me realize again how much I like gaming. It made me like playing things like LoL and such again as well.