I'm trying to get myself to enjoy gaming again. I can't seem to just relax and play a game without thinking I'm wasting my time. It's also hard to get the same high in a game that I do when I solve a bug or add a feature to whatever project I'm working on.
I'm going through the same thing. Just bought my son his first console. I tried getting back in to it. No interest. The whole time I just wanted to put down the controller and go "actually" do something.
I can relate to this. I often feel like I should be doing "something", like I'm just wasting my time if I'm not producing something.
However I think it's good to get the balance right. If you're working full time then I think you deserve to give yourself a break when you get home from work and indulge in some escapism. Be that watching a film or playing a game. If not it often leads to burnout.
I think I'd often rather play a game as my mind is being kept partly active and I'm not just blindly staring at the TV. I've recently been playing "The long dark", it's a good way to chill, although it can be tense in parts.... ;-)
I can also relate to this. Especially when I was pushing through a period of unemployment (funemployment). I felt compelled to keep busy and regular hours of simulated work.
Felt great until, somewhere between practicing interview problems and actually interviewing, I crashed and burned.
I remember it explicitly. Staring at a problem for almost an hour, not writing anything. Then just kinda saying screw it. I gave myself permission to just stop. Just started playing the first game I could find and sank a weekend into it.
I'm back to where I was before, but that moment is something I won't forget. Gotta give yourself permission, almost the way pomodoro gives you permission to focus completely for x time.
Try a competitive game. Something like hearthstone.
If you don't want to keep getting things done, that is.
I have no interest in a game unless I can demonstrably become very good at it compared to others. So, games like Skyrim (which used to be my favorite genre) are no longer very fun for me. Typically I don't finish them.
That's like losing at counterstrike to a 12yrold. At that point they have the knowledge of how to play and will out-class your reflexes by miles. I don't play competitive twitch games anymore (am in early 30s).
There's a lot of research and commentary addressing the benefits of play for adults. I'm having a devil of a time recultivating it for myself too though. I mean, I have hobbies, I have pasttimes. But "play," like it means for a kid, I am not there yet. I hope to get there.
For me, it is almost the opposite. I can't get into games that are highly "stateful" anymore. I find that the only games I can consistently play for relaxation are games like match-based FPSs that I'd call "stateless". The anxiety about wasting time hits me when I'm looking down at an empire in Civ or a growing base in DF or my stats pane in an RPG. When I can see evidence of how much time I've spent building an imaginary artifact, I inevitably come to the conclusion that I have better things to do.
Maybe another way to look at this is that I can't get into games that feel like projects. Building a base in DF is a project. If I'm going to be working on a project, why not a programming project that will actually create value in my life and others'? With something like Overwatch (team-based FPS with 15-30 minute matches) on the the other hand, it feels more like an activity, like watching a movie or playing a sport. I feel comfortable playing it for two hours one day and picking it back up the next day or the next week or just whenever I want to spend some time relaxing.
I'd never thought of it as stateless / stateful before but this is exactly my feeling, great vocabulary for it.
I still like building things so Age of Empires 2 is perfect for me - there's a lot of base / army building but it's ultimately a short stateless activity.
Get into a skill game, then you can say that you're improving your skills. Something like Go, Starcraft, etc. People are actually impressed even if you're only above average (dan-level Go player/Master or above SC2 player)
Same, any hour long competitive game is too much for me. It feels like a complete waste of time. I only have fun playing games like battlefield now for 20 minutes while listening to music.
I'm on the other side of that wall. I never got into WoW or any similar game. So last year, my wife and I tried getting into WoW one weekend. It was awful, so utterly boring for both of us.
That said, we did get into Minecraft for a few weeks. It was a fun little way to build a virtual world together. But after an hour straight of playing, I would just get this deep sense of loneliness and depression, and have to turn it off. It's just not reality, and that makes it feel so empty, even when it's full.
Have you tried substituting with board games or tabletop RPG's?
I suggest this because they preserve the "game" aspect and give up a bit of the virtual world feel in exchange for having a strong social aspect (hanging out with friends in real life).
Either one is actually very conducive towards socially drinking with friends while doing something that isn't trying to hear each other at a loud bar.
Board gaming (ahem, euro-gaming) has replaced video games, and I feel better about it since I get to meet new people and converse. Social skills decline when not used!
Ha, opposite of me. I've been glued to Pokémon games (SoulSilver, Alpha Sapphire) all day outside of work. I give my personal projects a few hours on the weekend.
To me, programming (on personal projects) is as fun, if not more fun, as games. I've played some great games that I was fully engrossed in, but for the most part I feel like I'd rather spend my time programming with a tangible reward (a program that does something novel) than gaming with a virtual reward (put there by the developers, they can't be entirely new things).
I am the same, these days everytime I try to load up a game I keep thinking I could have spent this time learning something new or building a game myself.
I'm making a game because I have this issue with many games coming out these days too. I actually like games that only last a few hours since they seem to respect my time more than others that pad for length (less "shit work" quests, creative stories given the lack of time for the player to get absorbed into them, etc.)
