This thread is meant to be about sharing your thoughts on video games and time, not my feelings. Feel free to address them, but I want to read about yours. Here are mine:

In my youth, I remember having so much time... Now I feel there's so little. While video games are not the only medium capable of being time-sinks, I feel that they have the potential to be the greatest ones. Many are the digital worlds I recall remaining in long after I'd completed them. Now, in my memories, I think back fondly only on main story-beats or overall messages. And when I think about playing a game now, well #1: it better be good and #2: I plan to be done with it quickly. The idea of gameplay loops frustrates me, and games where-in the loop is the main point even more so. I appreciate shorter games now. I'm sure younger me would hate the very thought.

i think now i go through phases of consuming media. for example, i'll play video games for a few months maybe but then start watching tv/movies more, then maybe just watch youtube a lot for a bit. i feel like i don't have time to focus on more than one.

i also appreciate shorter games, but i also don't think games need to be drawn out to justify being $60. i'm perfectly fine playing games like Zelda Link's Awakening remake or Dishonored, which are both short games, but in terms of quality a lot better than a lot of other AAA titles that are coming out

celeste is another really good game in the short but amazing category

especially because the depth of it means you can spend as much time as you want working on 100%ing, gathering strawberries, learning speedrun techniques... but the inherent shortness of each sections means you can pick it up and put it down as desired.

overall i definitely echo your sentiment about phases of media consumption. some days i spend all my free time reading books, some days it's all watching youtube, some days it's all video games. i can typically find 2-4 hours a day of complete leisure time, after work and chores. honestly, it's comparable to how much time i had as a child, i think, or maybe even a little better: i have more chores & maintenance tasks now, but no homework, and frankly my job is much cushier in terms of time commitment than school ever was.

I used to love playing video games, but now there are so manys way to spend such little free time. However, this year I started Hogwarts Legacy and am really enjoying playing an hour here and there with no real rush to complete it!

That's one of the reasons I like FFXIV. If you're caught up on the story (Main Scenario Quests) and you aren't involved in extreme raids or PVP or using FFXIV as a 3D chatroom, you can do a few dailies and then log out. There's no sense of obligation to stay on for hours on end built directly into the game.

Elden Ring is pretty good about that, too. It might take an hour to find and clear a dungeon, but once you have you can put it aside feeling like you accomplished something.

And then there's Genshin Impact. I tried playing it once (with voices muted because Paimon's VA was entirely too perky) and it felt like an unpaid-bullshit-job simulator. After a couple of hours I felt as shitty as I would have at a day at my day job spent entirely in meetings -- like I spent all that time and had fuck-all or value to show for it.

Time to sound like a old man... Recently I bought a Xbox 360 for next to nothing and have rebuilt my library of games for maybe a few dollar a piece. I having been feeling like games have been sliding in quality, or is it just me getting older? Well getting totally sucked into the grind fest of Crackdown did kind of spark that old joy again. Messing with the physics of 'From Dust' has been an absolute joy. Yes they are time sinks but not in a way that feels like a waste of time.

But that isn't to say "Kids these days don't know how to make a game!". I am sure that these things are still out there somewhere but it is just so difficult to find them any more and the monstrous bucket of

One side track, Xbox live on 360 is weird nowadays - it is in a somewhat zombie state of having a lot of areas/apps that have not been maintained since 2015 and yet the movie rental service is still running like nothing ever changed. There loads of demos for games that you cannot purchase online. With a spate of recent de-listings on there, it looks like Microsoft is getting ready to sunset this service.

If I could get all the original Guitar Hero games and controllers on the 360 for a not stupid amount of money I would. I could waste hours playing those games and listening to the songs. I am not even that good at it, never really get past the medium level of challenge but I still have a lot of fun.

My main time sink is modded minecraft. Started playing back when it first came out and always end up going back despite my Steam, BNet, Origin, etc., libraries. I do agree though, the games these days just don't pack the playing punch they used to, but then again most games nowadays have to be online all the damn time even for single player games. They cant be arsed with finishing a game, gotta have it online so they can force DLC and micro-transactions. I would be more than happy to go back to the old school NES/SNES/Genesis/PS, PS2 timeframe. I have recently started playing through FFVII again (original, not remastered, rebuilt, reskinned, etc.) and enjoying it, but also looking at Octopath Traveler (Steam), though I am having a hard time spending $60US on a game that already has a sequel out.

The other side to this is we can no longer feel the same level of awe we did when younger playing games, we have experienced enough of life that it is all old content even when its new. Somewhat of our youth having passed away in that aspect.

Not enough time, I'm feeling that. I feel like the few modern games I've played are more movie than game. I tend to focus on the 8 & 16-bit games since they usually don't have any filler. Arcade style games are great, just let me jump in and get to playing. I think it's one of the reasons I've stuck with Starcraft II for such a long time, it's easy to jump in a 1v1 or team game and just play and then move on when short on time.

Absolutely, there are still titles that come out the scratch that itch but they are usually smaller indy things. Sonic Mania is the 1st one that jumps to mind.

Dude, I know what you mean by the gameplay loops being frustrating.

Zelda ToTK's loops were not enjoyable to me at all. I'm pretty fond of booting up games with roguelike elements like the Pokemon Mystery Dungeon games, Enter the Gungeon, and Hades. Those by definition have loops but I think the big difference is they provide a decent challenge. Zelda by comparison just felt really empty with how big the world was and how long it takes to travel from place to place. (even with the contraptions you can build).

I also think as we age, it's not that all the video games are getting worse, we are just remembering a time when we were younger and therefore had way less stress and responsibility looming over us all the time. Like, I can go play through DKC2 for the thousandth time (best SNES game IMHO), and it'll feel great in the moment but when I shut it down I'm reminded that I gotta get back to real life.

I second this, I love a story/adventure game with good music and storytelling. Makes for a great rainy afternoon.

It is usually either that or the complete opposite - pure focus on Mechanics.

That said I am currently struggling through the title Recursive Ruins that is a strange mix of both -

There is also the absolute 10 minutes of joy that is the absurdity of Pineapple on Pizza. It is free and if you do not know about it, do not look up anything about it. Just jump in. ;) https://store.steampowered.com/app/2263010/Pineapple_on_pizza/

Came across this quality post that touches on the subject for anyone interested:

Video Games and Dangerous Beauty

by Extramundane

This article has a moralizing tone that annoys me. I wonder if it's occurred to the author that the reason a lot of people spend their off-hours and weekends gaming is that they're too tired from taking care of IRL responsibilities to find motivation to do much else. My parents spent their off-hours watching TV. Sometimes I play games. There are people my age and younter glued to YouTube and TikTok, passively watching streaming videos instead of broadcast TV. You and I are posting on a bulletin board instead of "learning a foreign language" or "learning to play an instrument". Is gaming really worse than any of that?

But I wrote something about this at greater length a few years ago.

I agree. My focus (personally) regarding this issue is quality / bang for buck. I think nowadays, more than ever, it'd be so easy for me to waste time on slop. People may spend their time however they desire, but gaming is, to me, a blackhole at sucking time. As the author mentioned, more of a time sink than any other form of media.

If I am going to give a video game my time, I demand it be worth it.

And nowadays "being worth it" / being high quality I don't believe is as a high a priority for the game makers. Particularly the big ones.

EDIT: Many games don't have to be as long as they are nowadays, the industry wants eternal, zombie-money cows.

this is a hill i always die on. some of my favorite games are short ones that explore their concepts and then end. games like Dishonored and zelda: links awakening are 2 that i mentioned earlier in this thread.

most games are made to make you feel like you got your money's worth, which is super frustrating because there's a lot of games that would be really amazing if they were 30-40 hours shorter

I feel like this is complicated. Games were a lot different back then due to limitations of hardware and software. We could play Super Mario Brothers from the beginning for the millionth time because we had to. In 2020 dollars a new NES game was $108 ($45 in 1985), that's a crazy price for a new game today.

For game/system launch prices and their inflated costs in 2020: https://techraptor.net/gaming/features/cost-of-gaming-since-1970s

Learning something is a much bigger timesink than playing a video game for a couple hours here or there, plus you have to be dedicated to it. Last year I took a class at night school, it was 3 days a week, and 4 hours per class for two months.

I feel like most people only get 5 hours of free time at most outside of work as is after you remove the unpaid lunch, the commute time, and any time you spend just getting ready to go to work. Then once you're home you have to spend some of that 5 hours cooking and cleaning, and possibly some chores, so there's another hour or 3 out of your day. If you're someone like me, I can't play video games after 8pm, otherwise I'll be up until midnight, and that just makes the next day hell.

It's just a lot easier to shit on people spending a couple hours here or there playing video games when you can charge your time learning an instrument or foreign language to your job as a writer.

No shit, and $DEITY help you if you also have children and actually give a shit about raising them to be healthy, independent adults.

Somebody once asked me how I have time to be a half-assed writer and musician while also working as a programmer. It's simple, really:

1. I don't have kids.

2. I don't have a social life.

3. I don't really give a fuck about my job and do the bare minimum for my paycheck.

I'm pretty sure that's why our parents would tell us to go play outside.

My mother just wanted to watch her soap operas.

The older one gets, the less time one has for games in general. Games are strictly about recreational time, and as one gets older what is recreational changes and shifts, and that's a good thing.