Gaming is not 'fun' anymore when you hit a certain age?

[mrchow19910319]

Recently I've keep having this feeling where gaming was not what I remembered it was... like the whole 'sitting down in front of your PC and just dive into it' wasn't attractive anymore.

 

Everytime I open a single player game, after 5,6 minutes I keep thinking about the daily chores I have to do. Doing dishes, cleaning my room, keeps friends in contact etc. And I'm not even married.

 

Then I quit the game and pick up whatever stuff I needed to do, like cleaning or cooking or something, after doing so I kind of felt relaxed and even had a sense of accomplishment. LOL.

 

Younger me will sigh in disgust. Is this an age thing??? Where turning on vaccum cleaner somehow felt more rewarding then hard grinding ARPG for 5,6 hours? 

 

I went to cyber cafe from time to time, want to pull an all nighter, and it felt like doing work. LOL. I felt heck, I will only do this from now on if someone is paying me to do so. Why do I want to go home?? I just started this new level in Wolcen....

 

Does anyone feel the same way?? 

[SkilledRebuilds]

Priorities in life change..

Enjoy what you can.. its all circumstantial to your own stuff going on in life.

 

One day vs others it can change, or you just might be sick of same same games all the time,new skin but same games over the years...

Gets old quick to some people.

 

I might play PC games a little to a few hours per night these days,more SP than MP gaming... hardly do more these days whereas younger days it was a higher priority vs other things I could be doing.

But its circumstantial.. as circumstances change so will your opinions on different things at times.

 

Good luck finding the balance of goodwill and enjoyment without feeling like its a Con. Finding the positive..

Some games themselves can bring you out of the funk.

[lewdicrous]

3 minutes ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Does anyone feel the same way?? 

Yep.

One of the main reason I stopped playing games was because it felt like a boring chore shortly after starting, even with games that I've been looking forward to playing.

Maybe it's the repetitive nature of the games that I played; go here, do that, go back, go there, do this, go back, rinse and repeat.

[mrchow19910319]

4 minutes ago, SkilledRebuilds said:

Priorities in life change..

Enjoy what you can.. its all circumstantial to your own stuff going on in life.

 

One day vs others it can change, or you just might be sick of same same games all the time,new skin but same games over the years...

Gets old quick to some people.

 

I might play PC games a little to a few hours per night these days,more SP than MP gaming... hardly do more these days whereas younger days it was a higher priority vs other things I could be doing.

But its circumstantial.. as circumstances change so will your opinions on different things at times.

 

Good luck finding the balance of goodwill and enjoyment without feeling like its a Con. Finding the positive..

Some games themselves can bring you out of the funk.

recently I had been having a lot of fun in Wolcen. I knew the game is buggy and still needs a lot of polishes. But I haven't been playing a game that keeps me coming back to it in years until I tried wolcen.  Will play some more later today.  

 

2 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

Yep.

One of the main reason I stopped playing games was because it felt like a boring chore shortly after starting, even with games that I've been looking forward to playing.

Maybe it's the repetitive nature of the games that I played; go here, do that, go back, go there, do this, go back, rinse and repeat.

Yeah. Took me a while to adjust myself though.  

 

[dizmo]

Might be the games you're playing. Maybe they're just not what you're into anymore.

I don't think it has anything to do with age. My dad still games, has for many many years. He's approaching 70.

[LautarAdevarat]

Yeah, for sure it's a shame of just how boring it feels to play games now.

I love playing FIFA and yesterday I had a 4 hour playtime, after that I felt tired and exhausted.

But today I have just vacummed and felt proud bout me, like wtf is going on, when I was younger playing was joy, now it just feels like a time loss piece of crap.

[mrchow19910319]

3 minutes ago, LautarAdevarat said:

Yeah, for sure it's a shame of just how boring it feels to play games now.

I love playing FIFA and yesterday I had a 4 hour playtime, after that I felt tired and exhausted.

But today I have just vacummed and felt proud bout me, like wtf is going on, when I was younger playing was joy, now it just feels like a time loss piece of crap.

hahaha exactly how I felt! XD 

 

[mrchow19910319]

3 minutes ago, dizmo said:

Might be the games you're playing. Maybe they're just not what you're into anymore.

I don't think it has anything to do with age. My dad still games, has for many many years. He's approaching 70.

Wow! You got a cool dad! 

[mrchow19910319]

9 minutes ago, lewdicrous said:

 

your profile picture though. LOL

[Gork]

Doesn't help a lot of wht's shipped is broken. Then they go activision on it and claim they'll fixit when they feel like it oh and a few backstory things with DLC.

[mrchow19910319]

4 minutes ago, Gork said:

Doesn't help a lot of wht's shipped is broken. Then they go activision on it and claim they'll fixit when they feel like it oh and a few backstory things with DLC.

lol. isn't it a business strat these days?

 

put out semi broken / unfinished games

 

brings in loads of money 1st

 

apologize for it

 

fixing the game later on

 

profit????? 

[Avocado Diaboli]

I don't think it has anything to do with age. These days I probably play and finish more games than ever before. I think this year alone I've completed 30 games or so. For one, this is due to the fact that I now have more disposable income to play a greater variety of games than previously. And for two, I generally don't care about multiplayer games, as such I don't have any kind of time sink where a thousand hours disappear doing the same thing over and over again. And I honestly find it more tragic than impressive to see how many people spend a ludicrous amount of time playing the same game on repeat instead of looking for new experiences. It's like only ever watching your favorite movie on repeat while eating nothing but pudding for every meal. I mean hey, you do you, but I'd find it pretty boring.

 

What I can say has changed are my preferences, or more accurately, my tolerance for bullshit. If the smell of pointless grind emanates from a game, I usually stop playing, because I'm not inclined to have my time wasted by developers building Skinner boxes in lieu of actually crafting meaningful content for me to play through, which is why I've largely stopped playing JRPGs altogether and why I generally don't care about roguelikes/-lites, because it's mostly just endless dungeons filled a million palette swapped enemies. 

 

It also helps that my bullshit detector is very finely tuned to weed out meaningless fluff in open world games, because apparently every game produced by AAA studios these days needs to be an open world game, where you can largely ignore many of the side-quests, which are mostly just pointless wastes of time to fill a checklist to eventually unlock something worthless at the end. Basically, if the game has "post-game content", that's stuff that can be ignored, because if it were meaningful, it'd somehow be integrated into the critical path.

[Sauron]

You're older than me so who knows... but for me personally, interest varies depending on how I feel at any given time. There have been times where I was disinterested for a couple of months only to then come back to playing games regularly. I also noticed a significant difference in my drive depending on whether I was into a pvp game or not at any given time - the couple that I have played seriously have really taken a lot of my attention when I used to play them regularly.

[Arika]

I have phases of it. Some days i can play all day, others i don't even feel like opening any games at all.

[mrchow19910319]

3 hours ago, Arika S said:

I have phases of it. Some days i can play all day, others i don't even feel like opening any games at all.

hey! long time no see! 

[da na]

I've pretty much stopped playing games as well. At first it was a temporary break to do work, but then I came back after a few days and games just didn't seem... fun anymore. 

[tankyx]

I feel the same, but not for the same reasons.

 

I changed continents, and so I changed timezones too. And now I am unable to play with my friends, and playing alone isn't fun.

I usually pickup an online game, play for 20-30 hours, get bored and I just stop. I miss gaming with my friends.

[Stahlmann]

I started noticing my interest in some games dwindling over the last two years or so. I was VERY involved with counter strike a few years ago. Nowadays the only games i play are the ones i can play at my own pace like strategy games, RPGs, etc.

 

If you have to work 8 hours each day suddenly your free time is much more valuable so i don't like wasting my free time playing frustrating or stressful games. I also had a few months this year where i just didn't really have a game to play. Everything was just boring after a few minutes like you described in the OP.

 

But i'm still a gamer at heart and i still discover games that pull me back in every now and then. Games that recently accomplished that were Dark Souls Remastered, Dark Souls 3, Cyberpunk, Witcher 3, Final Fanstasy 15 and Terraria.

 

But yes, i noticed that i got less and less interested in certain games over the last few years. For example i'm simply not interested in playing multiplayer shooters anymore.

 

Games i'm really looking forward right now: Elden Ring and Final Fantasy 7 Remake when it finally get's ported to PC. But other than these games i currently don't really know what to do with myself when sitting in front of my PC.

[Montana One-Six]

I usually play games in the evening / night after dinner and after I did everything I wanted to do that day. Which keeps me from having guilt for not doing what I need to do and therefore I can relax and play without thinking constantly about shit I have to do.

 

I also have these periods where I'm not really interested in gaming and every game gets boring or annoying after a short time. I don't know why but going back to older games often does the trick for me. Just had one of these periods and after seeing BF2042 game-play I wanted to play battlefield again. So I installed BF3 a few weeks ago and been playing it every evening since then and having a blast doing it.

[Jerry Mouse]

 I don't get into FPS games at all anymore. My reflexes aren't what they used to be and you only get in older terms "fragged" so many times in a row until you either quit or break something and quit. I've had a couple of mini strokes and I am not what I used to be.
 I still play driving games and do okay. Not for long at a time though. I am guilty of point and click gaming...for shame.

[CTR640]

I'm 33 and I still like to play games. Mostly GTA tho because they never gets boring to me. And sometimes The Crew 2 but unfortunately that game has gone trash lately.

 

And games these days have gone full retard by greedy publishers with horrible managements and lazy and idiotic devs. See BF2042 and GTA Trollogy Defective Edition as examples. See Cyberprank 2077 and a lot of ("new") games are filled with bugs and glitches and are unfinished too.

 

Games in the 90s and 2000s used to be very fun and didn't need a lot of patches and also no microtransactions. It's the gaming industry has gone toxic by stupid fucks in tight suits.

[rrats]

14

 

I don't know why, but most games became boring to me at that age.

[vetali]

Depends. Usually I get sidetracked and want to do something else like watch sports. Most open world games/souls-borne games are incredibly boring to me. Feels like they follow the same exact formula and after you play one, you've played them all. Story usually isn't enough to detract from that.

 

Shooters, I can't keep up with the zoomers or people that play all day anymore. I play a few matches in Halo Infinite, get my ass kicked, log off. I try not to get frustrated, but its hard because I enjoy the game and used to be good at shooters. After 10+ years of playing MMOs its completely ruined what aiming skill I had.

 

Recently played through Guardians of the Galaxy though, it was a really fun play through. The fully customizable difficulty was really nice rather than your typical easy/medium/hard. Story is great, combat is meh. The linear story and world reminded me of older games which was refreshing.

[Beerzerker]

36 minutes ago, Jerry Mouse said:

 I don't get into FPS games at all anymore. My reflexes aren't what they used to be and you only get in older terms "fragged" so many times in a row until you either quit or break something and quit. I've had a couple of mini strokes and I am not what I used to be.
 I still play driving games and do okay. Not for long at a time though. I am guilty of point and click gaming...for shame.

Same here, I too have some issues that's made me not what I used to be capable of and I was never good at frag games - If there was a way to have a character with a target on their ass that would have been me, right along with a nice, big sign on my back that says "Go ahead - Shoot me".
Driving games I'm still good at though, maybe not the best but can hold my own vs the average player you'd ever run across for sure.

8 hours ago, mrchow19910319 said:

Recently I've keep having this feeling where gaming was not what I remembered it was... like the whole 'sitting down in front of your PC and just dive into it' wasn't attractive anymore.

 

Everytime I open a single player game, after 5,6 minutes I keep thinking about the daily chores I have to do. Doing dishes, cleaning my room, keeps friends in contact etc. And I'm not even married.

 

Then I quit the game and pick up whatever stuff I needed to do, like cleaning or cooking or something, after doing so I kind of felt relaxed and even had a sense of accomplishment. LOL.

 

Younger me will sigh in disgust. Is this an age thing??? Where turning on vaccum cleaner somehow felt more rewarding then hard grinding ARPG for 5,6 hours? 

 

I went to cyber cafe from time to time, want to pull an all nighter, and it felt like doing work. LOL. I felt heck, I will only do this from now on if someone is paying me to do so. Why do I want to go home?? I just started this new level in Wolcen....

 

Does anyone feel the same way?? 

Well.... It's really a matter of perspective. I too experienced this and it's really a form of "Burn Out". Nothing you can do about it because it's real and it happens.
Maybe taking a short hiatus will recharge the batteries (If you will) for being more into it. I didn't have problems with thinking about other things while playing, it was more like I just wasn't getting into it like before and I used to do some all nighter's back when I was.
I still have some games that I've never completed or even played around here from over 10 years ago (PSX and PS2 days) - It's funny how it works out but that's how it is because now I've got all the time in the world to game if I was still into it like before but I don't.

I'll give an example - The Xenosaga series for PS2:
Finished the first game, got about halfway through the second and just ..... Stopped. Still have the third and final one but I've never played it, maybe I'll pick it up again one day and finally complete the series. Still have all the game guides I bought to play these so not lacking there if I ever do but will say it was during the first one I started to feel it becoming more of a "Chore" than a game and that's when I realized it's burn out as said.

Now - I must admit if a game catches my attention and it's fun to play that's fine and I can still stick with it but the more gameplay repetitive ones like RPG's (Some games in the FF series is a good example of it) I'm just not into that as before.
Constantly going to, away and back to areas over and over again just isn't what it used to be and (To me) gets boring or in some cass really tiring really fast.
Also having to run across or slug through the entire game map, just to get that one thing each and everytime isn't too much fun either (Anymore) even if the enemy characters are more powerful/leveled up..... With games that actually have a story behind it, those are much better but even then the sheer repetitiveness is still there for me.

I'd suggest stepping back and when you really feel the urge again, go for it.

 

[IkeaGnome]

I'll start this with, I'm not that old yet. I'm 28. I definitely can't sit and play the games that I used to play for long periods of time. 12-16 hour sessions on OSRS? 12 year old me did it. Now, I touch that game two or three times a year, feel the nostalgia and close it out in a couple hours. 

I still play enough FPS games that reaction times and all that aren't really an issue (I'm routinely T500 in Overwatch if I did more than my 15 placement matches and linked my phone to my account). That being said, OW is a lot more than shooting. Map control, thinking about what the other team is going to be doing etc. Valorant, CS:GO, R6S, I can't play. I suck at them and they make me angry which gets expensive.

I've pivoted more towards story games, or more relaxed multiplayer and even driving, flying and farming simulators. RDR2, CP2077, FC5 and 6 etc. I still find racing games a lot of fun. A group of people I work with and I play Farming Sim somewhat regularly, and FS2022 was the game I was most excited about this year. I still find Pokemon fun, but that was what got me into playing games. I got Pokemon Red and a GBC the year they came out for Christmas. 

Priorities and how you get enjoyment out of games shifts, there's nothing wrong with that.