The Feeling Is Fading: Gaming And Adulthood
Several of these games are fighting for my precious downtime with monthly battle passes, limited-time events, infinite item grinding, and bloated playthroughs. They really feel less like games and more like side jobs in their own right.
Tell me if you have been here before. You just got finished working a long shift at your 9–5, your chores are all taken care of for the week, the kids are asleep, and you finally find some time for yourself. You turn on your console of choice and are immediately bombarded with options for how you could spend your evening. After finally settling on whatever game your friends are playing at the time, instead of something you might have really wanted to play, you play a couple of matches and then realize that you have stayed up much longer than you intended. You end up going to bed, feeling no more relaxed than you did several hours ago.
When did gaming turn into such a chore? When I was a young lad back in the early 2000s, I didn’t really have much of a choice in the games that I had available to me. My parents bought me a used PS1 from a pawn shop for Christmas one year, and the sweet angel of a man behind the counter talked them into buying Final Fantasy 7 and Thousand Arms to go with it. Before this point, I had never played an RPG before. Needless to say, it was a great year.
Cut to now, and I have hundreds of games across a handful of consoles. Several of these games are fighting for my precious downtime with monthly battle passes, limited-time events, infinite item grinding, and bloated playthroughs. They really feel less like games and more like side jobs in their own right. When asking friends why they play the games they do, most of them launch into a task list of objectives that they are trying to accomplish. Or an endpoint that they are trying to reach. And sure, I have found myself guilty of doing the same. I played Sonic Frontiers on Xbox, then bought it again at full price to play on PlayStation to get the Platinum. I never said I wasn't part of the problem.
But why has the hobby evolved into this? Gaming used to be the one thing that was guaranteed to brighten my mood. It didn’t matter what I was playing or what console I was playing it on; just the act of gaming brought me to my happy place. Now, I don’t play certain titles due to not having the energy for them. I noticed this change happening in my view of the medium for a bit. At first, I thought it was just that I was getting older and that I was no longer able to connect with games like I did when I was a child. But then, I picked up A Short Hike on PC, and the joy that I hadn’t really felt in a while came rushing back in droves.
That got me thinking about the major games that I have been playing recently. Varied experiences like Call of Duty Black Ops 7, Pokémon Legends: Z-A, Marvel Rivals, Ghost to Yotei, and Guild Wars 2. Games across several genres, but with a hyper-focus on either competitive play or expansive exploration. All of these games are amazing, but none of them help me relax after a hard day. (Look, I don't like that AI slop of Black Ops 7 as much as the next guy, but for a quick bang-bang match its a good time.) Even the games that are designed to be relaxing nowadays, like Animal Crossing, feel more like a checklist than a vacation.
Meanwhile, the games that I ended up loving over the last several months were, suprise suprise, the smaller titles. I mentioned A Short Hike, but I have also been diving into stuff like BALL X PIT, Escape From Duckov, Megabonk, Cas n Chill, etc. There is just something about jumping into one of these titles that strips away all of the bloat that modern gaming has, throwing you right into the action. In the time it takes me to load up a game of Black Ops 7, I have already played multiple rounds of Ball X PIT. (Also, I can pause, which is a plus.)
All of the joy that seems to be missing in modern gaming has cropped up in the indie scene. These smaller, more concise stories slot better into the busy lifestyle of an adult. You get right to the gameplay, then put it down when the children need your attention. The Steamdeck Oled has also been pulling its weight with gaming on the go.
In the past, I wanted every game to be an open world with content as far as the eye can see. I wondered why everyone couldn't do what Rockstar was doing. Fast forward a decade or two, and it seems like the smaller indie games are where I'm going to be getting the bulk of my enjoyment for the foreseeable future.
