Anyone experience gaming burnout?

tonydude

Been a gamer for the majority of my life, Commodore & Atari were my entry consoles and I feel my gaming life is coming to an end not because of family or work commitments but due to tiredness/burnout of the types of games that are available. It's not the first time it's happened and the game that pulled me back in was Demon Souls and the souls series.

I've tried the big titles like RDR and Spiderman but it's a task to play them , the only one to give some thrill was God of War. I recently got the Sekiro guide book with the intention of getting the game also but why waste more money on something I won't play. At this point I'd rather turn on Netflix instead of looking through a catelog of games that once excited me at the prospect of playing them but instead they are collecting digital dust.

Anyway that's my current state of mind when it comes to gaming.

madcabbage

Think everybody goes through it in some shape or form, I nearly binned off my consoles a few years back I got so bored with all of it. Instead I switched to PC gaming, best decision I ever made. It's like anything really, take a step back from it for a short period and find something to do in the mean time, you'll come around again to it.

IvoryTower

People do grow out of it as well. I used to love many different types of games, 1000s of hours on strategy games, always had indie games on the go, these days if a game isn't competitive fps I get bored instantly. If I get bored of this I'll likely just play games with my son

IvoryTower

A good example would be we have a gaming thread on viber between all our friends, year by year they're dropping off

pixelburp

I still game, but I honestly don't recognise the mainstream - the so-called AAA - industry anymore. The microtransactions, endless yearly iterations etc., not to mention the sh*tty work or business practises and rabid fans, just feels very alien and cynical to me and find it hard to feel an enthusiasm or support for it.

Times another, more tangible, part of it; it's not my only distraction or hobby now so a weekend spent on Civilisation or Skyrim ain't an option anymore.

RobbingBandit

I've had a few bouts of frustration related burnout, two games Final Fantasy VII (Alexander Materia) and Ocarina of Time Water Temple drove me crazy.

killanena

I go through periods where I don't play games at all, the longest being 2 years about 5 years ago. When a game starts agitating me I know its time to move on. If all games are I know it's time for a break

EoinHef

Burnout usually manifests itself with me in the sense i cant find games i like when im burnt out. Just cant get into games.

I find if i really pair back my playing hours for a month or two and put more time into other hobbies i can come back to games more refreshed and enthusiastic.

As an aside i thought RDR 2 wasnt great either and sigleplayer games like spiderman dont usually appeal to me. A gaming being super popular doesnt mean its gonna be for everyone.

killanena

EoinHef wrote:

As an aside i thought RDR 2 wasnt great either and sigleplayer games like spiderman dont usually appeal to me. A gaming being super popular doesnt mean its gonna be for everyone.

Very true,I haven't played either myself and couldn't care less about them tbh.

Retr0gamer

I get this every so often. There's a quick fix. Stop playing games. Catch up on some movies or films. Do a hobby. You'll eventually get an urge to play games again.

When you do go back playing games I'd avoid triple A open world busywork games as they aren't fun at all but give the illusion of fun through skinner nox psychology.

Just don't be in a rush to play games again.

BeerWolf

I quickly grow bored of Single Player games, has to be a multiplayer.

That being said, as an MMORPG enthusiast I got burnt out with WoW:Legion... the direction Blizzard were taking then disgusted me and I had zero desire to continue on with BfA.

ERG89

A lot modern games ask for a significant amount of investment of time so it's easy to get burnt out.
I do feel there is a severe lack of good pick up and play games these days.
I used to love replaying single player shooters, sports games (Madden, Tiger Woods, PES), stuff like Burnout or the PS2 era rockstar games. The modern contemporaries just don't seem as fun to play as most target online too much for my tastes.
Something I finished last year was Chrono Trigger and I was surprised it only took me maybe 20 hours. I wondered how many modern JRPG's would be that tightly made but also that enjoyable.
Indie games are nice to pick up and play but other than Stardew Valley I don't think I played that many beyond 20 hours, maybe Trials HD.

Canis Lupus

I get it although I tend to rotate genre rather than a complete burnout. I tend to have regular fall back games so WoW, World of Tanks, Eve, Total War games, Civ, Overwatch.

Been playing lots of Overwatch, getting bored/angry when playing comp lately so I pulled the joystick out of storage (not a euphemism) and am playing Elite Dangerous.

tonydude

Wow didn't expect such a response, thanks guys. From reading your opinions I think I'll put it to one side for the time being and maybe dip into it now and again so I don't completely abandon it and wait for a title that'll pull me back in.

Zero-Cool

In my 31 years of gaming (since the C64), I never once felt burnout from it. I put it down to just not having a lot of time to play in the last few of years. Some days I have zero play time, some have 1 hour, some 2 and if I get lucky, a whole 3 hours. I read about people being able to play all day or all night and I get envious but maybe it's for the best as there is always something I want to play but if I had the luxury of free time, maybe I'd get burnt out too.

So I'd say the length of your sessions would play a part as well

penev10

I've had several bouts of apathy towards games but I always come back. I think when youve played like 9 generations of games it's easy to feel like you've been there bought the tshirt when playing a modern game. I've given up on AAA games for this very reason.

daheadonu

Have that with open world's,as much as I liked the witcher 3 but I have this compulsion to do everything I can so I did every question mark on the map and couldn't stomach doing the dlc

Icyseanfitz

i find ive too many games to play which leads me to not completing or playing any. What i find really distracting though is jumping between multiplayer games with friends and singleplayer games, always seems like im under pressure to play certain games these days which is just making it into a chore.

TerrorFirmer

I get it in waves. There was a period of a year or two where I barely touched a game at all apart from the odd bit of Halo with friends.

At the moment I've lost all interest in single player games, and instead play nothing but competitive shooters. The amount of games I've started and failed to finish is staggering. Most recently Resident Evil 2 and Wolfenstein 2 - both completely short, to the point and decent campaigns, but can't stomach finishing them for some reason.

The last game I finished was Far Cry 5, pretty enjoyable....last SP game I sunk a lot of time into was Fallout 4...which I didn't finish either despite doing about 200 hours.

Riesen_Meal

I've held back a lot with games lately, I do get sporadic burnout from gaming and just don't touch games for a while, kind of in that phase at the moment, nowt grabbing my attention except for the odd bit of Mario on Switch of all things...

I think it's a time of year thing also, I can never really game during the summer for some reason!

I'm sure come August/September the consoles and PC will get busted out proper again

Cordell

I give a few days after I finish a game to let it sink in and I'm fresh after that:) But I only play SP games that have an ending.

Mr Crispy

Fieldog wrote: »

I think it's a time of year thing also, I can never really game during the summer for some reason!

I'm sure come August/September the consoles and OC will get busted out proper again

Generally speaking it's the same here. The long evenings make me feel like I should be out and about instead of in front of the monitor or TV! I'll be putting that to the test this summer though - building my first new PC in ages, so I'm sure I'll find excuses to not go out...

K.O.Kiki

I used to be all about fighting games, and now I only play Overwatch & am going through my Steam library.

Fighters require so much dedication & practice that I just can't be bothered anymore. Plus all the losses have kinda taken its toll.

TheValeyard

Yeah, definitely OP.

I find changing category of game helps. Then after a period of time, I resume my quests and general debauchery.

johnny_ultimate

This won't work for everyone feeling a bit jaded with the state of the medium, but it worked for me: come to terms with the fact that most AAA, blockbuster games aren't really that interesting.

Most big name games these days want your time. It doesn't matter how they get it: they just want your time. You see this most obviously in 'games as service' titles, that want to keep you hooked for as long as possible (preferably until the sequel shows up). But even many major single-player titles are time-consuming behemoths - open-worlds that offer up shiny trinkets to keep you 'occupied' for dozens of hours. Content is king. I mean, I think I'd enjoy having a wander around Assassin's Creeds' ancient Greece, but equally sure I'll be drowning in ****ty systems and busywork within an hour of booting the thing up.

True, the occasional great game earns such commitment - for me, that's something like BotW, or a Fromsoft game. But really a lot of them are a bit **** - I mean, I trudged through RDR2 and felt a whole lot of that was just a turgid waste of time. Again, this'll differ from player - but the games do want a lot of your time, and personally I couldn't be bothered giving it to them.

For me, keeping things varied is the most important thing. That's why I fall back to indie or smaller games when feeling slightly jaded. I'm playing Heaven's Vault at the moment, and that offers the proper thrill of experiencing something new and interesting. My time spent playing Obra Dinn last year was immense. Those sort of experiences are what make me excited about gaming - a medium that's still evolving in strange and fascinating directions.

That's just my approach these days: avoid most of the mammoth AAA timesinks, and focus instead on shorter, more unusual experiences

Robert ninja

Definitely feeling burnout in general for a long time but the main symptom isn't just not playing anything... it's not sticking with anything. I rarely complete games anymore or if I do it's over a very long time like literally years sometimes. I hop to different games sort of like what Murray said. Changing it up a bit can help.

Skerries

I have been sticking to only gaming on a Friday night and holidays
I usually start at about 8 and finish up about 3 or 4 in the morning, so a 7 or 8 hour gaming session a week
I also try to vary my games, so after playing an FPS I will try and play an RPG, action or RTS instead

pixelburp

Speaking of RTS games, it's not so much burnout as it is the genre I played most fadó fadó doesn't really exist anymore either

The Phantom Pain

I think Johnny Ultimate hit the nail on the head regarding why it's so easy to get burned out.

Devs these days have construed time with fun so what you get is games being designed with a vision of how much of the player's time it will consume and not necessarily whether it contains fun mechanics that will be enjoyable to do over and over throughout the course of 30-40 hours gameplay. That's why you have so much "busy work" and grind. It's all about creating a world that feeds your compulsion to "do stuff" and that can kind of trick you into thinking you're having fun because of perceived content.

I was watching the Kinda Funny review of Days Gone recently and co-host Greg Miller was describing a non spoilery occurrence in the game that apparently is more frequent than not. Now, I haven't played Days Gone but the story he told seemed completely nonsensical from a fun factor perspective, and a situation I've seen too many times in games like this. At the end of his recollection of this particular event he simply asked rhetorically, "Why? Why was that what you wanted me to do with my time?"

This wonderfully sums up the problem with a lot of AAA games in general, not just Days Gone. So many times you will be scratching your head just wondering why something is there. Of course, the answer to Miller's question is that in that particular moment the devs just wanted to cut an impression that the mission had depth due to its length no matter how pointless it was, because 'length' means 'content' which means 'fun'.

I think older gamers see through that, having previously consumed games in a time where that wasn't the case. Younger gamers, however, are conditioned to think this is the normal way of digesting games, subconciously using 'time' to measure whether a game is worth playing or not. This is why many are so put off by a 12 hour campaign that's full of thrills per minute, preferring a bloated 100 hour game with perhaps only 30 hours of actual engaging content.

I've personally witnessed people rage out when even the idea of a scaled down map for the next Assassin's Creed game is mentioned. I've played with people on Destiny 2 who spend hours upon hours in that world. Literally, when I log into my PS4 they're on Destiny 2 and nothing else. Yet, when asked, they seem very, very hesistant to say the game is fun because they know deep down, technically, "fun" is not the right word. When I ask them what their personal endgame is i.e. what they plan to do when they've got all the loot and power they need they're lost for words. All that time grinding the same thing over and over again to get loot and they can't even articulate why they're doing it and are not willing to say they enjoy it, it's just compulsion.

A game like God of War appeals to so many different types of gamers because it's all killer, no filler and what filler there is is mostly optional, not something you have to do just to get to the actual fun stuff. Virtually every aspect of that game is enjoyable whether it's combat, puzzles or just listening to boat stories. There is a conscious effort from Cory Barlog to sustain its thrills throughout the entire campaign and it shows.

I wouldn't go as far as to say AAA games these days are outright bad. Most (of what I play anyway) is enjoyable but needs hard editing in places and/or an honest reassessment from the devs of whether all content is genuinely fun to do.

Dcully

I very easily get burned out with mainstream games, its the main reason a PC is my weapon of choice.
So much choice and diversity, loads of indie stuff aswell as early access and beta builds.
Currently im playing Risk of rain 2 where every time you play its a totally different experience and Grim Dawn with its countless build possibilities where every build makes the game feel and play differently both non mainstream but with oceans of depth and gameplay.
Im also playing two early access titles, Pagan online and Last Epoch.

ancapailldorcha

Interesting comment from johnny_ultimate above.

For the past few years, I've rarely strayed from my chosen path of playing various strategy games, namely Total War and the rebooted XCOM series.

There seems to have been something missing from AAA games and it's only this year that I found myself really able to articulate it. It took 2 games for me to do this, the Resident Evil 2 remake and Devil May Cry 5, both from Capcom. The last non-strategy game I played was Far Cry 4. I've yet to clear the main quest. The game has a huge map but it feels so empty and barren. Many of the sidequests feel like chores to say nothing of the pointless collectables. Last game I saw this bad was The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion.

Playing Resident Evil 2 felt fresh and new. The game felt original and claustrophobic and packed to the brim with detail instead of the usual dreary, soulless and empty open world that never responds to anything the player does. We got tight action and great atmosphere instead. I did three run throughs of that game. Need to get back for a fourth.

Devil May Cry 5 on the other hand, while being a great game comes with microtransactions. The player doesn't need to actually spend any real world cash due to a wide availability of revival items in the game. I don't know if Capcom were trying to offset outrage at the microtransactions. There was a challenging boss fight towards the end of the game. I didn't realise it as I was playing but I got through by reviving a few times mid fight. This killed any incentive I would have otherwise have had to learn the enemy's moves, attacks and vulnerabilities and improve at the game. Afterwards, it just felt a bit hollow.

Even Total War feels quite hollowed out compared to the earlier titles in the series. Streamlining results in a less deep game which risks becoming boring. Total War: Rome II is a shuffling corpse compared to the classic Rome. I'm finding that more and more new games are resorting to tired old tropes like walking sections and QTE's. It feels... tiring. I'm sure there are plenty of Indie titles and such things but it's quite depressing to see so many iterations of franchises I used to love become little more than bland husks of their former selves.