Losing your Gaming Habits

[Vern5]

A few threads have been popping up every few weeks. It's always someone trying to give up gaming or looking for a reason to keep up the hobby. They all have their various reasons. Some think that giving up gaming will improve their lives somehow. Others believe that the industry is about to die and any further investment in games will go nowhere. The truth of these ideas is debatable but there is still a trend of gamers giving up their game.

Even I have started to semi-consciously pull myself away from the gaming habit. I stopped investing in consoles years ago; it was getting too expensive. I then moved exclusively towards PC gaming and handhelds. Now, I've managed to buy almost every PC game I'll ever want or need to play (I'm still missing Mount & Blade Warband). The only market I look forward to with any kind of excitement is the Indie PC market (which is very haphazard to begin with) and the 3DS market (which has been very promising and still has room to grow).

Basically, over the last ten years, I've lost most of my enthusiasm for the gaming industry. I'm still not sure when this change occurred or what has been prompting it. I'm only 24 so I rather doubt it's a factor of age. I graduated college last year and have been pursuing jobs, volunteering, and preparing for PeaceCorps so maybe it is a matter of maturity? I can't be sure.

So, Escapists, what could prompt a gamer to lose their gaming habits?

 

[Darquenaut]

In a word: Change.

People are normally creatures of habit. We learn of something and we latch onto it because it is something new and novel to us, and it feels unique and awesome. But as time passes and things change, we become less and less attached to it.

For example, name let's say 5-10 singers/ bands that you liked back a decade ago. How many of those do you still appreciate as much as you do now?

To use a couple more personal examples- back when I was in middle-school/ high-school, I loved comics. I grew up reading Marvel comics. Once I hit college, I got exposed to other comics like "Preacher" and the luster from comics I used to love like X-Men, Thunderbolts, and Deadpool (the Joe Kelly run) began to wain because I found something new, and the creators at that time decided to grow the series in different directions. It wasn't what I fell in love with, so I moved on.

In college, I fell into the animation scene, namely with the anime crowd. I helped run the on-campus anime organization for a few years after the initial bubble burst and companies like Geneon, CPM, and ADV died out and/or were restructured. And during this time, the whole culture itself transformed. I got into anime because of shows like "Wings of Honneamise," and "Record of Lodoss War." Now it was all cheaply animated, formulaic shows. Yes, there are and were good shows out of the lot, but it wasn't worth my time wading through the morass of dreck to find a single gem. It wasn't what I fell in love with, so I moved on.

Video games however have been a part of who I am since grade-school, if not earlier. I have lived through six generations of consoles, going into the seventh now. And even then, things are continuously changing, some for the good, some not. Even now, I have a nagging thought in my head that it is all about to fall through, that it is going to warp into something that I no longer consider worth my time.

But as I have found out- nothing ever lasts. Everything ends; everything fails in one way or another. That isn't nihilism- that's just the way things are.

I suppose in the end it all depends on whether or not you're wiling to see things through finality, or if you're going to jump ship early. I think I'm going to see this next shift through and see where it goes - and until then, enjoy what we got now.

 

[porous_shield]

It's not maturity. The word maturity is usually thrown around by people who desperately want to be mature like children during their puberty years disown their toys because they see them as baby stuff and they desperately want to seem mature. Fulfilling your obligations is what makes someone mature, not their interests.

Change is what's happening. Refer to Darquenaut's post above for a good explanation of it.

 

[Goofguy]

This word was already thrown out there but change in tastes. Back in college, I used to play the hell out of any and every FPS that came out. Unless it was a complete and utter piece of crap, I'd probably end up playing it. Nowadays, I don't care much for FPS games. They just don't do it for me. I find I also have less of an adventurous spirit when it comes to trying new games. If the concept doesn't intrigue me or the initial gameplay videos don't hook me in, then I'll probably never play them. It doesn't matter if the game is critically acclaimed, I feel as though I only want to dedicate my time to the games that completely draw me in.

The same could be said about my taste in music. Back in college, I listened to a lot of In Flames and Audioslave. I've been to four of the former's concerts and I thought no music could rock more than the latter's. I haven't deliberately listened to an In Flames song in over a year and Cornell's singing in most of the Audioslave songs is way to nasally.

You really don't have much of a say in your changes in taste. Sometimes, you just become ambivalent towards something that appealed to you so strongly not so long ago.