Am I getting bored of video games?

  • Thread starter Lukanyon
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Lukanyon

Lukanyon

802
Brazil
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Corredor_Y
Playing video games has been my main hobby since 2007. My father bought me a PlayStation 2 and thereafter I've bought my own consoles. I bought my PS4 Pro 2 years ago.

Racing games have always been my favorite genre. I had more than 20 different titles for the PS2, and in this generation I've bought most of the main releases. I've also played some RPGs and action/adventure titles that I loved. But lately, playing is one of the things I have the least interest in doing.

I spend much more time on YouTube and Netflix now, even though I still watch some videos about gaming. I think that playing games, which used to be my way to releive stress, is now causing it. I feel better watching someone play a game (or actually watching anything else) than playing it.

I wondered why this was happening and I thought that maybe I was just tired of this console generation, because I've never been so anxious to see the next consoles. I've even created my own blog to talk about racing games. But now I don't even know if I'm gonna buy a new console. I don't want to buy it just for racing games, but on the other hand I don't feel like playing anything else.

Have some of you guys been through this? What have you done and what do you think I should do?
 
Lukanyon
what do you think I should do?
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Simply live your life without worrying about videogames :cheers:

I can relate to your feelings. I've been a console player for over 20 years and I went to multiple periods like yours. Important is that you have a hobby in which you can decompress. I've been going out into nature more and more since a couple of months and gaming has less and less place. Over the wintermonths I see myself playing a bit more but as soon as the sun is out, I prefer to take the dog or bike a spend some hours outside.

I am still interested in games but not to the point that I must have the new gen console on launch. I am in no hurry at all and I only buy games for this gen I really want to play. I am not tired of gaming but simply a lot less interested and with that I mean that I don't want to spend too much time on it anymore.

Just think about what you want to do and what makes you happy. Don't let others or social media pressure you into something that inside of you you don't 100% agree with.
 
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Lukanyon
Playing video games has been my main hobby since 2007. My father bought me a PlayStation 2 and thereafter I've bought my own consoles. I bought my PS4 Pro 2 years ago.

Racing games have always been my favorite genre. I had more than 20 different titles for the PS2, and in this generation I've bought most of the main releases. I've also played some RPGs and action/adventure titles that I loved. But lately, playing is one of the things I have the least interest in doing.

I spend much more time on YouTube and Netflix now, even though I still watch some videos about gaming. I think that playing games, which used to be my way to releive stress, is now causing it. I feel better watching someone play a game (or actually watching anything else) than playing it.

I wondered why this was happening and I thought that maybe I was just tired of this console generation, because I've never been so anxious to see the next consoles. I've even created my own blog to talk about racing games. But now I don't even know if I'm gonna buy a new console. I don't want to buy it just for racing games, but on the other hand I don't feel like playing anything else.

Have some of you guys been through this? What have you done and what do you think I should do?
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Games as a service grindfests? It is the nature of gaming these days. Fundamentally worse than the previous generation of games.
 
It's pretty much that you have to find a balance of fun and enjoyment without getting board.
Some days I play for like 20 minutes others maybe an hour or two.
It all depends on the content you have and how much you did.

Take a break here and there.
It's good to see the outside world from time to time.
 
Pretty much the same goes for me, although I still play occasionally sometimes.

The only games that I am recently playing are in my laptop. Aside from that, I also currently have games that I could play in my PSP, DS, 3DS and PS3, all of which I'm not using that much anymore compared to before but that didn't mean that I have become bored of playing them. I'm thankful though that I still have all of them.

One reason I'm not playing that much anymore is because of work, too. However, in the past few days even when I have time, I'd rather do watch documentaries, movies or classic cartoons in my personal TV as well, which I just bought two months ago, while reading some books that have caught my interests.

So probably you didn't become bored of playing games or what but maybe because you're just doing other things that you recently found more interesting or something that makes you think you're using your time wisely, because somehow, this is what I'm feeling right now.
 
I can totally relate to what you're saying @Lukanyon especially the part about spending more time watching people game on YouTube than actually gaming yourself.


👍
 
Lukanyon
Playing video games has been my main hobby since 2007. My father bought me a PlayStation 2 and thereafter I've bought my own consoles. I bought my PS4 Pro 2 years ago.

Racing games have always been my favorite genre. I had more than 20 different titles for the PS2, and in this generation I've bought most of the main releases. I've also played some RPGs and action/adventure titles that I loved. But lately, playing is one of the things I have the least interest in doing.

I spend much more time on YouTube and Netflix now, even though I still watch some videos about gaming. I think that playing games, which used to be my way to releive stress, is now causing it. I feel better watching someone play a game (or actually watching anything else) than playing it.

I wondered why this was happening and I thought that maybe I was just tired of this console generation, because I've never been so anxious to see the next consoles. I've even created my own blog to talk about racing games. But now I don't even know if I'm gonna buy a new console. I don't want to buy it just for racing games, but on the other hand I don't feel like playing anything else.

Have some of you guys been through this? What have you done and what do you think I should do?
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To be honest, I'd be surprised if you still felt exactly the same about gaming as a 15 year old, as you do now as an adult.

I think you should embrace it and find additional hobbies. You can always dip back into gaming when it feels less like something your obliged to do.
 
Thanks for the replies, guys. When I became a player I thought it would last my entire life. It's weird to see that feeling go away. :boggled:

Fortunately I've not given up on life. :lol: Besides watching movies and videos, I started working out and reading more. I also got back into music (I'm a musician) and I still play some games occasionally on my phone when I'm not busy with anything else.
 
In the future when you're old enough, you might also start watching your kids play video games, too. Who knows? It's just like changing of the guards and for sure, you would enjoy that. :lol:
 
One thing about the current generation of console racing games that puts me off is the push towards online racing and esports, to the detriment of single player and more casual playing experiences.

I've been playing more PS3 racers (rather than my PS4 Pro) as they seem to have better single player career modes, plus they work with my DFGT.

You don't need to have the fancy new console to have fun with a racing game.
 
This is something that I've been doing for many years now its kinda funny. I used to be all about playing games 10 years ago from all genres and now all I care about is racing games but even then I dont really play them. My friends are still huge into games and I just stopped playing and they dont get it but games dont grab me like they used to.

I mean when you're a kid your imagination runs wild and crappy stories can pull you in but when your older it actually takes some convincing to keep you interested. I can play arcade racers but they hold no weight to a sim with a wheel. Could also be that back then games were just flat out better and the business practices actually cared about the end consumer and that you get a finished product because once you shipped that disc the only way to fix it was to do another printing. Whereas now you can release half the game for the full price and make the other half a payable option. And now that I'm older i can recognize that greed and makes me way less inclined to support that studio. Madden/EA being a prime example of this for instance since that franchise makes more money off micro transactions then copies itself.
 
I think it's normal to game less as you get older. When you're a kid your hobby options are rather limited so video games are an easy choice, but as you venture into adulthood you get more freedom, and more money to try new things. Of course if you do still game as much as you used to that's fine as well.

In my case I played pretty much everything up to about 20, when I started focusing more on just racing games. These days most of my gaming time is spent either pretending to farm or haul cargo across Europe or the western U.S. :lol:
 
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Gaming is one of my favourite hobbies, but I spend majority of my time reading about games on popular game sites, listening to podcasts about games, watching reviews, previews, conferences about them. I will probably never buy these games, but I find the topic interesting to see how the medium evolves.

I'm rarely playing a game

I think its normal to get bored of gaming, especially racing games. Oh, here is another track based racing game with the same tracks, and the same cars in, but with a different title.
 
Silver-Sylph
This is something that I've been doing for many years now its kinda funny. I used to be all about playing games 10 years ago from all genres and now all I care about is racing games but even then I dont really play them. My friends are still huge into games and I just stopped playing and they dont get it but games dont grab me like they used to.

I mean when you're a kid your imagination runs wild and crappy stories can pull you in but when your older it actually takes some convincing to keep you interested. I can play arcade racers but they hold no weight to a sim with a wheel. Could also be that back then games were just flat out better and the business practices actually cared about the end consumer and that you get a finished product because once you shipped that disc the only way to fix it was to do another printing. Whereas now you can release half the game for the full price and make the other half a payable option. And now that I'm older i can recognize that greed and makes me way less inclined to support that studio. Madden/EA being a prime example of this for instance since that franchise makes more money off micro transactions then copies itself.
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The point about stories is very on point. The stuff that gets passed around in story games as “masterpieces” these days is mindblowing. Fair play to those that enjoy it but if I see another damn skill tree and RPG elements infesting whatever game wants to artificially lengthen itself I'm gonna lose my mind.

Whatever happened to gameplay first?
 
I can certainly relate to this as well. Ever since I got into gaming when I was 7, I had pretty much been addicted ever since and I rarely stopped playing by choice. However, in recent years, I have experienced quite a decline in how often I play video games and while I haven’t totally lost interest in them, they just don’t interest me as much as they used to anymore.
I believe it can be traced back to 2018, particularly when Spyro The Reignited Trilogy was announced. I can remember being excited for the games release since Spyro had been a part of my childhood for many years. So for obvious reasons, I wanted to replay Spyro Year of the Dragon as well as play through the previous games since I hadn’t even played them yet. So I started to play the 3rd one first since it was the one I knew best, I even posted about it and I don’t fully remember what happened, but I generally wasn’t enjoying it like I wanted to. My mind is a bit fuzzy here, but it seemed like I was too distracted by other things, I think I was thinking too much about other games and was not feeling too nostalgic at the time. While it’s not that the game isn’t good, it absolutely is, I just was not in the right mood to play it despite the fact I really wanted to and such things can ruin even the best games for me.

So I stopped playing it, and any video games in general, and decided to wait until I was feeling good and nostalgic again because I knew that’s where I’d get the most out of it. However, a lot of time passed and I just wasn’t feeling up to it and it seems like every time I came close or attempted to start the game again, something would happen and then I ended up not playing it. Eventually, I think my mind adapted to not playing video games for so long and I started doing other stuff instead, which allowed for other things to take over.
Nowadays, I spend most of my time on my computer doing various things and I’m usually content with it. If I ain’t doing that, chances are I am probably customizing Hot Wheels or modifying Nerf blasters. While I have been doing these things long before this happened, it seems I do them even more now that I am less focused on video games. It’s crazy to me that this happened because 3 years ago, I did not foresee myself being like this, but I guess I just found other things to do and I suppose it had to happen sometime.

Do I think it’s a bad thing I don’t play them as much? Not really because it’s definitely good to have other things to do besides video games because I was probably too dependent on them at times and didn’t want to do much beyond that. Plus, the upside to all this is by not playing them as much, they’ll be much more interesting when I finally go back to them again.

Am I done with video games? Absolutely not. I may not play them like I used to, but I still think about them quite regularly and I do seldomly go back to them again whenever I can get myself away from whatever else I am doing. Once in awhile, I do feel quite a strong urge to play them again if something interesting happens, namely when I got my Playstation Classic hacked and when LAN mode and the hidden tracks were found in GT5. Plus, knowing I have some games I ain’t played in years that are still unfinished does give me some motivation.

Do I think it will stay like this? Probably not. I did go through a similar situation 10 years ago, but it ultimately didn’t last, especially since I later got a PS3. Given that the PS5 is set to come out soon and I am approaching the time where I usually transition to another console, I predict the same could happen again. However, upon looking at my list of games I own again, I noticed each generation seems to have fewer and fewer games that interest me, and unless the PS5 changes that, who knows?
 
Thanks for sharing your experience, @Sonygamer455. :D
Since this thread has been resurrected, quick update: I sold my PS4 Pro last year. Quarantine made me wish I hadn't :lol:, but I'm looking forward for the new generation of consoles. I definitely don't feel like playing on my phone, I just don't like it. So I'm gonna wait patiently for the new consoles and soon get back into gaming. :cheers:
 
I don't even have the current consoles(PS4 and XBOne), I got married 6 years ago and now have two kids. Other than occasional runs of old classic games and mobile gaming I'm basically done with console games.
 
Lukanyon
Thanks for sharing your experience, @Sonygamer455. :D
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You're welcome! I'm glad to see I am not alone on this, I guess it's a lot more natural than I once thought.

Some further thoughts I didn't think to mention is that it's not that I don't have time, I typically have a lot of time to play them and being in quarantine, I don't think I have ever had more time to play them in my whole life. However, it just seems I'd spend my time doing something else instead.

What's crazy is, I had wanted jailbreak on my PS3 and a remake of the old Crash Bandicoot games for a very long time and despite finally getting them, it seems not even that was enough to stop this from happening. What's even crazier is I had wanted a Spyro 3 remake for even longer than both of those and arguably even more so, yet it was ultimately what triggered this. Go figure. :lol:
 
I kind of feel like my interests as a gamer have waned over the years. Instead of playing the latest games and systems, I feel more like making my own games more. As I heard someone say, "I don't play games, I MAKE games." I have never succeeded at making any game. Also, I feel things like speedruns and "pay-to-win" in-app purchases sort of dilutes my classical thinking on gaming. Gaming culture has changed over the years. Maybe I have been bored or disappointed in respects to where I am not as excited or involved too much as a gamer anymore. All of us think and feel differently about these things. These thoughts on gaming a thing and are not unconventional in any respect. So don't feel you are in the minority here.
 
So after posting in here last year, I have thought about this a bit more, and a while back, I became self-aware of even more things that I feel have contributed to my declining interest in video games. I actually have been self-aware of them for quite some time, but I have been forgetting to post them here.
1. I touched on this briefly in my initial post here but didn’t really go into a whole lot of detail about it. However, I have thought about it more and more since posting here and I have more I want to say on this.

Okay, look at my list of games I have here, namely for my Playstation consoles. Look at how many I have for the older consoles like the PS1 and PS2, now look at how many I have for the PS3 and PS4. Notice the number of games I have for each console generation gets smaller and smaller? Despite my list being so dang long for the PS1 and PS2, I can still find games I want for them to this very day when I go in an old video game store and theirs still some I wish I had. The same could be said for the GBA and PSP as well. Meanwhile, I don’t know any PS3 games I want right now, and theirs only a handful I want for the PS4 currently. To be fair though, the PS4 is still going and they have time to come out with more interesting stuff, so things could change.

The point is though, it would seem with every console generation, they have fewer and fewer games that interest me than the older consoles did and that I feel is something that has slowly contributed to my declining interest in video games over time.

Disclaimer: I am not suggesting modern games and consoles are bad, all I am saying is they don’t put out as many games I want to play as much as they used to.

2. A few years ago, I got Crash Bandicoot 3 for the PS1 and I played the crap out of it shortly after. While I was having a blast playing it, once I had played through the game, I was a bit disappointed it was over already, I felt empty inside, and I regretted splurging so much time on it. This has kind of deterred me from wanting to play more often because I like to take it slow and savor it a bit and I just don’t like finishing some games way too early. I think a lot of this is because I grew up being busy with school and having my time restricted for so long, but now that neither of those is a concern anymore, you could say things are different now. It’s crazy how I spent much of my life wanting this sort of time to play video games, but now that I have it, I don’t even want to use it. :lol:

Though on the contrary, near the end of 2020, I played Buzz Lightyear of Star Command for the PS1 much the same way I did with Crash 3 and had a total blast with it and absolutely no regrets. One could argue my expectations were too high with Crash 3, but I think the thing with that is that it was new to me at the time, whereas Buzz Lightyear of Star Command was one I had known for a very long time. I guess some are fun to kick back and play for long periods, but there are still some I’d hate to play through too quickly, like Spyro Year of the Dragon for instance. While it’s still a contributing factor, I guess it’s hit or miss depending on the game.

3. Another thing I realized is that 10 years ago, I had a lot going on in my life at the time, everything from drama, high school, and generally just never feeling like myself. If theirs one thing I think many of us can relate to is coming home and unwinding a bit to some video games after a long day is a pretty satisfying feeling and it was one I had probably become accustomed to back then. However, I have been out of high school for nearly 9 years now, nowadays my life is a lot easier and I don’t have nearly as much going on as I did then. That said, while I can still enjoy them, you could say it hits a lot differently now and in some ways, it’s less satisfying.
I am sure theirs more I could say, but this is something I felt was worth mentioning.
 
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I find myself getting bored of the same old game that follows the same formula over and over again. Also, I have very little interest in games from huge studios that aren't sports titles it seems. For example, I tried to play Red Dead Redemption 2 and just gave up after an hour because it was so uninteresting to me. It had the same basic go-to place X, shooting X person, collect X thing. Sure it looked great but it felt really shallow.

Thankfully, on the PC there's a whole slew of games from indy developers that go after really, really niche things. I find myself drawn to these more and more since they almost always offer something unique, even if they're a bit clunky at times.

I don't think I'll ever get tired of sim games though. While my interest in traditional sim racing has waned over the years, I still enjoy games like American Truck Simulator and House Flipper. I have no idea why they're interesting, but considering the hundreds of hours I have on them, they must keep my attention somehow.
 
My interest in console games took a dive in the PS4/XB1 gen with titles of increasingly sloppy quality. The increased push of anti-consumer business decisions and a lack of diverse "middle shelf" titles have just made a complete dog's dinner of what was probably the worst console generation in recent memory. Most huge console titles like Spiderman, God of War and The Last of Us are just completely pointless to me.

However since switching to PC I have been reinvigorated, especially in my love of sim racing. Being able to go back to older great games like GTA San Andreas as well as playing around with mods on sims like Automobilista and Assetto Corsa show that there is a better experience outside of consoles. Running back in league racing on Assetto Competizione has kept my attention better than the last few years on consoles have done too.
 
I may also go as far as saying gaming is much different with having to pay to enjoy certain online games. It's kind of why I've been more interested in the Nintendo Switch as opposed to the PlayStation 5 and XBOX One systems. I think to play online is cheaper with the Switch for one year than with the PS5 and XB1's. I even recalled with the PS3 how I got to meet many people and enjoy content without having to have PlayStation Plus to enjoy more content online. So you may even say paying for gaming has contributed to mostly being bored or disappointed with some gaming experiences.
 
I was until i bought a retro console box and realised games just werent as fun as they used to be.

They all try to be some sort of film rather than just let you play the thing.

One thing that has got me playing more though is gamepass. For some reason I spend more time trying games out and will play through them more. Dont know why but maybe its becuase you dont own them you feel compelled to try them before they leave or something
 
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Are people getting bored with video games or did a lot of video games become boring?

I am really not impressed by the umpteenth iteration of most existing franchises for instance, but there's a lot of good original stuff coming out too. I'd say I'm not bored, but certainly more focused/snobbish about it.
 
I think in the last few years Ive become much more of a quality writing enthusiast, actually caring about the voice acting and all that. I just find that soooooo few video games have voice acting and writing that comes close to even average films. I just cant get into video games with stilted, unrealistic dialogue anymore, and there are like 5 games that have come out in the last 20 years that are truly exceptional in that regard, as opposed to thousands of movies :lol:
 
Thanks again for all the replies :cheers:

Almost 2 years later and with all the pandemic going on, there have been times when I wished I hadn't sold my console, not gonna lie. I may buy one of the newer consoles if I see any game that gets me really interested (GT7 maybe?), but it still isn't my priority.
 

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