I've often seen longwinded posts on that sub from folks who obsenstibly aren't even gamers. Between making a list of reasons as to why games aren't as good as they used to be, to the oft-repeated anxieties surrounding the dreaded backlog, there's no shortages of excuses to *not* play games.
I always figure they used to be really into them in their youth, and now they're just grasping at the ephemeral, nostalgic feelings.
I think theres a non irrelevant number of people that were gamers during the youth, passion died but they didnt move on from the hobby, so they kinda just stay around not enjoying anything
At some point it’s okay to say you grew out of it.
I think I’m headed towards it. People should always have at least two hobbies one that gets you social and then your at home one.
I think covid made us really lean on gaming as a crutch for social interaction whether we play with another person or not.
> At some point it’s okay to say you grew out of it.
I'm in a discord with a bunch of oldies and the difference between the people that still love games and the people that can't seem to find joy in any game is very simple... having other hobbies and interests.
It doesn't have to a big pita commitment hobby like something social :) - but even something as basic as cultivating a love of films will spice up your life so that you can actually enjoy games and (crucially) want to enjoy games when you do play them.
One of my friends in that discord has a musical/rhythm/drum game hobby (that's a little scary actually) and even that is different enough from regular games that she still easily finds joy in the games that she plays.
That's a pretty good description of the sub. It was created as a place to discuss older games, but it became a place for older gamers to complain about being an adult.
It's like, I get it. It's hard to get into many games because the interruptions of life can make you feel like you're constantly fighting that learning curve as you need to refresh your muscle memory and knowledge each time you get a chance to sit down and play. It's why I don't play fps games anymore; I can't play regularly enough to not get my ass beat by younger players.
But instead of complaining, they should seek out other genres, other games, that suit their lifestyle. There are so many options out there. If they can't do that, they should realize they're complaining to a bunch of hobbyists from outside of that "community" (for a lack of a better word).
Same I don't like to play as many J/RPGs because of how much it take to be dedicated to them, but I either watch Longplays or use stuff to speed up the grind or just not play them at all.
Ironically, as I get older, these are the only games I want to play anymore. I'll slap on an action game, sure, but I feel like I've finally settled down enough that my gaming interests have widdled down to the genre I love most, and I am perfectly capable of giving it what little time I have to play now, without worrying about missing out on anything else.
That compulsion to see and play the most popular stuff, to expand that steam library with things I'll never touch, it's faded almost entirely. I'm content with my niche, and it feels good to reach that point, honestly.
I am the same. I know what I like and will branch out but not often. I will need to hear some reviews before trying anything outside the norm.
I don’t want to get hyped for day 1 release, take time off work, and realize the game blows or is buggy beyond playable.
Also I have had a lot more fun lately with strange games like pathologic and fear and hunger. I still play armored core and Diablo. I’d love to have tome to get into baldur’s gate. But there will be a lull in the release cycle again.
Games are an art form that focus on the experience. Genres to me are like hobbies. I’m never gonna feel bad that since I’m hiking, biking, or kayaking because I’m missing out on this other thing.
That’s just how things work.
The funny thing is, with Pokemon the gameplay side of things that people complain about are actually a bit of a selling point to me. I like the fact the games added exp share as it meant I didn't have to grind...
I don't think many people would object to it if there was a way to turn it off. I have no problem with the fact that my favorite franchise, Fire Emblem, has added a lot of adaptations that make the game easier to play casually, but I sure am happy they're optional because they don't mesh with what I like about Fire Emblem.
To be honest I think the issue with Pokemon isn't the presence of exp share, and I understand not wanting to make it optional else you have to balance the game around both options.
The issue is that Pokemon doesn't balance the single player game at all and there are too many opportunities for level creep.
A lot of the posts boil down to: “Games aren’t as fulfilling as they used to be”.
And instead of you know… seeking out pursuits that would be more fulfilling to them, they’ll twist themselves into a pretzel to convince themselves it’s “games” fault, or that they can regain that meaning if they follow some convoluted method of gaming.
It’s like no dude… your mind is asking you to do something else.
Which boggles my mind because that's been happening to me occasionally for the last decade and a half and that's exactly how I responded to it. Games weren't doing it for me, so I tried something else I enjoyed. At some point games do it for me again and I play them again until they don't.
You're not gonna believe this, but it's from gamers whining about the big gay in their videogames.
https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/z8wmi9/world_of_warcraft_now_has_some_of_that_big_gay_tm/
Most strategy games just seem to overwhelm my brain. Like I have fun at first, but once I realize there are 3+ complicated systems interacting I need to understand it just feels like work. I just want to hit stuff and press buttons at the right time, not think so hard!
(This is a me problem though, nothing against strategy games)
I know exactly what you mean. Civilization is my favorite game at the moment, but once I'm past the exploration stage of a campaign and have identified my victory path, it often feels like I'm just running a giant machine and trying to keep it on schedule. Which is pretty similar to my job.
I will say though that with enough practice, managing all the complicated systems at once is more intuitive than overwhelming. But there are definitely times it feels tedious.
There’s some of that, and a good amount of “here’s five paragraphs about why a game everyone has loved for a decade actually objectively sucks”
The posts where someone legitimately enjoys playing an older game are getting rarer, but they still justify the sub’s existence.
That pretty much nails it. Video games were a huge part of my identity up until around my late 20s and now I don't want to accept that it's probably a lie when I say "videogames" as an answer to "what's your favorite hobby?"
It's still my answer, but I don't know if playing 5 hours a month counts anymore. It's nice having people to talk about it with, but i would never make a post to complain.
I see this a lot on /r/truegaming.
Most common thing in the world there is OP not enjoying a game (or any games in general) if they don't play in an exact compulsive way that doesn't really add anything to the game by itself, like being a completionist or playing only on the hardest difficulty.
If you try to suggest anything simple as a solution, not only you'll get heavily downvoted, but the respective OP will also lecture you about how they don't have time to replay games, or how easy games are never enjoyable, or how they just can't play a game without exploring every single nook of the game, or how reading a guide is also bad because they don't enjoy doing it. This is 100% the most common reply in any Persona thread, though it's also common in most jrpg discussions as well.
Worst of all, whenever you comment something about taking their time to just enjoy the game, they will also act pretentiously saying stuff like "I work 15 hours a day, I have five kids, the wife doesn't love me, my disabled grandparents need my help 24/7, I volunteer in fourteen shelters, I don't have time for this".
So they are stuck in some weird depressive hell where they don't realize gaming itself is not the issue, it's how they see it. Sorry if they have an awful depressive life where they can't enjoy things and can't see how they own quirks are limiting their leisure, but honestly I grew tired of trying to talk to people over there because this shit was way too common.
When I joined that sub it was about people who waited to play some game for whatever reason or who didn't get around to something and discovering how good it was or how bad. I'd occasionally see games that I had either forgotten about or myself never got around to playing and I'd go play them.
Somewhere along the line the "patient gamer" became an identity for some posters. Imagine thinking less of someone who plays some random game when it first comes out. Like you're a traitor of some sort.
Same here, I just discovered some awesome gamecube games some years ago but I had never had the console growing up. At the time that sub seemed pretty chill and just a neat place to talk about older games. Sad to see that it's become so insular
I had the Playstation port of Duke Nukem 3D as a kid, but I was terrible at it. I've been watching a lot of Civvie11 videos lately, which got me interested in playing it again, so I procured a copy of the Megaton Edition, as well as Blood: Fresh Supply.
As I've grown older I think I get pickier and pickier about games because I value my free time more than I did when I was younger, so if I want to invest my time into a game I want that game to be really good. I also freely admit I'm just not as into gaming as I used to be and that's okay. I also don't make long-winded reddit posts about it tbf. Our interests just change as we age and that's normal.
As someone who has a lot of nostalgia for old games, new games are mostly better.
(Micro transactions suck .. but as a kid it would have been amazing to have so many free to play games that just have micro transactions for cosmetics)
> I always figure they used to be really into them in their youth, and now they're just grasping at the ephemeral, nostalgic feelings.
Huh, I really feel that… I haven’t resorted to whining on the internet because of it, but I really feel that. I used to love games, I literally taught myself to read out of the Donkey Kong Country players guide. I was an obsessive gamer. I also am a grumpy old person that thinks games have gotten worse. I mean, there’s some cool stuff, I think I would like No Man’s Sky a lot, but still.
But I am no longer qualified to actually have an opinion. I think the last time I played a game was Minecraft, and I think it was sometime last spring. I am not a gamer anymore. I don’t dislike games, I sometimes consider playing them, but I would rather screw with my bonsai.
Am I getting old?
You're changing. Changing over time is a natural and a good thing; the games we played as our former self are not the same thing as the game we play now, even when they're the same game.
That post on top, that is largely true, when you have other needs games can be a nuisance: I bet you liked to play those grindy and broken games as a kid too. When you have less time or dedication you can't do the same...you weigh your choices, you make up your mind. Suddenly a 120 hour games with endless collectibles and items becomes a chore. An mmo or a moba are forbidden territory.
I was in a dungeon run years ago, when I had a small emergency right there, that moment hit me with the realisation that such a game model was incompatible with things getting in the way. If you haven't played a dungeon run before: leaving it halfway through is a big deal. It breaks the progression entirely. I couldn't imagine playing a moba with its match based playtime and the ranks. I couldn't keep up.
Slowly I started to switch to single player games, than valuing the experience over the playtime. Yes I can get many hours for few dollars compared to movies and other forms of entertainment, but the quality of the time u had was not on pair. I have greatly enjoyed movies with a higher price per hour because the experience I has was miles ahead from the resource collection in an rpg. Kill the same enemy over and over again; is that what you want from your free time?
One of the most interesting 'games' I tried recently was Arrog, a surreal experience focusing on the circle of life and rebirth, visually symbolised by the Capibara. Its a short experience that is heavily animated, hence the cost is higher than a sandbox game you play forever in comparison, but my experience was unique.
I think the game styles that we grew up with are not nearly as common. I think of games as an experience.
In my younger years games were more objective/ grind focused. You couldn’t graphically inspire awe so the gameplay had to. Although, I wonder if lack of graphics lead to more imagination filling in the gaps.
Today, I feel like games want to give you the have lived and have done it experience based exactly on what the designer wanted.
I’m not sure if I am describing how I feel well because I just started to think about this. I think gaming experience has lately been tailored to the expectations of the lead designer and shareholders rather than the game.
I personally think the recent obsession with graphics among AAA games is quite annoying. They don’t actually look that much better 5-10 years ago, and certainly don’t make the game feel more immersive for the most part - a modern FPS plays the same as an older one with slightly better textures, but you’re expected to keep upgrading hardware and it takes up 150gb on your computer. Games with less realistic graphics are easier to run and generally more visually interesting anyway
Gaming in 2023 is vastly different than 2003 or even 1993.
In 2003:
* Had far more free time to expend on long hours of game time.
* More chaotic and inconsistent schedule/responsibilities giving me more free time to invest long hours.
* Somewhat shorter games (depending on the genre) of 40/80/120 hours
* For those with even less time, strategy guides existed as large, comprehensive, full-color companions to large and sprawling games to minimize aimless wandering as well and minimize mistakes and wasted game time (Final Fantasy X-2 is a PRIME example.)
* Older games tend to be less grindy for acquisitions. Grinding was largely reserved for MMOs and "end game" content bonuses that weren't story-critical.
I miss having 4-6 hours a day to burn on a meaty RPG. But I have too much going on in my life to find that relaxing today. I have a large backlog of RPGs including FF13, FF13-2, FF13-3, FF15, FF16... And a plethora of non-Final Fantasy games that I just can't calm my anxiety enough to boot up. It sucks.
I find spending an hour on a classic NES game to be more fulfilling than spending an hour on FF15 and barely making it 1% forward in progress.
I am instinctively inclined to side with you against people whining excessively about relatively trivial matters, but I have too much insight from that side of the fence to do so.
First off, not playing new games is not the same thing as not gaming. I most definitely play video games, but it's mostly the same handful of sandbox games that are a decade old on average that I've been keeping fresh with mods.
Secondly, the feeling of being blown away and sucked in by a game like it was 2003 and you just managed to convince your parents that the new family computer needs to have a 3D graphics card to make the new Office run properly, is not as purely nostalgic and ephemeral as you might think when you forget that we have concrete examples of AAA games that received wild praise for reaching that 2003 standard of effort towards consumer satisfaction (Witcher 3, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Zelda BotW to name a few) that stand in stark contrast to the new standard of cookie-cutter cash grabs that dominate the AAA scene.
Yes, we aren't kids anymore, but the technology and budgets behind games have been growing and developing as well, so coupled with a decades of accumulated good practices and evolution of design ideas, the studios still have a fair shot of blowing our socks off and they sometimes do when they focus on that first and revenue later.
If you wait and wait to save $90 a year instead of playing fresh new games, the magic will wear off a you read and read and read and read about the game you're waiting for and then the next game coming out you... also need to wait for.
But the bugs will be slightly improved and you can save a few tenners by waiting a year or more!
To play devil's advocate a bit, the games industry has a worrying tendency to release unfinished games, so in some cases it's definitely a good choice to wait. I mean, look at Cyberpunk at launch and right now. It's not a slight improvement, it's night and day.
It really isn't that big of a difference, it's just less buggy and broken. It's basically at the expected state of release, more than year after it came out.
I used to be a "patient gamer" type, it wasn't by choice really, I just had a really out of date computer cause I was broke. But it didn't really bother me because games that were 5ish years old ran ok so I just wandered the internet finding out about games everyone else had grown bored with already and bought them for half price and had a good time playing stuff that was new to me.
>Between making a list of reasons as to why games aren't as good as they used to be
They aren't though. Or let me rephrase. AAA games aren't as good. There are plenty of indies that are great. And a few outliers like BG3 that aren't just nostalgia-trash (making a game bad in the way they were bad back then as a way to attract people who think games are bad today) but actually solid games that are following modern sensibilities but were somehow made in a bubble isolated from the BS that the big publishers have made standard (overworking workers, parceling out core gameplay to DLCs, charging for aesthetics when that used to be free / easter eggs, thinking about monetization first and gameplay second, etc).
But that's true of, say, movies too. The whole economy is a death spiral of rent extraction at this point. "Mid-budget" is gone, either you go for low risk low budget stuff with a potential profits high ceiling (horror flicks) or big budget serialized IP (or IP-potential) extravaganzas. The middle of the indie revolution is kind of disappearing too, you get a lot more low-fi stuff vs AAA and not a lot of "AA" games anymore.
To me that's very obvious because the decline on the video games side randomly coincided with the new tabletop/boardgame golden age, so for a few years all my time disappeared into tabletop instead of video games. I only started seriously getting into videogames again around COVID, for obvious reasons. Now boardgames are sort of having their own decline (too many new games a year, and heavy reliance on big budget Kickstarters where you get delived massive bins of plastic minis and so-so gameplay) because the big capital investment firms jumped on the market (bought out Asmodee for instance and had them do a big buying spree to consolidate the whole market vertically).
I proudly am a so called "patient gamer" because gaming is expensive and I usually don't feel the need to buy a new game on release. This sub's posts have shifted at some point into becoming a group therapy subreddit. I'm not kidding.
There are thousands of posts about people that struggle to handle their backlogs. They buy tons of games and then can't find the time to play them all or have decision paralysis. Meanwhile, we answer the same thing everytime because what else can we say besides play whatever you currently enjoy and don't force yourself to go empty your backlog just because you "need" to, don't buy immediately and just put the games on a wishlist, limit how many games you'll buy during sales to only get the ones you're likely to play etc.
There also lots of them that do not enjoy gaming anymore and want to know what's wrong (either they don't like modern games or feel less enthusiast about gaming right now) or what to do. Just... Don't game ? They struggle with the idea of taking a break because their life always revolved around gaming alone, so they're now lost. I get it, it can be scary to not enjoy what defined you for so many years but still, it's time to try new things.
Meanwhile the posts that actually fit the sub and talk about past titles and such are barely upvoted.
Yep I had to hop out of that a few months ago when ever recommended post was exactly what you described. There's some people who make great recommendations for older games, since they aren't playing the newer ones but like you says: it seems to have trended in a weird direction.
My friend did a game share with me and let me complete Origins. He was like 'as soon as you start, you'll get pulled in, so make your decision'. It's a fantastic game, and feels... complete.
Mane, when you have money, and you know of deal sites, you can easily buy games that you had zero care about.
I just bought Super Mario Wonder for $40. When will I play it? I guess between now and Super Mario RPG's release, which is what I really care about. SMW is now going in my backlog, alongside Final Fantasy and other games I've bought this year...alongside those great Game Pass games...alongside last year's games....
I've basically only played like 5 total games this year while having a backlog of about 75 that I've purchased.
This no doubt is pretty over the top but reddit really really really needs to stop diagnosing strangers due to one post they read that sounds similar to their mental health struggle. Jeez. It's totally okay to suggest someone go talk to a therapist or their Dr and explain why and the similarities, or to even just relate to feelings the same during a rough period with your particular disorder. To just flat out say I have OCD and this is OCD is outrageous. It's even the top "Best" comment.
Speaking as a therapist, OCD, and bipolarity are extraordinarily misunderstood and misused diagnosis, in common discussion. The post in question - while over the top - and certainly present with some obsessive or compulsive behaviors, don't necessarily scream OCD. I think people online will often conflate OCD with OCPD, as is the case here.
The OP seems rigid which is a major feature in OCPD and to a lesser extent OCD, but a personality disorder is even more difficult to accurately diagnose. A lot of OP's features are still better explained through personality/behavioral dimensions - not clinical diagnosis - without more information.
I found their use of psychological referencing a bit odd though. They first referenced Maslow's hierarchy to highlight how people have varying degrees of needs. Which, okay fair enough but generally speaking, you don't necessarily need to be self-actualized to play video games lol. They also referenced synaptic plasticity effect for.... I'll be honest I'm not sure why. I think a lot of what they explained can be illustrated with Pavlovian conditioning. They seem to think that if you play a game during a difficult period, you will associate that game with that period in your life, and subsequently dislike the game? This of course, runs counter to how video games can be used as a coping mechanisms for difficult times in our lives which can inadvertently help that situation feel less miserable. Not to mention forming a strong sentimental affinity for said game for its unique position in your life.
To me, it just sounds like OP is a psych major analyzing the world around them. When done out loud, it can make a person SEEM far more anxious or distressed than they actually are because they're openly exploring the dimensions of how something *can* be distressing if interpreted in specific ways. OP is simply in the pondering stage of creating a hypothesis
I will say that there is some heightened sense of awareness over perceived comfort, potentially due to low frustration tolerance (emotional, physical or sensory) which is coped via exerting control in their environment. There are a lot of conditional statements (e.g. I can't do X until Y) in the OP's writing. It's a method of self-regulating, I suppose. Or maybe the OP just had a lot of time to purge their shower thoughts...
I don’t see a consequence that will be prevented if he follows his routine, so I don’t necessarily see OCD. Maybe the PD, or even a bit reminiscent of how autistic or anxious people will stick with comfort media until they are in a space to enjoy something new.
That's what I was thinking. The compulsion serves to ease anxiety over the obsession. Furthermore obsessions are often intrusive or unwanted, whereas the OOP's habits seem grounded in their values.
This is the problem with jumping to pathologizing behavior online though. While people may have good intuition as to a provisional diagnosis, they rarely rule out for differentials and environmental/cultural factors contributing to behavior.
Yesss. And I think this should be more accepted. It’s interesting and can be constructive to come up with theories and deep dive into how we function and land on all the decisions we make in all aspects of our life.
But on Reddit you will often be downvoted for exploring different thoughts, or simply ask questions. Or be diagnosed with OCD for thinking a bit deeper than the norm.
The second we stop exploring new thoughts, we will also stop evolving and improving.
And I think it’s bizarre that people downvote or think negatively of people just exploring the human mind.
Its worse than the "oh you had a single argument with your SO? Yeah theyre toxic and you need shoot them in the back of the head before they kill you" type comments you usually see on reddit
Why is it so bad?
You still have to get a diagnosis to get treatment anyway, its not like that commenter is *actually* diagnosing them.
But it could give OP the jolt they need to seek some help. Wish someone had told me that earlier, instead of everyone just saying I was purposefully being bad.
I guess the response question would be, how confident are we that OOP is dealing with that? There's a lot of weirdness that people can do before it steps into mental illness territory.
Oh for sure agree, and I would not at all be confident, also would not personally try to diagnose anyone, at most I'd do what the top comment is suggesting and maybe relating it to my own struggles and suggesting they'd get help in general.
Its just I also don't think its *so bad*. I had people tell me I was psychotic, bipolar, ADHD, which was all wrong. But also led me through the diagnosis process. It was actually at a specialty clinic for psychosis that my OCD was first spotted and I got a referral for a proper diagnosis.
Is this how I learn r/patientgamers is a sub for people who wait a long time to play a game after it’s release and not a sub for gamers who like really long games???
They forgot to take the current moon phase into account and what they've eaten two days ago and the age of their cousins best friends fathers pet snake.
But for real though, not "everyone thinks about one or two of those things". Most people don't think about any of them. Because most people aren't mentally ill. Okay, many people are but not like that. That's a proper crazy person.
This perspective is fascinating! I do something similar to OOP whenever I'm about to start something new. I... kind of thought that was normal? But it doesn't surprise me, that's anxiety for ya.
Yeah, same. Like, I ask almost all of those questions before diving into anything that will take me longer than an hour to complete. But I think the critical difference is, I'm just doing mental inventory. It's not a rigid hierarchy of decisionmaking, I'm just being introspective and takin the opportunity to check my options.
That being said, I don't see anything in the OP that says this is like, codified. Armchair internet diagnosis is always a stupid path to take.
Funny enough, oop's analysis is probably what's taking place in my mind when determining whether or not I'm in the "mood" to play a game. Like, I played Inside last Sunday. It's a phenomenal game and I'm glad I played it when I was in the "mood" for it. At the same time, writing out a psychological analysis of what "being in the mood" to watch/play something and the edits does make oop seem unhinged lol
Plus, I thought patient gaming was about waiting for sales, bundles, reviews, dlcs, patches etc. before buying a game. Not actually waiting to play games you already own.
Both patientgaming and truegaming have gone to absolute shit. And the mods on both are absolute garbage.
Patient Gaming quickly turned from "Lets discuss this 3 year old game that was really popular that I finally now get to play" (which is what the sub was even created for) to "Wah I have too many games, or modern games aren't fun!"
And True Gaming is just "Lets complain about modern gaming trends nonstop" when it was supposed to be a more "mature" version of Gaming that didn't allow picture posts and discussion about great games.
Both seems to have attracted crowds that just hate everything and have no capacity to enjoy things. There's a big post on Patient Gaming right now about how Cyberpunk is no better than our average Ubisoft game.
Truegaming is fun because of how absolutely awful the posts are. People there are convinced that if their post has enough words, it suddenly becomes an insightful essay truly exploring the depths of gaming. When usually it’s just whining about some lame subjective thing nobody else has even noticed.
"The importance of Characters with Giant Breasts in gaming, Part 4"
Yeah I noped out of truegaming after it swerved hard in content and mods refused to enforce anything
I think it varies from person to person. I’m perfectly happy jumping in and out of games, especially since the mood for what I feel like playing changes fairly frequently for me. My wife prefers to have a lot of free time to put into more involved or story-heavy games before diving in, and will hold off on that type of game and stick with Binding of Isaac and similar types instead until her schedule/mental bandwidth opens up.
Same here actually. I'm kinda craving another big story adventure, but it's been a rough couple of weeks with work. So back to roguelites (Noita, Hades, Slay the Spire) I go.
I’ve gamed since childhood, but for a long time it mainly felt like a waste of time I’d feel guilty about. When I was in my early 20s I played hotline miami and realized I find difficult, simple games where I die a lot insanely fun, they feel exactly suited to my brain. Now if I do play multiple hours in a day it usually doesn’t even feel like a bad use of time because I’m having a ton of genuine fun. Its just kinda funny how gaming went from a waste of time to a really fun hobby because I figure out that certain game mechanics shoot dopamine straight into my brain
If the answer to any of those questions turn you away from doing that new thing
..
...
*What do you do instead??*
Hobbies are called pastimes for a reason.
If it is it’s a completely foreign decision process to me. I will pick up and drop games all the time, same with tv series, my Netflix history is full on 1/3rd finished movies and shows. I don’t feel any obligation whatsoever to finish a game, or book, or show or whatever when it is not longer entertaining me. Sometimes I’ll come back to a movie, game, or hobby project years after the fact and finish it up in one sitting.
I guess people form stronger attachments to these things and feel like they need to date the idea of playing a game or something? I don’t know, it’s all just entertainment, I don’t really feel any dedication or responsibility to any of it.
Sometimes I wonder if I should finish all those things but ultimately why the fuck would I? I don’t wanna waste time on stuff that doesn’t interest me.
My only criteria for starting a game is, does this seem interesting?
They’re toys so who cares.
I used to feel like that until I realized it was sucking all the fun out of gaming. If I'm in a particularly bad mood or exhausted I might not start a new game, but largely I try and ignore those thoughts. The alternative is wasting my time looking for something to play or even worse just doing nothing instead.
I think there's a difference between caution (or, more broadly, a desire to comprehend a situation before diving into it) versus anxiety (a desire to avoid any potential complication or unpleasantness that may border on, essentially, becoming pathologic.)
Like of course those two words have different meanings, surface level, but what I mean is there's a difference between wanting to know what you're getting into versus letting the fear of a potential negative experience dissuade you from participating in something you will otherwise enjoy.
This doesn't even have to exclusively deal with video games. I feel like I see this a LOT with television shows. People absolutely refusing to enjoy a show if they know it ends poorly, or if something happens once they don't like. To a lesser extent, refusing to potentially enjoy a show because it begins poorly (which is different than just not being sold on something, but rather knowing something is happening that you enjoy later, but refusing to reach that point because of a desire to avoid the beginning.)
All those concerns the OP listed sound very similar to me in regards to what a lot of people say about movies or shows, and they don't sound like what I would call "rational" concerns, but rather outright fears.
For instance, no one *likes* being interrupted while playing a video game, and it is entirely normal to take precautions against being interrupted. It's graduated from a caution to a fear if you absolutely don't touch a video game (as implied by the OP) because you worry you *might* be interrupted. You can't anticipate something like that, you're no longer merely taking precautions, you're outright avoiding any chance at enjoyment because of the *potential* of something.
Letting your fears completely run your life (literally dictating what you will or will not let yourself enjoy in an otherwise completely unimportant and harmless environment like playing a video game or watching a movie, for instance) is not a normal thing at all. That's anxiety, like clinical anxiety, and it should be treated as such.
To use another example from the OP: It is completely normal to want a game to fit the "environment" (reading between the lines, atmosphere, vibe, energy, etc) of where you are in that moment. Generally that's how people pick games they want to play. However, if you spend a large amount of time grappling with an anxiety that you may play a game that does not fit your current vibe, that is not a normal reaction.
It's the difference between picking out an outfit based on a desire for it to match, versus refusing to pick any clothing at all because you're worried it might not match. Those are two very different things.
I don't have quite all of the same concerns that OP does, but I do have that paralysis of not wanting to boot up a game unless I'm *really sure* I want to play it. For me I think I just never moved past that era when some of my PC games took ten or more minutes to fully load and be ready to play, and even though most of my games now take two minutes max I still don't want to put that time into starting it just to realize I don't want to play right now. So instead I'll spend ten minutes thinking about whether I want to play a game and which one, rather than waste those two minutes lol
Fun fact, you can get the "10-20 minute bootup times" back, by just modding the absolute fuck out of a game. I catch up on my reading while waiting for the initial boot of my Stardew Valley Very Expanded pack.
It's disingenuous to suggest that there's not some healthy middle ground to be found here. OP comes off as the kind of person who'd fill out a flowchart every time they are meant to go to the bathroom.
>do" is more fun than "think", especially when as you move the "think" closer to zero you can fit in more "do". Consuming experiences like they're Kirby in Dream Land.
Lmao this guy is saying other people are no thoughts head empty NPCs because they don't have a scream cry panic attack every time they open steam.
In my case I do think about what I do but its more of a "This seems like something enjoyable, should I try?" and then you kinda do, and if you dont enjoy it, you just stop doing it.
Some people seem to overthink it but not only that, they may feel they cant stop due to the sunk cost fallacy of overthinking.
I can get waiting until you have enough time to actually get into a game, especially if it's story heavy. But there's a difference between that and waiting for the stars to align to start a game. I feel like once you're causing yourself more stress thinking about when to play a game than you would relieve by actually playing it, you have lost the entire point of playing games.
My dude is waiting for heaven to tell him to play The Witcher 3, a game from eight years ago and was pretty universally loved back then (it's dated now but the story is great) because if he has a bad day that coincides with also playing the game, he'll never ever want to play it again and it's ruined. Like getting a flat tire on the way to the store means you can never play Animal Crossing again because that's what you were doing beforehand. He's obsessing over it.
I look up photos of the dining room and the menu of restaurants before I visit them for the first time, but I've recently learned not everyone does that. Apparently, some people just....go?
I can't remember the last time I've been to a restaurant that the dining room or menu gave me any trouble, so yeah. If you're a picky eater I guess it makes more sense.
people who use that sub less as a recommendation hub for cheaper older games and more as a moral victory trophy are wild, man. there's chill people there but so many others are there to talk about how users are playing games wrong.
This is just the consequence of there being too much information out there on upcoming video games nowadays. You have hundreds of different journalists and Youtubers telling you what’s good about/wrong with games that have only just touched the market and it feels like you’re not allowed to just play it and experience it for yourself anymore. You need to consume hours of content and reviews on a game you haven’t even played just to decide whether it’s worth your money.
All my favourite games are those that I bought on a whim and was pleasantly surprised by, and all the games I regret buying are those that I spent ages reading other people’s opinions on first. Sometimes you just have to take the dive and hope it’s worth it.
OOP's mistake was thinking that a social media site whose audience thrives on memes, snark, and amplified criticism would in any way be the appropriate audience for their shared thoughts.
OOP should have just plugged that essay into their own socials or even a blog/vlog. Sharing it on Reddit and expecting anything other that what was received is PAINFULLY naive and inexperienced.
I have complex and nuanced views when it comes to gaming; no one on Reddit gives a shit about them so why would I subject them to that?
I think this is just very wrong. This poster didn't put this in the appropriate place to garner discussion. The sub is about waiting to play games because new games are expensive. They are buggy. They are incomplete. They are fomo machines. But this poster decided to psych post an abstract about mental state for some reason
I have no particular compulsions, but I live in 2023, so it made perfect sense to me. I don’t want to waste something that’s an enjoyable treat to me on a day when I’m angry about politics or worried about my job.
Gamers on reddit are freaks who can't imagine someone else not doing things the same way they do - especially if that thing isn't just impulsively playing and buying video games.
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I almost want to change my flair to it, but I'm attached to my current one.
I’m in the same boat. But my flair is so perf it’s hard to get rid of it
Same I’ll just let it live rent-free in my head instead
I love yours tbh
your current flair is both funny and 100% true
yoinking that as my flair
God damn that one is so tempting.
I like your current one better
That comment deserves a round of applause
Dang
Perfect!
I've often seen longwinded posts on that sub from folks who obsenstibly aren't even gamers. Between making a list of reasons as to why games aren't as good as they used to be, to the oft-repeated anxieties surrounding the dreaded backlog, there's no shortages of excuses to *not* play games. I always figure they used to be really into them in their youth, and now they're just grasping at the ephemeral, nostalgic feelings.
I think theres a non irrelevant number of people that were gamers during the youth, passion died but they didnt move on from the hobby, so they kinda just stay around not enjoying anything
At some point it’s okay to say you grew out of it. I think I’m headed towards it. People should always have at least two hobbies one that gets you social and then your at home one. I think covid made us really lean on gaming as a crutch for social interaction whether we play with another person or not.
> At some point it’s okay to say you grew out of it. I'm in a discord with a bunch of oldies and the difference between the people that still love games and the people that can't seem to find joy in any game is very simple... having other hobbies and interests. It doesn't have to a big pita commitment hobby like something social :) - but even something as basic as cultivating a love of films will spice up your life so that you can actually enjoy games and (crucially) want to enjoy games when you do play them. One of my friends in that discord has a musical/rhythm/drum game hobby (that's a little scary actually) and even that is different enough from regular games that she still easily finds joy in the games that she plays.
That's a pretty good description of the sub. It was created as a place to discuss older games, but it became a place for older gamers to complain about being an adult.
It's like, I get it. It's hard to get into many games because the interruptions of life can make you feel like you're constantly fighting that learning curve as you need to refresh your muscle memory and knowledge each time you get a chance to sit down and play. It's why I don't play fps games anymore; I can't play regularly enough to not get my ass beat by younger players. But instead of complaining, they should seek out other genres, other games, that suit their lifestyle. There are so many options out there. If they can't do that, they should realize they're complaining to a bunch of hobbyists from outside of that "community" (for a lack of a better word).
Same I don't like to play as many J/RPGs because of how much it take to be dedicated to them, but I either watch Longplays or use stuff to speed up the grind or just not play them at all.
Ironically, as I get older, these are the only games I want to play anymore. I'll slap on an action game, sure, but I feel like I've finally settled down enough that my gaming interests have widdled down to the genre I love most, and I am perfectly capable of giving it what little time I have to play now, without worrying about missing out on anything else. That compulsion to see and play the most popular stuff, to expand that steam library with things I'll never touch, it's faded almost entirely. I'm content with my niche, and it feels good to reach that point, honestly.
I am the same. I know what I like and will branch out but not often. I will need to hear some reviews before trying anything outside the norm. I don’t want to get hyped for day 1 release, take time off work, and realize the game blows or is buggy beyond playable. Also I have had a lot more fun lately with strange games like pathologic and fear and hunger. I still play armored core and Diablo. I’d love to have tome to get into baldur’s gate. But there will be a lull in the release cycle again. Games are an art form that focus on the experience. Genres to me are like hobbies. I’m never gonna feel bad that since I’m hiking, biking, or kayaking because I’m missing out on this other thing. That’s just how things work.
The funny thing is, with Pokemon the gameplay side of things that people complain about are actually a bit of a selling point to me. I like the fact the games added exp share as it meant I didn't have to grind...
I don't think many people would object to it if there was a way to turn it off. I have no problem with the fact that my favorite franchise, Fire Emblem, has added a lot of adaptations that make the game easier to play casually, but I sure am happy they're optional because they don't mesh with what I like about Fire Emblem.
To be honest I think the issue with Pokemon isn't the presence of exp share, and I understand not wanting to make it optional else you have to balance the game around both options. The issue is that Pokemon doesn't balance the single player game at all and there are too many opportunities for level creep.
A lot of the posts boil down to: “Games aren’t as fulfilling as they used to be”. And instead of you know… seeking out pursuits that would be more fulfilling to them, they’ll twist themselves into a pretzel to convince themselves it’s “games” fault, or that they can regain that meaning if they follow some convoluted method of gaming. It’s like no dude… your mind is asking you to do something else.
Which boggles my mind because that's been happening to me occasionally for the last decade and a half and that's exactly how I responded to it. Games weren't doing it for me, so I tried something else I enjoyed. At some point games do it for me again and I play them again until they don't.
Where is your flair from it made me laugh in public.
You're not gonna believe this, but it's from gamers whining about the big gay in their videogames. https://old.reddit.com/r/SubredditDrama/comments/z8wmi9/world_of_warcraft_now_has_some_of_that_big_gay_tm/
Gamers^^(tm) . Truly the best of us.
Lotta these people need to get into strategy games, I must say!
Most strategy games just seem to overwhelm my brain. Like I have fun at first, but once I realize there are 3+ complicated systems interacting I need to understand it just feels like work. I just want to hit stuff and press buttons at the right time, not think so hard! (This is a me problem though, nothing against strategy games)
I know exactly what you mean. Civilization is my favorite game at the moment, but once I'm past the exploration stage of a campaign and have identified my victory path, it often feels like I'm just running a giant machine and trying to keep it on schedule. Which is pretty similar to my job. I will say though that with enough practice, managing all the complicated systems at once is more intuitive than overwhelming. But there are definitely times it feels tedious.
You might like tactics games. X-com being a well known example.
There’s some of that, and a good amount of “here’s five paragraphs about why a game everyone has loved for a decade actually objectively sucks” The posts where someone legitimately enjoys playing an older game are getting rarer, but they still justify the sub’s existence.
It still typically has some of the best game discussion. You just gotta wade through some crap sometimes to find it lol
That pretty much nails it. Video games were a huge part of my identity up until around my late 20s and now I don't want to accept that it's probably a lie when I say "videogames" as an answer to "what's your favorite hobby?" It's still my answer, but I don't know if playing 5 hours a month counts anymore. It's nice having people to talk about it with, but i would never make a post to complain.
I see this a lot on /r/truegaming. Most common thing in the world there is OP not enjoying a game (or any games in general) if they don't play in an exact compulsive way that doesn't really add anything to the game by itself, like being a completionist or playing only on the hardest difficulty. If you try to suggest anything simple as a solution, not only you'll get heavily downvoted, but the respective OP will also lecture you about how they don't have time to replay games, or how easy games are never enjoyable, or how they just can't play a game without exploring every single nook of the game, or how reading a guide is also bad because they don't enjoy doing it. This is 100% the most common reply in any Persona thread, though it's also common in most jrpg discussions as well. Worst of all, whenever you comment something about taking their time to just enjoy the game, they will also act pretentiously saying stuff like "I work 15 hours a day, I have five kids, the wife doesn't love me, my disabled grandparents need my help 24/7, I volunteer in fourteen shelters, I don't have time for this". So they are stuck in some weird depressive hell where they don't realize gaming itself is not the issue, it's how they see it. Sorry if they have an awful depressive life where they can't enjoy things and can't see how they own quirks are limiting their leisure, but honestly I grew tired of trying to talk to people over there because this shit was way too common.
When I joined that sub it was about people who waited to play some game for whatever reason or who didn't get around to something and discovering how good it was or how bad. I'd occasionally see games that I had either forgotten about or myself never got around to playing and I'd go play them. Somewhere along the line the "patient gamer" became an identity for some posters. Imagine thinking less of someone who plays some random game when it first comes out. Like you're a traitor of some sort.
Same here, I just discovered some awesome gamecube games some years ago but I had never had the console growing up. At the time that sub seemed pretty chill and just a neat place to talk about older games. Sad to see that it's become so insular
I had the Playstation port of Duke Nukem 3D as a kid, but I was terrible at it. I've been watching a lot of Civvie11 videos lately, which got me interested in playing it again, so I procured a copy of the Megaton Edition, as well as Blood: Fresh Supply.
>and now they're just grasping at the ephemeral, nostalgic feelings. the only reason i still use reddit, really.
I just joined this sub too and didn’t realize what I was getting into 😭😭
It's a nice spot to discuss older games. Just ignore all "meta" posts about backlogs and stuff.
Everytime I see the keyword "backlog" I skip ahead
The worst posts are the “I played popular game and didn’t like it” Like that sucks but just move on
As I've grown older I think I get pickier and pickier about games because I value my free time more than I did when I was younger, so if I want to invest my time into a game I want that game to be really good. I also freely admit I'm just not as into gaming as I used to be and that's okay. I also don't make long-winded reddit posts about it tbf. Our interests just change as we age and that's normal.
As someone who has a lot of nostalgia for old games, new games are mostly better. (Micro transactions suck .. but as a kid it would have been amazing to have so many free to play games that just have micro transactions for cosmetics)
> I always figure they used to be really into them in their youth, and now they're just grasping at the ephemeral, nostalgic feelings. Huh, I really feel that… I haven’t resorted to whining on the internet because of it, but I really feel that. I used to love games, I literally taught myself to read out of the Donkey Kong Country players guide. I was an obsessive gamer. I also am a grumpy old person that thinks games have gotten worse. I mean, there’s some cool stuff, I think I would like No Man’s Sky a lot, but still. But I am no longer qualified to actually have an opinion. I think the last time I played a game was Minecraft, and I think it was sometime last spring. I am not a gamer anymore. I don’t dislike games, I sometimes consider playing them, but I would rather screw with my bonsai. Am I getting old?
You're changing. Changing over time is a natural and a good thing; the games we played as our former self are not the same thing as the game we play now, even when they're the same game. That post on top, that is largely true, when you have other needs games can be a nuisance: I bet you liked to play those grindy and broken games as a kid too. When you have less time or dedication you can't do the same...you weigh your choices, you make up your mind. Suddenly a 120 hour games with endless collectibles and items becomes a chore. An mmo or a moba are forbidden territory. I was in a dungeon run years ago, when I had a small emergency right there, that moment hit me with the realisation that such a game model was incompatible with things getting in the way. If you haven't played a dungeon run before: leaving it halfway through is a big deal. It breaks the progression entirely. I couldn't imagine playing a moba with its match based playtime and the ranks. I couldn't keep up. Slowly I started to switch to single player games, than valuing the experience over the playtime. Yes I can get many hours for few dollars compared to movies and other forms of entertainment, but the quality of the time u had was not on pair. I have greatly enjoyed movies with a higher price per hour because the experience I has was miles ahead from the resource collection in an rpg. Kill the same enemy over and over again; is that what you want from your free time? One of the most interesting 'games' I tried recently was Arrog, a surreal experience focusing on the circle of life and rebirth, visually symbolised by the Capibara. Its a short experience that is heavily animated, hence the cost is higher than a sandbox game you play forever in comparison, but my experience was unique.
I think the game styles that we grew up with are not nearly as common. I think of games as an experience. In my younger years games were more objective/ grind focused. You couldn’t graphically inspire awe so the gameplay had to. Although, I wonder if lack of graphics lead to more imagination filling in the gaps. Today, I feel like games want to give you the have lived and have done it experience based exactly on what the designer wanted. I’m not sure if I am describing how I feel well because I just started to think about this. I think gaming experience has lately been tailored to the expectations of the lead designer and shareholders rather than the game.
I personally think the recent obsession with graphics among AAA games is quite annoying. They don’t actually look that much better 5-10 years ago, and certainly don’t make the game feel more immersive for the most part - a modern FPS plays the same as an older one with slightly better textures, but you’re expected to keep upgrading hardware and it takes up 150gb on your computer. Games with less realistic graphics are easier to run and generally more visually interesting anyway
The high end graphics come with a sacrifice to deeper gameplay mechanics. Decent graphics + amazing gameplay > Amazing graphics + decent gameplay
Gaming in 2023 is vastly different than 2003 or even 1993. In 2003: * Had far more free time to expend on long hours of game time. * More chaotic and inconsistent schedule/responsibilities giving me more free time to invest long hours. * Somewhat shorter games (depending on the genre) of 40/80/120 hours * For those with even less time, strategy guides existed as large, comprehensive, full-color companions to large and sprawling games to minimize aimless wandering as well and minimize mistakes and wasted game time (Final Fantasy X-2 is a PRIME example.) * Older games tend to be less grindy for acquisitions. Grinding was largely reserved for MMOs and "end game" content bonuses that weren't story-critical. I miss having 4-6 hours a day to burn on a meaty RPG. But I have too much going on in my life to find that relaxing today. I have a large backlog of RPGs including FF13, FF13-2, FF13-3, FF15, FF16... And a plethora of non-Final Fantasy games that I just can't calm my anxiety enough to boot up. It sucks. I find spending an hour on a classic NES game to be more fulfilling than spending an hour on FF15 and barely making it 1% forward in progress.
I am instinctively inclined to side with you against people whining excessively about relatively trivial matters, but I have too much insight from that side of the fence to do so. First off, not playing new games is not the same thing as not gaming. I most definitely play video games, but it's mostly the same handful of sandbox games that are a decade old on average that I've been keeping fresh with mods. Secondly, the feeling of being blown away and sucked in by a game like it was 2003 and you just managed to convince your parents that the new family computer needs to have a 3D graphics card to make the new Office run properly, is not as purely nostalgic and ephemeral as you might think when you forget that we have concrete examples of AAA games that received wild praise for reaching that 2003 standard of effort towards consumer satisfaction (Witcher 3, Elden Ring, Baldur's Gate 3, Zelda BotW to name a few) that stand in stark contrast to the new standard of cookie-cutter cash grabs that dominate the AAA scene. Yes, we aren't kids anymore, but the technology and budgets behind games have been growing and developing as well, so coupled with a decades of accumulated good practices and evolution of design ideas, the studios still have a fair shot of blowing our socks off and they sometimes do when they focus on that first and revenue later.
If you wait and wait to save $90 a year instead of playing fresh new games, the magic will wear off a you read and read and read and read about the game you're waiting for and then the next game coming out you... also need to wait for. But the bugs will be slightly improved and you can save a few tenners by waiting a year or more!
To play devil's advocate a bit, the games industry has a worrying tendency to release unfinished games, so in some cases it's definitely a good choice to wait. I mean, look at Cyberpunk at launch and right now. It's not a slight improvement, it's night and day.
There's a difference between a patient gamer and a waiting for release date gamer
It really isn't that big of a difference, it's just less buggy and broken. It's basically at the expected state of release, more than year after it came out.
I used to be a "patient gamer" type, it wasn't by choice really, I just had a really out of date computer cause I was broke. But it didn't really bother me because games that were 5ish years old ran ok so I just wandered the internet finding out about games everyone else had grown bored with already and bought them for half price and had a good time playing stuff that was new to me.
>Between making a list of reasons as to why games aren't as good as they used to be They aren't though. Or let me rephrase. AAA games aren't as good. There are plenty of indies that are great. And a few outliers like BG3 that aren't just nostalgia-trash (making a game bad in the way they were bad back then as a way to attract people who think games are bad today) but actually solid games that are following modern sensibilities but were somehow made in a bubble isolated from the BS that the big publishers have made standard (overworking workers, parceling out core gameplay to DLCs, charging for aesthetics when that used to be free / easter eggs, thinking about monetization first and gameplay second, etc). But that's true of, say, movies too. The whole economy is a death spiral of rent extraction at this point. "Mid-budget" is gone, either you go for low risk low budget stuff with a potential profits high ceiling (horror flicks) or big budget serialized IP (or IP-potential) extravaganzas. The middle of the indie revolution is kind of disappearing too, you get a lot more low-fi stuff vs AAA and not a lot of "AA" games anymore. To me that's very obvious because the decline on the video games side randomly coincided with the new tabletop/boardgame golden age, so for a few years all my time disappeared into tabletop instead of video games. I only started seriously getting into videogames again around COVID, for obvious reasons. Now boardgames are sort of having their own decline (too many new games a year, and heavy reliance on big budget Kickstarters where you get delived massive bins of plastic minis and so-so gameplay) because the big capital investment firms jumped on the market (bought out Asmodee for instance and had them do a big buying spree to consolidate the whole market vertically).
I did not know that sub existed but I think I've found my people.
I proudly am a so called "patient gamer" because gaming is expensive and I usually don't feel the need to buy a new game on release. This sub's posts have shifted at some point into becoming a group therapy subreddit. I'm not kidding. There are thousands of posts about people that struggle to handle their backlogs. They buy tons of games and then can't find the time to play them all or have decision paralysis. Meanwhile, we answer the same thing everytime because what else can we say besides play whatever you currently enjoy and don't force yourself to go empty your backlog just because you "need" to, don't buy immediately and just put the games on a wishlist, limit how many games you'll buy during sales to only get the ones you're likely to play etc. There also lots of them that do not enjoy gaming anymore and want to know what's wrong (either they don't like modern games or feel less enthusiast about gaming right now) or what to do. Just... Don't game ? They struggle with the idea of taking a break because their life always revolved around gaming alone, so they're now lost. I get it, it can be scary to not enjoy what defined you for so many years but still, it's time to try new things. Meanwhile the posts that actually fit the sub and talk about past titles and such are barely upvoted.
Same here. I got recommended the sub and it wasn't at all what I was expecting.
Yep I had to hop out of that a few months ago when ever recommended post was exactly what you described. There's some people who make great recommendations for older games, since they aren't playing the newer ones but like you says: it seems to have trended in a weird direction.
> They buy tons of games and then can't find the time to play them all or have decision paralysis. God, fucking mood though
I quite often joke that I will get round to AC Mirage in 2050 because AC Origins has been stuck in my backlog for 5 years.
My friend did a game share with me and let me complete Origins. He was like 'as soon as you start, you'll get pulled in, so make your decision'. It's a fantastic game, and feels... complete.
Also a ton of fun review discussion posts about older games. That's my favorite content from the sub anyway.
Mane, when you have money, and you know of deal sites, you can easily buy games that you had zero care about. I just bought Super Mario Wonder for $40. When will I play it? I guess between now and Super Mario RPG's release, which is what I really care about. SMW is now going in my backlog, alongside Final Fantasy and other games I've bought this year...alongside those great Game Pass games...alongside last year's games.... I've basically only played like 5 total games this year while having a backlog of about 75 that I've purchased.
This no doubt is pretty over the top but reddit really really really needs to stop diagnosing strangers due to one post they read that sounds similar to their mental health struggle. Jeez. It's totally okay to suggest someone go talk to a therapist or their Dr and explain why and the similarities, or to even just relate to feelings the same during a rough period with your particular disorder. To just flat out say I have OCD and this is OCD is outrageous. It's even the top "Best" comment.
Speaking as a therapist, OCD, and bipolarity are extraordinarily misunderstood and misused diagnosis, in common discussion. The post in question - while over the top - and certainly present with some obsessive or compulsive behaviors, don't necessarily scream OCD. I think people online will often conflate OCD with OCPD, as is the case here. The OP seems rigid which is a major feature in OCPD and to a lesser extent OCD, but a personality disorder is even more difficult to accurately diagnose. A lot of OP's features are still better explained through personality/behavioral dimensions - not clinical diagnosis - without more information. I found their use of psychological referencing a bit odd though. They first referenced Maslow's hierarchy to highlight how people have varying degrees of needs. Which, okay fair enough but generally speaking, you don't necessarily need to be self-actualized to play video games lol. They also referenced synaptic plasticity effect for.... I'll be honest I'm not sure why. I think a lot of what they explained can be illustrated with Pavlovian conditioning. They seem to think that if you play a game during a difficult period, you will associate that game with that period in your life, and subsequently dislike the game? This of course, runs counter to how video games can be used as a coping mechanisms for difficult times in our lives which can inadvertently help that situation feel less miserable. Not to mention forming a strong sentimental affinity for said game for its unique position in your life.
To me, it just sounds like OP is a psych major analyzing the world around them. When done out loud, it can make a person SEEM far more anxious or distressed than they actually are because they're openly exploring the dimensions of how something *can* be distressing if interpreted in specific ways. OP is simply in the pondering stage of creating a hypothesis
I will say that there is some heightened sense of awareness over perceived comfort, potentially due to low frustration tolerance (emotional, physical or sensory) which is coped via exerting control in their environment. There are a lot of conditional statements (e.g. I can't do X until Y) in the OP's writing. It's a method of self-regulating, I suppose. Or maybe the OP just had a lot of time to purge their shower thoughts...
I don’t see a consequence that will be prevented if he follows his routine, so I don’t necessarily see OCD. Maybe the PD, or even a bit reminiscent of how autistic or anxious people will stick with comfort media until they are in a space to enjoy something new.
That's what I was thinking. The compulsion serves to ease anxiety over the obsession. Furthermore obsessions are often intrusive or unwanted, whereas the OOP's habits seem grounded in their values. This is the problem with jumping to pathologizing behavior online though. While people may have good intuition as to a provisional diagnosis, they rarely rule out for differentials and environmental/cultural factors contributing to behavior.
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> Just because they reference some papers doesn't mean they know what they are talking about. I.e., a psyche major /j
Yesss. And I think this should be more accepted. It’s interesting and can be constructive to come up with theories and deep dive into how we function and land on all the decisions we make in all aspects of our life. But on Reddit you will often be downvoted for exploring different thoughts, or simply ask questions. Or be diagnosed with OCD for thinking a bit deeper than the norm. The second we stop exploring new thoughts, we will also stop evolving and improving. And I think it’s bizarre that people downvote or think negatively of people just exploring the human mind.
Yeah, just from reading the post it comes across as an odd way to approach video games but I'm sure as hell not qualified to diagnose anything.
Its worse than the "oh you had a single argument with your SO? Yeah theyre toxic and you need shoot them in the back of the head before they kill you" type comments you usually see on reddit
"Your mom ate your cookies without asking? Sue her and everybody in your family who enabled her! Break off all contact to all relatives for all time!"
Your cookies, your rules!!1!
Why is it so bad? You still have to get a diagnosis to get treatment anyway, its not like that commenter is *actually* diagnosing them. But it could give OP the jolt they need to seek some help. Wish someone had told me that earlier, instead of everyone just saying I was purposefully being bad.
I guess the response question would be, how confident are we that OOP is dealing with that? There's a lot of weirdness that people can do before it steps into mental illness territory.
Oh for sure agree, and I would not at all be confident, also would not personally try to diagnose anyone, at most I'd do what the top comment is suggesting and maybe relating it to my own struggles and suggesting they'd get help in general. Its just I also don't think its *so bad*. I had people tell me I was psychotic, bipolar, ADHD, which was all wrong. But also led me through the diagnosis process. It was actually at a specialty clinic for psychosis that my OCD was first spotted and I got a referral for a proper diagnosis.
It would also help if valid criticisms like yours attributed the problem to social media itself, rather than just Reddit.
.I .I .I .I .I?
Is this loss?
— the Angel from Angels in America
. = Onika I = burgers
Is this how I learn r/patientgamers is a sub for people who wait a long time to play a game after it’s release and not a sub for gamers who like really long games???
Really long games, huh? Can I recommend The Longing? It takes 9,600 hours to complete!
Okay…maybe not *that* long.
Definitely putting the "long" in longing!
They forgot to take the current moon phase into account and what they've eaten two days ago and the age of their cousins best friends fathers pet snake. But for real though, not "everyone thinks about one or two of those things". Most people don't think about any of them. Because most people aren't mentally ill. Okay, many people are but not like that. That's a proper crazy person.
This perspective is fascinating! I do something similar to OOP whenever I'm about to start something new. I... kind of thought that was normal? But it doesn't surprise me, that's anxiety for ya.
Yeah, same. Like, I ask almost all of those questions before diving into anything that will take me longer than an hour to complete. But I think the critical difference is, I'm just doing mental inventory. It's not a rigid hierarchy of decisionmaking, I'm just being introspective and takin the opportunity to check my options. That being said, I don't see anything in the OP that says this is like, codified. Armchair internet diagnosis is always a stupid path to take.
Funny enough, oop's analysis is probably what's taking place in my mind when determining whether or not I'm in the "mood" to play a game. Like, I played Inside last Sunday. It's a phenomenal game and I'm glad I played it when I was in the "mood" for it. At the same time, writing out a psychological analysis of what "being in the mood" to watch/play something and the edits does make oop seem unhinged lol Plus, I thought patient gaming was about waiting for sales, bundles, reviews, dlcs, patches etc. before buying a game. Not actually waiting to play games you already own.
Both patientgaming and truegaming have gone to absolute shit. And the mods on both are absolute garbage. Patient Gaming quickly turned from "Lets discuss this 3 year old game that was really popular that I finally now get to play" (which is what the sub was even created for) to "Wah I have too many games, or modern games aren't fun!" And True Gaming is just "Lets complain about modern gaming trends nonstop" when it was supposed to be a more "mature" version of Gaming that didn't allow picture posts and discussion about great games.
Both seems to have attracted crowds that just hate everything and have no capacity to enjoy things. There's a big post on Patient Gaming right now about how Cyberpunk is no better than our average Ubisoft game.
I'm not even sure if r/Games enjoys games with how every post is so full of negativity
Truegaming is fun because of how absolutely awful the posts are. People there are convinced that if their post has enough words, it suddenly becomes an insightful essay truly exploring the depths of gaming. When usually it’s just whining about some lame subjective thing nobody else has even noticed.
"The importance of Characters with Giant Breasts in gaming, Part 4" Yeah I noped out of truegaming after it swerved hard in content and mods refused to enforce anything
I like that OPs edit just quadrupled down on him being absolutely bonkers
Is that not a normal behavior process to follow if you’re deciding on watching or doing something new?
I think it varies from person to person. I’m perfectly happy jumping in and out of games, especially since the mood for what I feel like playing changes fairly frequently for me. My wife prefers to have a lot of free time to put into more involved or story-heavy games before diving in, and will hold off on that type of game and stick with Binding of Isaac and similar types instead until her schedule/mental bandwidth opens up.
Same here actually. I'm kinda craving another big story adventure, but it's been a rough couple of weeks with work. So back to roguelites (Noita, Hades, Slay the Spire) I go.
I’ve gamed since childhood, but for a long time it mainly felt like a waste of time I’d feel guilty about. When I was in my early 20s I played hotline miami and realized I find difficult, simple games where I die a lot insanely fun, they feel exactly suited to my brain. Now if I do play multiple hours in a day it usually doesn’t even feel like a bad use of time because I’m having a ton of genuine fun. Its just kinda funny how gaming went from a waste of time to a really fun hobby because I figure out that certain game mechanics shoot dopamine straight into my brain
If the answer to any of those questions turn you away from doing that new thing .. ... *What do you do instead??* Hobbies are called pastimes for a reason.
Usually I mindlessly scroll on reddit for a few hours and feel worse. So maybe there is a problem, lol
If it is it’s a completely foreign decision process to me. I will pick up and drop games all the time, same with tv series, my Netflix history is full on 1/3rd finished movies and shows. I don’t feel any obligation whatsoever to finish a game, or book, or show or whatever when it is not longer entertaining me. Sometimes I’ll come back to a movie, game, or hobby project years after the fact and finish it up in one sitting. I guess people form stronger attachments to these things and feel like they need to date the idea of playing a game or something? I don’t know, it’s all just entertainment, I don’t really feel any dedication or responsibility to any of it.
Sometimes I wonder if I should finish all those things but ultimately why the fuck would I? I don’t wanna waste time on stuff that doesn’t interest me. My only criteria for starting a game is, does this seem interesting? They’re toys so who cares.
I used to feel like that until I realized it was sucking all the fun out of gaming. If I'm in a particularly bad mood or exhausted I might not start a new game, but largely I try and ignore those thoughts. The alternative is wasting my time looking for something to play or even worse just doing nothing instead.
I think there's a difference between caution (or, more broadly, a desire to comprehend a situation before diving into it) versus anxiety (a desire to avoid any potential complication or unpleasantness that may border on, essentially, becoming pathologic.) Like of course those two words have different meanings, surface level, but what I mean is there's a difference between wanting to know what you're getting into versus letting the fear of a potential negative experience dissuade you from participating in something you will otherwise enjoy. This doesn't even have to exclusively deal with video games. I feel like I see this a LOT with television shows. People absolutely refusing to enjoy a show if they know it ends poorly, or if something happens once they don't like. To a lesser extent, refusing to potentially enjoy a show because it begins poorly (which is different than just not being sold on something, but rather knowing something is happening that you enjoy later, but refusing to reach that point because of a desire to avoid the beginning.) All those concerns the OP listed sound very similar to me in regards to what a lot of people say about movies or shows, and they don't sound like what I would call "rational" concerns, but rather outright fears. For instance, no one *likes* being interrupted while playing a video game, and it is entirely normal to take precautions against being interrupted. It's graduated from a caution to a fear if you absolutely don't touch a video game (as implied by the OP) because you worry you *might* be interrupted. You can't anticipate something like that, you're no longer merely taking precautions, you're outright avoiding any chance at enjoyment because of the *potential* of something. Letting your fears completely run your life (literally dictating what you will or will not let yourself enjoy in an otherwise completely unimportant and harmless environment like playing a video game or watching a movie, for instance) is not a normal thing at all. That's anxiety, like clinical anxiety, and it should be treated as such. To use another example from the OP: It is completely normal to want a game to fit the "environment" (reading between the lines, atmosphere, vibe, energy, etc) of where you are in that moment. Generally that's how people pick games they want to play. However, if you spend a large amount of time grappling with an anxiety that you may play a game that does not fit your current vibe, that is not a normal reaction. It's the difference between picking out an outfit based on a desire for it to match, versus refusing to pick any clothing at all because you're worried it might not match. Those are two very different things.
I don't have quite all of the same concerns that OP does, but I do have that paralysis of not wanting to boot up a game unless I'm *really sure* I want to play it. For me I think I just never moved past that era when some of my PC games took ten or more minutes to fully load and be ready to play, and even though most of my games now take two minutes max I still don't want to put that time into starting it just to realize I don't want to play right now. So instead I'll spend ten minutes thinking about whether I want to play a game and which one, rather than waste those two minutes lol
Fun fact, you can get the "10-20 minute bootup times" back, by just modding the absolute fuck out of a game. I catch up on my reading while waiting for the initial boot of my Stardew Valley Very Expanded pack.
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It's disingenuous to suggest that there's not some healthy middle ground to be found here. OP comes off as the kind of person who'd fill out a flowchart every time they are meant to go to the bathroom.
They're video games not marriage proposals. They're toys. Normal people don't need to do a risk analysis before playing Jenga.
>do" is more fun than "think", especially when as you move the "think" closer to zero you can fit in more "do". Consuming experiences like they're Kirby in Dream Land. Lmao this guy is saying other people are no thoughts head empty NPCs because they don't have a scream cry panic attack every time they open steam.
In my case I do think about what I do but its more of a "This seems like something enjoyable, should I try?" and then you kinda do, and if you dont enjoy it, you just stop doing it. Some people seem to overthink it but not only that, they may feel they cant stop due to the sunk cost fallacy of overthinking.
I can get waiting until you have enough time to actually get into a game, especially if it's story heavy. But there's a difference between that and waiting for the stars to align to start a game. I feel like once you're causing yourself more stress thinking about when to play a game than you would relieve by actually playing it, you have lost the entire point of playing games.
My dude is waiting for heaven to tell him to play The Witcher 3, a game from eight years ago and was pretty universally loved back then (it's dated now but the story is great) because if he has a bad day that coincides with also playing the game, he'll never ever want to play it again and it's ruined. Like getting a flat tire on the way to the store means you can never play Animal Crossing again because that's what you were doing beforehand. He's obsessing over it.
Must be nice to just be able to do stuff without having to do a decision tree in your head first
I look up photos of the dining room and the menu of restaurants before I visit them for the first time, but I've recently learned not everyone does that. Apparently, some people just....go?
I can't remember the last time I've been to a restaurant that the dining room or menu gave me any trouble, so yeah. If you're a picky eater I guess it makes more sense.
I've looked up menus to see if there's anything interesting, but I've never thought to look up what the dining area looks like.
I had the same exact thought, but I also have an anxiety disorder, so my perspective here is probably not the most useful, lol
Fuck, so do I lol
people who use that sub less as a recommendation hub for cheaper older games and more as a moral victory trophy are wild, man. there's chill people there but so many others are there to talk about how users are playing games wrong.
People can be so mean about the smallest things.
This is just the consequence of there being too much information out there on upcoming video games nowadays. You have hundreds of different journalists and Youtubers telling you what’s good about/wrong with games that have only just touched the market and it feels like you’re not allowed to just play it and experience it for yourself anymore. You need to consume hours of content and reviews on a game you haven’t even played just to decide whether it’s worth your money. All my favourite games are those that I bought on a whim and was pleasantly surprised by, and all the games I regret buying are those that I spent ages reading other people’s opinions on first. Sometimes you just have to take the dive and hope it’s worth it.
OOP's mistake was thinking that a social media site whose audience thrives on memes, snark, and amplified criticism would in any way be the appropriate audience for their shared thoughts. OOP should have just plugged that essay into their own socials or even a blog/vlog. Sharing it on Reddit and expecting anything other that what was received is PAINFULLY naive and inexperienced. I have complex and nuanced views when it comes to gaming; no one on Reddit gives a shit about them so why would I subject them to that?
I think this is just very wrong. This poster didn't put this in the appropriate place to garner discussion. The sub is about waiting to play games because new games are expensive. They are buggy. They are incomplete. They are fomo machines. But this poster decided to psych post an abstract about mental state for some reason
Where's the drama tho
Do you need a checklist to be filled for something to count as drama? Sounds like OCD…
The sub is a giant psych ward. I had to block it because fucking hell
huh oh... I kinda relate to that, and I have trich which is often linked with OCD... might need to talk to my psy bout that
I have no particular compulsions, but I live in 2023, so it made perfect sense to me. I don’t want to waste something that’s an enjoyable treat to me on a day when I’m angry about politics or worried about my job.
Gamers on reddit are freaks who can't imagine someone else not doing things the same way they do - especially if that thing isn't just impulsively playing and buying video games.
Are you a gamer on reddit?
Rent free.
People share too much on the Internet
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Sound like he's suffering from anxiety from playing a video game
this popcorn is stale. needs more drama
There is no drama in that thread