Arkane How Gaming Habits Form and Decline

[StaticSpine]

My habits formed around 1998 when I first played Fallout and got obsessed with isometric RPGs. Also, I've read game magazines and closely followed the 1-2 games I planned to play every year.
During RPG drought of 2000s I replayed favorites and picked some stuff here and there like Bioshock or Twitcher.

It all went south when I got Steam, and later - consoles in the early 2010s. I bought stuff because it was discounted, I had PS+, and forced myself to play all that. Which almost ruined gaming for me.
Lately, I've been trying to get back to how I used to approach gaming being much more picky and limiting myself.

What's your story?

 

[Nikanuur]

I grew up playing River Raid and Bruce Lee, usually for about ten or twenty minutes at a time, swapping with whichever friend happened to be visiting.
Hot-seat gaming with other titles was such a treat and felt like a marvel back then.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pmPjsBDN9Xw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txHAQaiqVWo


I hated when my brother played. He would usually spend half an hour or more on something what I would now consider a precursor to tactical and strategic gaming: Kennedy Approach
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jLYtuQnHg8M


I could never quite get into Universal H.E.R.O.—a precursor to questing, using items, and exploring.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3pxYrqYwhGs

Nowadays, I easily spend several hours or more in one game (usually an RPG), I love well written quests, and above all: meaningful exploration. I usually don't much care for company, and I have a love-hate relationship with anything multiplayer

 

[NecroLord]

My habits formed around 1998 when I first played Fallout and got obsessed with isometric RPGs. Also, I've read game magazines and closely followed the 1-2 games I planned to play every year.
During RPG drought of 2000s I replayed favorites and picked some stuff here and there like Bioshock or Twitcher.

It all went south when I got Steam, and later - consoles in the early 2010s. I bought stuff because it was discounted, I had PS+, and forced myself to play all that. Which almost ruined gaming for me.
Lately, I've been trying to get back to how I used to approach gaming being much more picky and limiting myself.

What's your story?

Played lots of PS1 games, then I discovered the majesty and supremacy of the PC...

 

[Tel Velothi]

NES and then 90's-00's PC gaming with all it's glory.
Now I just can't bring myself to play anything, the spark is gone - I feel like games don't give me anything anymore that they gave me back then. I still appreciate them as art and often read or watch YouTube videos about them.
There's a time and place for everything I guess. It's kind of sad maybe, but in the absence of things - other things come.

 

[Sergio]

I've been a gamer for over 30 years now. My goal is to reach 69 years. This hobby is still as addictive as it was when I was a kid, if not more. I even work in fucking gamedev. Never had any doubts.

 

[StaticSpine]

This hobby is still as addictive as it was when I was a kid, if not more.

Did you change your gaming habits though since you were a kid?

And are you having a blast often? Like you can't put the game down?

 

[tommy heavenly6]

I think playing too many modern games atrophies your gaming senses and skills. I rarely touch modern games so I can go back to old games without problems, but I smash my head when I read others saying that X game has "aged" or is too clunky now. It's a bit like only reading twitter so people become unable to read a book.

 

[Fargus]

Late 90s. First on ps1, wasn't mine but step brother's, played some games there: RE1-3, Smackdown KYR, Syphon Filter. I liked some of that as a kid but it never affected my gaming taste. At the same time first pc was bought by a grandparent. Played mostly quality shit like Blood or HoMM3 there or whatever it could run, had to be very choosy of what i install because of weak hardware, mostly games with 2d graphics or older 3d shooters with sprites. Then played a lot of games on stepbrothers decent pc and my RPG addiction developed with Fallout 1-2, NWN, Morrowind and other classics. Later got my own pc and went through many, many games. Got a habit of actually finishing an rpg. Was primarily a storyfag.

In the late 2000s i purchased 360 and played a handful of peasantware on it. Few years later threw it out because it had nothing of worth to play, and device was failing anyway. Stuck with pc only ever since, because i liked playing games on it, modding, hugest library with backward compatiblity at my fingertip and freedom it provided compared to consoles where a bunch of fuckwits worshipped Gaylo 3, Uncharted of whatever nigger iq over-the-shoulder exclusive piece of trash was trending in their peasant bubble. I was never cut out to be a console player, guess you need an extra chromosome to be a good turd consooming peasant.

Woke slop is what killed my excitement for games over the years. I can still enjoy them but not as much as before and i never get hyped anymore. Though VR kinda brought that excitement back for a time. But the usual suspects will destroy that too.

Don't play AAA slop anymore.

Story RPGs were fucked the most and it shifted my taste to playing tactical games instead with much less dialogue and text to read. But lately i've been playing some text heavy rpgs again. You could say i'm slowly healing while watching this rotten industry convulsing like a dying junkie in a filthy shit stinking drug den.

 

[Humanophage]

I tend to play less whenever I need to pull myself together IRL.

Compared to my younger self, I am less constrained by hardware. Back then, computers got old really fast and you often had to play laggy games, which was detrimental to enjoyment. Now everything is smooth. I dropped console games with NES and have not been interested in them. They disgust me and I blame them for the decline.

In terms of enjoyment, I do get gaming addictions and it is sometimes hard to put down a game. I genuinely enjoy games rather than "trying to kill time". I'd much rather they took up less time. For example, I had been playing a lot of Old World since mid-December. It had been consuming so much free time that I decided to delete it on a whim when I woke up to pee at 3 am.

Another downside is that when I was a teen, my English was still subpar, so playing games in English had an obvious self-improvement component. But now I can't really force myself to play games in languages other than English or Russian. I've been trying to do it with German and French, but I don't last long, although there is probably still some marginal utility.

 

[Sergio]

This hobby is still as addictive as it was when I was a kid, if not more.

Did you change your gaming habits though since you were a kid?

And are you having a blast often? Like you can't put the game down?

Early habits, no. The only thing that changed is that I almost completely gave up playing online. I used to play MMORPG and MOBA games at a high level, now I just don't. I play FF14 sometimes but that game allows me to play 95% solo anyway.

And yes, I am having a blast often. I'm too old now to skip sleep to play games, but if my body could keep up, I totally would do that sometimes. I still get plenty of enjoyment every year, and often find myself in a situation where I 100% a game and I am sad that there is nothing else for me to do.

 

[Iucounu]

During the 00s I used to check out demos in game magazines, then I played the few games I actually bought for years. After demos were no longer made I discovered a few more in gaming forums. Haven't bought a game since 2020(?), but found a few free Epic giveaways. I'm still taking notes of games that seem interesting, but rarely feel the urge to actually play them anymore.

I actually don't blame wokeism for feeling jaded (I ignore all woke media), I think it's more that games have become longer and longer. Back in the day you could replay the same 10 hour game 10 times (=100 hours in total), but with weeks or months between each replay. Nowadays you must either play a 100 hour game within a short time (which may burn you out), or take breaks from the playthrough (which makes you lose focus on the setting).