Gaming

The gaming space may have changed but I'd say it's because you changed.

You brought in your decision the "worth playing". Is this game worth to buy or is this game worth my time. When you can give your time a value, you can also compare it to what you are doing and if it's worth to do that.

I tend to not really do that too much, because gaming is a hobby. If I start to compare it to what I could earn, well it doesn't give the most "value" in monetary gain or maybe knowledge gain. But that is why it is a hobby for me, not work.

On the other side, is it worth playing? What is the comparison? The price? If you like the game? For me, if I can enjoy it, and come back to it, even if it's very long (Warframe for example is the one where I have the most hours played), well it's worth playing to me.

Tho some games are very expensive for the experience they give and some are really s* recently (gollum *cough) and those are not worth playing.

And is it worth playing compared to your other games? Maybe, maybe not? If you wait you can get discounts (at least on pc), and increase the value. And play your backlog in the meantime.

I think that playing the most recent games can be enjoyable but not always the best "value". Tho I still play "newer" even if I have the backlog, which I use as a filler between releases and "patient gamers" style.

Yeah, I feel the same. When I was younger I loved RPGs because they usually gave you 40+ hours of content just for the main story. Now I kind of dread playing them because it takes so much mental effort.

Then again, Long Covid also gave me brainfog. But I also felt that way before I had it. I guess back then my mental capacity was taken up by work.

I really enjoy long games but I'm very picky about which ones I choose to play. I usually don't have a lot of time to play all at once, but I play after work a few days and sometimes a couple of extra hours on the weekends.
Games with a really good story always interest me. I've had good recent experiences with things like final fantasies, tlou/2, horizon games, etc. I don't mind that it could take me a month or two to finish a game as long as it's enjoyable.

As an older dude, I think it's more about how people choose to live. I'm one of the DINK couples so the wife and I love gaming together.

Both working full time, go on camping trips, play tennis, and still manage to be a part of a destiny clan who we have cleared all the raids with.

We just beat Diablo 4 together (then dropped it due to the patch and garbage 1st season lol).

I get how some people need more contained experiences, but I can not stand games that are too contained or basic.

There are exceptions like party games (gang beasts, Mario party, etc), but for the most part I need my games to be engaging.

I did a little bit of game development in college and have played games all my life, so sometimes I feel like I'm somewhat sensitive to certain designs. It's hard to put into words, but a bad animation/game mechanic that might bother a different person like 2/10 might bother me more like an 8/10.

Some mixture of the above information and my ADHD need for stimulation keeps me away from the smaller games.

I'd say getting older and having more responsibilities is a bigger part of it. When you're young and have lots of free time to devote to a game, a 100 hour game is no big deal. When you have a fraction of that time, you just don't want to deal with that. I'm equally wary as well.

There's definitely some change to the gaming scene, like all the cheap sales and freebies. Very easy to build a backlog of games while barely trying.

I stopped playing AAA games because there is so much filler. I would prefer if games went for 3-6 hours for playtime with a clean and tight plot.

I don't read books that have a cool intro, 300 pages explaining how everything works, 1000 pages of characters just doing random stuff for random people, and then a return to actual plot in the last 100 pages.