I want to play ______ but I end up playing _______.

[republic]

While at work I want to go home and play Europa Universalis IV, Command Air/Naval, (insert cerebral game) but I'm so tired I end up playing Elite or Planetside 2.

Do you want to play certain games but end up going to fallbacks?

[Barthheart]

Yes all the time. EU IV is one of the ones I want to play but when I get to my home PC I can't be bothered trying to wrap my head around it and play Tropico 5 or some other form of brain candy  instead.  :P

[FlickJax]

One of the reasons why I am stuck in world of tanks....it so easy to play and no deep thinking or time reservation needed.

[RedArgo]

I want to play CK2, Endless Legend, Flashpoint, Sails of Glory, Nimitz, but I end up playing World of Tanks.

Like Flickjax said, it is just so easy to start and play without thinking too much.  I should really uninstall it again.

[Steelgrave]

I want to play any of a dozen titles I've bought through Steam and never played, but I end up playing 7 Days to Die.

[Rayfer]

republic....I suspect many, if not most of us here suffer this same syndrome. I know I do. I start out intending to play Battles from the Bulge but end up playing Skyrim.

[undercovergeek]

i want to play Wargame Red Dragon AoW III, FE:LH, Endless Legend, more Rome II, i end up playing Elite because its awesome and the others dont have a big enough pull yet

[GJK]

I want to play a board wargame but wind up doing mindless clicking in a pc wargame.

[MengJiao]

While at work I want to go home and play Europa Universalis IV, Command Air/Naval, (insert cerebral game) but I'm so tired I end up playing Elite or Planetside 2.

Do you want to play certain games but end up going to fallbacks?

  What happens to me is more insidious:  I want to play X, but I end up reading up on the real actions being simulated and I end up changing the rules.  Flying Colors is the worst case of this (boardgame), but no game is immune.  For Pc games the result is something like instead of playing CMANO, I play small scenarios basically in the editor.  Currently I'm trapped in the CMFI editor.  In the worst cases (where there are no accounts of any actual actions) I've just played in the editor for decades (all of the ARMAs since about 2004, for example and DCS)

[sandman2575]

Want to start getting into Elite and Battle of Stalingrad, but don't have the mental energy to reconfigure countless flightstick bindings...  So I just wind up playing CM Red Thunder.

Want to play:  OOTP15.  Wind up playing:  Red Thunder.

Want to play:  Divinity Original Sin.  Wind up playing:  Red Thunder.

Want to play:  Distant Worlds.  Wind up playing:  Red Thunder.

Obsession or gaming rut?  you decide.

[spelk]

I want to play War in the West, Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue, Distant Worlds Universe but I end up playing Dungeonmans, Dungeon of the Endless, Heroes and Legends: Conquest of Koldar, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

I think its a time thing. All the games I want to play require time and effort to play - major investments - whereas all the ones I end up playing are small bites of tactical/roguelike rpg abstractions that I can get a fix out of them for half an hour without much mental or time investment.

I'm a shallow bastard who pretends to call himself a wargamer. :(

I often gear myself up to play the big games, and I reckon if I pop on Youtube watch a few Lets plays I'll get the gist of what is involved and can start the game running, rather than having to plod/crawl through the manual. Usually after one or two Lets Play videos of the game I want to play, I'm fatigued of the game and haven't the minerals to start it up myself! Madness!

[MengJiao]

I want to play War in the Weat, Decisive Campaigns: Case Blue, Distant Worlds Universe but I end up playing Dungeonmans, Dungeon of the Endless, Heroes and Legends: Conquest of Koldar, Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup.

I think its a time thing. All the games I want to play require time and effort to play - major investments - whereas all the ones I end up playing are small bites of tactical/roguelike rpg abstractions that I can get a fix out of them for half an hour without much mental or time investment.

I'm a shallow bastard who pretends to call himself a wargamer. :(

  Sometimes war gaming is more of an aspiration than an experience.  Just as well -- for example, reading End Game at Stalingrad was a lot more rewarding than playing Wittergewitter, though probably one would not have been as rewarding (or even comprehensible) without the other.

[Father Ted]

What I try to do if and when I ever get going in the likes of Command Ops and CMBN is make sure I save and quit at a point where I've a definite idea about what I want to do next, or want to see what happens next.  The idea being that I then have an impetus to get going again.  Of course, you've got to get going in the first place...

[sandman2575]

I'm a shallow bastard who pretends to call himself a wargamer. :(

Not at all -- what you're describing is an experience most of us have all the time, myself very much included.

The amazing thing about the amazing abundance of games cheaply available (and so easily bought during Steam sales and the like), is that I probably only regularly play about 1-5% of the games in my library. I occasionally look at my Steam stats and see that i have "7 minutes played" on Tropico 4 and "12 minutes played" on Silent Hunter 5" and so it goes, down the line.  There are only a handful of games that I've logged 50+ hours on (and only one that I've broken the 100 hour mark -- "Sword of the Stars II" --!!--surprises me too). 

Bottom line is, most of the games that interest folks who frequent grog sites like this one take a major investment of time to learn. 99% of the time, after a long day of work and making dinner and getting the kids to bed, you just don't have the mental or physical energy left to start learning a new, complex game. 

The best case, for me, is the rich, complex games that you've mastered and are second nature to play, so that you can enjoy them even when you're pretty tired. These are my core games, and it's a small, small core, a handful at most.

@FatherTed -- interesting, I have just the opposite, especially with CMx2 -- I quit when I realize I'm too tired to figure out what to do next. The times I try to muddle through even though I know I'm tired, just because I want to see what will happen, invariably lead to disaster...

[jomni]

I want to play Elite but end up playing ATC3.