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).

 

[NecroLord]

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.

Consoles are one of the main facilitators of AAA slop propagation.
When I discovered PC gaming it was nothing less than a complete epiphany for me.
So much more quality and class on PC compared to console trash.

 

[Machocruz]

As far as home gaming, I went Colecovision - Master System - Genesis - PS1 - PS2/PC - PC, where I've stayed since. Did get a PS3, but I was already primarily PC by then. Most of my top 10 are PC games now. Was in the arcades until they declined, and would still go if they were around. I play emulated arcade games every now and then.

Never decided by genre, I played whatever piqued my interest based on theme, setting, and art style.

Interest in playing games has declined in the last couple years, even though I just bought a new PC not too long ago, one that can run everything at High or better; I guess scarcity made we want the games more, or something like that. At any rate, something has to really grab me in previews and be on my mind for a while to even get me started, curiosity isn't enough anymore. Novelty is a factor, I don't want to repeat shit I've done a dozen times before, and most games are derivative to a fault imo. So these days it's usually one or two games that really call to me that I will play over the course of a couple years.

 

[Habichtswalder]

My gaming habits have definitely changed over the years. I had a phase a few years ago where I'd be overwhelmed with the amount of cheap games and bought an unnecessary number of them. This led to the habit that I changed games so often that I couldn't finish any of them. To be honest, I abandoned most games after just 1-2 play sessions. Even if I liked them.

In the last few years, I try to restrict myself more. It is actually quite successful because I regularly finish games, even if they are 80 or 100 hours long (as long as they are good).

My general interest in gaming fluctuates a lot however. I have phases where I play a lot and phases where I barely touch anything and focus on other activities. Right now I am going through a phase where I don't regularly play. Actually I haven't touched a game in months. But that is not really a changed habit - I've always had this changing phases of interest since my childhood.

 

[Nutmeg]

I've narrowed down my gaming to ① shoot 'em ups and rail shooters occasionally breaking the rhythm with a game from an adjacent genre that's popular within that gaming subculture and ② turn based and real time strategy, with the latter limited by the fact that the ones I like are either broken as "versus" games (but could easily be fixed with a patch or mod) or lack a multiplayer community in my region (none have human like AIs that are fun to play against for more than a few games).

 

[BruceVC]

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.

Same as me

The secret to still loving and enjoying gaming is to not suffer from gaming fatigue and have other things you do in RL. It might be family time, work expectations or other hobbies like gym\hiking\cooking. Just try to find other things you enjoy and you can do outside of gaming

And then lately its important to not become obsessed with culture wars and wokeness where suddenly you evaluate every game around this even to the point where its irrational and exaggerated

Its fine to be aware of these things buts its equally important to be rationale or you end up becoming jaded, cynical and unnecessarily critical

You end up forgetting why you suppose to play games, they fun and provide entertainment

 

[BruceVC]

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.

Yes but dont forget how LoversLab mods have saved Bethesda games, we CANNOT ignore that

 

[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.

Same as me

The secret to still loving and enjoying gaming is to not suffer from gaming fatigue and have other things you do in RL. It might be family time, work expectations or other hobbies like gym\hiking\cooking. Just try to find other things you enjoy and you can do outside of gaming

And then lately its important to not become obsessed with culture wars and wokeness where suddenly you evaluate every game around this even to the point where its irrational and exaggerated

Its fine to be aware of these things buts its equally important to be rationale or you end up becoming jaded, cynical and unnecessarily critical

You end up forgetting why you suppose to play games, they fun and provide entertainment

Well said, though ignoring the "culture wars" is very difficult, considering how it's shoved down our throats at every opportunity. Not only gaming, but pretty much my every hobby is compromised by this. I avoid social media (which is a start) but I'm not blind.

 

[BruceVC]

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.

Same as me

The secret to still loving and enjoying gaming is to not suffer from gaming fatigue and have other things you do in RL. It might be family time, work expectations or other hobbies like gym\hiking\cooking. Just try to find other things you enjoy and you can do outside of gaming

And then lately its important to not become obsessed with culture wars and wokeness where suddenly you evaluate every game around this even to the point where its irrational and exaggerated

Its fine to be aware of these things buts its equally important to be rationale or you end up becoming jaded, cynical and unnecessarily critical

You end up forgetting why you suppose to play games, they fun and provide entertainment

Well said, though ignoring the "culture wars" is very difficult, considering how it's shoved down our throats at every opportunity. Not only gaming, but pretty much my every hobby is compromised by this. I avoid social media (which is a start) but I'm not blind.

Im not saying you should ignore it but when it comes to gaming and how we assess games it shouldnt become the most important factor because sometimes a woke component is a small part of the overall game and you can easily just ignore it

For example an optional LGBT Romance arc can he ignored because you just dont initiate that type of dialogue option

But when wokeness becomes overwhelming and impossible to ignore, like Veilguard, then thats different. But you can see the outcome of that type of design choice in a game if you look at the subpar sales figures of Veilguard and how Bioware is retrenching. The game didnt meet its sales target or sales expectations

My point is you dont want to become obsessed with wokeness or culture wars in gaming because you risk " not seeing the wood for the trees "

 

[Grauken]

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.

I think I agree with JarlFrank of all people about this, I know I'll never play everything I have whether it's the thousands of pirated games or the thousands of games I have on Steam/GOG or the couple of hundreds in boxes. But it's nice to pick and choose on a whim whatever catches my fancy. I do need to get better about only playing one game at a time as I happen to love starting games but find it difficult these days to finish them (mostly due to IRL stuff that eats into gaming). Shorter games are better for me these days, which also means less RPGs in general.

As for gaming habits, I realized a couple of years ago I got stuck in 2d gaming that were en vogue in my formative years and never made the jump to 3d (except for a couple of FPS), so while I think there's value in 3d games I just don't like them or appreciate them as much as I like sidescrollers, top-down games, 90ies isometric RPGs or blobbers. So lots of modern games just don't interest me, due to of all things, viewing perspective. Given how many devs these days do retro, I can't complain though.

It does get harder to find games that really captivate me these days, so I sometimes have months where no game really clicks with me enough to get obsessed about, until eventually one does and I lose sleep on it. But that's ok, as you get older you've seen a lot and it gets harder to find the things that work for you. But its fun trying a lot of stuff to find those gems.

 

[rumSaint]

I was sorta molded in childhood by NES gaming with ball crushing difficulty of Ninja Gaiden 2 and 3, other platformers and action games and it stayed till this day as I like to jump into something hard and skill based like Nioh. I also had some friends to play NES together, supoer fun.

Then high school came, I got my PC and other genres opened like RTS, FPS strategy games. In College I was grabbing games, but was mostly occupied with real life stuff. Ironically this was time when I started playing League of Retards, I played it on and off from pre-season 1 till season 5 and dropped. Never picked it up. I had some episodes with Rocket League and Fighting Games, but playing online suuuucks assssss.

Now as I am sorta settled and my gaming time is limited I jump genres on a whim. I play online stuff but mosly with my friends. I played some Apex but only with friends premade, but game went to shit.

Overall I think my early NES days haunt my gaming habits in a way, that I always try to be tryhard, often to my own fun detriment.