I'm losing interest in gaming.

[X-pert74]

Sorry to hear you're losing interest in gaming I know how it goes; I myself lost my interest in most games during middle/high school, but my interest came back when I got a Wii in 2007. I didn't get rid of my games though, and in retrospect I'm really glad I held onto them, because now I'm into gaming again, yet I don't have hundreds of games I need to repurchase. In your situation though it seems like the best decision would be to sell them. I also think holding onto stuff like your copy of EarthBound is a good idea. Less rare/special games would be worth selling off though, most likely.


I'm not committing to anything yet, but I'll take a look at your backloggery and see what I'd be interested in purchasing

[justjustin]

It's interesting that I'm going through a lot of the same experiences as Ike, but have a totally different outlook. I'm working on selling over half my collection, I don't care about owning original copies of games anymore, and I play games much less than I used to. For me, though, I wouldn't call it losing interest. I'm taking my hobby even more seriously than before. Previously, I didn't have good taste in games, simple as that. I would buy games that I didn't really care about-- bought them simply because they got good reviews, or just because they were considered classics. I would browse Gamestop about every week and buy one or two cheap used games on a whim.

I'm only able to finally sell all these games I don't care about because I finally developed some taste and took videogames more seriously. I know what my preferences are so I buy way fewer games, and enjoy them more consistently than before. I also learned I was never really a collector to begin with; it happened accidentally.

I won't be giving up on videogames despite the state of the industry these days. It's true that most games are garbage, but the few that are great are much better than anything made previously. It's the same for movies, music, books, and art in general. 99% is crap, but the 1% that's good is often better than before, because someone finally took advantage of accumulated technique and greater technology to produce something truly great. Some of my favorite games come from this generation.

[Deleted]

I'm basically with Snarboo on this one. I personally don't like where gaming's going, but at the same time, it's not absolutely bad and I'm not ready to give up on it just yet. I'm more interested in the history of games than the future, and I can't really explain why that is. It seems to have something to do with the more "spectacular" nature of modern games and how company representatives are advertising more what they DO as opposed to what they ARE. I know games have always been a business, but... they just seem to me to be far more a business than ever nowadays, and not in a good way.

I sympathize with Ike too. Gaming is... somewhat different for me nowadays. Instead of a means of genuine entertainment, it feels more like I'm staving off boredom at this rather... interminable phase of my life at the moment. I may enjoy gaming more if I were to get employed, but as it stands now, it being my raison d'etre is hollow. That being said, I'm kind of a packrat by nature, and while I HAVE sold some games I don't think I'd ever care about anymore, I do still like the ones I still have to a degree. If I had the time and the courage to get around to it, I'd file down the games that I consider essentials and pawn off the rest, but... well, let's just say my laziness is one reason why I'm not really all that happy with life at the moment.

I digress. The short short version: I respect Ike's decision, even if it still is a bit depressing by nature. But our lives have to change sometime and somehow if we don't like where we are, and... well, that's just the way the chocolate melts.

[Wildcat]

I'll make a longer reply to the topic when I'm not so tired, but I will say that I hope you do stick around, Ike. You're a really awesome poster, and your absence would most certainly be felt around here.

I understand your sentiments, though. I wish I had some money to aid you in alleviating some of your collection, as I've been envious of some of your acquisitions over the time I've been here.

[steven]

It seems once or twice every year, some respected member of his (or her) respective community comes out and makes a topic like this.

I have to say though, with Ike, I'm surprised. I don't know you well, but having read some of your posts you are very thoughtful and I just always assumed your gaming fire would always be lit. As someone else said succintly, do whatever makes you happy.

Me, I'm the opposite right now. In 2006 I experienced a Super Nintendo resurrection. I bought over 600 games and even started up a fansite in honor of the SNES. That's all I play these days. I tried getting back into NES and Genesis in 2006 as well, completing my childhood dreams, but I just couldn't get back into NES and Genesis games. I ended up selling both (though I did re-buy the NES again in 2010-ish... it's on stand-by in case I ever get an '80s nostalgic rush)

Remarkably, the SNES fire for me still burns. I'm on a mission to play my entire 600+ game collection. I have maybe a good 300 or so to go, and see that as my gaming time for the next 10 years or so. After that, I'll just occasionally replay certain titles here and there as I hit my 40s and beyond (God willing). I would also like to eventually have over 200 SNES reviews on my site (also during these next 10 years...)

Heck, I'm playing through Paladin's Quest at the moment, and really enjoying it. I keep a gaming journal and chronicle my playing time. I find doing that helps keep me motivated. I'm at a stage where I want to fully explore these childhood games that I missed. I'm having a blast, and a little shocked the fire still burns six long years after coming back to SNES.

Nice thing about focusing on one system is I only have to decide which game to play next. I skip the "which system should I play?" stage. It's remarkable IMO how focusing on one system and "maxing it out" is incredibly satisfying. People tell me I'm missing out on classics like Gunstar Heroes, Halo and such, but like someone said earlier, do whatever makes you happy. I find focusing on just the SNES (my all-time favorite system and it's not even close... it's come to the point where if it weren't for SNES I wouldn't game anymore beyond 5-6 times a YEAR) to be immensely rewarding from a gaming standpoint. All I know is, it's fun and I'm not burning out.

Anyway, take good care of yourself Ike. Be good to see you pop in and out still. It does suck when games become 'meh'.... but sometimes that's just life. All the best.

[kisai]

If I was given the choice of giving up sex or giving up gaming for the rest of my life, sex would go bye-bye.

[Reiji-kun]

I can somewhat sympathize too, myself. Lately, gaming, for the most part, has been slowly leaving my life as well. A lot of it has to do with the topic of depression I went through that left me feeling awful and like I was a total bum for wasting the majority of my life, day in and day out, playing nothing but video games almost all day, every day... which you have to admit is downright pathetic and horrible. My gaming addiction got so bad that I wound up putting other hobbies aside for it just so I could finish one RPG, then move on to the next. As I mentioned in an earlier post, Backloggery is part of the blame too, as it suddenly gave me a drive and obligation to try and complete the backlog of games I have at some point and intensified my addiction unhealthily.

Nowadays I'm wanting to get a job, contribute to society, socialize, help out my family, make some kind of decent living for myself, and become a better human being. That's not saying I'm going to give up on gaming--retro gaming that is. Modern gaming, though? I'll have little to no part of it. I'm as disillusioned as Ike is over the current state of affairs. But yeah, I'll always love the old games, from when gaming was, you know, not all about bilking money from DLC off people.

Nowadays, I'll only play a game for a few hours, one or two games a day, or just none at all. It's tough for me to stick to a long term game straight like I used to do, I feel. But you know, maybe this is for the best. Everybody's got to overcome that gaming addiction sometime in their life, and take steps to greater things.

Anyways, sorry for my own TL;DR post, but I felt I wanted to explain my situation too, since we're all gamers, and the loss of an interest in gaming is something I consider worth mentioning too.

[Sketcz-1000]

I've read three dozen people on a dozen forums make this exact same claim. They all come back. I've thought it, went through non-active periods (including an entire year), and always come back. You'll be back.

Besides, gaming is only expensive if you don't know what you're doing; I've recently bought half a dozen PS3 games off eBay for less than $5 with shipping, because they're a few years old. Emulation of classic games is free.

I cleared out all my classic games that could be emulated and now run them on my Xbox and widescreen SDTV. Never looked back.

Go play something super obscure, then take pleasure in sharing it with other people.

Or sell stuff, travel, and come back refreshed.

[Ike]

I'm not giving up gaming in its entirety, I am just rapidly ceasing to give a shit about games in the way that I used to. It kind of hit me last week when I got a ROM of Super Mario World and played through it. That game is fucking amazing on a really core level and I don't see that same amount of love put into things anymore. SMW is a game about showing off new technology and finding creative ways to work within its expanded but still restrictive limits. All kinds of little things are in the game that nobody notices, like how Mode 7 is used to rotate the sprites of Goombas and Bob-ombs that are floating in the bubbles of later stages.

I still (rarely) see that kind of cool design come through in games like Dark Souls, games that can simultaneously focus on spectacle while providing a tight gameplay experience. It's becoming rarer and less impressive, though, as game developers are no longer forced to work in a really limited scope.

I'm kind of partial to the virtual caveman thing, but I would prefer to consolidate the games into ROM format and play them that way, as well as cutting back on my time spent gaming in general. I think that perhaps I've come to appreciate the physical copy of the game a bit too much and not the game itself.

[retr0gamer]

I'm really only losing interest in mainstream games. It's become totally about making money and not about the games anymore. Even the news is boring. It's hard to get rexcited about anew release when it's all just talk about DLC, new IP's subscription based models, etc. and not why we should take notice of said games. I play and read about games for fun, I don't need boring boardroom business speak. Luckily there's still plenty of games out there that are made with so amount of love and creativity and not based on grabbing as much money as the developer can. I'm pretty sure there'll still be room for these games but with handhelds getting more powerful I think they might become a thing of the past with only the odd break out game that takes a chance like Dark Souls and Valkyria Chronicles.

[Ace Whatever]

I believe you're already on the right track to recovering from your funk with getting rid of most of the physical stuff. I think it's a bit silly that you're letting the state of the industry dictate what you think of the hobby and your life. I've seen you talk about games on and on with an unhindered passion, and I'm pretty sure you only need to adjust the hobby to fit your current and future lifestyle so you can get back in the swing of things.

Everyone else with similar problems also needs to change up their habits a bit. Consider not playing so many games simultaneously. Consider reaching some form of conclusion in a game before you drop it for the shiny new one. Consider reevaluating an entire genre and whether it's worth spending your precious time on its games.

[dooz]

Ike, I hear you, buddy.

I don't post here much at all anymore, and if I do it's rarely about gaming. I still play a game every now-and-then, but really I feel like there's little out there that is different from what I've played hundreds of times before. And if I'm just playing what I've played before, then what makes it interesting? A mildly more anti-hero hero that looks just that much more brooding than the last anti-hero? More bad guys to shoot using a play-style developed 20 years ago? More menus for my RPG's? Fuck that!

In my eyes, gaming is at an all time low for creativity right now, and I don't see it getting better until it crashes again. And until there is a surge of interest about genuine innovation outside of, "Let's jump around and see how we can make games about that," then I'm happier to not be a part of it at all. At least, if it were to crash, the focus would be back on to making genuinely interesting titles and less on what market makes the greatest profit. Though, I guess I am being unrealistic, since the market is driven by people and the people want more standard, boring, games. Which kind of makes me feel better about not gaming.

So, yeah. The golden age of gaming is dead, and it was killed by consumerism; much as how the Mom & Pop stores of our parents times have been killed by Walmart and Blockbuster (Which is being killed by the internet). More generic = more money. Too bad that also = more boring.

[Allie]

Just to add my own (short, terse) comment :

I keep buying stuff, and I hate myself for it. I want to be able to step back and pursue other interests (and finally, even in my old age, learn to develop a creative skill since I currently have none), but laziness and force of habit stops me.

I keep saying "OK, this is the end.", but it's not the end. I'm disgusted with how much room this crap takes up sometimes (even though I had to get rid of all my PS1 (over 120) and PS2 (over 330) packaging in various moves).

I've already committed to no more new systems ever (aside from a Vita somewhere down the line if Ragnarok and PSO2 make it to the US), but I don't want to chain myself to a new home console ever again.

If I had any willpower, I'd have made Xenoblade my final home-system software purchase ever.

[The Great Klaid]

I'm slowly losing interest in this generation of gaming, namely because JRPGs haven't been the same for years. However I have quite the backlog of older games to work through and a summer where I may have time to play through them.

As for you leaving I'll miss thinking how is Ike going to tear me a new one on this post. Then thinking it through a little better. But then again I'm going to probably dissapear this summer myself, to spend time with my lady.

[Ike]

Here's another bit (realtalk ahead):

I'm at a point in my life where I can honestly say I rather dislike the person I am. That's not to say that I hate myself, but that I just don't like being the guy who owns a thousand games and only a few friends (approximately none of whom give a shit about my hobby.)

I still love games. I find them completely fascinating on a technical level, specifically the way in which they can so effectively grasp the mind of a player and absorb it. I think there's real metaphysical value in games, because they interact with our consciousness in a way that has very little analog in the real world. Let's face it: The vast majority of games, with very few exceptions, have story modes that are completely repugnant and childish from a literary standpoint, and yet there is a fairly large contingent of people whose lives are touched by, say, Final Fantasy 7.

That's very interesting, to me. Why does that happen? What is it about the way games tell their stories that can enrapture people so? I think this is an unexplored field of study that has mostly been fleshed out with regard to other forms of media like movies and books, one that goes largely and sorely ignored in the gaming community at large. There seems to be very little in the way of a generalized desire to make gaming into an art form. It's been commercialized in the most hardcore way; hence my complaint about the 'playing it safe' mentality being much too prevalent in publishing. This may be changing, slightly, in the indie game scene, but there almost seems to be a concerted effort by the larger publishing community to keep it there.

I referenced Earthbound earlier. Earthbound is as close as I think gaming has come to making a true Art Game. The degree of subtext in it is staggering, and it deals on a very subtle level with a lot of adult/life issues behind a veneer of Peanuts-style visual art and quirky humor. The game even deals with what could be interpreted as drug addiction in which you become severely disoriented and have to go to a hospital ("rehab") to get cured. Themes of sacrificing your very being to achieve understanding. I have never seen another game take a significant portion of time to involve the player in a long, engaged piece of self-reflection.

This is basically what I hoped gaming would be in 2012. The fact that it isn't has greatly disillusioned me. There are games once in a while that start to breach this barrier, but they're increasingly few and are often derided by the very people they're meant to appeal to as 'pretentious' or not appropriate as a game. It's upsetting to me.

I had more to write but I need to be going, so I'll probably expand on this later.