do you find it difficult to get into games? I’ve got Epic Games and Steam Games libraries chock-full of classic top-tier games along with many other newer games like Stray or 2077, and a bunch of indie titles. I just can’t be bothered to download and install them, much less try to get into the characters and storylines. Used to be I couldn’t wait to see what happened in the story, what new items you could collect, what new worlds the developers had created. Not anymore. I return to playing the same franchise for a quick FPS match or three and then I’m done.
Years ago I made the decision to never play a game on launch, never buy a game full price, never play a game just because it was on the online buzz.
I decide what to play usually days in advance, carve out a chunk of my recreation time to explicitly play, as if it were going to a movie or a party with friends. It’s like a date with the game. I block a couple of hours to it. If the game is good, it will get a second date, if it bored me, we would break up.
I don’t buy on sales pressure either. If I decide I want to play a game, I would wait to buy it on the historical cheapest price. Only then would the game get schedule time to get played. That keeps the FOMO away.
It has made gaming super enjoyable and no longer the dopamine chase that publishers want to make to milk the most money out of me. As a result I usually enjoy my time way more, play older games more frequently, not out of nostalgia but because I never played then. I also spend less money, which lowers stress and anxiety. As a result I haven’t played a AAA game in a long while.
Time is scheduled for a game on what I’m interested in right now. But since the decision is always for a time far away in the future (up to a week in advance) I can make a more directed and intentional decision. Some weeks it’s thematic, some weeks it’s just genre based. Some weeks are retro. Some weeks are for comfort. All with small and concrete goals for each.
Yup. Just finally played through Skyrim, and starting fallout 3. They’ve been fun. Honestly didn’t game for the better part of the last 15 years, work and kids. Sunk hundreds of hours on Skyrim now done, fallout totally different and a predecessor yet familiar.
I go by the same rule, basically if people can still play and talk about something 10 years later it’s actually good.
@pdxfed
I also love Skyrim and fallout 3 they are some of the best games even today but I didn’t finished them yet.
I just finished cyberpunk after 170 hours and It was so good that i am starting it again from scratch.