Why Some of us Struggle to Enjoy Gaming 

I mean, I'm in my 50's and I still haven't grown up, but I struggle to play games. I think a large part of it is that games have gotten longer and longer. When I was playing RTS's and turn based strategy games, you could sit down and finish a game in a few hours. Now I play Paradox games, and while they're great, games can take 50 or more hours to finish with no clear breaks or time to slow down. Multiplayer games are even worse, because now unlocking things in a game is tied to a money investment as WELL as a time investment, which makes me feel forced to grind if I want to get my perceived value out of them. I don't want my game to be a job, or else it starts to feel like a job, and I'm never excited by going to work. Now that I think about it, a second part of it is not having close friends around to hang with, which makes everything easier. Time flew when I was playing Everquest in my 20's, not because my perception of time was different, but because I was always talking to a friend in the game. Now I game in silence, with no one around, and I feel disconnected. Most games don't have a friend component anymore, even the multiplayer ones, because communities in the big multiplayer games are sinkholes of toxicity. I wish I had a solution, because I'm tired.

For me personally, "I grew up" is about half of it. As I got older and played more games at some point, games became less about just having a good time but rather trying to be the best or the strongest. I'd give anything to go back to the bo1/bo2 days. Another thing is friends. I have gone from having 8-10 people in a vc every day to 1 or 2 every other week, as time goes on its inevitable that people you once knew will go off to college or get a grueling job that leaves them too exhausted to get on and talk or in some unfortunate cases, experience tragedies or medical problems leaving them unable to get on anymore. My advice at the end of the day is to not prioritize games over life and to just stop looking for an experience you had a decade or more ago and make a new experience instead.

This vid really spoke to me. Thank you!

6:17 Hit the nail in the coffin. This is the exact reason why I don't play video games as much anymore.

tbh one of the biggest issues i saw with modern gaming was always a mix of 2 things. 1 being game studios releasing things wayyyyy before they are ever ready to be played by the general public. and 2 increasingly toxic multiplayer communities. used to be a time if a player was better then you you either got your game up and turned the tables to get better or you just leave it. now you got DDOS attacks and even mfers that will actually attempt to hack your account all because they got their booty clapped. no one wants to play games when those become the norm for a persons options unless they decide to buy older game titles.

I had spent a couple of months doing exactly that, doom scrolling on Reddit lol, (ngl kinda feel called out lol,) TL;DR My method is to cross off games based on why I don’t wanna play em atm (such as what your in/not-in the mood for), then choose one out of your now shortened list and try to force yourself in there. If after playing for roughly an hour you feel no joy try switching up the game, (heck, switch up the console even, pull out your old PSVITA and hide under your blanket for nostalgia or Xbox360 Kinect and get a little pump going.) Although it’s weird trying to force yourself to have fun it works personally and may work for you, who knows? It certainly wouldn’t hurt to try. I’ve found if I just take 10 minutes to go through my list of available games and tick them off based on reasons I don’t want to play em atm, it gets me a little more excited to play whatever I choose. And if I’m not enjoying my self, either 1. I need to force my self to stay there cuz we haven’t gotten to that “enjoyable stage” yet, or 2. I chose the wrong game for my current mood and need to go back to my list, (also friends are of course a factor, but that’s different for everyone, so I’m gonna ignore that for now.) But in the end I find if I force myself to enjoy and try to immerse myself I eventually start to enjoy the game again and may even look forward to playing it next time. For instance I bought “outer worlds”, and yeah, I’m aware they’re made by the same company, but, it just seemed like I was restarting a game of fallout, bland, already done into the ground (personal opinion there, I’m an avid FO76 player. Not saying the franchise sucks or anything). But I forced myself and picked it up anyway about a month ago and have been enjoying it in small doses. I have the cartridge in my switch till I finish it at least so I’m more enticed to open it up and when I do, I either remember whatever whackadoodle thing I was doing and try to continue that or just follow the quest instructions. Doing either eventually sucks me in and I end up having a pretty good time. Sorry for the long rabble I just typed, just wanting to try and help anyone who may need it. Hope you yourself had a relaxing weekend.

The worst thing about the content creation aspect of it is when I have a cool idea for an essay or something like that, when I finally get to the editing stage my brain just slides right off it. Editing can be fun sometimes but so much of it is a fuckin SLOG.

When I think about my backlog, not just of games but of hobbies, I think about how I've reframed everything as "i have the rest of my life to enjoy this thing, and it will technically never stop being relevant once it exists". In that way, I'm excited that I have so many things to fill my life with going forward so I'm not thinking I only enjoyed the world or met people or met new things when I was young. That being said, I've built this mindset as a direct result of streaming/binging/twitter culture. I didn't like how all the talk about a subject happened for one week, all at once, and not even very analytically. I'm not very vulnerable to fomo about random pop culture things that didn't interest me in the first place, and I don't want to become vulnerable to it later. But now games are in that category of 'everyone will be talking about it on twitter/at work so if I don't devour this thing now I'll never have socializing'. I think it very much doesn't help. Getting one new game a year to make a holiday special and make that game special is more than enough for me to chew through, and a game is never 'done' to me. But if you don't get and play the 70$ game NOW you won't get any cool side material or mindless chatting with other people. :/

Doesn't really help that fresh releases feel like unbaked slop thrown out of the oven to please investors rather then something made to be enjoyed by the players. Slap a perfectly tested and tip top microtransactions store into the game and you got yourself a modern triple A standard, or what feels like it. These aren't games anymore (mostly), but products made to rank up the profits of some company. There's rarely ever any real passion put into a game or care to make the game at the very least _work._ Dusting off older games that were lying somewhere in your attic to go for a trip down the memory lane can help, sometimes, but sometimes makes things worse as the games you remembered being fun, just aren't anymore. Then there's ocean of indie games, some of which is trash, some of which is amazing, some of which is just _meh._

Where you will be in 5 years? Castle Przmer in Brazil

I miss the call of duty days ;_;

Theirs not enough time to enjoy a game anymore. And if you dont have ac u usuay just lay there miserable. Unless you have all the time and ac ur prolly just jaded

I truly think the reason why is because you're not managing your own life right by chronically procrastinating on your responsibilities (job, family, bills, health, etc), in other words, it's more your fault and not the games themselves. Video games are not meant to fix the problems in your life that are constantly making you miserable because at the end of the day, when you finish gaming, you still have those responsibilities you been pushed back that are still there. There are TONS of games that do not have microtransactions that are still plenty fun already on their own and more on the players mentality on how they feel playing them. How do you explain some bad games that are still enjoyed by memers as well as great games that some people still feel empty playing them. Too many people are looking forward to the endless hype of that ONE game that will "change the world", "be the next Skyrim", or "fix my life problems" from developers that cannot possibly meet these high expectations, only to be completely disappointed with the results. Personally, I have 340 games in my Steam library and I usually like to focus on a handful of games to finish at a time, but even than, focusing on only those handful of games makes it feel more like a chore to game rather than fun. Play OTHER games you havent played in awhile, it worked with me!