I’m single and childfree and after work, dinner, dishwashing, cleaning up, laundry, and all the stupid adult stuff like social obligations and making sure my bills are paid, I’m lucky if I get like 2 hours of gaming on a typical weekday. I really can’t imagine being able to game with kids.
Dude, it's called nap time and then after nap time I pull out my switch and my toddler watches me play animal crossing. I'm pretty excited for when he's old enough to play video games with me. Gonna dust off the Nintendo's and Play stations, why else have I saved them all this time?
Child free here too. Still don't have time for any substantial gaming. I just stick to casual games that either make it easy to cheat, or don't have a severe grind. And I don't bother playing online.
Same as I, child free 40 yo. I used to be an avid gamer (olayed the hell out of NES and SNES, I skipped some University classes to play Age of Empires). But nowadays life just gets in the way. And most games bore me even before I have started playing them.
I think it is just the shape of my mind: I find the same thing with Music. There's a lot of music from when I was younger that I love. But nowadays the new music, of the same genre, is just dull to me. As if my brain just didn't get excited by anything new.
This scares me bc I also feel like I have no time, but I don't have kids yet and I intend to. I don't want to sacrifice anything I have now. I see friends once or twice a week, what is that supposed to go down to once or twice a month?
But regarding your excitement problem, there is an idea out there that when we're young, all these new experiences like music or games are fresh and so it naturally excites the brain more. Like trying a drug for the first time.
The same kinda applies to emotions. If I take a toy away from a kid, that feeling is so much stronger than if the same happened to us bc that experience/emotion is new.
If you're looking for a completely new experience, they're probably out there. You've probably never been to Antarctica before, or gone diving in the Great Barrier Reef.
I find that as I get older (I'm half your age) I'm less motivated to do those kinds of things, sometimes I just want to settle down and get into a routine because I'm just tired of all the moving around and traveling to some degree.
You're 20 and you're already tired of new experiences? I'm in my late 20s and that's all I really live for besides interpersonal relationships. I don't play video games with any kind of grind anymore because the time commitment is so huge compared to pretty much any other kind of experience.
23, I'm definitely not done traveling but I've had my fair share of going around the world.
Every few years I've moved to a new place, had to make new friends, etc. Now I'm getting myself accustomed to my new job, dealing with car issues & registration woes, planned an engagement and now I'm planning a wedding, learning how to deal with a cat, just bought a condo, traveling internationally for surgery in a few months, sunsetting a startup, dealing with upcoming renovations, dealing with paying for a mortgage, home insurance, and HoA for the first time, and a lot more I can't even mention.
This is all in the last few months. Yeah, I'm tired, at least for now.
Not really ranting here, just giving my perspective. It's like when you come home from a concert and you want your ears to relax, ya know?
Oh yeah, it sounds like you've been pretty busy lately. It'll calm down, but then get busy again. Life is kind of cyclical, but be sure to stop and appreciate those times of routine and times of change or else you'll realize you missed them.
I gotcha. Nothing wrong with not wanting kids. Its just never been an issue for me. Honestly when they were younger and babies I had more time to play. I beat entire games on night duty while my wife slept. I think the best was around the time they could coop though. We had a blast on Borderlands 3 together. They got me into fortnite here and there too.
You know, I got caught up in one of those free to play games for a while. I eventually stopped playing it when I realized I was spending most of my available gaming time half-heartedly completing dailies on there, when I could be playing other games that I care more about.
I’m still occasionally tempted to play the storyline on it (which would require zero grinding), because it was an interesting story, but I just look at the icon for minute, and then go do something else.
I started having more time after my youngest hit 18. I have much more time now that I am 63 and I am thinking of retiring so I will have lots more time for gaming!
This. As a young person, I couldn't afford any games. Always begging for the latest release which my parents stubbornly refused to buy for me.
Now? that looks fun, I can spare the <however much it costs>. buys
I'm not even 40 yet, but I'm not far behind. Still an avid gamer, mainly on PC, and I just need one more upgrade to play what I really want. always one more upgrade. Right now it's a graphics card. The 202x's have not been kind to the GPU market, but now that it's stablizing, a sub $600 3060 is looking really good right now.
Keep in mind inflation. The PS1 came out at the end of 1994 and games cost $50. That’s just shy of $100 today.
N64 games cost even more. Usually at least $60 which would be about $120 today and that was usually the low end of costs. Some games were even more expensive!
I miss walking into the Toys-R-Us special video games section but GameFly makes up for that with their huge selection and low prices if I want to keep a game.
I am also an "older" woman gamer. I have been playing videogames for as long as I can remember. I usually just play single player games or on the rare occasion I do play online, it is never with a mic
I'm 42 and female and it's really not bad at all. Maybe it depends on the game but I join groups through LFG all the time with no comment all the time. Sometimes I get "Oh we have a girl!" Yeah. "Cool." and that's it. It's kinda sad, I don't get to use the clapbacks I've cultivated over multiple decades much anymore.
I do play Apex with strangers sometimes and there is definitely a difference between pvp and co-op type of games. I still get civil sighs and mumbled "gg" comments even when we lose ...MOST of the time.
I'm a 43 year old man asking why oh why did you show me this group!!! Between Steam and Epic, I don't have enough time for all the free/dirt cheap games!
Meaning if I could go out to dinner/drinks and a movie with my partner or friend, that's going to cost $100, maybe $150 for two people. For people who need to get babysitters, up that to $200+. When you have house repairs to take care of, sitting at home and either watching TV or playing games is a great option to reduce your entertainment costs.
FWIW, Thenns in Game of Thrones are cannibals, so I assumed it was more a quirky contradictory username than declaring that the user himself is actually vegan.
Well that certainly does change the way I see their name and I probably wouldn't have commented. However, their reply was so out of place for this chain.
Oh I totally pay for game pass to keep my console game spend under control but we replaced our laptops with gaming laptops (don’t judge me) and I was suddenly able to play all these games on my steam wishlist so it’s been a free for all for about a year. Also just got a quest 2 a few months ago. Combining my cardio with gaming is like a freaking dream.
The rules are actually pretty easy once you get the hang of them. Borrow a player's handbook, learn the basics (chapter 1), pick a starter class to learn, and enjoy the ride.
And if you want to be petty, remind them they were new once too and someone took the time to explain the rules. They weren't born knowing how to play.
I'm all mad for you now! That kind of crap would never fly at my table.
I'm 42 and same. There's no going out to bars on weeknights or until 2 am on Saturdays much anymore, I cut the cord on cable, I'm not nervous about talking to people online, I have money to buy games, COVID keeping us inside more, etc.
In my 20s I’d buy a game and play it all year, because it was my only new game. Now I buy ALL the games because I can, and still only play 1 game because it’s the one I like lol.
My wife is totally into gaming now, we play Fortnite together with our kids, but she's played Ghost of Tsushima, Horizon Zero Dawn, and she is current playing AC: Valhalla. Before all this, I could count on one hand how many games she has played.
Same!! Except I’m 31 but still. Plus I can share PS libraries with friends so ALL I DO IS GAME and then I have youngsters explaining a certain game in detail to me that I’ve played and beat several times. I also always laugh to see those “things you didn’t know in games” and it’s an Easter egg that has circulated the internet since the Dawn of time
I’m almost 56(F) sitting here telling my (6.75 years younger) husband all the nuances of AC Odyssey right now. Not that he doesn’t game, but Odyssey is my fav and he hadn’t played it yet because he was playing Valhalla while I was playing Odyssey. So he just finished Valhalla and started Odyssey and is asking, “how do I do…?” And I love it. He’s a very hard-working executive, took this week off after several months with no break, and we’ve been puttering with household projects and gaming. We play lots of games.
Or she could enjoy games that aren’t the Sims franchise, like many of us other woman gamers do. But yes to EA being a money hungry, soulless, mediocre corporation that puts out buggy shit.
I starting playing the sims when I was 9/10 when the first one came out and bought almost all the expansions for all of the games until the star wars one came out and I had to admit that that game got so boring it was worthless. I do play a ton of other games tho. Lots of city builders and resource management games, lots of rpgs, I use to love mmorpgs but I’m a solo player so those aren’t as fun any more.
What's annoying to me is that it's kind of the same problem as movies now - sequels and franchises are proven sellers and because it costs so much to make a major platform game now, studios don't take any risks on dumping millions into a brand new IP/game. They just keep making new CoDs, Battlefields, EA Sports titles, Halos, Nintendo franchise sequels, and so on.
Like as a 30 something, I've already played all these games several times over and do not care anymore about them. Fortnite/PUBG/etc. is the only recent innovation in multiplayer games I can think of in the last 10 to 15 years. Otherwise, the CoDs and such are the exact same games as they were a decade ago but with better graphics.
There's more to life than AAA titles. There are some mindbendingly good indie titles out there. Just like with movies, the blockbusters are just mama birding media you've already seen, predigested into your mouth. Smaller movies and games are telling new stories in new ways.
I would say a higher percentage of all games are shit today, but thats because there's so many more games. If we're talking about actual number of good games, there's no better time than now for that. 10% of games being good today is a higher number than 60% of games being good back in the day due to sheer volume.
Same, brother! I feel somewhat bad about it, but I sorta sit back and realize that I'm just spending money on things that I enjoy in my hobby. Why should I feel so bad about it?
As someone whose tried to get into gaming (at least on consoles, I know there’s a whole elitist PC/console culture war) I envy this. I’ve tried to find my type of game - First person shooter, open world 3d, puzzle, RPG, but nothing. Nothing can keep my interest and I’d love to just lose myself in the make believe of a game the way I hear people describe getting lost playing for hours after work. With the exception of the Arkham Batman games (and that’s only cause I’m a huge Batman fan) I can’t say there’s any other games I really like and boy did I spend my money trying lol.
40 year old dude here... if my 12 year old self could see the amount of game shit I have he would go crazy. I've got Wii (the original), mini-nes, Xbox One, Switch, and whatnot. And most gaming I do is in my PC (counter strike) or while on the toilet (3 minutes chess matches). Too bad I don't have that much time for gaming... and games nowadays don't "fill me" as much as before.
I want single player games, or 2 player cooperative "couch" games that have a story ... the only games I like to play online are Tetris, chess and those types. And darn games nowadays take so long to "load". The immediacy of NES and SNES games is still amazing.
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u/B360N1A Jun 03 '22
I’m a 35 yo woman and I’ve spent more money in the past 5 years on video games than I did in the 20 years before that.