Have you gone through a long period of time where you stopped playing video games?

[Milennia]

Went about 6 months at one point without seriously sitting down and playing, playing sparingly right now as well, mainly for school reasons and nothing captivating me

Ive learned that it's best not to force it if you're not feeling anything

 

[bananab]

I quit playing em throughout high school, picked em up again when I was around 20, and since then I've had several multi-year breaks like that (in my 40s now). It's not a hobby that always fits neatly into wherever you're at in life. Sometimes you need a break, and they're nice because then there's lots to catch up on.

 

[FliX]

Judging by my trophy stat's I might have had a month or two in between but beyond that no, not really.

 

[redbomb6]

Nowadays, I don't really replay games anymore because of this reason. Very rarely do I go back to an old game unless it's been so long that I want to try it out once more. The main issue is that games take a significant amount of time to sit through and complete and I would rather dedicate my time to just playing 1 game at a time and thoroughly enjoy it before moving on.

I do tend to take a break after heavy gaming like for example when Elden Ring, Horizon and Triangle Strategy dropped. I played those games for basically 2 months non stop then took a month off from single player gaming basically and either enjoyed some shows or some multiplayer instead. When I did come back to play games in May, I was basically catching up on some old chill games that weren't necessarily needing as much investment and I could play through slowly.

I think people just need to take breaks from gaming more regularly as it helps prevent burnout from playing too much especially as you get older. I'm in my late 20s now and the breaks help reinvigorate my love for gaming.

 

[BasilZero]

Never

 

[defaltoption]

Nearly a year back in high school that was the longest for me, these days I'll go a week or so every once in a while

 

[Snake Eater]

Gaming is a solo activity, when your social responsibilities grow something has to be given up

 

[Deleted member 91227]

43 and nope. Doubt I've ever gone even a month without gaming.

 

[JooJ]

Yes, I've had many years with barely any gaming or when I didn't even own a system.

I'm currently 36 but I don't have nearly the passion I did as a kid or teenager. I'll hardly ever be interested in a game and they're more like a chore and almost never fun. I'll play and enjoy one or two games a year and go for months with no gaming.

 

[Deleted member 17210]

I never stopped but I remember being 25 (this was in the year 2000) and my peers had mostly stopped playing. I would come home after partying and play stuff like Unreal Tournament and Shenmue. I love that era just as much as my childhood games. My friends got pulled back into gaming a few years later with stuff like the Xbox/Xbox 360 and Halo.

 

[Era of not Yakuza]

During my teenage years, I did not play video games for quite some time.
Since I started earning my money and buying my consoles, I have never gone more than a month or two without playing anything.
When I don't play these days, it's because I'm following a series or going out often.

 

[Jetsun Mila]

The first three months of this year I played nothing. Never over a year but a few months happens pretty often

 

[SnesCartman]

twice.
the first time when I'm in high school around 2001 to 2007, we didn't have money to buy a ps2 then in 2007 my friend gave me his ps2 slim.
the second time around 2011 to 2017, my 360 got rrod and I'm only had a wii.
come to think about it I play much less since the end of 2021... I hope the cycle didn't came back.

 

[Vibed]

When I feel too busy for it (because I have a years old habit of not managing my time well) I won't properly play a game for weeks at a time. I've never outright stopped playing or lost interest in games though. I think in particular my fondness for Nintendo is too important to me.

 

[DWarriorSN]

Not completely but it does happen here and there relatively often.

If my GaaS games aren't hitting right i usually end up playing nothing till something really piques my interest.

I have a problem starting games in general and usually default to the same shit lol.

 

[elbageluno]

24 years old, the longest I think I've went is like 2 months.

 

[Baoben]

I'm currently in a burnout period. It's a combination of getting a new girlfriend and moving to a new country. Don't really feel like playing games at all.

 

[XSX]

End of the 360 era for like 2-3 years.

And lately I think it's time for another year+ break. Shits been feeling way too expensive and boring lately.

 

[Deleted member 49482]

I've heard some people say they fell off gaming around this stage in life and then got back into it after a few years away. So to you gamers who are older and wiser than myself, is this normal? Am I slowly falling out of love with gaming or do most people tire out around this time?

Click to shrink...

Warning, OP: long post incoming.

First of all, I'll say this: I think having an ebb and flow to hobbies and interests is a normal and healthy thing. You can go through phases of your life where you focus your time and effort toward different pastimes. Nowadays, I'll have some years I'm really into sports, other years into outdoor pursuits and socializing, others movies and TV series, and others video games. It sounds like you are filling your time with enjoyable things and expanding your interests - that's great and there's nothing wrong if the time and desire for gaming just isn't there for you right now.

Second, if the time barrier is a real issue for you where you feel like you can't play games unless you have a big block of time - well, you'll have to get over that and figure out a way around it. As you get older, having a free block of time and the accompanying mental bandwidth to play for 5+ hours is very rare, at least from what I've seen and experience. You have to get mentally comfortable squeezing in shorter sessions during the week and focus your "longer" sessions during certain weekend time blocks. If you're playing a short to moderate length game, smaller playing sessions through the week add up. Playing for 45 minutes a night during the week may seem hardly worth it, but that means by the weekend you're about 4 hours further into a game.

As for my ebb and flow with gaming:

I was a big gamer from being a child through high school. Even when I had a full social calendar and played sports in high school, I was still carving out time to play all manners of RPGs, action/adventure games, fighting games, etc. Through my four years of college, I was too focused with my social life and school events to do much gaming. I did some light gaming, though; mainly multiplayer Halo the first couple years, and then the last couple years regular sessions of online multiplayer in NCAA Football and I played the three PS2 Grand Theft Auto games.

When I was in grad school, I picked gaming back up in a big way and it was a regular hobby of mine for about 6 years thereafter. Then around the time the PS4 was being released, I stepped away from gaming entirely: I basically didn't touch a controller for about 5.5 years. I barely even followed gaming news during that time frame. I kind of thought that I'd never return to console gaming as a hobby in any real way.

Then one random fall night in 2019, I got the itch to see what I had been missing and read up on a bunch of the PS4 games that were released over the past 6 years. I ended up buying a PS4 that next month during a Black Friday sale. From then until now, gaming has been a regular hobby of mine again and I don't think I've had so much passion and enjoyment for it since I was a kid. I even managed to snag a launch day PS5, and I'm not someone who ever gets launch day hardware. My enthusiasm for gaming again even caused two of my friends to jump back into the hobby in a serious way this year.

So, yeah, decreasing the time spent on gaming as a hobby, or stepping away from it fully for a while, can happen. It may even make you enjoy gaming that much more when you eventually return to it.

 

[Auros01]

I'm in the midst of a burnout period, for sure. I haven't played that many games over the last maybe 3-4 years. The main ones I put some time into were Hades and Ori and the Will of the Wisps but then I hit a dry spell after that. Tried to get into Mario Golf Super Rush but dropped off pretty quickly after finishing the campaign.

I only have a Switch but, even so, I'm just not feeling like there are a lot of games that are jumping out at me to try.

 

[Leafshield]

I barely played anything between the ages of around 18 and 25, I was struggling for cash at college and for years afterwards and just couldn't afford it.

 

[J-Skee]

Just happened to me recently after fighting that one infamous boss in Elden Ring over & over again. Just got tired & stopped playing games altogether for about two months. I'm back at it, though (games, not Elden Ring, may have taken too long of a break from that to get back into it properly).

 

[Flygon]

Does this count if I've essentially checked out of playing new games for the past 10 years?

 

[TaySan]

I go through phases where I'm only interested in one hobby for a while and move on to the next. Video games, movies, music etc

 

[Wilsongt]

Yes, mainly because I don't want to be that rude to to the bf about playing games all the time...

 

[Incubuster]

I'm currently in a slump with gaming. It's been going on for almost a year. Granted I've had some serious health issues in that time and was even going through a rough breakup. But even since things have settled my desire has not returned.

I think game releases since last summer have been lacking as well to be honest.

 

[Otakunofuji]

Not even for a few days. Video games were my job from 2001 until 2016. Since 2016 I've been free to to just play whatever I actually want instead of what I "had" to, and have had a lot more fun and love games even more than ever. There are so many good new indies all the time and emulation makes playing classic stuff so easy that I always have something I'm excited to play.

 

[Adder7806]

I'm 48. Been playing since Atari 2600. Basically didn't play during the 90's. Just had no time to dedicate to it.

 

[eXistor]

Nope, been gaming straight pretty much since age 7 (40 now).

 

[Unaha-Closp]

Yeah, I started noticing it probably the last half of last-gen, so PS4 for me. I had a good time with Persona 5, Horizon, and Nier Automata, and then hereafter I have kinda been not playing much at all. Every few months I'll rouse myself to try and play something, but since the PS5/XSX gen I think I have played and beaten 2 games, and they were games I had played before. No, I did play through Donut County, so 3 is all I remember. I did get briefly back into Civ 6, of which I almost have 3,000 hours, but have fallen off that too. These days, I think, must play something, look at libraries on various platforms, and then don't. I had assumed I would love Horizon Forbidden West but, you guessed it, fallen off that too.

 

[Eugene's Axe]

Not really.

 

[ShaggyLobo]

i missed the first half of the previous 2 gens. usually because i just get into something else.

 

[Skiptastic]

I've had some periods, but now that I have Red Dead 2, if I ever get tired of what is out there, I'll just play that again.

 

[Doug Dimmadome]

Warning, OP: long post incoming.

First of all, I'll say this: I think having an ebb and flow to hobbies and interests is a normal and healthy thing. You can go through phases of your life where you focus your time and effort toward different pastimes. Nowadays, I'll have some years I'm really into sports, other years into outdoor pursuits and socializing, others movies and TV series, and others video games. It sounds like you are filling your time with enjoyable things and expanding your interests - that's great and there's nothing wrong if the time and desire for gaming just isn't there for you right now.

Second, if the time barrier is a real issue for you where you feel like you can't play games unless you have a big block of time - well, you'll have to get over that and figure out a way around it. As you get older, having a free block of time and the accompanying mental bandwidth to play for 5+ hours is very rare, at least from what I've seen and experience. You have to get mentally comfortable squeezing in shorter sessions during the week and focus your "longer" sessions during certain weekend time blocks. If you're playing a short to moderate length game, smaller playing sessions through the week add up. Playing for 45 minutes a night during the week may seem hardly worth it, but that means by the weekend you're about 4 hours further into a game.

As for my ebb and flow with gaming:

I was a big gamer from being a child through high school. Even when I had a full social calendar and played sports in high school, I was still carving out time to play all manners of RPGs, action/adventure games, fighting games, etc. Through my four years of college, I was too focused with my social life and school events to do much gaming. I did some light gaming, though; mainly multiplayer Halo the first couple years, and then the last couple years regular sessions of online multiplayer in NCAA Football and I played the three PS2 Grand Theft Auto games.

When I was in grad school, I picked gaming back up in a big way and it was a regular hobby of mine for about 6 years thereafter. Then around the time the PS4 was being released, I stepped away from gaming entirely: I basically didn't touch a controller for about 5.5 years. I barely even followed gaming news during that time frame. I kind of thought that I'd never return to console gaming as a hobby in any real way.

Then one random fall night in 2019, I got the itch to see what I had been missing and read up on a bunch of the PS4 games that were released over the past 6 years. I ended up buying a PS4 that next month during a Black Friday sale. From then until now, gaming has been a regular hobby of mine again and I don't think I've had so much passion and enjoyment for it since I was a kid. I even managed to snag a launch day PS5, and I'm not someone who ever gets launch day hardware. My enthusiasm for gaming again even caused two of my friends to jump back into the hobby in a serious way this year.

So, yeah, decreasing the time spent on gaming as a hobby, or stepping away from it fully for a while, can happen. It may even make you enjoy gaming that much more when you eventually return to it.

Click to shrink...

Great post! I think right now I'm still adjusting to adulthood and learning all the perils of it lol I recently moved out from my roommates place and am now living entirely on my own and dealing with all the ensuing stresses. But that's life! You live and learn and I'm sure I'll get it all sorted. Learning how to adjust things I did in my youth to doing them as an adult has been a challenge.

Honestly there just hasn't been a ton of games that interest me of late. Maybe I'm becoming jaded - maybe that's a part of getting older - but as game development becomes bigger, more expensive and more complex, it slows down the rate at which they release. So whereas the 360 generation would have 6-7 AAA games every year that really interested me, now it feels like we only get 2-3 games a year that pique my interest. I was betting big on Starfield to be the game that pulls me back in, but looks like I'll have to wait even longer for that. Maybe God of War if that hits this year

 

[Nameless]

Yeah. From 2009-2013 into 2014 I basically stepped away from the hobby, for a number of reasons both related and unrelated to games. Totally quit following the industry, listening to podcasts, and maybe bought a game a year, if anything at all. My 360 was mostly just a media player outside of some casual Bad Company 1 & 2 with my roommate at the time. Played a little Universe Sandbox on PC here & there too, but that was it. It wasn't uncommon to go several weeks or months without touching a video game.

Around this time in 2014 I started to get the itch back. Caught up on Dark Souls, New Vegas, Mass Effect 2 & 3, and Witcher 2 back to back over the Summer, and that rekindled my interest. Got way into Destiny shortly after, and grabbed a PS4 bundle on Black Friday.

 

[rude]

Somewhat. 2012-2015 were the dark years of gaming, didn't play much other than a handful of 3DS and Vita titles.

 

[Midnight]

I have actually, from around 2014 to 2018, so in my early twenties. At that time my PS3 broke and I didn't really play anything else during that period. Became uninterested.

On a whim, I bought a PS4 during Black Friday 2018 and because I had so much to catch up on, my love for games grew again.

 

[Paroni]

I didn't play much of anything when I was in my late teens and early 20s around 2009-2011, I went through military service and then started university, and owned just a weak laptop when I moved out. I started gaming more again once I got a better PC.

 

[carlsojo]

Yeah when I go to bed I usually don't play again until I wake up in the morning.

Serious answer: No, not really. Even when I'm depressed it's pretty much the only thing I can do to pass the time and keep the bad thoughts out.

 

[JMY86]

Yep, I basically missed most of the PS2 console generation while in college.

 

[Arithmetician]

Yes, 2011-2017. I got back into gaming because I saw on twitter something about Metroid Prime 4 being a game that was in development and I wanted to be part of that when it released. 🤡

It was worth it though, games are so good these days.

 

[Deleted member 23094]

I think the longest I've gone is maybe 4 months.

 

[Sprat]

I'm not sure if I'm falling out of love with video games or not. I've been a gamer my whole life and would regularly consume as many as I could in a given year. I'd even replay games all the time (completing the entire Mass Effect trilogy 20+ times is one of my greatest gaming achievements). But these last 2 years, my gaming has ground to a halt. I've still played the huge tentpole releases, but I've probably played as many games across 2020, 2021 & 2022 as 2019 alone.

I'm 25 years old and in 2020 I moved out of my folks place and in with a roommate. Since then I started trying new hobbies. Got into surfing, started going out on the weekends and trying my darndest to be more social. I also have one of those... job... things. Working full time takes a lot out of me. I've never liked multiplayer games and would almost exclusively play epically long single player RPG's. As such, any gaming session less than 5 hours just didn't feel worthwhile for me. Now, at the end of a long day of work, the idea of sitting on the couch playing games for 5+ hours sounds pretty intimidating. So I don't feel like I even have the bandwidth to enjoy gaming. Yet I've still followed the industry studiously over that stretch. Keeping up with all news, stories and big game releases.

I've heard some people say they fell off gaming around this stage in life and then got back into it after a few years away. So to you gamers who are older and wiser than myself, is this normal? Am I slowly falling out of love with gaming or do most people tire out around this time?

Click to shrink...

Similar situation to you. When I moved out I started living and completely stopped/lost all interest in gaming for a good 5 years or so.

Don't sweat it. I missed the entire ps2 life cycle and dove back in when my partner bought me a ps3 uncharted bundle which reignited my love for gaming.

 

[Hippopuncher12]

In college I went about a year without touching a game, girls and partying were far more important to me at that time, I have taken 6 month breaks a few times since then. Sometimes it's nice to just get away from something even if it's something you love a lot.

 

[xGeneral Ice]

Xtortion
Look bro it's you

 

[Deleted member 93062]

This year I haven't completed a game (except Turnip Boy). I've dabbled in a few games but haven't been able to finish any. Really disappointed in the current state of the gaming industry.

 

[knightmawk]

Around when Mass Effect 3 came out I basically completely stopped playing games until Sunset Overdrive came out, so that was like.... three years or so? It's actually probably a bit longer because I wasn't really playing a lot of games when ME3 came out. I'm not sure what the last game I finished before Sunset Overdrive was, but I'm sure it's a ways back. I kept trying different games and just slowly fell off but the one that's a memorable casualty was ME3, still haven't finished it to this day and don't think I ever will.

It happens, life gets in the way. I mean even today I can go months without playing a game but it doesn't mean I love them less, just means I'm busy.

 

[Wislizeni]

No, but its different for everyone. At 25, I honestly played the most games I ever had in my life, in between getting to grips with adulthood. I've never really had a problem making time for games, despite everything. But its really not a flex, or anything. It shouldn't be for anyone, lol. Like, for me personally, I've always ended up in circles where people play video games. So it makes sense if you discover something new, and have to drop something you love to make time.

 

[PlanetSmasher]

Not by choice, but I regularly go through long periods where there's literally nothing to play so I don't play anything.

 

[The Shape]

Not really. A month or two while focusing on other hobbies, but never stopped. Always had a console since a was a wee lad and I'm still going, now on PS5.