You just gotta find the right game. I discovered Satisfactory last year and had to uninstall it after a few eeks because I was staying up till 2am playing. I am 40.
Isn’t it less fun and more preying on the addictive aspects of gaming?
It’s kinda like life Sims, ala Harvest Moon. Give just enough time to finish out your day. Extend the need to progress by fluffing out interactions. Make there be lots of little progression increments.
It’s less good game and more preying on dopamine routines. https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=1Yb5CINrC5E I get games have similar feel good spikes. Like loot/number simulators which are mostly idle games with more effort for how easy they are. But min/Max Effiency games like many games that have day/night stamina cycles are just keying in on that dopamine rush on a filled day, which doesn’t feel different than loot box games in the end. My time at Sandrock was my last one that felt great for a bit then you realize so much is pointless fluff gated by time dumps for no reason than to increase their playtime metrics.
I installed Civ 6, played one game on easy and uninstalled it because I knew what was going to happen if I went down this road.
Try Civ Revolution. It’s an older game but it holds up and you can do an entire campaign in less then 2 hours.
You’re like a pusher telling me “Don’t take heroin, here’s morphine instead” 😳
I feel the same way about Baldurs Gate 3, I’m only pushing 30 but after playing for less than 20 minutes I had a mini pre-intervention with myself like, “okay listen up you geek, remember staying up until 4am every night and surviving on popcorn chicken and coffee isn’t sustainable”
I think for me a lot of games just don’t challenge me in a meaningful way anymore. Especially as I get older the game AI feels a lot more predictable and shallow.
Then I tried factorio and that game is fun. So I agree its about finding the right games which spark that interest.
I think for me a lot of games just don’t challenge me in a meaningful way anymore.
I’m the opposite. If it’s a story driven game, I don’t wanna die. If I do die, you better make sure I don’t have to repeat much. And you’d better make sure I don’t die twice in the same place.
Old style save anytime is much preferred to checkpoints, but I feel barely exist in AAA games anymore. I’ll put up with checkpoints if they are very frequent. If you make me repeat 30 mins I’ll probably just stop playing.
Fuck yes, I’m not repeating the same fight sixty time so that I can balance the vague satisfaction of having defeated a video game boss with the fact that I’ve wasted three hours of my time. Also it completely brings me out of the world/story.
I’ve abandoned a fair number of such games.
The checkpoints is why I returned Dark Souls 3. It was a great looking game and I enjoyed the first boss, but it was not for me.
Story games I’ll switch between hard and story designing on my mood, sometimes I just want to enjoy the show instead of struggling to fight the more baddies or play a game in perfect button timing.
