Have your gaming habits changed?

[Forlorn Drifter]

Have your gaming habits changed over the years?

I can say mine have. It comes down to more recent changes though, but I've really noticed them as of late. The one of the most note in my mind is my view on open world games. For a while, I thought they were the coolest thing ever and there was nothing better. Now, I'm changing gears. I lean towards more linear games, with obvious objectives and paths. Barring that, arcade-y games like shmups or fighters where the goal is simply to finish the one round or what have you really grip me. The biggest factor about open world games for me, looking at it now, is how large they are in comparison to how much there is to do. The inevitable Skyrim comparison is that the game map is HUGE... but unless you need to go somewhere for a quest or just really like the exploration in the game (which loses my interest pretty quickly, as the games environments aren't all that varied, and the cave exploration loses its charm when I'm spending half my time in the washed out look of night vision). Something like 3D Dot Game Heroes gets a good balance- there's exploration, but the world isn't so large I'm spending an hour running to where I need to go. Games where exploration is a point is also interesting to me- No Man's Sky looks interesting, because the only point is to explore and look. The exploration in the original Zelda, or what I'm assuming it will be like in ZeldaU, are interesting in that exploration is awarded, which makes it interesting.

I'm also mellowed in how I view what genres I like. I'm completely fine with shooters, 3D beat-em-up's, sneak games, and the occasional puzzle game. I used to really try and diversify, but nowadays I like to sit in my little groove. Not to say I don't branch out, but it usually falls into something like that.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

My tastes fluctuate wildly month to month even. I know there are some things I center heavily around like arcade games and online FPS but I don't worry too much about it. I've learned to like a lot of "anime-bullshit" stuff a whole lot so that's a bit new. I've also gotten into fighters recently.

However I find my desire to game has dwindled significantly along with the diversification. I think that's largely because gaming has been such a social thing in my life for years and without online gaming, while I'm playing through a lot of single player stuff, I don't really enjoy it as much and it sorta exists just to pass the time.

I've also found I'm much more accepting of iOS and tablet/phone gaming than I used to be. Yeah there's a ton of bullshit F2P models but there's also Crazy Taxi, Sonic CD, various Final Fantasy, and even Monster Hunter games. They control worse but man is it convenient to just whip out your phone and play some Puzzle Bobble or Sonic and All Stars Racing right away.

I guess I'm becoming a filthy "casual".

[Haoie]

I used to play a dozen or more games and never finish them.

Last few years I've actually stuck to 1-3 at a time and usually actually beat them!

[Erik_Twice]

Some time ago I decided to play games with writing in mind and it has increased my enjoyment tremendously. I focus more on each game instead of jumping from title to title.

I also have pretty much stopped playing TF2 regularly because my internet connection is poor and I'm currently not playing Beatmania so I don't have any endless game sucking up all my play time.

There's also the fact that I spend around 3 hours each day commuting so I play a lot of older games on my GCW Zero. I've already beaten a Fire Emblem game and I'm on my way to beat another one and trying to 1 credit clear a Magical Drop game which is very nice.

[Tanooki]

It has happened thrice to me it has happened to me.

Originally it was fun for most things other than really TRPGs, Sports, WRPGs, and somewhat related stuff as it wasn't fun (still isn't.) Once I worked at Midway back in 2001 my time was sucked up but I still managed quite a bit. But when I exited the industry change number one hit. I ended up with a permanent case of gamer ADHD. I used to be able to finish stuff without issue and keep pushing at it, but I can rarely do that anymore. I switched to where I finish little compared to before, and it's not that I dislike or lose interest in a game but the motivation is gone usually anywhere from 5-20 hours into it, rare I can go longer in most genres. I dealt with it though and still finished a good bit of stuff and my unemployment issue a decade ago making me sell stuff off helped.

The second change came not with marriage but a kid. These days it's hard for me to finish much of anything if it's not on a PC or a handheld. Even then there's stuff I think I should enjoy but I feel that I need to force myself to do it and it'll take months if ever. I'm also finding certain things I had a high enjoyment or tolerance for is damn near if not completely shot. I can't sit on a racing, fighting, or GTA (or clone) type game anymore at all or for more than a few hours. I detest open world games, they're time sucking pains in the ass with little reward for taking an hour just to cross an area to do whatever and the whole feeling of being lost sickens and angers me as I like to have a destination in mind.

And finally unless I add to this later in this or another post -- My 1985-present trust in Nintendo as a maker of good home consoles and video games is shot. The Wii burned me, the Wii U burned me even worse, good releases fewer and farther between, and WiiU with almost all it's existing remaining library known through 2015 has dick other than Starfox so I sold it. I'll never buy a Nintendo console day one again, if at all, they have to re-prove themselves to me. Compound the fact they've altered the focus of franchises I once adored in a wrong direction being multiplayer focused with a single player as a tack on (like a Call of Duty game for example) with Kart and Brawl my interest is going away. Zelda was a test on 3DS being open world, and I still haven't done but 2 maybe 3 dungeons I could even find on that (as I won't cheat online) isn't good because the WiiU game will expand on that so Zelda is dead to me as well. Aside from Mario, Kirby, Starfox, and stuff they ignore like F-Zero I'm not sure what's left there to get hyped for so if they have no third party support they're useless. Thankfully their handheld division is wise, many of the same mascots, little of the baggage. They've successfully driven me to be a PS4 and PC gamer.

[AppleQueso]

I've played very little games at all this year, and I've played pretty much nothing since selling my collection during the summer. Instead I've just mainly focused on my music. Even anticipated titles like Smash Bros I'm not exactly in a hurry to go out and get.

'course I've also had an awful lot on my plate this past year.

[Blu]

I've still play frequently, though my tastes are slowly changing as I get a little older and settled into my career. Having a more structured work day has slimmed down when I'd play and the frequency that I do play. Through my undergraduate career and through grad school, I'd have variable times of the day where I could sit down and play an hour or two as a break with some more time free in the evening. I regularly find myself being able to play an hour or two in the evenings a night, with a little more added time on the weekend.

Getting married, and planning the wedding caused me to not have much time to sit down and play, focusing on what we needed to get done. We want to have more social gatherings at our place and we commonly do that by sitting down and having a board game night probably every two to three weeks on a Friday or Saturday night.

My tastes ebb and flow depend on how much time I can sink into a game. Traditional RPGs, Open World games I have a hard time even starting let alone finishing due to the amount of time they require to complete. I think that's the tough part, I like being a completionist to games that require you to explore, completing side-quests, etc. This makes my backlog hard to address -- I think I need to re-read Dsheinem's guide to completing 5 Million games from your backlog in your lifetime.

Despite Tanooki's remarks, I've found that the Wii-U so far for me has been easy to pick up and play for an hour or two, and feel satisfied having sat down to play. We'll see if that lasting appeal stays, but so far the two games alone that I've played have been enjoyable for both me and my wife. She loves Super Mario 3D Land. There's a few other games that I'm going to pick up.

Honestly though my tastes change, depending on my mood and what's available to me. Lately it's been PC and Wii-U, next month it could be Dreamcast and 3DS. The tough part is I have so many great games that suck me in, and that's both good and bad. Oh well, it's a marathon and not a sprint.

[BoneSnapDeez]

I actually play more now than when I was younger.

That said, I can only manage to squeeze in 1-2 hours per day.

[dsheinem]

My habits changed a good deal about 4-5 years ago when I started posting in the Games Beaten thread. That experience was the basis of an article that I published earlier this year about beating games.

An original, much longer introductory bit that ended up getting cut from the final thing addressed the impetus for a change in my habits, so this is as good a place as any to share those thoughts. Here it is:

Introduction
In January of 2010, I decided to jump into a forum thread in an online community that basically asked the question “What games have you beaten so far this year?” I was very active in the forum anyway, and so I initially replied because the thread was yet another place where I could share my recent gaming interests and accomplishments, shoot the breeze with others on what they thought of the games they’d recently finished, and otherwise continue in another venue the same kinds of conversations I’d enjoyed participating in elsewhere on the forum. I’m also the kind of person that likes compiling lists, reviewing media I’ve consumed, and otherwise debating the merits of various games, so it seemed like the perfect opportunity to combine a number of interests. What ended up happening in that thread, and then in subsequent annual threads, truly changed my outlook on managing my gaming time, my collecting habits, and my relationship to that nemesis of so many gamers: the dreaded backlog. In this essay, I hope to talk about my experiences beating 400 games over the past 4.5 years, to encourage you to change your approach to beating games as well and, hopefully, to help you make a serious dent in your backlog over the next few years.

Pile of Shame
I think my game collection is pretty typical of many people who think of themselves as “serious” gamers (especially those with a “backlog problem”). I have around 2500 games or so, about two-thirds of which are physical carts and discs and the rest are tied to some kind of digital service (Steam, PSN, etc.). I’ve been actively collecting older games for about ten years now, and I have recently reached a point where I own the vast majority of titles that really interest me for older systems. So while I have no problem naming plenty of games I’d still like to buy from the last millennium, I am fairly satisfied with where my collection sits.

However, the problem that many gamers have with a large, growing backlog is that adding games quicker than they can play them creates a sense of guilt that they won’t have the opportunity to ever experience the titles that sit on their shelf. (“Parasite Eve is supposed to be really good? Sure, I’ll pick it up and add it to my PS1 collection! Hopefully I’ll get to play it someday!”) That was how I felt for a long time: I enjoyed collecting but grimaced every time I picked up a new game, just knowing that there was a high probability I would never get to spend any quality time with it. Recent research about people’s Steam collections confirms that this is a common problem, with over a third of people’s libraries going entirely unplayed and more than half getting less than an hour of play.

About five months prior to getting involved in the 2010 Games Beaten thread, I posted a message that captures that mindset pretty well. I lamented that

I have had a bad habit lately of starting multiple games and playing 3-4 hours of each before putting in something else. I guess I am easily distracted if the game isn't doing much for me right off the bat...I was actually part way through a half dozen games or so: Gears of War 1, Dead Rising, Golden Axe: Beast Rider, Matt Hazzard, Motorstorm Arctic Edge, and the new Riddick game - and haven't made it past the first quarter of gameplay in any of them due to lack of interest/motivation.

Even though I used the qualifier “lately” in that post, the truth was that this was pretty typical of my gaming patterns for a long time: playing a half dozen games (or more) at once, focusing almost exclusively on newer releases, and rarely getting to the credits before getting distracted by something else. It was uncommon for me to finish more than maybe 20 games or so a year in that mode, and it usually only took one Steam summer sale for me to acquire more games in one month than I would finish off in an entire year. In retrospect, I was probably jumping around from game to game so much because I was frantic: I was trying to tackle as much of my backlog as I could at once, hoping to somehow get through newer games so that I could finally spend more time with the retro game library I had built up over time. It was a recipe for failure, and one that because of its lack of focus was never going to help me make any serious dent in my backlog or encourage me to pick up those classic games that I was neglecting. Something would have to change.

Getting Serious, by Accident
There were a couple of key factors that facilitated my comfort in racking up titles in the Games Beaten thread at its inception and, subsequently, motivated me to get serious about my backlog. First and foremost, there was a distinct lack of competition involved in the thread. People weren’t trying to see who could beat more games than anyone else, demanding proof of success, or (usually) debating what counts as a “legitmate” reason to count a game as beaten. Instead, there was a sense of mutual appreciation for everyone’s accomplishments given their own personal criteria, specific time constraints, and stated goals. That might be a counterproductive atmosphere to some who seek motivation through competition, but it was great for me to feel like I was making progress regardless of how many games I listed, what kind of games I listed, and how frequently I listed them.

This sense of engagement with others about what games I had beaten was a key driver for me to get through more and more games. By the midway point of the first year, I started writing up brief thoughts (usually 2-3 sentences but sometimes 2-3 paragraphs) about the games I was beating, which gave others a chance to respond with their own impressions of that game or of my experience with it. This dialogue was, of course, a two way street: I made it a point to chime in with regularity when another member beat something that I found interesting, that I had beaten in the past, etc. It reached a point that, for many of the games I played, the idea of listing the game in the thread and then getting to talk about it afterwards with a community of interested participants was far more of an incentive to get to the credits than any ending cinematics, trophies, or achievements were.

Eventually and over time I also found ways to provide interesting challenges to myself in each yearly thread. One year, I wanted to beat at least one game for every system I owned. Another year, I decided to play through a few series in their entirety. I’ve made it a point to occasionally focus on runs of certain genres or systems. I’ve occasionally made it a goal to hit a certain number of games by a certain date (e.g. fifty by mid-July). These extra motivators also helped to give me a sense of my own gaming habits, providing an idea of what times of the year worked best to play certain kinds of games based on my schedule, what kinds of games I was neglecting, and what kinds of games I might want to go acquire for future play.

[here's the most relevant part to this thread , I think:]

I also think, reflecting back, that at least part of my interest in building up an annual list was to try and figure out whether recent changes in my life around 2009/2010 would indeed cut into my gaming time in any significant way. In 2007 I had entered into my chosen career on a year-to-year probationary basis and in 2009 I became a first year father: both of these changes made me fear that perhaps gaming would be something I would have to give up as I entered into my 30s and the other responsibilities of life crept in. What happened instead was that I started gaming with a purpose. While I have certainly spent less time gaming in the first half of my 30s than I did in the last half of my 20s, my game time has been focused around particular small goals all in service of the larger goal of tackling the backlog, and it has been much more rewarding. I’ve consistently achieved career, relational, and parental success over this stretch of time as well, so I don’t believe that trying to reach these gaming goals have ultimately been a detriment to those more important areas of life.

[fastbilly1]

Single player gaming is almost nonexistant in my gaming now, I rarely play non coop games. Not counting telephone games ofcourse.