Moments where you learned you outgrew something in gaming.

[lechat]

I've outgrown long games.

I simply can't find the time to devote 100 hours to a single game anymore, I'm lucky if I can put down about 4 hours each week for gaming alone. I used to complete Final Fantasy games several times over, now I've gotten to the point where I hear a game is only 5-15 hours long and I think "Oh good, I can finish that".
I suppose it's the sad truth of getting older is I have my job, I have my girlfriend, I have other projects and hobbies to pay attention to, and I can't justify myself spending 6 hours in a single day playing a video game anymore, and I tend to rush through games just so I can finish them and move onto the next one. The idea of replaying them is laughable, but one day, when I'm retired, maybe...

just pretend i said that.
i pretty much only pick up a game these days if i can finish it in one sitting.
I read reviews and only if i see "9/10 but game is too short" do i pick it up. 9/10 and too short? nah buddy that's a 10/10.

 

[lee1287]

I'm not into OTT violence anymore. Like, i was playing Bulletstorm, and i just sliced some dude up and fed him to a plant, and i thought 'Meh' I'm not offended by it in anyway, just like, 'man, i'm too old for this stuff'

 

[ShinyCharizard]

I started playing Watchdogs and realised "I do not give one solitary fuck about any of this"

my standards are a little higher now

+1 to you. That game was ass.

OT: I used to care about getting achievements and trophies in games, I would spend alot of time trying to get them (goddamn fucking garden gnome in the rocket bullshit).

Anyway when I got to about 18 years old, I kinda just stopped giving a fuck. Too many games to play, not enough time to play em.

 

[King Billi]

I've outgrown long games.

I simply can't find the time to devote 100 hours to a single game anymore, I'm lucky if I can put down about 4 hours each week for gaming alone. I used to complete Final Fantasy games several times over, now I've gotten to the point where I hear a game is only 5-15 hours long and I think "Oh good, I can finish that".
I suppose it's the sad truth of getting older is I have my job, I have my girlfriend, I have other projects and hobbies to pay attention to, and I can't justify myself spending 6 hours in a single day playing a video game anymore, and I tend to rush through games just so I can finish them and move onto the next one. The idea of replaying them is laughable, but one day, when I'm retired, maybe...

Absolutely.

It isn't even just a case of wanting quality over quantity(although that is still good) I just can't see myself being able to meet the time requirements some games seem to demand and I just don't know how to feel about that... The thought of having to actually set aside time to do something as frivilous as play a game.

 

[briankoontz]

And after all that I realized that despite the attempts to ape some of the more sophisticated moments out of Inglorious Bastards (the card scene) this essentially was that game. The teenage self insertion power fantasy where your awesomeness wins the day no matter how bleak the world is around you. That became all the the more clear when after the card scene Anja clumsily suggests we can fuck in the train, which we do. Anja who has so far shared maybe 25 words with the my doughy duke avatar wants to sleep with him/me because... well... I'm awesome? Didn't you see how many people I murdered just to carry your unconscious body into a getaway car to essentially push you into being an accomplice to my murderous rampage? I guess we can't blame her for wanting to jump his bones before we've even left the first act. Perhaps she was the kind of girl who was sexually aroused by the Buffalo Bill scenes in Silence of the Lambs.

It's social - psychopaths are in such obvious distress that women are doing a community service by having sex with them. As in - it can "tame" them or mollify them. The way the typical video game protagonist behaves indicates that sex might be the only thing to stop him from killing 1,000 more people, so the woman is trying to save the local population by fucking him. This works to some extent in real life, but it's never ever worked in a video game - the sex amounts to a cutscene instead of a relationship and the mass murderer continues his work after playtime with a vagina is over.

The feminine concepts of breasts pacifying babies and vaginas pacifying men is certainly true to some extent, but in video games at least the protagonist is such a monomaniacal freak determined to complete his mission no matter what that sex can only ever be a diversion. Every video game protagonist is some sort of ultimate soldier, and not only men as Lara Croft illustrates.

So I guess you *could* say that mass murder is a "turn-on" for women, but not in the straightforward way. And not only women - a male character in the world of Tomb Raider would be far more likely to have sex with Lara Croft after she's killed dozens of people than before, not because he's impressed with her murder-skills but because he's terrified that she'll kill dozens more people if he doesn't pacify her with his penis. That's what the sex scene in the recent 300 movie was all about, and it worked no better there than in video games.

But because the premise of such a ridiculously high percentage of video games is that the murder victims are "monsters" or otherwise "had murder coming to them" there's no ability for game developers or even most gamers to understand the psychological dynamics of sex and death. There's no ability to appreciate the horror of murder when the victims are demonized to such an extent that just like Jason Vorhees, the "hero" views the murders as cleansing the world of monsters as a necessary part of saving the world.

Humans value life, even if video game protagonists and Jason Vorhees do not.

PS - Why hasn't there ever been a video game where a "hero" is running around killing people saying he's "saving the world" and the protagonist is a woman who has to seduce him to try to get him to stop? Would that hit a little too close to home for the game industry?

{Video Game Industry}: "We don't know how to design that gameplay".

 

[Th37thTrump3t]

I used to love playing shooters like Halo and Battlefield a couple of years ago (Call of Duty, too, I guess. Only reason I bought those though was because all my friends did). Now a days though I can't seem to get into them. They lack the depth to keep me interested in playing anymore. I can play maybe two games of Battlefield or Titanfall before getting bored and going right back to Dark Souls or Borderlands. The only straight shooter I've gotten into lately was Spec Ops: The Line, and only because the story was great.

 

[Poetic Nova]

I outgrew any kind of racing games a few years ago. Still wondering why I used to like them. Only one I still seem to like in this gerne is Demolition Racer.

Also, I didn't outgrow sandbox games perse but I am tired of the GTA series, GTAIV triggered this but GTAV outright made me stop caring for GTA, outside of the few older titles I do still own.

 

[stroopwafel]

For the most part my tastes haven't really changed over the years. I still love action-RPGs, survival horror(insofar that still exists as a genre), open world games and story driven/single-player shooters. I think PS3 is my most played system of all time as it had a huge amount of games I absolutely loved.

I've never really been into 'traditional' RPGs, MMOs or online/competitive games. I like me some Dark Souls PvP or occasional Battlefield but that's about it. After Final Fantasy 7 came out I was into jRPGs for a while but that didn't last long.

Now I'm hyped like holyshit for Bloodborne, Arkham Knight and Phantom Pain! With games like that I don't see myself lose interest in videogames anytime soon.

 

[gargantual]

The only sentiment I've outgrown is that games 'necessarily' have to be like profound media communication to have any impact. They certainly CAN be. They can be whatever they want to be, but they're friggin video games, and profound is a highly contextual definition in the eye of the beholder.

So yeah I've been RE-realizing that the sentiments of discovery, and unquestionable fascination I've had in my youth, trudging through Resident Evil 2, Final Fantasy VIII, Road Rash 32, Tekken, MGS, Half-life and DOOM were all valid feelings because I understood, combat was the nature of the format, and the story was the dressing for the game.

we want the illusion to be maintained that we're not playing a video game, but engaging in a profound, digital experience allegorical to our lives. The latter is possible but certainly no standard badge of merit. MMORPGs may have the social overlaps but I say Get us to the point where people are literally plugged into the matrix and then all real world rules, and concerns of the humanities shall fully apply.

Otherwise have fun, because reality at times does a far better job of NOT making sense than the alternative.

 

[everythingbeeps]

I've never felt like I've "outgrown" something, and I think that's a pretty crappy way of looking at it.

But there's plenty of stuff that I'm no longer interested in. Competitive gaming and challenge, mostly. The desire to play games for hours a day. I loved that stuff as a kid, but I didn't love it BECAUSE I was a kid.

 

[Michael Tabbut]

Online multiplayer. While I've never exactly cared for it in the first place (the only games with online multiplayer were myriad MMOs, TF2, and Mass Effect 3) I now have nothing but scorn for them. I don't mind games that have it, I hate it when it's used as the only selling point (COD Battlefield) or if it's tied to the actual campaign (aforementioned Mass Effect3). If I do multiplayer it has to be local.

 

[krazykidd]

Sandbox. I can't do it anymore. Especially since the side stuff doesn't really amount to anything. I'll like my games linear and story focused please.

However i have gotten more into fighting games. A game where skill trumps all, and every match is different? Sign me up.

 

[WeepingAngels]

JRPG's = They just don't hold my interest anymore. Too much fluff. Never understood the love for the Persona series, it's just a dungeon crawler which the worst kind of RPG in my opinion. While I did enjoy Final Fantasy 13, it's sequels were trash, too focused on side quests. I guess SE thought that's what western gamers wanted. Not me!

WRPG's = Things like uninteresting main quests and too many meaningless side quests are a turn off now. For a time I enjoyed games based around side quests but that time has passed. Now I see them for what they truly are, fluff. Inventory limits and finite XP (Bioware) can go straight to hell. The level up system in Bioware games bores me to no end. Most of the skills I pick I have no interest in ever using.

Lego games = Lego Star Wars is still the best one and even though I keep buying them, they never get played. I keep thinking that one day I will get the urge to play The Lego Movie video game or Lego The Hobbit but so far, they are collecting dust. In fact, on the rare occasion that I get the urge to play a Lego game, the urge to play Lego Star Wars again is greater than the urge to play any other Lego game.

GTA type games = I was never a big fan but for a while I played GTA 4, Saints Row 3, Mafia II and a few others. I have no interest in Saints Row 4 or GTA 5. I bought them but they too sat on a shelf.

 

[Eleuthera]

When I was a kid we had a NES with 7 games (at the peak), so I played everything.
After that we got a Gameboy with 5 games, so I played everything.
Then we got a PC in the age of copying games for friends, so you got 2 or 3 new games a year, so I played everything.
Then finally games became available in much greater amounts, first in stores and later on the internet. And I started to be much more picky.

Example:
I managed to beat Dune 2, and Warcraft but haven't been able to beat any other RTS ever again.

 

[Hap2]

I outgrew competitive multiplayer games a few years back.

When I was in college I fucking LOVED playing Call of Duty. I was in a clan, and I played at least an hour or 2 a day, and around 4 or 5 hours on weekends. I loved the competitive nature, but after a while something just clicked with me that Call of Duty, and competitive shooters in general, weren't fun for me, they were a job, they were something I was doing not because I wanted to but because I HAD to because my clan wanted to keep winning. No fun, no messing around, just stomp people's faces in with the most brutal and effective tactics.

I haven't bought a new multiplayer shooter in 3 years now. I feel like I just outgrew the whole hyper-competitive nature of them. I'll still play them every once in a while if I have friends who want to get a game in, but usually I just play them for fun, messing around and causing hijinks rather than actively trying to stomp people's faces in.

I get that; I'm in the same boat myself. It's just too tiring these days after a stressful day to play something so intensely competitive. I tend to stick with bots, or with story driven games these days if I play anything at all.

Still play Halo 4 once and awhile though. Most of the time I play for the sheer joy of chaos: driving Warthogs into bases, sneaking behind enemy lines and blowing up people as they run past, often with their own mechs, tanks, etc.