Ask HN: Has anyone else stopped playing video games as an adult?
Somehow I just lost all joy in playing video games. I loved them when I was a kid and throughout high school and college. I'm wondering if this happened anybody else and, if so, why you think it happened, and if there have been any ways that you've rekindled your appreciation for the art form.
I didn't stop, but the nature of the games I enjoy has changed a bit. Fast action games, multiplayer games, and games that require an enormous investment of time are no longer ones that appeal to me (although turn-based games that last for months very much are). Nor are games produced by the major studios (but that's because I dislike their behavior as companies and has nothing to do with the games themselves).
I tend to spend more time playing tabletop games in person with my friends than video games, though.
Games are designed to be addictive, so once you stop its like quitting soda.. eventually you lose the taste for it.
Though, I noticed a lot of satisfaction from my life comes from interactions with others. Games no longer encourage quality interaction like they used to. Your friends get older then get married and get busy, so theres less of that. I usually analyze a game and decide if its wasting my time or improving my time on this earth.
Then there are the single player games. I feel like these had more meaning when the market wasn't as saturated. A lot of times you're just chasing nostalgia from that one really good game you've played. Hoping to recapture the same feeling. Not only that, most aaa games now days are now products of money instead of passion.
So if I had to guess why anyone stopped it's probably one of the reasons above.
I think you've hit on a lot of good reasons that resonate with me in a fairly short comment; well done there. One point I'd elucidate on a bit:
> A lot of times you're just chasing nostalgia from that one really good game you've played. Hoping to recapture the same feeling.
I also think back to the 90's - the 8-bit NES was still kicking just about to be replaced by the SNES and by the close of the decade we had the Dreamcast and the N64 was already showing its age; it was a really incredible time of advancement (and I don't think that's all nostalgia from me as a kid at that time). That continued somewhat into the 00's, but really felt like it petered out since. I remember the sense of wonder at what could come next, and I just don't have that anymore.
> A lot of times you're just chasing nostalgia from that one really good game you've played.
I've just kept playing those really good games I found decades ago. For instance, I still play Master of Orion I and II on a regular basis.
The ability to continue to play games I purchased a lifetime ago is so important to me that I won't buy new games that rely on any external service to work. When I buy a game now, I want to reasonably expect that I can still play it 50 years from now.
Seems like many games require a connection to the server, even for solo play, or it's a download only. There's no market for used games since physical copies don't exist. There's only so much download space, and the game sizes are getting absurd in many cases.
I feel like many of the older ones weren't made to be addicting. Certainly some became addicting, but more as a side effect. Many didn't have online portions and could be beaten a few times and moved on. The ones that did have online portions had some things making them addictive, but not on the same level. Now the games seem mostly focused on online multiplayer. They require immense time investment to unlock things or level up, or you can pay money for a shortcut. There are constantly new things being released that you have pressure to buy or be left behind. It's very much designed to be addicting now, even if the game play, story, and social aspects have gotten mostly worse.
I lost interest in video games after 3D first-person shooters took over back in the '90s. I never learned to play them effectively, and could not afford to keep up with the hardware-upgrade treadmill they demanded. Video gaming seemed to have become an expensive hobby for aggressive, competitive, trend-following people; I did not want to interact with such people, much less become one, and just... stopped paying attention.
The value proposition has definitely changed since those days: divide the purchase cost of "Baldur's Gate 3" by the number of hours of enjoyment my wife has gotten out of it, and the result is negligible. It's hard to imagine a less expensive form of entertainment short of going for a walk!
Sometimes I still like to play roguelikes (by which I mean games that are like Rogue, and not the mostly-unrelated recent genre also called "roguelike"), of which Brogue is my favorite; it can be a fun little puzzle to bang through when I have ten or twenty minutes to kill.
That people have started using "roguelike" to mean games that are not, in fact, like Rogue has become one of my current pet peeves. It's very confusing.
That happened to me from around 2003 to 2008. Games became too repetitive and uninteresting. I got back into them for a while but it wasn't until Dark Souls that I truly rekindled (sorry for the pun) my love of what games could be.
That was a game that perfectly recaptured my imagination and made it feel like I was a kid in the 1980s playing the original Legend of Zelda again. It was everything the modern Zelda games, which have always been my favorite series, had forgot about. I think Zelda regained its footing with Breath of the Wild which I thought was fantastic, but Dark Souls taught me that there is still great games out there if you look around. I started getting more and more into smaller, independently developed games and although I might not have as much free time, I love to discover new games that aren't just bog-standard shooters or annoying multiplayer games or AAA produced dribble.
I used to be quite good at FPSs around 20 years ago, and played Counter Strike often. I tried again recently, and got shouted at, called a cheater, etc. No thanks.
I also love a good open world over Xmas holidays, but man - can I be bothered to struggle with a game's "launcher"? (Steam/Linux/Deck player here). No thanks.
Just last night, I tried playing a game for the first time in a month. Wasteland 3, because I loved the original Fallout and the first Wasteland games. I just got a mess of pixels and what sounded like random SFX playing. Not even using Proton. Could I be bothered to search the web for a why/what/how/etc? No thanks.
There's been one little shining light recently. I've always been a fan of "Honey, I shrunk the kids", and saw this game a few months ago called "It takes Two", which is purely co-op. I bought it on sale. I've got two kids (8 and 11), and I got an extra controller and hooked the Deck up to the TV, and boy - that game is awesome. I can watch them play while I cook dinner, and would dip in every now and then when they get stuck (not often, mind). I had a closer look, and it's EA, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't crap and had a launcher, etc. Such varied game mechanics, and beautiful too.
Oh, and then there are the other little shining lights - indie games. No launchers, no crap. Just start playing. Good 30 minutes of fun, then you can crack on with your life. And usually when you come back after an absence, you're not lost. (Looking at you, Witcher 3.) I support these guys whenever I can. In fact, I'm trying to be one. But, bills, kids, house, etc, haha - it just doesn't pay. It will stay a hobby to me forever more.
I played a decent amount as a kid and a lot as a teen. A few years after college and I stopped for a long time. I've started playing again, mostly online with some friends once or twice a week. I mostly do it for the social aspect.
I feel like most of the games are unoriginal garbage these days. Companies appear to be coasting on franchise reputation to make money. Halo is an excellent example - 343 took over from Bungie and the campaign storyline isn't great (although the format and mechanics are mostly nice) while the multiplayer has sucked and they cant even figure out how to fix it. Games like CoD, Rainbow 6, and Ghost Recon have been terrible recently too (Ubisoft, wtf happened to you?). The Spliter Cell series had similar issues towards the end and seems to be finished off completely now. The mechanics and graphics have gotten better but the stories suck and you can tell many of them are being dragged out just to make another game.
A big part of the fun is being exposed to something new, different, or better. I supposed the more exposure we had in the past will make it more difficult to meet this criteria in the future. Perhaps our tastes have largely been set by the "classic" games (depends on your generation for what those are) and our expectations are outdated. Maybe I just grew up in the golden age of gaming (95+ PC, consoles from NES up to the Xbox 360, some online play but also some in-person and LAN parties). Maybe it will never be that good again. Maybe we'll have ethernet cables crisscrossing the nursing home halls, playing the classics.
My tastes have changed a lot but I still do gaming. Now I'm playing Minecraft with my kids and I have a server where a bunch of their friends can join in and build stuff. I'm not interested in Minecraft for it's own sake but as a social club it's great fun. I also tinker with maps and mods for Quake and Doom. Doom was the first PC game I played - on a demo machine at Radio Shack at 7 years old. I don't play the same way but using the engines as a sandbox to create something still holds my interest.
I don't play them as religiously as I did when I was younger, that's for sure, but a few years ago I started a tradition around playing video games that has been an absolute blast.
I've got a 120" projector screen in the living room with a giant, half-circle couch that seats ~10 and a good set of speakers. All year I try to find short (1-3hrs), emotionally evocative, single-player video games which aren't demanding of reflexes or wit.
On my birthday, I invite a big group of people over, we all take acid, and we dive deep into a curated set of games for a whole night. We take turns passing around the controller.
It's an absolute blast. I've ran this experience for three years running. People who don't traditionally play video games love to come and watch and get a taste of gaming, sometimes people will pilot the controller for just a short while before getting overwhelmed, but everyone's take away is a shared group emotional experience. There's been standing ovations at the end of some of the years :D
https://i.imgur.com/6F0iSxp.png Here's a list of the games. Highlights have been ABZU, The Beginner's Guide, Milk Inside/Outside a Bag of Milk, and Slay the Princess
I've done similar group gaming. I would recommend the following two games. The first is more casual and just fun to watch. The second is one of the greatest narratives communicated through game design. Haven't played the recent remake that came out this year, but I will stand by that statement for the original. Make sure everyone has a chance to try the controls to fully appreciate it.
Well, as an example, Proteus (https://store.steampowered.com/app/219680/Proteus/) is a very clever game, but comes across as too simple when I'm sober. The childlike wonder instilled in me when tripping pairs great with the aesthetics of the game. I'm more interested in exploring, in taking my time, in giggling. I'm happy the control scheme is simple rather than being frustrated that the designer didn't add more complexity to enrich the game further.
I stopped playing them at 17/18 because I felt like I was wasting my time (my mother used to frequently tell me they were a waste of time). At first, I felt like I was missing out on something. Today, almost 15 years later, I don't regret quitting them. Truth is, I don't miss them, and the times I've tried playing again, they no longer hold any appeal for me.
I realized my favorite video games were (co-op) games I played with my brother, like:
- Final Fantasy
- Lost Vikings
- Final Fantasy Tactics
These days we're too busy with other stuff and living too far apart.
---
So I was trying to design a (phone) game that is played with others and encourages interaction with each other (vs. the meme where everybody is sitting at the same table, but staring at their own phone.)
Ideally: this game would be co-op, can be played together remotely but gives bonus for playing together in same physical space. Also the game should be casual, so people can have a conversation while playing this game (maybe even gameplay that encourages putting the phones down).
Yes. I used to be a heavy gamer. I got tired of single player games first. I started to think why bother with what is essentially just an interactive movie? Challenge or accomplishment for defeating a tough boss? No one is going give me a prize or applaud me for it. To see the story? I’d rather just watch a movie.
Multiplayer games lasted a while longer. Eventually I stopped playing those too as friends grew older and none of us had hours to dedicate.
Ten years ago I would have thought I’d be a lifelong gamer. Today, it’s been almost five years that I last played a game.
Sitting down and playing a long, open world, cinematic adventure is just not an efficient use of my time anymore. The only time I get to play videogames are brief stolen moments during my week. So I only play games that give me a satisfying "chew" for my time. Trying to come back after a couple of weeks to Red Dead Redemption 2 with only 45 minutes to spend... it's agony.
I also spend 8+ hours a day staring at screens. I don't relish staring at them for leisure. So my indulgence is to pull out a board game.
i don't really game unless im playing something with friends in a social setting, or its something i've been fiending to play for years. other than that, i can never find the time
I used to game all the time but completely stopped during college. I always felt like I had more important things to do (invest in relationships, study, read, exercise) and there way no time for gaming. I would still watch a movie or a TV show, but the time commitment there was always much lower.
Since then my responsibilities have only grown (kids, job, house to maintain, etc) so I haven't even tried picking them up again (though I do play Switch with my 7 yr old occasionally)
To me, what happened is that my tastes have changed. I no longer appreciate games that are huge time-sinks and require grinding or mindless tasks. I prefer things that are engaging and allow quick gameplay sessions. I tend to gravitate to Fighting Games and Indie Games, and I haven't played any of the huge recent AAA successes.
Other than that, gaming with my kids. Minecraft, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Cuphead, Lego games, etc.
I stopped not because they are less enjoyable but because they are too enjoyable.
When I play games, I inevitably end up extending my gaming sessions when I get caught up in excitement. This is especially true with fighting games.
I find that unacceptable since I have many other hobbies that I want to give my time to. It is just easier to avoid the temptation of extending my sessions than to fight it.
I loved them so much when younger it inspired me to become a programmer. I wouldn’t be in tech without them. Nowadays I don’t play other than with my kids. I believe this decline is because there are so many other problems to solve and responsibilities to take care of when older. When relaxing for an hour of the day I tend to want to do something passive.
I always loved the adventure/exploring/open world aspect of games as a kid
As an adult a lot of that interest has just turned into interest in traveling to other countries, and doing outdoor activities like hiking, camping, or 4x4ing
I still like gaming but to me real life is like the ultimate open world game to explore once you’re an adult and have money
I think new games are high commitment too. You could happily enjoy an hour of Fallout 2 or Baldur's Gate 2, but you need many hours for a satisfactory session of Fallout 3 or Baldur's Gate 3. Today's games seem more designed for streamers than players; people who do it as a full time job and require 500 hours of gameplay.
Yes, I did. I haven't lost the joy of playing tho, I can easily get hooked and start neglecting my life goals. That's why I don't get near video games and places where people are playing, the dopamine hook is too risky for me. The same for series and movies. I don't watch them anymore.
To enjoy games you need to have free time, true free time, where nobody has any claim on your attention. That's hard to get as an adult, especially if you're working in tech right now.
My taste in games changed...as a kid my favorites were Assassin's Creed and Call of Duty. Today I play games like Crusader Kings 3 and Kerbal Space Program. There aren't any single-player console games that I find that great, other than Spiderman for Playstation.
I got back into gaming recently because that's how I like to spend my down time, intermixed with reading and board games with the kids. Cable TV is terrible these days, and it only takes me a couple of weeks to get through the shows that I do enjoy on the streaming services.
there's gaming and then there's gaming. Simon tatham's puzzle games are a neatly packaged up bit of fun. and then there's Factorio.
as I got older though, I want to make an impact on the world, and video games, while fun, don't let me do that as much as contributing to an open source project or volunteering or some such. I expect I'll get back into them as I get older.
I got slower and can't compete with younger players while playing action or even RTS. The other day I decided to give AoE2 a go and was quickly obliterated (and yelled at) by the online competitors.
I have also developed a certain sense for patterns and game logics quickly become repetitive and boring.
I tend to spend more time playing tabletop games in person with my friends than video games, though.
Though, I noticed a lot of satisfaction from my life comes from interactions with others. Games no longer encourage quality interaction like they used to. Your friends get older then get married and get busy, so theres less of that. I usually analyze a game and decide if its wasting my time or improving my time on this earth.
Then there are the single player games. I feel like these had more meaning when the market wasn't as saturated. A lot of times you're just chasing nostalgia from that one really good game you've played. Hoping to recapture the same feeling. Not only that, most aaa games now days are now products of money instead of passion.
So if I had to guess why anyone stopped it's probably one of the reasons above.
> A lot of times you're just chasing nostalgia from that one really good game you've played. Hoping to recapture the same feeling.
I also think back to the 90's - the 8-bit NES was still kicking just about to be replaced by the SNES and by the close of the decade we had the Dreamcast and the N64 was already showing its age; it was a really incredible time of advancement (and I don't think that's all nostalgia from me as a kid at that time). That continued somewhat into the 00's, but really felt like it petered out since. I remember the sense of wonder at what could come next, and I just don't have that anymore.
I've just kept playing those really good games I found decades ago. For instance, I still play Master of Orion I and II on a regular basis.
The ability to continue to play games I purchased a lifetime ago is so important to me that I won't buy new games that rely on any external service to work. When I buy a game now, I want to reasonably expect that I can still play it 50 years from now.
The value proposition has definitely changed since those days: divide the purchase cost of "Baldur's Gate 3" by the number of hours of enjoyment my wife has gotten out of it, and the result is negligible. It's hard to imagine a less expensive form of entertainment short of going for a walk!
Sometimes I still like to play roguelikes (by which I mean games that are like Rogue, and not the mostly-unrelated recent genre also called "roguelike"), of which Brogue is my favorite; it can be a fun little puzzle to bang through when I have ten or twenty minutes to kill.
I also love a good open world over Xmas holidays, but man - can I be bothered to struggle with a game's "launcher"? (Steam/Linux/Deck player here). No thanks.
Just last night, I tried playing a game for the first time in a month. Wasteland 3, because I loved the original Fallout and the first Wasteland games. I just got a mess of pixels and what sounded like random SFX playing. Not even using Proton. Could I be bothered to search the web for a why/what/how/etc? No thanks.
There's been one little shining light recently. I've always been a fan of "Honey, I shrunk the kids", and saw this game a few months ago called "It takes Two", which is purely co-op. I bought it on sale. I've got two kids (8 and 11), and I got an extra controller and hooked the Deck up to the TV, and boy - that game is awesome. I can watch them play while I cook dinner, and would dip in every now and then when they get stuck (not often, mind). I had a closer look, and it's EA, and I was pleasantly surprised that it wasn't crap and had a launcher, etc. Such varied game mechanics, and beautiful too.
Oh, and then there are the other little shining lights - indie games. No launchers, no crap. Just start playing. Good 30 minutes of fun, then you can crack on with your life. And usually when you come back after an absence, you're not lost. (Looking at you, Witcher 3.) I support these guys whenever I can. In fact, I'm trying to be one. But, bills, kids, house, etc, haha - it just doesn't pay. It will stay a hobby to me forever more.
I feel like most of the games are unoriginal garbage these days. Companies appear to be coasting on franchise reputation to make money. Halo is an excellent example - 343 took over from Bungie and the campaign storyline isn't great (although the format and mechanics are mostly nice) while the multiplayer has sucked and they cant even figure out how to fix it. Games like CoD, Rainbow 6, and Ghost Recon have been terrible recently too (Ubisoft, wtf happened to you?). The Spliter Cell series had similar issues towards the end and seems to be finished off completely now. The mechanics and graphics have gotten better but the stories suck and you can tell many of them are being dragged out just to make another game.
A big part of the fun is being exposed to something new, different, or better. I supposed the more exposure we had in the past will make it more difficult to meet this criteria in the future. Perhaps our tastes have largely been set by the "classic" games (depends on your generation for what those are) and our expectations are outdated. Maybe I just grew up in the golden age of gaming (95+ PC, consoles from NES up to the Xbox 360, some online play but also some in-person and LAN parties). Maybe it will never be that good again. Maybe we'll have ethernet cables crisscrossing the nursing home halls, playing the classics.
I've got a 120" projector screen in the living room with a giant, half-circle couch that seats ~10 and a good set of speakers. All year I try to find short (1-3hrs), emotionally evocative, single-player video games which aren't demanding of reflexes or wit.
On my birthday, I invite a big group of people over, we all take acid, and we dive deep into a curated set of games for a whole night. We take turns passing around the controller.
It's an absolute blast. I've ran this experience for three years running. People who don't traditionally play video games love to come and watch and get a taste of gaming, sometimes people will pilot the controller for just a short while before getting overwhelmed, but everyone's take away is a shared group emotional experience. There's been standing ovations at the end of some of the years :D
https://i.imgur.com/6F0iSxp.png Here's a list of the games. Highlights have been ABZU, The Beginner's Guide, Milk Inside/Outside a Bag of Milk, and Slay the Princess
- A Short Hike: https://store.steampowered.com/app/1055540/A_Short_Hike/
- Brothers - A Tale of Two Sons: https://store.steampowered.com/app/225080/Brothers__A_Tale_o...
Sitting and playing some random story-type game for 50 hours seems like a complete waste of my time.
- Final Fantasy
- Lost Vikings
- Final Fantasy Tactics
These days we're too busy with other stuff and living too far apart.
---
So I was trying to design a (phone) game that is played with others and encourages interaction with each other (vs. the meme where everybody is sitting at the same table, but staring at their own phone.)
Ideally: this game would be co-op, can be played together remotely but gives bonus for playing together in same physical space. Also the game should be casual, so people can have a conversation while playing this game (maybe even gameplay that encourages putting the phones down).
Like if you're sitting down together, 90% is just plain conversation (about anything) and 10% or less is specifically about the game.
Multiplayer games lasted a while longer. Eventually I stopped playing those too as friends grew older and none of us had hours to dedicate.
Ten years ago I would have thought I’d be a lifelong gamer. Today, it’s been almost five years that I last played a game.
Sitting down and playing a long, open world, cinematic adventure is just not an efficient use of my time anymore. The only time I get to play videogames are brief stolen moments during my week. So I only play games that give me a satisfying "chew" for my time. Trying to come back after a couple of weeks to Red Dead Redemption 2 with only 45 minutes to spend... it's agony.
I also spend 8+ hours a day staring at screens. I don't relish staring at them for leisure. So my indulgence is to pull out a board game.
Since then my responsibilities have only grown (kids, job, house to maintain, etc) so I haven't even tried picking them up again (though I do play Switch with my 7 yr old occasionally)
Other than that, gaming with my kids. Minecraft, TMNT: Shredder's Revenge, Cuphead, Lego games, etc.
When I play games, I inevitably end up extending my gaming sessions when I get caught up in excitement. This is especially true with fighting games.
I find that unacceptable since I have many other hobbies that I want to give my time to. It is just easier to avoid the temptation of extending my sessions than to fight it.
As an adult a lot of that interest has just turned into interest in traveling to other countries, and doing outdoor activities like hiking, camping, or 4x4ing
I still like gaming but to me real life is like the ultimate open world game to explore once you’re an adult and have money
I might not play the former ones I played 15 years ago, but I've got far better stories and gameplay.
as I got older though, I want to make an impact on the world, and video games, while fun, don't let me do that as much as contributing to an open source project or volunteering or some such. I expect I'll get back into them as I get older.
Yes.
> if so, why you think it happened
Too many other time commitments, with no "free time" left for video games.