Too Tired To Game?

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Back in 2000, 2005, 2010, I used to get off of work, and I’d game for hours. I’d spend every second I could pushing forward in whatever game I was working through. That, most definitely goes for games like Mass Effect, or the next expansion in World of Warcraft. I’d do that before work, too. I remember it like it was yesterday. I remember these things, and how I also would somehow fit in time to go out to bars, or write one of my older books. But now? I don’t know.

When I get up in the morning, I definitely have the energy to do a billion things. But work takes much more out of me than it used to. Before I go in, in those hours I have before it’s job time, I’m stuck in this sort of “waiting mode” where I don’t feel relaxed enough to boot something up. And then, when I get out, my whole entire body is so exhausted, I can muster maybe a half hour in, say, Assassin’s Creed.

And then I relegate myself to laying down and watching TV with my phone in my hand.

Is this due to getting older? Probably.

Is it all that important that I don’t really have the mental space for 100 hour games anymore, and it takes me a much longer time to get through them? Not really.

I’ve only played through maybe two hours of the latest Dragon Age, and I’m not even all that broken up about it. They trashed the entire history of the series just to have a sort of linear story, anyway. And I fear, they may do this to Mass Effect 5, as well.

I’ve been chipping away at Genshin Impact for three years. I haven’t even beaten Alien Isolation, and I had that when it was brand new. I’m maybe 20 hours into The Witcher 3. In The Division 2, I just now got back to New York. In Assassin’s Creed: Odyssey, I’m still exploring the 2nd main land mass. In Avatar: Frontiers of Pandora, I mostly just wander around killing humans and picking flowers.

In Star Wars: Outlaw, I rode around on my speeder and killed some Stormtroopers, and that’s as far as I’ve gotten.

Beating games is no longer something I’m concerned with.

Except for Baldur’s Gate 3. I beat that.

When Veilguard finally dropped, and before I was kind of dissatisfied with it, I was feeling a little worried, like, “Oh man, by the time there’s a Dragon Age 5, I could be in my 50s?!”

But … maybe it’s a good thing studios take three centuries to release one game now. Because I can’t get through stuff that was new 7 years ago.

Maybe this is a lack of energy to do so, or maybe studios just need to respect people’s time more? Another one of those questions that I don’t have an answer for.

But I do sometimes miss the hyper-active me who could get off of work, spend 8 hours grinding in WoW, fall asleep for 3, and then go back to work.

Maybe … maybe that wasn’t so healthy.