EPTHas anyone ever taken a two year break from not gaming at all? What is it like when you play again after a long stretch of time?
Feel like you're getting too old for videogames?
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Hug-A-Hydralisk
United States174 Posts
Has anyone ever taken a two year break from not gaming at all? What is it like when you play again after a long stretch of time? | ||
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ZERG_RUSSIAN
10417 Posts
[edit] I'm 24 and I just started a doctorate program in psychology. I don't have time to mass game like I did but that doesn't change the fact that I enjoy it. [/edit] | ||
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Torte de Lini
Germany38463 Posts
The community involved with it however... | ||
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obesechicken13
United States10467 Posts
I know some guy from bioware? recently wrote something online about a year without gaming. He said he did it to test himself. He had more time but he obviously missed it and made a list of games to play after the year was up. | ||
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FeUerFlieGe
United States1193 Posts
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TheRabidDeer
United States3806 Posts
On August 21 2012 13:06 FeUerFlieGe wrote: I'm still in high school and I play on and off. The thing is, my grades suffer when I play and I don't have a good computer, so I want to get into College before I start playing again. If your grades suffer in high school, you definitely dont want to play in College when your grades REALLY matter. I can still play at 26, but it feels like I dont play as well as I did when I was younger. | ||
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MountainDewJunkie
United States10346 Posts
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TheSwedishFan
Sweden608 Posts
Nowadays, if i'm going to play a new game i have to schedule it and say to myself that "- Tomorrow, i'll be doing nothing but playing a certain game". If i do that then i can fully commit to the game without having anxiety about having better things to do. | ||
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Xiphos
Canada7507 Posts
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KobyKat
United States111 Posts
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Kich
United States339 Posts
I graduated college, landed a sweet job, get up at 6, don't get home until around 7 or 8 from work, and there's just very little time to play like I used to.. I still game every night, but it's very casually. I think that's the key thing, when you're younger the game feels very important. Everything you do feels very important because it's all very new to you. When you're 15 and World of Warcraft just came out, it was very new, there was a lot to do, the grindy repetitive tasks don't feel that way because you honest to god don't even realize how grindy and tedious they are until you end up having to do them for the fourth time over. Right around 20 when I was no longer playing CS competitively (team fell apart) and WoW relegated itself to the backburner because it just kept getting more and more dumb is when I realized that I wasn't actually having fun playing games. The games no longer feel very important and they stop being fun when you take them very seriously. So now I play CS:GO, my natural FPS skill pushes me to the top of the team and I spend most of my time playing it with friends doing fun things. The biggest thing about video games is that initial portion, the portion where everything still feels new, you still get that adrenaline rush, you still have an urge to play it. CS 1.6 eventually lost that for me, I lost any sensation when I played and you trade the adrenaline and fun for having flick headshots engrained into your muscles. So I'm trying to play it less frequently and only with other people to keep it fun. The only game actually, that I still play with some degree of frequency is Magic the Gathering. It's easily my most invested hobby and the only game that after 13 years is still enjoyable. There's aspects I miss, like the innocence of opening a pack and finding a cool card and thinking "wow I hope I find another one of these in a pack" (harder to do that when you have a salary and can just buy the playset, but hey, now I have a salary, so maybe I'll just buy packs and get back to the trading side of it all), but over all the sheer amount of people I've met and literally unending depth to the game drives me to play it. I often spend hours browsing cards and tinkering new decks (hoping to drop a bomb on legacy soon). ((I'm aware tinker is banned, that was not intended to be a joke)) I literally just dropped $250 on various foil japanese cards and felt -super- fucking good about it. Magic is pretty set in stone as a game I'll play for the rest of my life, and it's unique in that role. Most highly regarded players are adults--the hobby is expensive and requires travel to gain notoriety, you literally need a real job or a rich ass dad to play it competitively. I could straight up play Magic for 12 hours straight and never get bored--tried and true. The ever changing rotation of Standard cards and the changes each new set brings to Legacy makes the game an ever evolving Turn Based Real Time Strategy Game. I mean how can you fuck with that? It's a TBRTSTCG. Fuck you MMORPG's, big man in the house. I like these threads, gives me an excuse to ramble. | ||
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screamingpalm
United States1527 Posts
Video games were a huge part of my life growing up. I had Pong when it first came out, the Atari console, and eventually PC. In those days, everything was innovative, new, and exciting. I think that leaves a different sort of long lasting appreciation for my generation than what the current state of the industry does. AAA titles do seem more targeted at a younger audience though, getting older just means your tastes get more sophisticated. We usually find more satisfaction in indie titles these days. | ||
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obesechicken13
United States10467 Posts
I'm 21 if it matters. I thoroughly enjoy gaming still. I do enjoy talking to people more. Like I'd rather be talking to any friend or even texting than playing games, browsing TL, or standing awkwardly at a loud party. There's definitely a nostalgia to gaming as a youth, but it's not like I suddenly don't have fun gaming as an adult. I just wish there was more interaction in the gaming. Many of my friends play LoL, but I don't see them online often enough. Like I'll sign in and noone else will be on. A few times I'll sign in and see someone on but still play alone  I wish I could play more with my little brother. He's into minecraft and he talks to me about it, but I'm not into minecraft and so we can't play together anymore. It's not all bad. I comment while he plays now like back when he played turret defense in starcraft. | ||
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Leyra
United States1222 Posts
The free time naturally goes away as you age, as you gain more responsibilities and obligations, but I think filling that free time with games is still okay | ||
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shindigs
United States4795 Posts
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dUTtrOACh
Canada2339 Posts
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Euronyme
Sweden3804 Posts
On August 21 2012 13:35 Leyra wrote: I find that most of the people that talk about how they're "too old" for games, or they've "matured" past gaming always come off as a bit condescending, lol. I'm 23 and working full-time while finishing school, so obviously don't have the time I have in the past, but still spend most of the free time I have that's not taken up by family/friends playing games. Perhaps its true some people grow out of it, but I'm quite sure I won't. My oldest brother is 30 and is much the same, he has a wife, 2 kids, and a full time job, and still plays games probably 10-15hrs a week. The free time naturally goes away as you age, as you gain more responsibilities and obligations, but I think filling that free time with games is still okay Imagine our generation when we reach retirement. Epic lans with what friends you have left that stretches for years. Awesome. | ||
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MountainDewJunkie
United States10346 Posts
Also, I essentially grew up through the near-complete evolution of video games. Even though I wasn't born when it was first created, we played Atari as little kids. One year later we're all playing Super Mario Bros. on NES. Three years later we're shuffling though Genesis, SNES, and GameBoy Color. When I was 9, the N64 came out. Then came the big PC game boom. PC games were strange in retrospect. At first they were great. But they became more time consuming, less satisfying, and rigorous than many console games. Then the console games began to mimic the increasing path of PC games. Now today's generation is lost in a sea of FPSs, MMORPGS, and whatever the hell LoL qualifies as. Games that are designed to keep you in. Raids, PvPs, character purchases, paying real money for fake game money, endless patches and modifications, new maps. So I grew up on games that had an objective, a long struggle of increasing difficulties, and a finality, a victory. So it's probably just my conditioning that pushed me away from today's type of gaming. Is beating Metal Sonic on a goddamn Zeppelin (or plane-o-copter?) cooler than going online with friends and shooting complete strangers, or leveling up, or upgrading equipment? Objectively, of course not. But since taste is subjective, allow me to say, hell yes it is! | ||
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Grimmyman123
Canada939 Posts
My gaming prime was 15 years ago. So, I guess I am old enough to be the father to a great majority of TL's patrons. But, I still love video games, and I enjoy playing them. It's frustrating for me, due to my age, that my hands don't work as fast as they used to, and because I have to work a day job as well as have a life outside of a video game, I don't practice/play as much either to be as good as I possibly could be. But, I am not a highschool student, still attached to mom's teet, living for free, where I can just seclude myself in an office and play day and night. I have other things that need to be done, and other activities I enjoy more than playing video games. So, I do that. As you get older, you just have to find the balance between the additional tasks that need to be done, and gaming loses priority in life. | ||
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GnarlyArbitrage
575 Posts
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