Losing Interest In Games - A Natural Progression?

MotherInferior writes "I'm 27, soon to be 28. I used to fiend over the newest games and eagerly play whatever I could get my hands on. Team Fortress Classic, Civilization, WarCraft, these were all games that I could literally lose myself for days in. I still drool over the newest games at Best Buy, but now that I actually have the money to buy them, I find myself saying, 'Nah, I'll just play what I've got,' or 'Y'know, I'd rather design my own game then play someone else's.' Even still, I don't really play the games I have. What's up with that? I'm sure my mom would sagely say (with some satisfaction in her voice), 'Wellll, you're just growing up...' Am I not as capable of having fun as I once was, or what? Don't get me wrong, I still enjoy gaming, but I can tell there's some kind of trend happening. Will there be gaming Viagra in my future, I wonder?"

Comments

Re:I know what you mean...

[Decaffeinated Jedi]

I thought I might have outgrown games in recent years, but it turns out that my tastes had simply changed and I needed to find the right games. For instance, from the age of 10 to around 20, I couldn't get enough of the adventure genre. I played and loved just about anything that Sierra and LucasArts released. Heck, I webmaster a site dedicated to the Space Quest series. Around 1997 or 1998, though, I found that adventure games just couldn't hold my interest anymore. The puzzle-solving dynamic just wasn't particularly interesting to me, and the stories (by and large) seemed less appealing.

After a brief period of time spent with shooters like Quake and Unreal Tournament and real-time strategy games like Warcraft, I more or less resolved myself to the fact that I had outgrown gaming. The genres I had loved just weren't that fun anymore. Then, a few years later, I began to discover two genres that really revitalized my interest -- genres that hadn't really interested me in the past. These were stealth-based first-person sneakers like Thief and No One Lives Forever and good old-fashioned RPGs. Now, while I still don't find myself all that interested in adventure games, I still enjoy gaming in new genres.

If you feel like games just aren't that fun anymore, try something a bit out-of-the-ordinary. You might be pleasantly surprised.