Gaming Burnout

[SkyKnight03]

Has anybody ever get burned out of a specific game? I feel like I can't play long RPG's without this being an issue. Open Worlds such as Elden Ring or Fallout are almost impossible for me. I can put 50-60 hours into a game with full immersion and investment, then suddenly my mood crashes and it becomes a chore to finish. Even if I liked the game. I've been telling myself each night I'll progress in Xenoblade 3, because for a while I was having so much fun with it. Now I don't feel like picking it up.

Instead of having a game backlog, it becomes more of an extensive list of games I got far into and have no motivation to finish.

 

[Seastar]

Yes, I get easily burned out from Animal Crossing, actually. There's a bunch of other games I don't have motivation for, but that one comes to mind first.
I'm actually supposed to be playing Splatoon 3's Side Order DLC right now and I'm struggling to continue though that might be more of an issue with my physical health.

 

[Newbiemayor]

I get tired of games all the time. Like I want to play it for weeks and then drop it for months or even years. I don't worry about it too much because I know that someday I'll get the motivation to come back to it and eventually I'll finish it. Or I won't and I don't care because I don't really want to play anyway

 

[.: Meri :.]

Possibly because I play a lot of longer games and a few that can be played indefinitely, I get this a lot, and I've found it best to just kind of go with it and play (or do) something else. I used to be very fixated on only playing a couple games at a time until I finished them (which... I'm not entirely over, but I think it's less unhealthy now lol) and when I got tired of them, it just stressed me out and sucked the fun out of what's supposed to be a relaxing hobby. Sometimes playing my games felt like a chore, and I felt like I had to make x much progress every however many days. Then I came across this video, which really did not have to call me out so badly:

...and now I've been trying to take a much more laidback approach to my gaming backlog, and if I'm in the mood to start a new game instead of continuing one of my current playthroughs, I will.

By far the largest chunk of games in my backlog are mainline Pokémon games, but when I found myself getting irritated with the gameplay, I set it aside. I played Rune Factory 3 Special exclusively for weeks, and then Rune Factory 5 just as exclusively immediately after (and I'm nowhere near done with 3, I just missed playing 5) and overall I've been having an absolute blast with them. They're very comforting to me, but when I last tried to play a few nights ago, I found myself getting frustrated that progress was taking so long... so I'm giving myself a break from them and focusing on my other, non-gaming hobbies a little more. It could've just been that I wasn't in the mood for it and may feel like playing again in a day or two, or it might be a few months. But they'll still be there, exactly as I left them, as soon as I want to visit those worlds again.

I truly love a lot of my games and know that I'll come back and finish them or 100% them sooner or later. And if I don't, and don't want to ever go back and finish a game, that says a lot more about my enjoyment of the game than it does about myself, and I can use that to inform what games I decide to get in the future.

 

[Mistreil]

I definitely get burnt out -- I feel like it's more rare for me to finish a game than to not. Usually it's a mixture of me getting sidetracked too much, or just a "well, I'll come back to it again" (and then I just... don't.) I usually just read summaries of games after a certain point if I don't think I'll finish it myself eventually. Games like Animal Crossing and Story of Seasons are the worst offenders for me because I love them so much I end up playing them for hundreds of hours and go super hard, and while it's super fun in the moment, it quickly sucks the fun out of things. I'm definitely trying to learn to pace myself better.

I also try to avoid forcing myself to play things to the point where it feels like a chore because that tends to burn me out the most. I think this applies most to mobile games and MMOs for me, as I'll constantly force myself to log in, do dailies, etc. and do a whole cycle of stuff and at some point it's not even fun anymore?

I think this post summarizes the idea well (and helped me step out of my cookie run kingdom dailies loop):

https://bidoof.tumblr.com%2Fpost%2F101071197053

if i start thinking "this feels like making ice cubes" that's when i clue in that i need to stop with a behaviour (。_。)

 

[Neb]

I’ve been burned out on open world games for over a year. I can’t go more than an hour on any without feeling bored. I vastly prefer linear games or games with open, but small areas instead.

 

[Rainy.Nights]

MMOs in general, I'm to the point I avoid trying new ones altogether because I know what will happen. There is only one I still keep an account on because I've had it a really long time and might consider going back to casually on occasion, but I can't see trying to get into one seriously again. I've tried a bunch of different MMOs and they may have different graphics and stories and such but the grind is essentially the same. Starts off easy with all these incentives to keep you going, gradually becomes rolling RNG stuff at an increasingly ridiculous low chance in order to progress eventually to some endgame which is never seen because it's severely paywalled somehow, or you had to get lucky getting the less than 1% chance best equipments, or have some godlike gaming skills, or likely all of the above. All that plus the constant fomo stuff just gives me a huge mental strain. And like half the MMOs I was interested in ended up getting shutdown anyway. At least my singleplayer offline games are forever. Honorable mention for game burnout, not a MMO, and I'll likely try to get back into it someday but, Palworld. It's a fun game for a good amount of time but after 200+ hours that lategame grind was getting a bit too tedious for me.

 

[Romaki]

I'm definitely over OpenWorld AAA games. I think GTA V is the last time I was interested in them, but I do look forward to VI.

 

[Marridia]

I get that with long jrpgs, that's why I haven't played persona 5 royal or rune factory 5 in a while.

 

[VanitasFan26]

It tends to happen whenever I'm playing a game that feels like it drags on forever and there is nothing really interesting happening and it gets boring. That is how I felt with Breath of the Wild. Yeah I know I'm going to get yelled at but I just wasn't a fan of it and I didn't play any Zelda games to understand anything.

 

[nightglow]

Same, but I think part of the problem is we think they need to be finished when they don't have too. Like I understand story driven games, but if you lose interest in it, is it really worth finishing anyway?
I find that for most games my cap is 60 or 80 hours. Sometimes 30 or 40. There are very few that I play longer than that in a spurt. And some games don't matter at all if you take a 6 month long break. For those, that is great because you can always just come back later and not worry too much about where you left off in it. For those that matter, I just restart the game if I want to play and struggle at trying to get back into it.
It is easier to play more hours if you have someone else to play with you for games that are long. I don't really force myself to finish a game unless I am really close. I rarely worry about 100%ing games unless it is a collect a thon game. Collect a thons are meant to be 100%ed impo. I find that as a chore if you aren't obsessed with the game and it isn't a collect a thon.

 

[Cowplant]

Oh, I get burnt out all the time! I get really invested in a game, I play it every chance I get, I watch or read stuff about it when I can't, and I'll think about it all the time. This can last anywhere from a couple of days to a week or 2. But then I'll feel my interest slowly drain until nothing sounds worse than playing whatever game I was interested in. It's just the kind of person I am and despite attempts to change it, I've resigned myself to it. I've figured out some stuff that makes the burnout easier though.

1. Don't reset. I'm a chronic re-setter. I think my perfectionism tends to bleed over into my hobbies, so when I inevitably return to a game I feel like I need to reset and that this playthrough will be the one I'll complete the game with...I haven't completed a lot of games because of this, and, probably worse of all, it makes playing through the beginning of a game a slog because you've already done it a bunch of times but you still haven't seen the stuff that happens later. Now if I really need to, I keep a couple of notes on my phone about any builds or stuff I was working on so when I do get the urge to jump in again I can jog my memory and pick up where I left off.

2. Play different games. Don't be like me and start a playthrough of Breath of the Wild after playing through Horizon Zero Dawn and definitely don't start a new Skyrim playthrough after that. Speaking from experience. Mixing it up has helped a lot in keeping my interest in games alive. I'm playing through Fallout 76 right now which scratches my "questing and destroying bad guys" itch and then when I get sick of that and I feel like building something I switch over to DragonQuest Builders 2. Both games are different enough that when I get burnt out on one I'm normally excited to play another. And when you're not constantly resetting save files (RIP all of my different saves over the years gone but never forgotten) you can actually make progress in your games.

 

[Chris]

Absolutely. There's few games I've completed without needing to take a break partway through. Immortals Fenyx Rising, Hogwarts Legacy, and Stranger of Paradise are the few I think I've completed it recent years without hitting pause for a months partway through.

 

[Yoshi155]

Yeah. Right now it’s Animal Crossing, but there’s been a lot of games that I play for a long time and then just put down for a few months… or years.

 

[PapaCrossing]

A huge part of the problem is that developers are making games too huge. Way back in the day, my day, Ocarina of Time would drop and it would only take a week to finish and 100%, or a long four day weekend because school has those sometimes.

Some of today's games take hundreds of hours and they're still not done. Also, some games don't even end at all.

As a result, I'll only play the main part, and I won't even bother playing for any longer. 900 Korok seeds? Nah bruh nobody got time for that.

This might not even be burnout. I view this as a sign that you're growing up more and being less involved in games.

 

[ShadowLelouch97]

It stinks when I'm getting burnt out on a game, because I want to see it to the end before moving on to another game to play. The problem with that is that I feel this urge to play on and on until I make enough progress, which inevitably leads to burnout. I've paused certain games I've loved and am replaying just to experience a new game I've been dying to try for ages.