This forum is aging.. gaming getting old for you too?

[Zeze]

I'm only in my 30s, but I'm starting to lose interest in gaming.

I know having a newborn completely changed my life, and I'd rather sleep or just do nothing. But I think it's more than that. I think I became too anal for gaming.

Younger me: Oh my god, so many skills & different ways to play the game!
Today me: Ugh, what a chore.. which are useless & out of meta? Which are OP?

Younger me: What an amazing lore they have! Can't wait to figure everything out!
Today me: I feel burdened already- so many cutscenes & talking. Can I just get to action? I think I'll just turn on the TV instead.

Younger me: I can't wait to get access area abc or finally obtain weapon/skill xyz!!
Today me: This is all too just formulaic. I can already see xyz happening a mile away.

Fall Out 4: I just couldn't get into it. The huge perks screen just turned me off. And fighting mechanic/action/feel just wasn't good.

Dishonored: I would've loved the crap out of this game mere years ago (just tried it recently). I couldn't play it more than 2-3 hours. Switching weapon to heart (basically a radar) to collect the items felt like a HUGE necessary chore.

Bioshock Infinity: The younger me would've absolutely loved this too. I couldn't get past 5 hours. It felt like I was just watching scripted cutscenes with subpar action thrown in here & there.

The last AAA title I enjoyed was actually Skyrim. I couldn't get over the sheer beauty of the completely open world. Also Deus Ex: Human Evolution- wish I had the proper rig to play the upcoming sequel.

Surprisingly, rogue games have completely sucked me in lately. The Binding of Isaac is super fun because I can pick it up & stop at anytime. FTL was amazing too! I wish I could find more games like these.

Overall, I'd rather just sleep or just tune-out to watching TV... anyone else?

 

[quikah]

It is the kid. Once they get older and more independent and you get more time to yourself again you can start enjoying more in depth games again.

Happened to me to, totally burned out on games when my kids were little. Now that they are 4 & 6 I am back into deeper games and bored of casual ones (CoC, hearthstone).

Or not, everyones tastes change.

 

[happy medium]

its the games, same old same old with some extra eye candy.

 

[rivethead]

One thing I've found as I've gotten older....games are having a hard time holding my attention. I don't think it's me so much as I think game designers are just using the same formulas over and over....same picture with a new frame is all.

What I'm finding that's helping (a little) is that I'm cycling through game types as I play now. Ten years ago, I wouldn't have hesitated to play two FPS games back to back. Now, I try to mix it up. An FPS followed by an RPG followed by an RTS followed by a platformer back to an FPS. Seems to help (a bit).

 

[Stg-Flame]

Closing in on 30 (six months and counting) but I still love gaming as much as I did when I first started at three or four. My parents are gamers and my brother and I grew up doing nothing but video games and TV (perks of living in the middle of the desert I suppose). I grew out of TV and haven't had it since 2007 and my brother doesn't game at all anymore. My parents still play video games and I play whenever I possibly can. It's just that since I have a lot of responsibilities, my free-time is being partitioned between hundreds of different activities and I don't have as much time to game as I used to. On the plus side, I did get my girlfriend into gaming, so that has doubled-up on some of the responsibilities, but it's hard for me to get into anything involved (lore-wise) these days. I finished Witcher 3 and all the side-quests, but it took me a very long time to accomplish this and I only ran through the game twice. Back in my teenage years, I probably would have ran through the game hundreds of times before calling it quits.

 

[nakedfrog]

I'm pushing forty, and have gone through this a few times, then picked gaming back up again, had interest wane, then gamed again.

Surprisingly, rogue games have completely sucked me in lately. The Binding of Isaac is super fun because I can pick it up & stop at anytime. FTL was amazing too! I wish I could find more games like these.

I really enjoyed Rogue Legacy.

 

[ImpulsE69]

^^ Same. I go through phases. I definitely game less than I did when I was younger, but I still game. I attribute it to having more hobbies and more things to spend my time on than I did say 20 years ago. I'm pickier about what holds my attention, but sadly it hasnt' stopped me from buying cheap games and amassing quite a collection of unplayed ones, or ones played for 10 minutes before deciding I'm not that into them.

 

[WhiteNoise]

Been gaming since the 70's and I still game on a daily basis most of the time. I have those months where I game lightly though as RL forces me to focus on other things but I always come back. I have two young kids (2 and 7) and I found that having time to game like I did before getting married is not the same but I have found a happy medium. I play at night when the family go to bed (830pm) and it works for me. It also helps that my Daughter loves PC gaming too so we play Ark and Minecraft together all the time.

Maybe you are just burned out a bit. Take a break and find something else to do and maybe you'll get your spark back later.

 

[Fenixgoon]

still enjoy gaming, but there are fewer games i care about. my tastes have been honed to a fine point

 

[Insomniator]

I only play Sc2, Overwatch and Dota 2 with a few friends now. Not at all interested in single player Metal Gear Solids, Grand Theft Autos, Uncharted etc...

I spent 99+ hours on every Final Fantasy from FF7 - FF10... now if a game isn't about improving and beating real humans (even if they are 13), its a complete waste of time to me.

 

[ImpulsE69]

I only play Sc2, Overwatch and Dota 2 with a few friends now. Not at all interested in single player Metal Gear Solids, Grand Theft Autos, Uncharted etc...

I spent 99+ hours on every Final Fantasy from FF7 - FF10... now if a game isn't about improving and beating real humans (even if they are 13), its a complete waste of time to me.

I've been like that, but I had to step back from multiplayer games. I just don't have the patience for the negative side anymore (people being a-holes)....that and I don't have the time or care to research, dig into every meta number, play exactly like others think it needs to be played, etc. It's almost impossible to simply enjoy a multiplayer game anymore :/ It just becomes work.

 

[nurturedhate]

It's already been said but it really could indirectly caused by the kid, especially if it's your first. The complete lack of sleep does a lot of damage and takes some time to 1) adjust to and 2) eventually recover from. Our second child didn't sleep through the night until he was 2.5 and believe me your mind starts to go. TV and sleep sound like great options because they require no thinking. Once the kiddo gets a little older and starts sleeping better you may very well be back to your gaming ways. Also, when they get older you get to introduce them to a wonderful part of your life.

 

[moonbogg]

I have two kids. Look man, what you need is to build yourself a good closet with some decent ventilation. Make sure it locks from the outside only. You will have more time to game then. If you don't know what the closet is for, you'll figure it out.

 

[Sulaco]

I would say my enthusiasm for "all things gaming" has died off. I love gaming, it will always be one of my favorite hobbies, but I have less patience for trying to force myself into games and genres that don't immediately appeal to me. My tastes have evolved, I enjoy fewer games overall, but they're usually deeper.

No kids, but having a fiancee and real-world commitments keeps me from feeling compelled to force myself into games that aren't my cup of tea.

I'd still play a game over watching television about any day. Nothing feels like time wasted quite like vegging out in front of the TV.

 

[PrincessFrosty]

I'm 33 and felt the same over the last 5+ years of gaming and I don't have a kid, my brother at 28 is the same, we're gaming fatigued.

I've gamed since I was a young kid and back then everything was new and interesting and games had fun and different dynamics which were new and novel. However once you've seen all the templates for games and the market is saturated with games which are re-skinned variants of one another, then things become predictable and therefore boring.

In fact I get the same with TV and movies these days, I can predict the outcome of probably half the movies I watch with a high degree of accuracy which means it's not really storytelling to me anymore, it's just the same predictable story arcs and no surprises, so nothing is terribly novel. Only a handful of shows and movies really keep me continually guessing and they're the ones I tend to gravitate towards.

I think the industry is also partly to blame, games are big investments and so publishers stick to formulas that work, it's why we have CoD and Assassins creed every year with more money spent on marketing than actual development. I think gaming becoming popular in the mainstream has hurt it a lot quite frankly, in the same way that a movie aficionado would look at something mainstream like a marvel movie or transformers, these are big money productions with lots of cool effects, but little substance because the vast number of games simply don't have an evolved taste in games.

The types of games that primarily appeal to me today broadly fall into a few categories:

1) Puzzle games, puzzles are engaging and always have a good payoff, games like The Talos Principle is a fantastic example of this, and I even like playing a lot of the old school 2D puzzle adventures, I'm playing through the 4th Deponia title right now, that's a fantastic little series. Oddly I've found myself enjoying playing those simple little HOG (hidden object games).
2) Multiplayer can be very predictable, high skill games like CS are long dead for me, the only time I'll touch those games is to play something fast and fun like gun game. Typically with multiplayer over the last decade I've gravitated towards games that are more dynamic and require more thinking in the moment, BFBC2 was the last good battlefield game and it was so good because the large scale destruction in FPS gave us a game we'd basically never seen before, and moment to moment game play was somewhat unpredictable and fun. And what I found is that Rainbow 6 Siege is very much like this, there's a very broad range of in the moment tactics you can use that make games different and interesting and keep you thinking on your feet.
3) Indy games which are different/quirky and outside the mainstream. I back quite a lot of kickstarters and things like that, one of the more recent which is Blackwake is a FPS pirate game where you manually load cannons in different stages and then blow holes in each others boats, the weekend alpha tests for this have been hilarious, it's just something you can't really play elsewhere. In the past games like The Ship were good example of smaller indy studios doing something different and cool. And of course reboots of old games from my childhood like Toejam & Earl which I can't wait to play.

 

[Majes]

To be perfectly honest a lot of it is sleep. If Im below average sleep I find gaming to be a chore. If I've had enough I still jump into it like I used to. Almost everything is a chore if you haven't had enough sleep...

 

[Sulaco]

To be perfectly honest a lot of it is sleep. If Im below average sleep I find gaming to be a chore. If I've had enough I still jump into it like I used to. Almost everything is a chore if you haven't had enough sleep...

Preach.

 

[HumblePie]

I'm 38 with a pregnant wife due in 4 weeks and a 2 year old. My gaming time is practically non existent anymore. At most I can usually do is casual games with my time because I'm lucky to have an hour to game. Most games I want to play require longer time sinks to enjoy fully. I've been trying to finish the recent release of DOOM, on map 11 now, but every map takes 2+ hours to complete if you grab all the secrets. So I'm lucky if I get one 2+ hour gaming session in a week for DOOM. At least with DOOM I don't really have to remember what the hell I was doing last or how my skills all work or some such bullshit that RPG based games would require of me. Which is why I have finished Fallout 4 yet either. I took so long getting back to it I don't have a clue where I left off and don't want to restart the game at the moment because I know I don't have the time at the current state in my life to devote to restarting it and beating it.

I will say that my friends that do have kids all 6+ play a ton though as they play with their kids. With the kids being more or less self sufficient, it allows them the ability to spend more time gaming. Right now I am not in such a place in my life.

My desire for good gaming hasn't waned, just I know I don't have the time to devote to fully enjoy most games.

So basically most of my gaming is hearthstone, sudoku, and the occasional level on DOOM.

 

[Canun]

Pushing 40 with two kiddos below the age of 6. When my son was a newborn, I would play turn based games, and let him sleep on my chest while I played. As they got older and more active, my play time dropped. Now I basically have about 2 hours Saturday and Sunday morning to play before the kids are up and running. My interest would drop off a bit for a while, then a new game would bring me in. I'll probably keep playing, but will really depend on the games.

 

[Dannar26]

31. Wife, 3 kids, a house with a pesky lawn that refuses to cut, weed, and trim itself. Youngest is 16 months, oldest is 6. Wife has 2 jobs, I have a lengthy commute to my 9-5 and a military obligation to boot. 404, game time not found!

But the sad reality is that I do have the time, I'd rather vege out or go to sleep. It's like sitting in my computer chair and firing up my rig is some kind of awful chore...and I just want to lay down.

To follow the OP's format:

Back-in-the-day Me: 9386798367 hours of content!? I'm like a kid in a candy store!
In-the-now Me: Holy....I can't commit to something like that!

Back-in-the-day Me: Whelp, I beat the game! Go me! Time to find the extras...
In-the-now Me: Ugh. Look Batman, we already saved Arkham City. The Riddler can have his effing trophies.

Back-in-the-day Me: TV is boring and vapid, and anybody who likes watching it is the same!
In-the-now Me: Only you understand me Netflix. No one must know of our forbidden love.

Most fun I've had in awhile was the killing floor 2. Not only did it bring back some nostalgia of when I was a single bro, and we'd meet up to play some local multiplayer on my buddy's 360 (world at war), but it's a get-in and get-out experience. The appeal of something I can walk away from at a moment's notice cannot be overstated.

I picked up the expansion to WoW, but at this point the game and I are like a long running off-again on-again couple. I come back from the expansions because I have history with it, and I think that maybe this time things will be different, and the reasons I quit the last time are so irrelevant and lost in the past. And then I realize I still have no time, and less desire, to make it work.

 

[ControlD]

The good news for those of you with young children is that there will be a huge backlog of great games to play at cheap prices once you get some time back. My youngest is 11 now and while she still takes a lot of time (which isn't at all a bad thing) I do have time for gaming in the evenings most nights.

I have found like others that what I like to play has changed however. These days I tend to like things that aren't "AAA games". Desktop Dungeons, Tales of Maj'Eyal, etc. are what I find myself playing these days. Every so often a big budget game like Witcher 3 will grab my interest but for the most part I find myself playing smaller budget things now.

 

[moonbogg]

I'm 38 with a pregnant wife due in 4 weeks and a 2 year old. My gaming time is practically non existent anymore. At most I can usually do is casual games with my time because I'm lucky to have an hour to game. Most games I want to play require longer time sinks to enjoy fully. I've been trying to finish the recent release of DOOM, on map 11 now, but every map takes 2+ hours to complete if you grab all the secrets. So I'm lucky if I get one 2+ hour gaming session in a week for DOOM. At least with DOOM I don't really have to remember what the hell I was doing last or how my skills all work or some such bullshit that RPG based games would require of me. Which is why I have finished Fallout 4 yet either. I took so long getting back to it I don't have a clue where I left off and don't want to restart the game at the moment because I know I don't have the time at the current state in my life to devote to restarting it and beating it.

I will say that my friends that do have kids all 6+ play a ton though as they play with their kids. With the kids being more or less self sufficient, it allows them the ability to spend more time gaming. Right now I am not in such a place in my life.

My desire for good gaming hasn't waned, just I know I don't have the time to devote to fully enjoy most games. Feed them 70% of the recommended amount of food. They will have less energy.
So basically most of my gaming is hearthstone, sudoku, and the occasional level on DOOM.

After they go to bed is when I game if I don't have other things to do. While they are awake you are a slave and live in misery. Bed time is liberation hour for you. I poke my kids with a stick.

 

[JeffNY35]

I am experiencing something similar. What has happened to me in the last 2 years is my impulse buying thanks to Steam has risen. But that has left me with piles of unfinished or barely started games. many AAA times.

Some of well respected games that sound enticing but just do not do it for me:
Batman Series
Deus EX HR
Dishonored
Tomb Raider

So seems clear this action adventure thing is not hitting the mark for me. Why? I just do not know.

Then I have the RPG/open world games. These have traditionally been my favorite. I have played more of these but still can't quite finish or even get past 50%
Witcher 3
Pillars of Eternity
Wasteland 2 ( Actually I DID finish this one, amazingly )
Fallout 4 ( had fun with this....)

for multiplayer games - I also seem to not play much because i do not like to commit to playing with people. it is the way my life is. Too many interuptions. So MMOs or any dedicated sit down is hard. I did play a bit of Dirty Bomb but I think I am burned out on that. Getting repetitive.

Now here are the 2 games that by FAR I have clocked the most time and gotten my moneys worth
XCOM 2 ( beaten this on every level except Ironman legend. still trying that... )
Darkest Dungeon

So, it seems like I am not sick of gaming, but there is a certain niche that I like now. That is strategy with some form of customization. Something about customizing my own guys and watching them get blown to bits just hooks me. With DD - it is more the flair and style mixed with strategy and I can still name my guys after coworkers or friends and family and watch them get eviscerated.

I need to reflect on this and not buy every pretty title with good review. Because many of these games as has been said here is the SAME freaking thing regurgitated over and over. Same thing with movies these days. I mean for example the DC comic stuff. I used to love them. Now I am so bloody sick of them. Fantastic four - come on guys really. The first movies were barely watchable and the reboot is worse. I did like Dead pool though - that one took me off guard!

 

[TeknoBug]

I'm in my 40's, I can no longer handle playing FPS games anymore, I played FPS games for about 25 years but just can't stand it now probably due to the newer generation of gamers online- I do once in a while log into Planetside 2 and Fallout 4 is a decent offline FPS game. I'm also into hockey and football and occasionally soccer however the hockey franchise (EA NHL) has progressively gotten worse and so has FIFA but PES has improved. I'm also a hardcore racing gamer so I still play those and I also like MMO's however haven't played one in about 3-4 years now and the new ones doesn't even look remotely appealing to me.

I'm not into RTS or mobile games, yech.

 

[PlanetJosh]

Nah, not getting old for me, although I happen to be a old person. Games are inching closer to bluray movie quality and I'd like to stick around and upgrade to see new gfx advances. Ok maybe it could take decades to achieve a bluray level of visuals in a game.