I, like many gamers, grew up playing Pokémon Red and Nintendo 64 and was obsessed with Nintendo products. I graduated to a PS2 and PS3 and became super into Metal Gear Solid and Call of Duty and Fallout. Also spent a ton of time with the Guitar Hero series. I loved the escape gaming brought me and it genuinely helped me relax.
Fast forward a few years and I hadn’t really played a video game between the years of like 2011-2017. College, moving cross country and busyness of life kept me from gaming. Finally in 2017, I bought a Switch and Breath of the Wild and felt the same magical feeling I remember when I first started playing Ocarina of Time, or the first time I booted up Metroid Prime, or Metal Gear Solid 4. I started to get into online gaming and made a lot of friends. I played my Switch frequently for a few years.
During the beginning of COVID lockdowns, I turned more to reading than gaming and my Switch gathered lots of dust. I ultimately ended up buying an Xbox Series S when it was announced because I’d never owned an Xbox system and Game Pass really intrigued me. I went through a phase of being very into Destiny 2, Halo, Gears of War, Forza Horizon…a bunch of games I had never played before.
Then, a divorce, a new job change, another cross country move brought new levels of stress to my life. I lacked an attention span strong enough to focus on a video game. FPS’s seemed boring, online games couldn’t keep my attention long enough to get through a match, and eventually I’d just leave a game on the pause menu while I messed around mindlessly on my phone. Gaming wasn’t even a way for me to decompress anymore, it seemed more like a chore I was procrastinating—which sucks.
I’ve fallen deeper into this lately, as more life changes have come along. I work a stressful job with long hours. I’m now a stepparent to two young boys. The little free time I have I spend walking the dog, reading, and trying to just let my mind settle and decompress. Let alone, if I try to turn the Xbox on or have the Switch on my lap, it turns into a whole event where the kids want to sit and watch and participate and ask tons of questions (which is fine, but sometimes I just want to do something by myself for me!)
I miss the time of my youth where gaming was a relief and a release for me. I miss how I felt when I first got a Switch and felt so excited and so nostalgic and reinvigorated and looked forward to playing a game! Now…I feel like I can’t even consider myself a gamer.
So. That’s a long winded way to ask if anyone else has gone through similar ruts, or fallen away from gaming, and if so, what games helped you get that spark back? What games brought you back to that nostalgic feeling you had when you first got into gaming? What games help you decompress after a long day? What games have you recently become obsessed with in such a way that you look forward to playing them and are always thinking about them?
I want to get back into gaming. I want to feel the magic again.
This does sound like something beyond gaming; you do have a lot on your plate like you said.
At different points in my life my gaming time also changed, depending on what my priorities are.
Eventually the want to game comes back and I’ll spend a weekend or two on something fun.
It does sound like you’re burnt out in general, and I’m not sure more gaming might help. I think the first thing to do is to find a way to establish some “me” time, like a solid block of an hour or two where you can do something for yourself. Doesn’t have to be gaming, but it has to be for you. Once you can get that going you can work gaming into it, or some other hobby.
Yes, I definitely need to work on getting more “me” time. I am just…so exhausted. All the time.
The only time I seem to have for myself is in the early mornings when I go to the gym. Or when I’m commuting to work. Or when I’m walking the dog. All other times I am either working, or with family at home and constantly being pulled in different directions. It is a lot, and it is hard to find the balance that I think my body and mind need right now.
Man, I sympathise, that’s really asking for burn out.
With the exception of gym times in the morning, none of the other times sound like “me” time, more like, “not getting disturbed” time. You’ll have to find a way to carve that time out yourself. Talk to the family, I hope you’ll find a way to get it!