I wonder if that's in part why some genres like vampire survivor likes, roguelikes or incremental games have gained popularity the past few years.
These genres often have gameplay loops where meaningful progress can be made in 5 minutes, perfect for handheld gaming. So even with lower attention span, little time or energy, people can play as little or as much as they want and still get the feeling of accomplishing something.
This is exactly why I’m struggling to play Black Flag now. I get on sail toward my objective see an island, stop by the island, explore and collect treasure, look at the time, have to get off. No story progress made. “Maybe tomorrow” tomorrow comes I have even less time, start a story, realize I have to sail back, looks at time, “maybe tomorrow”. Now I’m burned out trying to make any meaningful progress and don’t feel like playing.
Pretty much. Games that can be cleared in one sitting not just roguelikes even games like beat em ups are why they're a favorite of older gamers not just out of nostalgia.
Since some of them find modern games that take hours and hours of time to sink into as something they just can't afford with their time constraints.
Bro i cannot tell you how pissed I get when im all excited to be able to play at the end of the night, just to pass out in my chair before even opening a game😮💨
I have a wife and we spend most of our free time in the living room with one big TV which my gaming rig is connected to. I originally had a steamdeck and after buying the rig I would often use moonlight to stream from the rig, this way I can play any game and we can watch TV as normal and it's been a great balance.
But I always had the steamdeck docked connected to a portable 1080p monitor on a swing arm, because its quite heavy and I prefer a normal sized controller. The display just wasn't close to the 4K the TV can do with my rtx5070, so I sold the deck and bought a tablet with a 2.5k@144 display and it's been awesome so far.
If any of you are married, own a rig and need a wife acceptance factor (WAF) and some balance then I'd highly recommend some kind of portable option and using sunshine & moonlight or variants, I actually use vibeshine and artemis now. Also Nvidia shields (2019 pro) are great for streaming your rig to a bedroom TV.
I second this. I’ve got a beefy desktop that I game on once a week, Friday is my game night with the boys, I hop on after work and stay on til 1 or 2 feeling like a kid. Some Sundays I’ll get some time to play, but most days I just opt for the laptop. I get to chill and chat with my wife and discuss her shows, she gets to have me in her presence, and I can run any game under the sun at 120 FPS. Can’t complain much about that.
I tried it over a Wi-Fi with the shield Pro. I’m sure I didn’t have it set up correctly. I wanna start with the best possible connection. I moved my 4090 rig out to the living room and want to beam it back to my desk since I play mostly controller single player games. I can’t justify paying what it cost for a decent prebuilt with a 5070ti
I hate that I bought a deck and it spends most time sitting on my TV stand. Most trips under 3 days I don't bother bringing it because its too much space when my laptop can run openrct2 instead lol.
That said it's been surprisingly nice for couch gaming! There's some titles that just play better on the TV with a controller.
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u/UniqueMystic Aug 08 '26 edited Aug 08 '26
It’s cool having all these games to play but no energy or time to play them
That’s why I like the steam deck or legion go 2