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God help me, I think I might be outgrowing video games D:

BRocknRolla said:
Since I've seen this question countless times, I'll just reiterate what I know to be true.

1.) You don't "outgrow" video games any more than you "outgrow" movies and books.
2.) Take a break, dial back your consumption, or seek new hobbies. Everyone gets bored sometimes. It's a natural ebb and flow.
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It's pretty easy to outgrow AAA gaming, at least.
 
CaptainGyro said:
man sometimes I wonder how much time you guys spent playing video game when you were a kid. Even when I was younger I don't think it was something that took up more than a couple hours a week
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Back in the NES/Genesis days, there were no save files like today. You either finished the game in one sitting or restart it all over again. Passwords did exist later on, but even then, typing a wrong letter could screw you. My gaming time has diminished alot. I'd say in my kid era, played at least 16 hours a week, then teen era, 10 hours a week, then mid 20's about 6 hours a week and nowadays in my early 30's about 2-3 hours a week or more depending if I have some free time from the gf which is almost non-existant. Gaming priorities change with some and stay the same in others, depending if you don't have kids, mortgage, bills to deal with.
 
I think mainly my tastes have just focused as I've gotten older, and I'm just not interested in Western games anymore. I was bored to death with games, then put 80 hours into Atelier Ayesha a couple weeks ago.
 
Also... and this might be more of apersonal thing, and a rather stupid thing to say when I'm here at 2 in the morning posting on a videogame site

But, at some point taking a break from gaming sites and specially boards has helped me get more enjoyment from games just as much as taking a break from gaming itself.

I really like talking about games with other people. I like talking about the stuff I'm playing, the games that have me excited or just to talk about all the latest news. I also think it's great talking about what we think could have been done better or giving an argument about what made us dislike a certain game-
But be it GAF or (specially) others sites, and despite the fact that all these sites are filled with people that enjoy gaming, more often than not most of what you see is negativity.
"This game sucks because", "This game was dissapointing because ", "This game is overrated because", "This console is a bad because", "I hate AAA games because", "Random bad thing EA did", "Is this game terrible or is it just me?".
For every thread I see about people enjoying a game I see 3 about people pointing out bad things. A thread as simple as "TLOU running on 30fps has a slight graphical advantage over the 60fps version" somehow evolved into 60 pages of listing everything that is wrong and dissapoiting about the re-release.


At times I simply feel that if you visit these sites frequently the negativity can start to get to you (wear off? is tha the term?).
Read how everything is bad, overrated and dissapointing for long enough and you might start to think so yourslef.

Sometimes I just like to disconnect from all of that for a while and just get back to the simple joy of picking up a game I like and enjoy it for what it is.
 
NoTacos said:
Okay, well in the interest of trying to make it a little less bland how about a different sub-topic:

What do you think the main difference is between playing games as kid and playing as an adult (w/ an overwhelming sense of burnout)? Is it simply the fact most games are "shallow AAA", or could it be another factor such as technology overload in this day/age, or even a matter of actual age (the perception of games as a child vs an adult relative to life events)?
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Well, actual age might have something to do with it. When you're first introduced to video games there's a certain novelty factor. But there also used to be a large variety of games with drastically different gameplay to keep things fresh, so the novelty factor didn't go away. AAA nowadays is a bit derivative, and it's difficult to find something fresh/amazing in that space.

However Indies still have the novelty factor going for them. Not all of them, mind you, but enough of them. You'll also find a few medium sized studios on handhelds doing interesting things.

So, my thoughts on the matter is that it's less about growing out of video games then the actual progression of the industry toward absurd budgets.
 
After playing the last of us, which set my expectations towards games up high regarding story. I feel like I've outgrown video games.
 
I'll be turning 40 this year. I can tell you that as I'm getting older I play less and less games.

I used to play everything. There was a time when every time an anticipated game would come out, no matter the genre, I would be all over it. Buy it, play the hell out of it, toss it aside and go to the next one. I would consume so many games.

During the 7th gen, I started to slow down a lot. My favorite genre has always been JRPGs, so I kept playing those but in general I was buying like a third of the games I used to buy.

Nowadays, all I buy are pretty much the rare JRPG that comes out every now and then. The rest I'm not really interested in. Honestly, Destiny has me a bit curious so I might try it. I play a lot on my 3DS when I'm away from home. It gets like 90% of my play time. But console gaming? My interest level is way down in general.

It's also a matter of how much time I have to dedicate to gaming during the day which is a lot less then I used to have. I have other interests now that are somewhat related to gaming that take most of my time. I'm currently working on my own game which has always been a life long dream of mine. I'm also learning Japanese. These two things take a lot of time. I also to take care of my house and watch a little bit of TV, mostly animes :).

So yeah, not much time left for gaming.
 
GraveHorizon said:
Do the math on how long it would take to play to completion every game in the average Steam backlog (let's say 5 20 hour games) at a rate of 2 hours a week. That's almost a year to play through 5 games, in addition to such a sparse amount of gametime that the player might not even be able to keep track of what's going on across each session.
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I'm not saying that people should cut it down to 2 hours a week though. I'm commenting on the idea that playing only an hour a day is "outgrowing" videogames as if 7 hours a week is a really low number compared to earlier days
 
You can't outgrow an art form.


But for me, I've found that as I've grown older, my video game tastes have grown...simpler, I guess.

I've found myself shying away from deep, complex strategy games....AAA cinematic blockbusters...extremely competitive MMO / DOTA / shooters...

I just like to sit back and unwind with a nice, quick game of Mario Kart. Nice and simple. And I like a good romance story. I will sit down and play through the entire Mass Effect series just for the romance options and nothing else.

OP, it's best if you don't take games all that seriously. Just relax and drift towards whatever excites you. If nothing really gets you going then that's perfectly okay. Take as long as you need. Just keep a cursory interest in the medium so if something comes along you'll be able to give it a shot.

I'm always going to remain interested in sales figures / how the market is doing...so even if I go a month without playing a single video game there are still aspects of the community I really enjoy participating in.
 
Fbh said:
Also... and this might be more of apersonal thing, and a rather stupid thing to say when I'm here at 2 in the morning posting on a videogame site

But, at some point taking a break from gaming sites and specially boards has helped me get more enjoyment from games just as much as taking a break from gaming itself.

I really like talking about games with other people. I like talking about the stuff I'm playing, the games that have me excited or just to talk about all the latest news. I also think it's great talking about what we think could have been better in a game or giving an argument about what made us dislike a certain game-
But be it GAF or (specially) others sites, and despite the fact that all these sites are filled with people that enjoy gaming, more often than not most of what you see is negativity.
"This game sucks because", "This game was dissapointing because ", "This game is overrated because", "This console is a bad because", "I hate AAA games because", "Random bad thing EA did", "Is this game terrible or is it just me?".
For every thread I see about people enjoying a game I see 3 about people pointing out bad things. A thread as simple as "TLOU running on 30fps has a slight graphical advantage over the 60fps version" somehow evolved into 60 pages of listing everything that is wrong and dissapoiting about the re-release.


At times I simply feel that if you visit these sites frequently the negativity can start to get to you (war off? is tha the term?).
Read how everything is bad, overrated and dissapointing for long enough and you might start to think so yourslef.

Sometimes I just like to disconnect from all of that for a while and just get back to the simple joy of picking up a game I like and enjoy it for what it is.
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Your post kinda made me realize how much time I spend on message boards and how pointless it feels sometimes because of the reasons you listed. I should probably cut back. I would have a lot more time for other things.
 
NoTacos said:
Okay, well in the interest of trying to make it a little less bland how about a different sub-topic:

What do you think the main difference is between playing games as kid and playing as an adult (w/ an overwhelming sense of burnout)? Is it simply the fact most games are "shallow AAA", or could it be another factor such as technology overload in this day/age, or even a matter of actual age (the perception of games as a child vs an adult relative to life events)?
Click to expand...

Depending on the person, it can be all of those things.

My parents are divorced, so as a kid I had a lot of time to spend playing Final Fantasy VII-XII (elementary school through high school) and other games on the weekends. That dedicated amount of time isn't something I can do, even on days when I have the physical amount of time, because of my attention span. I just can't focus on a game for over four hours now.

Technological overload is definitely a factor. I can barely pull myself away from my phone for any length of time, whereas I depended on physically being at a desktop on dial-up (and by necessity not gaming) as a kid. Laptops and wifi changed everything. It's hard enough detoxing for any lenth of time.

The amount of games is probably a perception issue. If you look at Wikipedia, just as many (if not more) games are being released, but if something's not coming out every week, it feels like a dry spell. Most of my favorite games currently are indie/mid-tier, but it's easier to purchase them than play them.

And of course, the biggest issue: kids don't have enough experience to know what's cliched or awful.
 
SHL23 said:
It's not outgrowing video games. It's just that the current games suck ass. I rarely touched a game for the longest time, Kept trying out the most hyped games but only played for a few hours and quit. But when I went to older games, I had so much fun. Game design has changed. Nothing is as good as the 90s and the early to mid 00s

All forms of media are starting to become shit, it's not that you outgrow them
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This kind of talk makes me sad, because it's so painfully obvious that it's an opinion based on looking at a very very very narrow view of what is actually available to play right now.
 
Same here, i burn out quik.
The last years i cant seem to play any game longer than a couple of hours, then i get bored and quit to never play it again.
Only games like Mass Effect, Dragon age,Witcher, Borderlands and Destiny seem to please me.
I love MMORPG and bought a lot of them but the last 3 years i commit and love the lvling and then when end game hits the boredome hits, and now that i am a father i dont have time for long raids etc.
I loved the Wildstar beta and bought it and went to lvl 22 and quit, i just cant do it anymore.
Only problem is i cant seem to stop buying games, my curiosity gets the better of me every time.
 
It happens to us all.

Games used to be one of my favourite pass times but as you get older your priorities change. Now I pretty much see gaming as a waste of time when I could be doing something with the family or doing something more productive instead. There's nothing wrong with this, you're not the target market for these titles any longer. It doesn't help that today's titles are often huge time sinks requiring many hours of commitment.

I'm in no rush to play new titles on day one as I already have a huge backlog. Instead I usually pick up new titles for peanuts many months after release. Then I'll dip in and out of the backlog for maybe two or three hours a week. If I'm not enjoying a game, I'll dump it immediately and move onto something else. Time is too precious and life is to short to waste on things you don't enjoy.
 
Ive taken a step back and sold half my physical stuff and only buy games on sale on steam now.

All I'm really interested in are fighting games now.

AAA has nothing to offer me anymore.
 
I took a break of about 3 months and am now finding myself going from wanting to play just about anything, to only games that really interest me. I used gaming as a form of escapism though and since my personal life has improved my desire to escape reality has dwindled.
 
SHL23 said:
It's not outgrowing video games. It's just that the current games suck ass. I rarely touched a game for the longest time, Kept trying out the most hyped games but only played for a few hours and quit. But when I went to older games, I had so much fun. Game design has changed. Nothing is as good as the 90s and the early to mid 00s

All forms of media are starting to become shit, it's not that you outgrow them
Click to expand...

I bet you're a lot of fun at parties...
 
We have these threads on GAF regularly, so, yeah, a lot of people go through the same thing I guess.

Kinda sad I don't have this problem myself. I love gaming more than ever and now even have to squeeze in an MMO (FFXIV) which I'm currently playing.

Now imagine me trying to squeeze in Lifting (4 times a week), Gaming (SP games + MMO), Watching movies (500+ movie collection), Watching TV series (still have Breaking Bad and several others on my list) and reading books (have the whole Game of Thrones series ready here) into my free time after work.

So yeah, where to start, huh? It's depressing. :(
 
I have plenty of free time as I'm unemployed, not married and don't have cleaning or cooking to do and I still only play an hour or so a day, and old stuff too.
 
There's a reason one of these threads are popping up constantly as of late. You're not outgrowing video games, you're outgrowing consoles. Right now the console industry is being completely dominated by a tiny handful of publishers who in turn control, if not own, the majority of developers. Their vision of "Gaming" is a nonstop stream of your equivalent of summer hollywood blockbuster movies. Imagine if you went to the theater and nothing was ever showing except Transformers 17, 18, 19, 20, ... and onwards with a new release every 6 months to year. I think it'd actually be pretty fun for a while - perhaps even a number of years. But sooner or later you're going to end up getting really fucking sick of seeing nothing but robo cars blowing stuff up. I love a nice explosion or rack as much as anybody, but it needs to be tempered with your Schindler's Lists, Inceptions, Moons and all those other awesome flicks that entertain and excite on something beyond an exclusively surface level presentation.

Getting sick of that is not you outgrowing movies - it's you outgrowing that form of movie that is designed for nothing other than to generate the most revenue possible. With consoles you're experiencing a tiny fraction of overall gaming that's becoming more and more insular and derivative every day.
 
Would you say you were "outgrowing" movies, music or any other hobby? I don't see how games are any different in 2014. Just take a break for a bit..
 
Classic case of burnout. Happened to me once. Stopped completely playing games (I'm talking not only no console games, but no mobile or browser games also).

After about 2 weeks I desperately wanted to play something. Playstation is like cocaine.

If after several weeks you still don't want to play, maybe gaming is no longer something that interests you. No biggie, find another hobby.
 
I used to play through my games a million times.
Now i lose all interest at the exact moment i reach the credits.

I recently borrowed TR:DE from a friend, expecting to be hyped again due to the graphical upgrade. Nope, been there done that. It made me reconsider my TLOU:R purchase. Replay value is non existent for me.

Maybe it's because i got a kid, a wife, a full time job and very little gaming time. Destiny beta was amazing, but i think i won't have enough time to commit to the full game and i'll have a hard time keeping up with my friends pace. So i just give up before it's even released.
 
I wouldn't use the term "outgrowing"
(connotes the idea there's an age apropos to quit gaming which is not true, but this is my own contrivance)
necessarily but yeah I go through periods really often where the last thing I'm interested in doing is playing a game. Just take a break, if your on GAF I highly doubt your love for gaming will ever go away.


Besides every one knows being on GAF is much more fun then actually playing games.

XP
 
Don't judge the state of the industry by the way Destiny plays - it's a horribly overrated game, especially if you're from the PC community.

It's just not very good, given what other MMOs offer.

For a lot of people (even here on GAF) getting a WiiU got them back into games. Maybe you should try that.
 
sometimes a certain type of game will make you feel so burnt out in such a specific way that it'll make you question if you're into gaming anymore

but


then there is those games that you get so addicted to that are so special you remember the reason you fell in love with gaming in the first place


more often then not though you run into those supposed top tier games and they burn you the fuck out (yes destiny does this after awhile you feel really blah) my solution to that problem was to switch to mario kart and then i felt good again lol
 
Nope.

I've been gaming since I was a little kid with an Atari 2600 and I still love this hobby.

My dad asked me recently if I still see myself gaming when I am 50 years old (which is in 14 years..) and I told him : 'Sure, you are still listening to Elvis Presley right?'
 
NoTacos said:
I love my ps4, don't get me wrong. It's a work of art and it fulfills my needs in terms of streaming media, but starting a few months back the gaming aspect has become less and less relevant to me. The more I look at games that are available, the less interested I am in purchasing them.

For example I just played the hell out of the Destiny Beta (was also an alpha user) and had a great time with the GAF community. Despite that, I am no longer certain that this game can sustain my attention for the long term, no other game for that matter. In my case, games are now beginning to shift from "entertainment value" to "waste of money" which sucks considering I was/ still am interested in what the industry has to offer to consumers.

Has anyone else experienced a burn out/loss of passion for video games like this before? Should I just cut back on games for a while and come back to it at a later date?

Interested in seeing what this community has to say.
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Please go and play/replay super metroid

if your attention is not sustained, then yeah, you're burnt out
 
This happens to me from time to time and it's happening to me right now. I have quite a few games to play on PC and I got the Destiny Beta as well. Ever since it began I don't really feel like playing it and now I don't feel like playing any game. Just take a break and then, one day, when you're least expecting it, you'll get the hunger again...or not.
 
I felt the same for the past years. My recent return to Nintendo products was a complete cure. I've been collecting GB/GBA titles and I purchased my 3DS XL two days ago. I can't remember the last time I had such a healthy desire to game.
 
I'm kind of in this situation myself right now. Its not just AAA games either, I cant get enthused by most of the indies I've played lately either. My solution will probably be just going back and play my faves from the mid 90s to early 2000s, indies don't scratch that itch.
 
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