Gaming what happened to you?

[Keunert]

with the current state of my gaming, i could as well quit it. even though i still read gaming blogs and aar's i have a hard time to really get into a game these days. i bought civ 5 and even though civ 1 was my last game it felt old from the start and i only managed to play two complete games. then i bought Total War Empires after Shogun 1 and i haven't finished the tutorial yet. i invested a half day as austria and took over poland, feeling like the ai would let me expand quite inopposed so far. then i bought Battle of the Bulge on ios and what a great polished game it is! but after my first axis victory i never returned again.

i buy games now and then but i hardly put in a quarter of the time i did ten years ago. so what's next? gardening? knitting?

[Yskonyn]

Perhaps it is a good idea indeed to take a break and focus on other things.
I do not know your age, but I suspect you are also a child of the glorious computer golden Era. Which means we have seen most of it before.

I used to be trying to keep up to date on too many games. This results in a) playing each game only shortly b) some stress to want to play it All c) a feeling with many games of 'been there, done that' d) an empty wallet. :)

I now try to focus on only those games/franchises I really really like. Which is a good move, especially with the more attention on Family life as we get older.

I have been away from gaming before for quite a while and it has re energised my fun and gaming morale every time.

Go paint some miniatures, build a model kit, go (learn to) draw. :)
It will do your gaming good. And if you do not care for games at All afterwards, aparently you are done with them for good.

[Rekim]

i buy games now and then but i hardly put in a quarter of the time i did ten years ago. so what's next? gardening? knitting?

Solitaire wargaming perhaps?

I have a difficult time getting past the kicking the tires phase with most computer games these days as well. There have been some exceptions in recent times. Civ V and Distant Worlds being the main culprits.

[jomni]

It's not gaming... It is You!

[undercovergeek]

I used to be trying to keep up to date on too many games. This results in a) playing each game only shortly b) some stress to want to play it All c) a feeling with many games of 'been there, done that' d) an empty wallet. :)

I now try to focus on only those games/franchises I really really like.

all of this is wisdom

its easy to read GH and think wow, everyone seems so excited about that ill have that, ooo and that, ooo that too, and this, but we have here approx 500 people all with different game interests and tastes but because of their passion for their genre/favourite game that we eloquently write about (!) its easy to get sucked in and buy games you will never/hardly play.

Over at the screenshots thread the CLOD and War of Thunder shots look absolutely amazing and id buy one of them. Do i really want a flight sim/arcade flight game now - no, Skyrim isnt my thing so im immune to that but all the snippets of game news and 'what i played this weekend' stuff makes it very easy to get lost....... we are after all, all kids in a toyshop here

[MikeGER]

.... so what's next? gardening? knitting?

what's wrong with gardening ;) 

...there is no better relaxing then sitting in the warm spring sun, looking at the garden (and how the bulbs display planted month before finally came out) reading a game manual (pdf), or a military history book, or just staring at the clouds and planing the next turn on the frontline, ...even browsing all the wargaming sides on the net with a tablet ...and when its start raining the pixel soldiers get alive on the LCD -indoor.

actually the work in the garden to get the results (see above) can have its zen-like mediation moments too, and counts as a light workout

     

Keunert, just take a timeout (other hobby -best outdoor and with exercise), play some silly completely different games like Candy Crush (ooh, its not as silly as i thought)  and a like on the phone/tablet .... and suddenly a unstoppable lust to play a wargame will come back. Triggered probaly by a movie, a news-article, or even a forum post yo've read     

[Jarhead0331]

Dude...mow your friggin' lawn.

[Keunert]

his lawn's on the wild side! i like your garden Mike... and you try to do some Anbauschlacht from what i see. that's how Switzerland called it during ww2: they changed every green spot into a garden, most famously places in front of opera houses turned into potato fields.

thanks for your advice! i started doing sports and that sucks up a lot of time. and being 39 with two kids there is enough to do anyway. most attractive would be to find some games that we could enjoy together. so far the games aren't really enjoyable themself, but the gaming can be. but attention span of the 4y old is really short.

[Gusington]

I am also 39 with two kids.

But I do love playing as the Austrians in Civ V. Or against them, for that matter.

Maybe try that...

[GJK]

I found that I had to get away from the computer for a while in order to enjoy gaming again.  At the time, I was working on/with PC's all day long and coming home to get on one to play a game became work like.  That and I found that I was getting lazy with the gaming.  The PC can do all the thinking for you in most/many games if you allow it to do so.  I would move a few units here and there, attack here and there without really putting thought in to it and just find myself bored to tears and would try the next game to try and get my game fix.  So I pushed myself away from the PC and started back with solitaire boardgames and then discovered miniature gaming.  I picked up a couple of $6 boxes of modern 1:72 plastic figures and the rulebook for Force on Force and had a really good time; both in painting the models and making the terrain and in actually playing the game.  Pick up a copy of Patton's Best or B-17 Queen of the Skies and challenge yourself to learn the game and you'll find that you stay engaged more because you don't have a computer to do the leg work for you.

[GDS_Starfury]

Dude...mow your friggin' lawn.

he's growing cover for his recon ops.

[FarAway Sooner]

I too went through a wargaming blues stage.  Came out the other side with my passion for the genre intact, although not nearly as intense or as enthusiastic as before.  I myself am mid-40s and also have two kids.

I find reading helped to re-energize me a lot, honestly.  There are a lot of great books out there.

[MengJiao]

I used to be trying to keep up to date on too many games. This results in a) playing each game only shortly b) some stress to want to play it All c) a feeling with many games of 'been there, done that' d) an empty wallet. :)

I now try to focus on only those games/franchises I really really like.

all of this is wisdom

its easy to read GH and think wow, everyone seems so excited about that ill have that, ooo and that, ooo that too, and this, but we have here approx 500 people all with different game interests and tastes but because of their passion for their genre/favourite game that we eloquently write about (!) its easy to get sucked in and buy games you will never/hardly play.

Over at the screenshots thread the CLOD and War of Thunder shots look absolutely amazing and id buy one of them. Do i really want a flight sim/arcade flight game now - no, Skyrim isnt my thing so im immune to that but all the snippets of game news and 'what i played this weekend' stuff makes it very easy to get lost....... we are after all, all kids in a toyshop here

  Alas, all I can add is a cranky comment: I'm definitely old enough to have recognized that my interest in games is pretty cranky -- I have absurd fads that come and go and often the day would come that I would say "No more games of that kind!"  and those games would go into deep storage or vanish with an old machine never to return.  I pretty much stopped playing board games about 20 years ago for example and now they are back with a vengeance.  At first I was nostalgic for all the old games, but now I'm working out what I really like about the more recent boardgames: they can manage a certain level of complexity without overdoing it -- ie they tend to be focused.  But this doesn't stop me from looking into some games just because they seem different from my usual gaming.
  So maybe that's a positive thing -- I have some things I find good in certain games, but I'm willing to look at new stuff and be disappointed.

  Also -- Once I know a game system is good (like Combat mission2), I tend to back off of it for a while or even skip some iterations completely (as I think I've done with Battles From the Bulge -- good system but I'm skipping it for now).

   And another thing -- some games are so good that they let you look at the world in a new way.  For example, Flying Colors, or the Grand Tactical Series from MMP, or The Burning Blue or Elusive Victory or Fontenoy.  These can feed into other interests and you can work on a sort of feedback loop that goes:  Neat game -- (eg. Flying Colors) -- read up on period -- modify game.  I guess this all will drive me to blogging eventually.

   In some areas I'm more sensible.  For example -- one flight sim at a time seems quite enough.  I've left RoF, moved to CLOD and I hope my interest in CLOD lasts until Battle of Stalingrad comes out next spring.  Sticking to CLOD lets me avoid RoF and the alphas and betas of Battle for Stalingrad.  Some strategy there.

   Ultimately of course, gaming is pretty irrational -- something you can't get much useful overthinking on -- especially if you've reached the point where solitaire games are interesting and you learn to let things run as they will for various overlapping irrational reasons.  If you lose a certain level of thoughtless irrationality, then you lose a lot of the fun of gaming.
 

[Nefaro]

i buy games now and then but i hardly put in a quarter of the time i did ten years ago. so what's next? gardening? knitting?

I'd been doing this recently.. the usual burnout period.   

I finally had some spare change to go on a tabletop shopping spree, and grabbed a number of solitaire capable ones.  It has helped keep my brain baking, even when I'm not actually playing them (always loved reading the manuals & learning new game systems). 

During my digital game burnout periods, I also tend to revert to some of my staple favorites that aren't too involved.  A couple of my favorite roguelikes (Dungeon Crawl Stone Soup, etc), maybe a "MOBA" arcade-sim (War Thunder, World of Warplanes, World of Tanks, etc) are easy enough to jump into.. and back out if I'm not feelin it.  I'm sure other people's idea of easy "comfort games" differs from mine, but you get the point.

But yeah.. I've started filling my burnout time with tabletop games and reading.   Don't try to force yourself to fire up anything when you're burned out.. you'll just end up loading a bunch of crap on your hard drive, start them up, and possibly not make it past the main menu on each one before quitting.  After a couple weeks or three of avoiding most, you'll get the urge again. ;)

[Sir Slash]

When I get burned-out on gaming, I often go to youtube and watch some one else's Let Play video of almost any game I have. Sometimes I learn new tactics or a trick I didn't know about or else watch the poor fool make an ass of himself trying to look good, and I can't wait to get back to my games. ;D