Can a gamer suddenly get bored with games?

A weird thing happened to me recently. I got bored playing a game on my Playstation. This happens occasionally but even so, I normally try and get an hour or two into a game at a minimum. That way I feel like I am giving it a chance and if I still don’t like it, I move on to the next one I have bought or downloaded. But then it happened five times in a row and I started to worry. Am I getting bored of gaming?

I am a massive gamer

I have loved playing games ever since I was a kid. Some of my earliest gaming memories were in the pub playing asteroid while my dad had just one more for the road. I had an Atari games console in the early 80s. I bankrupted myself getting a Sega Megadrive in the 90s and again getting the PS1. Then followed all the Playstations. I even have a PSVR and there was no question about my purchasing a PS5.

So what happened?

A while ago, I made a decision to try different types of games. I went through loads of top ten lists and then set about either downloading them or at least trying out the demo. I then kind of forgot that was what I was doing.

I normally play sandbox games, third-person adventure games, FPS games with a decent story. That kind of thing. I love games in series such as GTA, Red Dead Redemption, Uncharted, the Witcher 3, Bioshock, Assassin’s Creed, Fallout, God of War and so on. On a more individual basis, games I have recently really enjoyed were Horizon Zero Dawn, Skyrim, Persona 5, Spider-Man, Dishonored 2, The Last of Us and Metro Exodus.

I felt like I was in a rut, so that was what prompted the change. Change bad. I did go for games that were massively popular but that didn’t help.

What did five games did I try?

First up was PES 2020. Football! I fucking hate football. 90 minutes and there may or may not be a score. If there is a score, it may or may not matter to the rankings. If it does matter to the rankings, then it might only matter for that year. Essentially, I only care when it is the European or World Cup. That is fun and every match has consequences. For some reason, I thought that if I was in control of the players and the match, I would enjoy it more than just sitting there and watching. That turned out to not be the case. I thought I would stick with sports though and moved on to the next.

Next was The Golf Club 2019 Featuring the PGA Tour. I have very fond memories of playing golf games on the Sega Mega Drive back in the early 90s with friends. Having four of you playing while drinking beers and listening to music was a great day in. On my own and with advanced graphics, I really did enjoy myself for a bit. Then I started to get bored. Then I started to wonder what the point of it all was. Unable to answer that question, I then quit.

Enough with the sport but staying with a simulation, I next went for The Sims 4. I have played the Sims games before and they were all kind of fun. Soon I had a male scientist, a female spy and their kids. They had a nice house and friendly neighbours. I even bought them some nice furnishings and so on. Then, as I have done with every Sims game, I got a bit bored and wondered where it was all going. I found myself watching a Sim playing a computer game and they were loving it. They were having time than I was.

The next two I think I may have liked if they had come after something I really enjoyed. Sadly, they didn’t. I will give them another go later on.

I knew Divinity Original Sin 2 was popular and well made. Beloved even. I started playing and it was like the Baldur’s Gate games I loved back in the day. The stories and characters were good, the fights were fun and everything was kind of as expected for a game of this type. The problem for me began with inventory management. I just get a bit fed up with it. Also, and I couldn’t put my finger on why, but I just realised that I wasn’t enjoying myself and wanted to play something else. It is possible that because I had been bored with the previous games, I just wanted something else. Something that required no thought. Consequently, we get to the final game.

Doom Eternal doesn’t really have much of a story. It has some Lore and some cool art. Essentially, Hell and its armies are invading Earth. You are the Doom Guy and you are shooting the shit out of them. There is no boredom when playing Doom, just low-level stress and excitement. It’s a great game and lots of fun. It’s just that after a while, I realised there was something lacking. It was fun in a shotgun blast to a demon’s face kind of a way but I just wasn’t into it. Like with Divinity, I knew I was playing a great game and it was fun but it wasn’t what I wanted. I was curiously bored amidst all the excitement.

What changed?

I had forgotten I was in the middle of an experiment. I was starting to get concerned that I was bored of games. I looked at the Playstation Plus free games at that moment and they were two simulators – one was a city building sim, the other was a farming simulator for fuck’s sake. I have dozens of games in my library that I hadn’t played and I started looking through them.

Then, bizarrely, PS Plus gave out Call of Duty WW2 for free before the end of the month. Awesome. I downloaded it and started playing the story mode and it all came back to me. My ill-fated attempt at change and my love of games. I realised what I like and that is a story. I like there to be a point to it all. That fact is obvious when you look at the games I enjoy.

I don’t watch normal TV, just the odd great show on Netflix and regularly see a movie at the cinema. Apart from that, these days I game and I read. It’s good to be back. Next up – Detroit Become Human, a kind of interactive scifi book, and then Last of Us 2. Good times.

Remember – change bad.