Steam Feel like you're growing out of gaming?

This somes me up. I just have too much other stuff to do. I play War Thunder a few hours a week and a couple of games of Fifa with my son but that's pretty much it now. Last games I sunk loads of time into were Destiny and GTAV. Fortnite and many other Battle Royale games leave me a bit cold. Hoping Cod Modern Warfare goes a bit more 'old school'.

 

It goes in cycles with me, time allowing.

The same with book reading and watching films, can leave it for a good while then binge.

I tend to wait for a few decent titles to mount up whatever the medium.

 

The only time I ever felt like I was getting bored of games was after I had played a bunch of ok, decent, 7/10 games. It's the 10/10 games you love forever that bring you back.

Stop playing Red Dead Redemption. You don't like it. Don't play it for the sake of it, maybe because you feel you're 'supposed to' because it was critically acclaimed or had a lot of hype. Games should never be a chore or 'work', it's leisure time. If you end up working in your leisure time (unpaid too!) you just have 24/7 work. No wonder those angry 'achievement hunters' are so wound up and intense, they're circling the drain. If you'd have more fun playing a game you love, Sonic or GTA III, an old sports game even, that's what you 'should' be playing.

 

I feel like nowadays I find gaming as a stress reliever, but there are some instances that I do feel bored. During my younger day, I consider gaming as an escape from reality but now it's different.

 

I play when I feel like it whereas before I felt like it was life and death or something stupid.

Over 15000 hours in BF2,3, 4 and 1.

Not making that mistake again

 

I'm 50 now and whilst I still love gaaming it's nothing like what it was for me. I remember when BF2 came out, it got me into building PC's and I dread to think how many hours I put into it.
Since then I've never found another game like it. I did put around 1700 hours into The Division, but the new one just doesn't grab me and there aren't any other games that have either.
As I was struggling to find games to play I built myself a digital pinball machine and am totally loving that.

 

When I get in I don't want another job to play that I don't get paid for. I want to shoot people in the face and smash up zombies and enjoy myself so I've definitely transitioned to games that are easier to pick up and play or that I can enjoy playing together with my son or a pal. So it's stuff like rocket league, apex legends and then co-op games like BL2 or dying light. And when I don't feel for gaming I don't game. That way you can preserve the buzz for the times you do.

 

I am, like others, over 50 now and my first game experience was a text-based RPG called Rogue on a Compaq 286 LCD screen laptop. I then moved onto more notable things like Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Monkey Island & sequels, Their Finest Hour: The Battle of Britain, SWOTL, Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, Duke Nukem 3D, Quake (a lot!), the Command and Conquor/Red Alert series, Half Life (1 & 2), Counterstrike (the Half Life addon), Unreal Tournament, Civilisation III and IV (still have V to fiddle with now and again), SimCity & sequels, Battlefield 1942, Colin McRae Rally etc.

Apart from Quake (especially MP - bonded ISDN 128k rocked in the era of 56k modems) in the mid 90's, the next major eye opener was Call of Duty (the first one) by which time I had an Nvidia Ti4200, a major step up from my previous Matrox MGA Millenium & Voodoo 3DFX card pairing.

COD, especially the MP element, was awesome in comparison to everything previously. I was hooked until COD4:MW (the first one), the games after that left me cold. I had by then upgraded to a GTX8800GTS (£203 from Scan in March 2007) which was even more awesome.

Since then I have passed through (in no particular order) CS: Source, CS: GO, BF2, BF:BC 2 (I skipped BF 2142), BF3, BFV, RA again (free download), World of Tanks, Civ V, Tropico 4, 5 & 6 (cheap steam buys when bored), CoH 1 & 2 (ditto), a few FIFA releases, Red Orchestra 2 (same), Dirt 2, 3 & Showdown, Cities: Skylines, Doom (the new one), Left for Dead 2 and recently, The Division 2 (free with SSD purchase). I even have Crysis 3 sitting in my Origin client, never even downloaded it.

Apart from a lot of time on World of Tanks for a couple of years, BF3 MP (almost all on one server), Civ V, Tropico 6 and recently The Division 2, I haven't spent a lot of time in the last few years on any one game. WoT got me back into online gaming at the beginning of this decade (wow, that long ago?) after I had previously stopped due to boredom, work & family commitments. I liked it as I could hop on, play for 15 minutes then stop which suited my busy schedule.

Since I stopped WoT (due to boredom again) a number of years ago, I only really dabble. I don't buy games at launch or pay full retail prices, I look for massive discount deals and even then, only bother after a lot of research. I just don't have the time or inclination to invest a lot of time into a game, especially nowadays with the emphasis on pay to win and loot boxes.

I can take or leave gaming now, I hop on and off when I feel like a short term distraction and also when I feel I have to make use of my dedicated gaming rig. I think half of it is that yes, I am getting old but mainly because nothing really excites in gaming releases, nothing like the excitement of an original Quake, COD or Red Alert/C&C release.

Be honest, when was the last time anyone here was REALLY excited enough about a game release to pre-order or purchase at a full price premium on release?

Has anything in the last 10 years really set your heart racing?

 

I VPN'd Steam to get access to BL2 earlier than the UK was supposed to - then proceeded to rack up almost 30 hours between Friday night and Monday morning. Part of me would love to do the same with BL3, but not having a PC (nor the space, time or money for one) currently, coupled with the fact I really don't know if it'll actually be as good as BL2, means i'm not going to lose sleep over potentially not playing till a few months after release this time.

 

Like others here who have gone past 50, I'm a few days into 55, I'm getting a bit bored with games. I first started playing when I got my first PC at 35 then really got going when I discovered WoW, just after the first expansion launched. I played it several hours a day untill after the Cataclysm. I have also played Everquest 2, Rift and Elder Scrolls Online, as well as solo RPGs but, have never regained the enthusiasm I had in those early years of playing Wow, although I have played it on and off since. Now, fed-up with waiting for Elder Scrolls 6, stopped Everquest years ago, bored with WoW and TESO and, Rift is on very shaky life support.

Sometimes wonder why I bothered buying a new graphics card last year.

PS, the only game I ever pre-ordered was Skyrim. Bored with that too...

Get more out of making things with wood these days. Just made the wife and I a pair of headphone stands from some odd bits of mahogany I acquired very cheaply.

 

Ditch all the MP stuff and embrace the cheap, abundant and short indie single player games that you can easily discard after one evening with zero regret

 

The Witcher 2 was my last being hooked by the original.

I would have pre-ordered The Witcher 3 but I was out of the country and was waiting until a gpu upgrade.

 

I would love to play more games, but the prices of GPU's at the moment and also the amount of games that look fun are very small so it's not worth splashing out on a 2070 to play the odd game every now and then. When GTA 6 comes out then I might consider it

 

40 here and had a similar journey to most. I still do game daily but I think that's down to the fact that I don't have kids and my work is kinda crazy flexible. Yesterday I had calls till 9pm so started at 11am, so managed to get an hour in in the morning.

I do lean heavily to more online / social aspect of games hence I'm a bit of an mmo nut. I think it's because I'm an only child and I work remotely a lot.

WoW / EvE and Ark are my thing generally but as guild / corp / tribe members come and go I flitter between them as for me it's the interaction with people.

What I wouldn't give for 2003-2005 era eve with my crew of 10 folks (none of who play anymore, so my eve re dips are general spend a month of tottering around, get bored and quit again).

Just restarted in ark as my old crew became active again and who knows maybe wow classic will tempt some old folks in to start something up again. (So I can be told an enhanced spec shaman is not raid viable and be forced to roll resto!)

Between the online stuff the games I play solo are TD1 and 2. Lots to do that don't involving having proper relationships!

 

Things change as you get older that's for sure. Even if I wanted to I am now almost physically and mentally incapable of pulling an all nighter. My record was playing Worms on the psx with three chums for about 30 hours.

The closest I've come to that since is being awake for 23 hours. I just can't do it any more.

So it's a combination of that and the terrible games coming out that have massively slowed down my gaming. The last game I played for any considrable time was Fallout 4. And it wasn't even all that. However over the past few weeks I've been playing Fallout 3 again and have been reminded what a good Fallout game actually is and it just makes Fallout 4 seem that much worse. I can still only play it for about two hours at a time, mind, but have been doing three sessions a day quite frequently lately. What's made it quite fresh is that I hadn't played it in about three years or more and due to playing Fallout 4 more than I should have I've forgotten a lot. Mostly the map, where everything is and the ways to get there so it's been lots of fun.

There was an article/post I wanted to link to on a small game based forum I frequent but it's down ATM. It's titled "evil game companies" and is very interesting.

They link to articles and videos and in one video they question this guy about the morals of gambling in kid's games and etc and he replies "leaving morals aside for a moment' before blabbering on with his sales patter.

That's what's happened. Morals are out of the window for greenbacks (dollars in case you weren't familiar with that nickname)

And the more time goes on the more blatant it all becomes. Fallout 76 was the pinnacle of this. I've seen home made quests on FO3 better than that.

It's not changing. Money ruins everything.

 

I miss the old days on the Bit-Tech Battlefield 3-4 Server.

 

Spent a bunch of time Friday evening thinking "ooh free evening, what should I play" and wasted the entire evening not knowing what to do haha. But then tried For The King on Saturday as got it free via Twitch Prime and I was deliberately trying some of them and played a bunch as it just kind of clicked, despite not thinking it would really.

Try new games if you don't think you're interested by many you 'know'.

 

I'm finding it more difficult to find games that hold my interest.
I am 50 now and have been gaming since the start pretty much.
For me it's all about playability.
I am not interested in online games and getting munched as soon as I spawn, I want a decent single player challenge.
I have just started playing Far Cry 5 and it seems quite decent.
In recent years, it has been slim pickings, particularly if you are only really a fan of FPS/Stealth games.
Alien Isolation/Deus Ex MD/Dishonored/some of the Sniper Elites were excellent but I am struggling to remember anything else that really held my interest.
Tried GTA 5 the other week. What an empty souless experience.
Simple missions, empty world, just bored me to tears.
And forget anything with orcs, trolls, strategy, top down views....no thanks, the most I want to consider is where to place this sticky camera, or how to open this door.
I think enough in my job, I want an escape not more ******* work!

 

It just boils down to time, I think. I used to spend hours gaming and, at first, anything getting in the way of that was an irritation. Then other things, like growing up and having a wife and kids meant I just didn't have time - so gaming was a rare treat.

Now, I have more time again but I'm much more picky about which games I invest time in, and it's the big franchise names that come off worst. COD stopped being fun after MW2, Far Cry was about 2/3 through the first game, ditto for Ass Creed, and I have no love for GTA above 3 or Metal Gear anything.

The Witcher series? I keep meaning to persevere, but I've already played Skyrim and the Witcher seems like more of the same with added "collect three flowers and rub em together". meh.

I could go on, but I have indie games to play.