Gaming Variety vs. Gaming Devotion

[3DSStrider]

When I was a kid, I lived near a Gamestop. This meant that I had a bunch of cheap games that I never beat. Now, it's even worse, especially since most of my time in the past month has been spent on tokusatsu.

[Cronozilla]

I've been finding that most games in my current backlog blow away the quality level of games I had when I was a kid.

When I was a kid, literally, the best games I owned were Super Mario Bros. 3, World, Yoshi's Island, Chrono Trigger, Batman, and Sonic 2. Everything else I owned was stuff like Ghostbusters on NES. These were accumulated over years. So, if I hadn't really finished something it'd be like ... Amagon or something. Now, I have games like Skyward Sword, Red Dead Redemption, and Rayman Origins sitting in my backlog.

So, I don't know. I definitely finish more games now. But ... I did spend more time with individual titles when I was a kid. Usually ... I'd just replay the games I liked over and over again. So, I'm not sure which would be a better process. Sticking with things until they're over or hopping from game to game. Something I have found is my favorite parts of most games is well into the campaign after you're completely comfortable with everything and it hits its stride.

However, I mostly play action adventure games, it seems, so it could be a remnant of that. I have noticed, games that are very quick playing, like beat em ups or shmups or something like that ... I don't really devote much time to them. I'll play them once in awhile, but if I die ... I'm done playing for the time being. So, genre might have something to do with it too, and your preferences.

[Retronomy]

I agree with the general sentament of this thread.
It seems that as an adult, I just simply don't have the time to commit to games that I used to.

But on the same token, I don't really think there was any difference in the amount of time I had. If anything I actually have more time now then I did as a child. Back in the school days I had school, homework, study, chores, and more of a social life then I do now. Nowadays my only obligations are to ensure I have bill money.

But nonetheless, it feels like I have less time. Time passes faster for me now and I'm stuck trying to optimize my play time. As a result I play more variety in shorter bursts. For example, I just got done playing through The Final Fantasy Legend on my gameboy, but I played the entire game in very short bursts, like smoke and lunch breaks. When I was younger, I'd play these types of games for hours at a clip. I remember playing through pokemon on the gameboy for hours at a clip when I was in third grade.

It also doesn't help that as I got older I obtained more hobbies and interests, and I simply can't tend to them all at once. I miss those days when I could just sit with a single PS1 rpg and invest a good 60 hours into it. But I wouldn't dare attempt that right now.

[jinx]

But nonetheless, it feels like I have less time. Time passes faster for me now and I'm stuck trying to optimize my play time. As a result I play more variety in shorter bursts. For example, I just got done playing through The Final Fantasy Legend on my gameboy, but I played the entire game in very short bursts, like smoke and lunch breaks. When I was younger, I'd play these types of games for hours at a clip. I remember playing through pokemon on the gameboy for hours at a clip when I was in third grade.

This.

I remember having a Game Boy in my hands (Usually with a Pokemon cart in it) everywhere I went. I devoted so much time to games I loved, and it's not like I had limited access like others in this thread. I could rent a new video game every week if I wanted, but I chose to play the same ones over and over.

Now, it feels like I have to make time for games and the games I do play are in short bursts. For this reason I love shorter games. For example, I enjoy playing indie games that like 'Braid' or 'Dustforce' because I feel like I can finish them in a reasonable amount of time. However, I'm having trouble trying to find time to complete Infamous, even though I'm almost to the end of the Good story. The thought of going through and playing the Bad side is starting to make me cringe.

I noticed that when others are playing with me, I feel more motivated to finish a game. A couple years ago, I started to play EarthBound again with a friend who had never played it before. I got through the game a lot faster than I did as a kid, and I stuck to it. It was great reliving that experience, and sharing it with somebody who had never played the game before. I think this is just my personality though, as I'm this way with most things.

[Gamerforlife]

3. I turned off achievements and notifications on my current consoles--it's distracting during high points of the plot to have the notification and sound pop up. Plus, it keeps me focused on the game rather than some mundane element that bears little significance to the experience as a whole.

Hell yeah! I hate "achievements" for this very reason.

They often have some jokey title too that can ruin the mood of the game. If we had achievements in the Playstation days and Aeris' death in Final Fantasy VII was followed by a "Damn, these are strong onions" achievement pop-up, that would have totally colored that experience differently.

This reminds me of something I see on TV a lot. When you watch a dramatic scene on The Walking Dead, the following commercial break will show Chris Hardwick saying something funny about it and then asking you to tune in to his show Talking Dead later on where they discuss the episode or you'll see him sitting on a chair with some of the actors on a couch and they'll be smiling and joking around after you just watched a scene when a major character died. When you watch a Dr. Who episode, the commercials will immediately show the actors discussing what you just saw. The "illusion" or "immersion" of our entertainment gets broken constantly now and we are not really given time to fully process our feelings on a potent scene that we've just seen before somebody is onscreen dissecting it for us or making light of it. In a way, TV is becoming a less personal experience.

Back to the achievements thing though, I think they can enhance certain games, giving us a reason to replay them the way we replayed stuff when we were younger

Reading that a game offers 100+ hours of gameplay is a total turn-off nowadays

I hate the fact that so many games use game length as a selling point. Truthfully, the longer a game is advertised to be, the less likely I am to play it. When a developer goes on and on about how long their game is, all I hear is, "Our game has tons of padding to artificially lengthen the game, and lots of pointless, "busy work" for you to waste time with." Less is more. Those three words are becoming a life mantra for me. I tend to avoid sandbox games or rpgs lately, because those games just seem like time wasters. I prefer short and sweet games now for the most part. I like accessible games now too, so I won't even bother with some super deep strategy game as I don't have the time to learn all of its complexities, or a really tough action game with fifty thousand moves or combos to learn. As a gamer who just turned 34, I just don't have the patience for that crap anymore. The simpler and shorter a game is now, the more likely I am to play it. Most of my favorite 2012 games can be described this way

As for the tons and tons of games there are to play, it's not really an issue anymore. I don't care about my backlog anymore. I just play whatever holds my interest and ignore everything else until I either finish it or it loses my interest, and if I like it a lot I'll go for 100% completion, including trophies/achievements just to have a reason to continue playing that game. Sometimes I do find myself trying out multiple games, but inevitably one will grab my interest and hold it, and the others I just forget about. All that stress of keeping up with what's new is largely a non issue for me now as well as I've come to accept that I'm a picky gamer with specific tastes, meaning that I can ignore many of the notable titles that come out every year that every one else will be playing and talking about. This frees up a lot of time to just play what I want to play, instead of worrying about playing what I should be playing. I just play what appeals to me now and don't even care anymore about how notable it is. While everyone is playing stuff like the newest Metal Gear Solid or Dead Space or waiting on Bioshock Infinite, I'm just happy to sit back and enjoy something simple and fun like Sly Cooper Thieves in Time or The Cave or whatever. I'm finding that more and more I just don't care about big name titles anymore and it's nice to not have to stress over playing them just to "keep up with Joneses" as they say.

I feel like I've reached a Zen like state with gaming. I just play what I want and have fun now, and don't worry about anything else. Screw the backlog, screw keeping up with every new big name title, screw forcing myself to finish a game I'm not enjoying, etc. I just don't worry about all that crap now. I think this is the best way to get in touch with that kid gamer in all of us, just making gaming about fun and nothing else. And like a lot of people, I don't have as much free time for gaming. So I make sure that I make the best of the time I do get and just play whatever seems fun