Have any of your guys' interest in video games decreased as you got older?

D

dwluv3333

CAG Veteran
Hi All,

I'm 24 and I feel like I haven't been playing video games nearly at the same rate as I used to. I remember in high school always having something every couple months to look forward to... the new Final Fantasy, Metal Gear Solid, Resident Evil... but as I speak now there isn't that next "it" game that I am salivating looking forward to.

Have I gotten too old to become amused by video games the way I used to? Or do you guys think the gaming industry has just changed since the "golden" PSX/PS2 era? The last game that I had "looked foward to" was Starcraft 2, and I feel like it's been forever since I played a great JRPG (Lost Odyssey being the last one.)

What do you guys think? Has the change in console generations made games that much less appealing? Have you guys maintained the same level of desire and interest in jumping into games as you went into your 20's and 30's?
 
I certainly dont play as much as I used to, but I wouldnt say my interest has decreased, just the amount of free time I have.
 
I don't play as much as I use to but I'd say my interest is actually greater as I've gotten older. Of course it could also be I don't have any other hobbies like I use to.
 
[quote name='Hell Monkey']I don't play as much as I use to but I'd say my interest is actually greater as I've gotten older.[/QUOTE]
Kind of the same deal here. My interest in video gaming increased after I got out of college and was able to afford hardware and games.

Sometimes I'll go through periods where I don't feel like gaming as much, but that's usually the fault of what I've been playing at the time, not gaming itself.
 
I'm 29 and my interest has actually gone up in the past few years-- in college and for a couple years after that I barely touched games at all, but then I got back into it.

It's my free time to play games that's evaporated.
 
[quote name='Hell Monkey']I don't play as much as I use to but I'd say my interest is actually greater as I've gotten older. Of course it could also be I don't have any other hobbies like I use to.[/QUOTE]

Agreed. Graduating and getting a full time job has allowed me to fund my gaming habit and collect games I thought I'd never get my hands on. Seems like each week I'm able to get at least one new game :D
 
[quote name='Puffa469']I certainly dont play as much as I used to, but I wouldnt say my interest has decreased, just the amount of free time I have.[/QUOTE]

Same here. I want to play more than I do but I just can't with all of my other responsibilities. It just comes with growing older.

I try to get in about an hour a night. I go through periods where I play less than usual but it's usually because something else has grabbed my attention (usually an arcade project) but there are also periods where I play a ton more because the game I'm into is so awesome (like when I just played through Mass Effect 2).
 
I Can totally relate to the feeling and I also miss those Metal Gear, Resident Evil and Final Fantasy days. I think it also has to do with the fact that other franchises have entered the arena. For instance, Modern Warfare. Modern Warfare nowadays is HUGE. MW2's release numbers in sales, raked up more money that any other entertainment release in history, including the Box office of movies like spiderman and Batman. And they release a new Call of Duty game every year whereas a Metal Gear Solid only comes once in a generation. Sometimes twice. Let alone back in the day not as many games were released as nowadays. Nowadays there area gazillions of games released every month so maybe amidst so much offer, games don't feel as special as they used to.

The funny thing is that back in those "Golden Days" that I remember with such nostalgia, I had my ps1 or even ps2, hooked up to a 20 inch CRT TV and I owned about 8 of 10 games tops. Now I'm 33 years old, I own every current gen console in existence, they're all hooked up to a 60 inch 3D LED TV and 7.1 surround sound system, And I have flat screens in every room of my house including the bathroom. My house looks like a Best Buy. If I feel like playing any videogame, I just open my laptop, go to amazon.com, 2 or 3 clicks of the mouse, and the game is in my doorstep 24 hrs later (Courtesy of amazon prime). If I don't feel like waiting I can just get in my car and drive to any store an buy it in 5 minutes whereas in the "golden days" I had to save my lunch money for months to be able to afford a game. Sometimes when the process of obtaining something, like a game, is much harder (saving luch money for months vs just going to the store and buying it in 5 minutes), and doesn't happen as often (waiting 2 years for the release of a Metal Gear vs checking online for new releases every Tuesday), I guess when that happens, maybe games feel a bit more special.

As for "salivating" for a new game, as you say, I guess it still happens for me. And it's one of the best feelings in the world. For instance, I'm totally "salivating" for the new dungeon siege for ps3 to be released in may, and also for the new Lord of The Rings: War of the North, to be released at the end of the year. What do those 2 games have in common? they're both spiritual successors to of of my favorite games of all time: Baldur's Gate: Dark Alliance (And I guess Champions of Norrath. Those 2 games were almost clones of each other). My wife is also a huge fan, so we're really anticipating the release of those games so we can sit in the couch, order some pizza and crawl dungeons together until sunrise like in the old times, when we were dating. I'm also really looking forward to the new Mortal Kombat, which is supposed to be (don't laugh yet, it's true) the spiritual successor of Mortal Kombat II.

I guess now you can laugh. All 3 games I'm looking forward to, are spiritual successors to games of the "golden Days". How about that!
 
Last edited by a moderator:
If anything my interest has stayed about the same, though I find myself only really playing short games or just screwing around in open world/sandbox games to kill time at night anymore.

I used to play at least a couple RPG's a year a gen or three ago, but I just don't have the desire to play them anymore or I get bored of grinding levels after an hour or two.
 
I have hit those patches myself occasionally as I have gotten older. 12 year old me who played through games 5-6 times would punch 32 year old me in the dick if he saw the backlog I have.

My suggestion try a new genre of games see if something new sparks your interest back. SRPGs got me first my first funk
 
Yes, my interest has decreased especially for the current generation of games.

I prefer last generation (platformer, RPG, action adventure centric) to the current gen (1st person shooter, 3rd person shooter centric).
 
Obviously everyone is going to have nostalgia for their younger days and the games that defined them, but I'd say my interest gaming has increased since then. It's just an issue of time now, and you begin to realize that 90% of games really aren't worth playing because of that.
 
Back in 2000, I stopped gaming almost entirely. I got a job working at Funcoland and fell in with a group of guys that were a few years older than myself that worked there (or used to). They were into all the same games I was into, and we got along pretty good. They invited me over to play games one night and I realized that 6 of them were sharing 1 crappy little apartment, had no asperations and all had minimum wage jobs.

It scared the hell out of me. I had a HUGE collection of Saturn and Dreamcast imports, arcade sticks, etc. at the time. I managed to sell them all off to those guys at pretty high prices (they could afford stuff because they pooled their resources) and walked away from it all for a few years. I had a gamecube for Mario Kart and that was it other than a few random games. I didn't start gaming again full force until the Wii and PS3 came out. (A year or so back, I was walking through the mall with my wife and I saw one of the guys working at the toy store in the mall. He was still stuck in the same routine. It was kind of sad).

I think others have said this above- but I find more often than not that I go in cycles of what I want from my gaming. When the Wii and PS3 came out, I bought a Wii because I was looking for a group experience, and games that weren't very deep. Somthing I could pick up and play and not pay a lot of attention too along the way.

Currently, I have a hard time playing a game that doesn't have a lot of story.
 
At 29, my time is limited but my interest is still there, and probably higher than is used to because I can't just sit down and play whenever I want to.

Sometimes interest wanes, and a few years ago it did until I started working full time and could afford almost anything I wanted. Being able to buy more than 3 or 4 games a year certainly helps.
 
Like many of the other posters in here I'd say my level of interest in games hasn't changed from a quantitative standpoint, I still love them as much as I did when I was a kid, but like others my time for gaming has shrunken as I've gotten older.

I'll also agree that my taste in games has changed somewhat as I've gotten older, it used to be I was always looking for really long and involved games to play, now that I have less time to play I don't mind getting something that can be played in nice small chunks. For instance I'm much more into fighting and arcade games now than when I was a kid, although I think I can attribute more interest to fighting games to them having online play now since I don't know many people in real life who enjoy that genre (so I mean changes in technology are also effecting how and what I play too).
 
Hmmm... I have an interesting perspective on this. I played all the time when I was a kid. That meant taking $5 and going to the arcade during what I consider to be the peak of arcade gaming (around 1980 or so). I still remember fondly "Top 40" songs like Another One Bites The Dust playing while I played Zaxxon (whose graphics utterly blew me away at the time), Donkey Kong, etc.

I also had an Atari which I played quite a bit. But I got bored with console games because they were so shallow (no saves) and didn't hold up to the arcade games in terms of graphics/gameplay.

Once I hit high school and college I pretty much stopped playing games entirely except for the occasional RPG on my original Mac (things like Wizardy, Might & Magic, etc). I also played stuff like Rogue and XConq on the university computers. Note, also, that this corresponded to the video game crash of the mid-80's. I guess I didn't really notice that crash at the time because I had pretty much stopped playing before that happened anyway just in becoming a teenager. Of course, things are very different now and were I teenager these days I'd probably have kept playing - what with all the online multiplayer and such the kids enjoy these days. When I was a teenager, even using a computer was considered the heights of nerdliness. I still get a kick out of seeing anyone and everyone now with a laptop computer and everyone using Facebook, etc and shake my head at the insults and nastiness that went with that back then. I think the people who are my age that felt that way then should be banned from using the Internet/Facebook/etc now ;).

Anyway, back to my late teens/early 20's: being very very busy then (school, fraternity, and University club volleyball team early on, then a steady girlfriend, followed by graduate school, marriage, etc) I didn't play all that often. At that time arcades turned into all fighting games and I really disliked those. I know a lot of people on CAG love the Street Fighters and Mortal Kombats and stuff, but to me that was the death of the arcade. The last arcade game I remember putting any serious time into was Gauntlet. Also, for most of my 20's, I played a metric ton of (real) basketball. I used to play every few days for 3-4 hours.

I think it is really funny the OP mentions the "golden PSX/PS2 era" as I sat that out entirely. I had an NES and played Mario and Zelda a bit when I injured my knee and couldn't get around for a few months. But, to be honest, while they were a great improvement over my previous system (the Atari), I didn't think they were all that great and I never really got back into console gaming except for that couple of months in 1988 or 1989. So I missed out entirely on the SNES/GenesisN64/PS1 era. That era, to me, is a void - a black hole. It holds no nostalgia factor to me whatsoever.

I got back into console gaming when I had kids, interestingly enough. We got them a Gamecube in 2003 and I've been into it full force since then. One of the first games I played was the GC Star Wars Rogue Leader game. That thing BLEW ME AWAY! I couldn't believe console graphics could be that amazing. I'm telling you - I really didn't pay attention for about 15 years there. But that game was the one I always dreamed of when I was a kid. So that, along with other stuff like Super Mario Sunshine, got me back full-force into console gaming (and for that reason, I consider SMS to be the best Mario game which I know is a very minority position!).

Now I play WAY more than I did in my 20's and probably even more than I did when I was a kid. As Hell Monkey says in the 3rd post, it is because I don't have all the other "hobbies" I used to have. Plus I play with the kids now - so I have some time playing with them (LBP2, Sonic racing, etc) and some time playing by myself (Dragon Age, Mass Effect 2, etc) when everyone else is asleep.

So, yeah, it may seem when you are in your 20's that maybe your interest decreases. I think that is normal. But it will pick up again when you have kids and the new systems then are light years beyond what you played when you were a kid. In fact, I recommend taking a break if you are at all bored with gaming. You'll come back later with renewed vigor ;).
 
io has a point. As a kid I was a strict pc gamer, and it wasn't until 2000 that I bought a Dreamcast and I sort of wandered over to console gaming but I sort of lost interest in gaming in 2003-2004 I was still a pc gamer in my early 20s and at college. But I bought a xbox and a ps2 and I seemed to really jump back in. That also game me a reality check that I didnt need to buy every game on the planet.

Flash foward to 2006 where I bought my ps3, and here in 2011 with a full time job, with a house and a wife. I also write/support Goozernation.com so my time for gaming comes in spurts, a few hrs here and there, a few times a week and if I don't get to play the hottest release until 1-2 month after it comes out I am fine. For me I just want to play casually and I don't want to stress about gaming. I get enough of that stress at work
 
I'm 33, married with two kids plus one on the way and a busy full time job. And I'm more into gaming now than I've ever been. I expected it to kind of decline about this time, but no sir. Too many great games. I've been gaming since I was 5, now I'm gaming with my 5 and 3 year olds. Life is good, brother. Enjoy the games as long as they don't interfere with the important stuff, like family or work. If they don't ... see you online!

As for quantity of time to play games....not as much as I'd like, but more than in the past 10 or so years. I keep it strictly to the nights when everyone else is in bed and I play a bunch on the weekend nights. That way it doesn't interfere with family time. I probably should get more sleep though.
 
I'm 32 and it has definitely waned some for me. I still go through phases where something like a Mass Effect 2 comes out and I'll get sucked in and game a ton and shun other hobbies for awhile.

But whereas gaming was my number 1 or 2 hobby (behind sports maybe) when growing up and even into college, it's behind sports, movies, reading, TV etc. these days most of the time. And all that's far behind my career, family, social outings with friends etc. that take up most of my time these days (mainly work!).

I still enjoy gaming. I just have less free time and for whatever reason more often than not I prefer to spend it on other hobbies than gaming these days. But that does ebb and flow like I said. I gamed a good bit through the summer into the fall last year. Haven't played very much from December through present currently.
 
Man I hope my knees don't go I enjoy hooping 3-5 times a week. I play a lot with m kids too in fact my 8 year old son is a killer player. i probably only have a few more years before he beats me in everything
 
[quote name='jlarlee']Man I hope my knees don't go I enjoy hooping 3-5 times a week. I play a lot with m kids too in fact my 8 year old son is a killer player. i probably only have a few more years before he beats me in everything[/QUOTE]

My knees "went" when I was 20 ;). Well, I had anterior cruciate reconstruction then on my left knee after having ortho on my right knee the year before. That patched me up well enough throughout my 20's that I could play bball often while still in college/grad school and do some extensive hiking and such.

However, I'm feeling it now. Every time the weather changes my left knee aches. So playing video games is more my speed now, though I really would like to get back into playing basketball, or at least working out a bit to stretch and strengthen the area around my knee so it doesn't hurt so much.

Having kids is what really put an end to my basketball playing, though. I can still play video games because that is an at home activity. Going out places to do frivolous "me-time" stuff like working out is what you lose with kids - especially with 5 of them ;).
 
I lost my vertical after my foot surgery and had to change my game from slashing to more of a spot up jump shooter. Knock on wood my knees have been sturdy

Good thing about living on a military base i get most of my runs in during lunch. I do hit the gym once on the weekend but I usually bring my son with.

Then again I only have 2 kids and staying in shape is part of my job requirement.
 
My playing of video games has gone up and down over the years. I started with the Atari 2600, then moved on to PC gaming mostly. I had a brief foray with SNES, but college was heavy PC gaming. (Civ, Wing Commander, Star Con II, Front Page Sports Football, X-Wing, amongst others.)

After college, my interest in computer games waned somewhat as I explored other avenues. It kinda coincided with the decline in the type of PC gaming I was interested in. But, within the past few years, my interest in gaming was revived, strangely enough, by the rise of Guitar Hero. I have a great love for music and it was nice for a non-music guy to play along.

So, I picked up a used PS2 and started back up. With Steam doing kick-ass holiday sales, my interest in PC gaming came back. Last year, I bought a Wii when I couldn't get the deal I wanted with the PS3 and don't regret it one bit. It allows me to play games with my now 5 year old son.
 
those games you experienced were fresh and new to you because they were new. as you got older, nothings changed. your boredom comes from having to replay the same type of games over again. look at world war first person shooters. there were so much uses of world war scenarios that first person shooters using world war situations are boring. call of duty 4 sold better than call of duty 5 because people liked the fresh idea in call of duty 4 as opposed to call of duty 5.

i've stopped playing 2-3 years ago. the last game i bought was resident evil 5 and street fighter 4. i find that many of the games are pretty predictable and linear, which means it's not worth the cost and time to play. there is only one way of playing gears of war.
 
With work, family(wife + 15 month old + one more on the way), other interests, my gaming is very sporadic last couple of years. Add to that a huge backlog, and it's hard, interest is mostly there, but time is not..but its all good, some day it'll come back more at least.
 
i would not say my interest in games has decreased, just my ability to stick to a game and finish a game.
 
interest hasnt decreased i own a giant backlog, with a girlfriend and a 3 yr old i have a lot less time then i use to. usally every night i still make time to sit down and lately put out my psp and play some crisis core :). I know i will never get to everything i own due to time, but still love games as much as i did when i was kid, my kid, and work come first, but i make time when i can.
 
Was into gaming when I was in elementary but middle/high school and college I really lost interest. Only became re-interested after using xbox live to keep in touch w/ my best friend who moved to N.Carolina.
After GRAW and MW I was hooked to FPS on MP.
 
I'm 25, married, have a two year old son and another on the way. I watch our son while our wife works and have a full time job. My gaming time is scarce. I do partly blame this for my decreasing interest in gaming but even if I did have a ton of free time I wouldn't play games nearly as much as I used to.

Two years ago I had every system under the sun and about 300 games. I currently have a PC, PS3, and PSP, and I'm considering selling the PS3. I realized that as much as I liked having a collection, I just wasn't interested in playing anything. When I do game these days I confine it to strategy games on the PC and PS1 classics on the PSP.

In short yes, I have lost interest as I've gotten older. Life in general and new hobbies mean I just don't have the desire to play a ton of games anymore.
 
Lack of time making me have long stretches without playing games sort of dulled my urge to do it to begin with. I doubt i'll ever be out completely but this will probably be the last generation that I own more then one console.
 
[quote name='coolsteel'] I doubt i'll ever be out completely but this will probably be the last generation that I own more then one console.[/QUOTE]

Yeah, I already made that change this generation. I had all three consoles last generation, the N64 and the PS1 the generation before.

But I don't game enough anymore to even keep up with the games on one console, so I can't justify owning more than one. So it's just the 360 for me this generation. I started with the Wii but didn't dig it much and got rid of it 6 months or so after getting a 360 as it was just gathering dust.

I'm still unsure if I'll buy a next gen console personally. It will depend on price, how much motion controls are being shoehorned into games, and whether there are enough games that look like personal "must plays" to tempt me into buying a console.

Odds are I'll end up with one, but not until the first price drop as I can spend a year or so catching up on 360 games I never got around to.
 
I have all the free time in world now, but don't play as much as I used to.

I also play games that don't require fast reflexes; I'm not into them as much as I was younger and I'm not as good at them anymore.

It's mostly RPGs, 2d Shooters, puzzle, Rock Band, and video (and regular) pinball for me now.

(I'm 35, BTW)
 
I've gone through phases where I've lost interest in gaming, but that often had a lot to do with no current games really catching my eye. I would say that even at 28, I'm still as much of a gamer as I was as a kid. Just seems like my tastes have changed. As a teen, I was really into sports games. It was pretty much all I played. Looking back, I cannot believe how much money I sank into buying the newest Madden, NBA Live, NHL, and Triple Play game every year. Now, I barely play sports games. Far more into games with a narrative, even if the gameplay isn't that great.
 
well when i have children (hopefully), i definitely would want my kids to play video games. not excessively of course.. but i want them to not just play for fun, but to actually appreciate everything there is about video games, especially the art in them.

so i guess that means, ill buy them games with a good plot and storyline, with unique features overall.

i played loom, monkey island and that titanic rpg when i was 5-6 in 1995. i first took courses in english when i was 11, though i honestly learned most of my english through playing multiplayer games like Jedi Knight dark forces 2 via MSN zone; and also from watching a lot of movies.
 
[quote name='giantqtipz']well when i have children (hopefully), i definitely would want my kids to play video games. not excessively of course.. but i want them to not just play for fun, but to actually appreciate everything there is about video games, especially the art in them.

so i guess that means, ill buy them games with a good plot and storyline, with unique features overall.

i played loom, monkey island and that titanic rpg when i was 5-6 in 1995. i first took courses in english when i was 11, though i honestly learned most of my english through playing multiplayer games like Jedi Knight dark forces 2 via MSN zone; and also from watching a lot of movies.[/QUOTE]

Is English not your first language?
 
[quote name='2DMention']Is English not your first language?[/QUOTE]
no actually haha.

if you look at the bottom of most of my posts, you would see an indication that ive edited some of them. because i always reread them and make sure they make sense :/
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
bread's done
Back
Top