Gaming burnout

[selenicseas]

At the beginning of the year, I made a goal to complete six video games that I hadn't played before. At this point in August, I've completed one: Horizon Forbidden West. I've started three others – Mass Effect: Andromeda, Quantum Break, and Divinity: Original Sin II – but ended up dropping all three.

Of those four, only Horizon Forbidden West was really able to hold my attention, and even that became difficult toward the end of the game, where I started skipping things just because I wanted to be done. With Mass Effect: Andromeda, I stopped playing after an hour due to lack of interest. I almost got all the way through Quantum Break before dropping it. And with Divinity: Original Sin II, I slowly stopped playing and haven't booted the game up in a few weeks.

I'm not sure why these games couldn't interest me long enough to finish them. They're in genres I tend to like, from developers whose games I've liked. I liked the Mass Effect trilogy, I liked Remedy's other games, and I liked Baldur's Gate 3 a lot.

Am I burnt out on gaming? Do I need to take a break from video games for a while? Am I not playing the right games at the moment?

Maybe what I need to do is go through my game libraries and try various games until something hooks me. Or maybe I need to replay something I've wanted to replay for a while. That wouldn't help me accomplish any of my goals, but it would potentially help me feel like gaming isn't the burden it feels like at the moment.

Comments

[f0rrest]

I have this problem all the time, yet something in my brain still seeks out a video game to be playing on the regular. It feels like an addiction sometimes, it really does, for me at least. What I find, however, is that I have the most fun and focus on games that I do not "task" myself with playing but instead games that somehow naturally flow into my head seemingly at random. Like, I got this sudden urge to play FF8 again, gave into the urge, and now I'm having a blast, whereas with Suikoden or something, I went in with the very intentional "goal" of completing the game, and I burned out quickly. Of course, everyone is different so this may not apply to you.