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Being able to buy whatever game I want ruined gaming for me

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I’ve noticed that as an adult, with a fairly steady and decently paying job, I can buy whatever video game systems, gaming computers, and games I want to play. This seems to have coincided with me getting less joy out of gaming.

From college through to mid-twenties I used to game during the majority of my free time. I’d fight with Wine to get Windows games running in Linux. I’d dual boot my computer for games that didn’t work because I couldn’t afford a dedicated gaming computer or even enough hard drive space to keep more than one game installed. I’d heavily mod and tweak games. Every game I bought was new and special, Steam was new and really only had Valve’s games, and every purchase was a hard decision - do I save for two months to buy a game at launch (or sometimes four to six months for an import or rare title), wait a year to get the game of the year edition, or do I buy it now as an impulse buy and eat ramen for the next two weeks? Consequently, I followed gaming news more closely and did a lot more research on games and reviews because the impact of buying a terrible game on my budget was catastrophic.

Now, in my late 30s, I’m finding that I’m motivated less to fire up a game and play. I’ve accumulated over 500 games on Steam, most of which I have never launched and probably never will from various bundles and sales where I just bought the whole package. I typically only play multiplayer online games with friends instead of taking time to really get deep into single player games because the main draw of gaming now is that it’s a way to spend time with friends during the lockdown and after a move across the country.

I can’t help but feel that part of this is the result of being able to impulse buy games and play any game that I want. Steam and other online distribution systems (even on consoles!) mean I can buy a game during my lunch break from work and by the time work is over it’s installed on my gaming rig and ready to go. I have a separate gaming rig from my normal day-to-day work computer, so I don’t have to fiddle with keeping Windows from stomping over my hard drive, and if my gaming computer corrupts itself I can just reinstall and get my cloud saves from Steam. I don’t have to read/watch reviews as much because if I buy a complete shit game on Steam I can get a refund.

Back in the day, if I wanted a game I had to save and go to the store to buy it. If it wasn’t in stock, I’d have to order it through them or order it online. In that case, it wouldn’t arrive for over a week and I had to wait and let the hype build. Now I click a button, type in my credit card, and my game is installed within an hour at most. There are times where I’ll order a pizza and buy a game at the same time and it’s a 5050 chance that the game will finish installing before the pizza gets here.

Does anyone else feel like this?

Edited by MasterOfMagic at 2020-08-06 14:51:052020-08-06 14:51
Trying too hard

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-08-06 14:48:24
a fairly steady and decently paying job,

leave this zone

ein cooler typ

From: Philoktetes at 2020-08-06 15:31:56

From: MasterOfMagic at 2020-08-06 14:48:24
a fairly steady and decently paying job,

leave this zone

Understandable, have a great day.

Trying too hard

I think ease of access is definitely part of it. When you can only get a new game every so often it’s easy to fall in love with something that’s mediocre because you know you won’t be getting anything else for awhile, so you make it work

But if you can just get a new game whenever or already have a sizable backlog, as soon as something is mildly boring or inconvenient in some way its trivial to dump it and move on to something else that might be more fun, or just go back to what you already know is fun

stunt failed

From: Lyra at 2020-08-06 16:03:19
But if you can just get a new game whenever or already have a sizable backlog, as soon as something is mildly boring or inconvenient in some way its trivial to dump it and move on to something else that might be more fun, or just go back to what you already know is fun

This has been my experience. Any time I get to a part of a game that drags, I end up either switching to something new or going back to, say, Rocket League or the Doom series.

This isn’t limited to video games though. I feel the same way about novels. If I get to a part in a book that drags or is uninteresting I will put it down and either re-read something old again or pull down something new.

This means my reading lately has been primarily non-fiction (primarily technical with some political thrown in the mix) with some short fiction sprinkled in. I burn through short stories (especially collections of short stories), fanfiction about fandoms that I find interesting (as they tend to be on the shorter end), and books that are so well written that I can’t put them down. I’ve been reading more manga/comics recently as well because the episodic nature makes it easier to put down and pick up at the ends of issues/chapters/volumes.

I wonder if it’s for the same reasons - I can typically afford (if I want to) buy any book from a bookstore or online (the library’s e-lending during the lockdown has been fantastic for this), so I have the freedom to bounce around instead of being constrained to a smaller collection.

Edited by MasterOfMagic at 2020-08-06 17:30:282020-08-06 17:30
Trying too hard

Part of it too is its just natural for your tastes to refine over time. You’ve read a lot of books, youve played a lot of games, there’s a lot of concepts that seemed fresh and intriguing the first time you saw them, but now you can identify them elsewhere and it feels like more of the same, and this just gets more true with time.

stunt failed

i think you hit the nail on the head with the easy access thing
when you don’t have to put any effort into getting the game, why should you care about having it basically

there’s still gems out there tho and you get out what you put in. i don’t think everything just sucks now or anything like that

but also it’s harder to be as involved in gaming communities when everyone’s a fucking nazi pedophile asshole piece of shit

i didn't learn nothin

like i’ve definitely soured on gaming as a whole as a result of stuff like gamergate, or like, looking at the internet at all
but i’m still playing lots of games and having fun so

Edited by Applebaps at 2020-08-07 00:03:532020-08-07 00:03
i didn't learn nothin

do not stop gaming because of gamergate otherwise the females win

ein cooler typ

shut the fuck up

i didn't learn nothin

5 pussy points have been deposited into your account

ein cooler typ

Its not 2004 and you’re not on eti anymore, you don’t have to be an ironic shithead on the zone

stunt failed

what if i’m an unironic shithead

I’ll have to get back to you on that

stunt failed

I’ve had more fun and spent more time over this last week modding my games and tweaking the configs for performance than I have playing them.

I spent like, four hours finding the best renderer for Unreal and Unreal Tournament (‘99), setting up 4K textures, and tuning the renderer to my hardware and about fifteen minutes outside of testing playing them.

I just uninstalled both after documenting a working config and set of mods.

Edited by MasterOfMagic at 2020-08-17 01:13:422020-08-17 01:13
Trying too hard
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