Tired of PC games? Say it ain't so, Joe!

Yep, I'm tired. (Tired of being admired)
Tired of PC Gaming, that is. I've been a PC Gamer since my parent bought a shiny new Apple ][+ for me (and my sister, ha!) back in nineteen-eighty mumblemumble.
It started innocently enough: Raster Blaster, Lemonade Stand, Oregon Trail. I learned to program BASIC from a book that summer. You've never seen such stellar examples of someone's name running, rolling, bouncing and filling a screen. Then there was the graphics programming: both low res and, hehe, Hi Res.

And there was Castle Wolfenstein. How many here played that when it was new? Ah, how those SS officers could make me jump with a shout from nowhere and what a wonderful thing it was to steal a uniform.

Let's not forget Wizardry. Yes, the original one. In the box, along with the diskette(s) and manual was... wait for it... graph paper. Yes, a half-sized notepad of graph paper. No automapping here, boys, in my day we mapped our RPG worlds with a pencil and graph paper, and we liked it!

The years passed, a new town, new friends, and a new experience: computer games loaded from a ... cassette tape and cassette player? Awesome! And you don't need a monitor? Just hook it to the old 13" TV your parents gave you? Mule? What's Mule? Sorry, M.U.L.E., what's that? (Only the best multiplayer strategy game ever made! Ok, maybe second best. Chess is a tough act to follow.) Sweet mystery of life, at last I've found you! Ah, my sweet, sweet Commodore 64! I even talked my parents into the old 1541 disk drive.
(I will give my parents, particularly my mom this: they/she really did grasp that computers were the wave of the future, a tidal wave poised to upend the world, and those that understood them would be kings among men - okay, I made that last part up, but it's good to be the king.)

More learning programming, more typing page after page of code in from that magazine, snickering at the syntax errors, laughing out loud at the cumbersome techniques used, but still, faithfully paying fealty to those that took the time to type it all up. And cursing their mothers when it didn't work and I had to go bug hunting, or worse yet, typo hunting. Work work work, work work work, hello boys!

I've been gaming for a long time, is what I'm saying, and I think I've grown weary or bored or something. I haven't been able to bring myself to launch WoW in a couple of weeks other than a quick run into ZG. Even Dwarf Fortress no longer holds any sway. I did play Diablo for a couple of hours last night, and it was fun for a given value of fun, but there were so many design decisions that I now bristled at. (Seriously, why, exactly, can't I turn that item sideways in my backpack to pick up just one more thing? Is my backpack made of molded plastic and there's only one way to tetris things in there? Ugh.) Hell, I don't even want to muck with getting a C64 or Atari800 emulator working to play M.U.L.E.! I downloaded some heinously huge BF2 Mod right before patch day, I used to love the inkling of a glimmer of an outside chance of a snowball's chance in hell of finding and terminating Swampy, but, alas, even Yankee-hunting holds no allure any more. Twenty-mumblemumble years is a long time, but it's just not fun any more. Or there's nothing fun right now, who knows?

The only thing I can imagine bringing me back is Spore, so if you guys could have a chat with Mr. Wright, that'd be peachy. Even alpha code might keep me plugged in. Until then, I just bought a DSLite, I think I'll go play Tetris with something other than my Inventory. It's a lot more fun than the backpack shuffle and I can just snap the case shut and it's there waiting for me when I get back.

P.S. No, you may NOT have my graph paper, I might need it! Hey, get out of that box! You don't even know what Raster Blaster is!

Happens to all of us I think. A good break followed by an enticing new game and you'll wonder why you ever left

Do you like Quake 3? That's what usually gets me back into pc gaming and I'm always willing to play.

I was kind of the opposite. I never had a decent computer until I got out of college, and now my consoles have gone the way of the dodo. I play my PC pretty much exclusively these days (I don't count handhelds, as I can't lug my computer on a vacation), with the occasional break for some Halo2 action now and then.

I go through this about once or twice a year...lay of for a month and come back when you really feel the itch.

I am going through the exact opposite emotion right now. I quit WoW, the Xbox 360 just isn't offering me much for some reason (thinking about a Wii if the online is worth a damn), and I am having a great time playing old games on the PC and new ones I never tried before with all my new free time. I am about to beat HL2 again for the first time since the first week it was out and with my new rig I am totally engrossed in the experience. I am looking forward to Defcon, NWN2, CS:S and DOD:S nights, and I may even get back into Battlefield 2 some.

I may be buying a DS:Lite (black) for my wife soon, but I am sure I will use it plenty.

I'm coming to the tail end of my PC-Bah! phase.
I'm starting to look at my row of games boxes with longing and I DO need a break from Disgaea 2 every now and then... Ride it out, it isn't fatal.

boysetsfire wrote:

Do you like Quake 3? That's what usually gets me back into pc gaming and I'm always willing to play.

X-Com is mine. It both pisses me off and keeps me interested at the same time.

But Ducki, it is break time. Like Certis said, something will bring you back.

Certis wrote:

Happens to all of us I think. A good break followed by an enticing new game and you'll wonder why you ever left ;)

The man's the CEO for a reason...

Seriously, we've all faced it, Ducki. Try just a couple nights without any kind of game. Play with the ducks, hit people with sticks... Whatever strikes your fancy.
It might help if you choose activities that allow you to 'space out' abit. Sometimes I get to the point where, between work and errands and games, my brain's engaged all the time, and that wears on you. So give it up for awhile. Read or watch TV or take a walk or something that will let you shut down for awhile.

Flux wrote:

I am going through the exact opposite emotion right now. I quit WoW, the Xbox 360 just isn't offering me much for some reason (thinking about a Wii if the online is worth a damn), and I am having a great time playing old games on the PC and new ones I never tried before with all my new free time. I am about to beat HL2 again for the first time since the first week it was out and with my new rig I am totally engrossed in the experience. I am looking forward to Defcon, NWN2, CS:S and DOD:S nights, and I may even get back into Battlefield 2 some.

I may be buying a DS:Lite (black) for my wife soon, but I am sure I will use it plenty. :)

I did pretty much this back in the EQ days.. eventually when I finally escaped EQ.. I took a month off from gaming.. and started playing Quake 3: Arena.. UT.. and more importantly Deus Ex.

I do this every once in a while, but I normally take 3-4 month breaks from just about everything. This is normally when I catch up on all the books I've been wanting to read, but was too hooked on [insert game here] to bother with them.

I seem to go through pc, console and gaming break cycles. Recently been having fun with the 360. My home office is under construction, so my pc is temporarily setup in our dining room on a childs size play table for quick email checks. Having to squat down on the child size chair has been a pc dis-incentive, but I'm kinda enjoying a bit of time away from it. I got far too burnt out on WoW last year. I think Dark Mesiah of M&M might bring me back to my pc when its released.

Battlefield 2 and Half Life 2 were the games that brought me back into PC gaming. I can't wait for Half Life 2: Episode 2/Portal/Team Fortress 2 package drops cause that will surely keep me playing for hours on end...

It's odd because I don't go in cycles. I've been PC Gaming pretty much for 20 some-odd years.
I wonder if it'll be a 20-year break. Haha!

(Oh, yeah, so I showed DuckiDeva the non-timed, using the stylus mode of Tetris last night. After a while, she said "Damn you." I offered to take over for her. This morning, she asked "Are you taking the DS to work?" Why, do you want me to leave it? "Yeah." Hehe. That seems to be a consistent theme with purchasers of DSes and their SOs.)

That's all right, ducki.

I remember when Elysium quit gaming a few years ago. That was scary. But he came back. They *always* come back.

It happens. Hit me hard in the summer of `99, bit I came back with a vengeance. I love my freaking hobby

Flux wrote:

I am going through the exact opposite emotion right now. I quit WoW, the Xbox 360 just isn't offering me much for some reason (thinking about a Wii if the online is worth a damn), and I am having a great time playing old games on the PC and new ones I never tried before with all my new free time. I am about to beat HL2 again for the first time since the first week it was out and with my new rig I am totally engrossed in the experience. I am looking forward to Defcon, NWN2, CS:S and DOD:S nights, and I may even get back into Battlefield 2 some.

I may be buying a DS:Lite (black) for my wife soon, but I am sure I will use it plenty. :)

Did I miss something here? Flux, I haven't seen you post for, like, years. Welcome back, man! Good to see one of the originals back in action!

Flux wrote:

and I may even get back into Battlefield 2 some.

Start by downloading PoE and play your first map on the "Fallen" map. The site is down right now though. It's a 1GB file, so be prepared.

It's so funny everyone sees this as a problem, whereas 99% of the people I know irl would welcome Ducki back to earth

Man, I love this site...

IMO you're bored of sameness.

Small games like Defcon from indie developers are slowly revitalizing the stale PC game scene, and it is only starting. The sooner people will become tolerant of indie-level graphics and show this with their wallets, the faster the process will go. Also, it will eventually force giant game companies like EA and today's Blizzard to get out of their franchise ruts and try something new.

I foresee more games which are designed toward people of 25+ age as well. Games with maybe dated graphics, but ones which do not insult the player's intelligence.

Just give it a rest for a while, wait until a new game hits, and then buy a shiny new system. You'll fall in love all over again.

I don't know what you're worried about; you've got a console to play with. It's not like you're going sans games. That'd be plain scary.

It's scary. I swear the OP just posted my gaming life story... and EXACTLY how I'm feeling lately.

I did fire up an Amiga emulator recently and had some great nostalgia moments but I'm just totally burnt out on almost all aspects of video gaming. I'm still playing things but it feels more like I'm just in a rut than enjoying myself. I haven't finished a game in a long time now.

Sigh... I haven't even unwrapped Disgaea2 yet... I know it's bad when I don't even try to play one of my most favorite franchises of all time.

Gaming has been my hobby for so long and brought me so many hours of entertainment I just don't know what to do either.

Whenever I'm down on gaming, and it does indeed happen from time to time. It's time to go back to the basics. I read a book and then slip into Fallout 2 or BG2 or lately Space Rangers 2.

In other news my Xfire is reported exactly 300 hours in BF2.

Stylez wrote:

Whenever I'm down on gaming, and it does indeed happen from time to time. It's time to go back to the basics. I read a book and then slip into Fallout 2 or BG2 or lately Space Rangers 2.

In other news my Xfire is reported exactly 300 hours in BF2.

Pshaw, 616 hours here.

I tend to switch to lots of book reading and movie watching whenever my gaming habit goes bad on me.

I'm right there with you, as evidenced by my 4Sale post.

I've had it. I've poured hours into the titles at Tactical Gamer, and don't get me started on World of Warcraft...man, I should have done something productive!

The thing that gets me is that it's all the same. Another WWII/Battlefield/HL shooter. Wow. That's exciting. FEAR gets points for at least trying, but let's face it: there are few if any new ideas on the PC platform.

And RTS titles? Don't get me started....

Yeah, I'm down on PC gaming....maybe I need a PS2 or something.

mateo wrote:

The thing that gets me is that it's all the same. Another WWII/Battlefield/HL shooter. Wow. That's exciting. FEAR gets points for at least trying, but let's face it: there are few if any new ideas on the PC platform.

And RTS titles? Don't get me started....

I don't think it is fair to fault the platform the stagnation of two genres. If you want new you're going to have to look past the FPS and RTS bins.

I'm right there with you, as evidenced by my 4Sale post.

Yeah, I almost tried to claim Diablo2 and Quack 4 but realized I didn't really want to play them as much as I wanted to want to play them.

I don't think it is fair to fault the platform the stagnation of two genres. If you want new you're going to have to look past the FPS and RTS bins.

I don't agree with mateo on this, fully, but there is a cornucopia of war shooters.
My ennui has nothing to do with sameness, I don't think. I think it's just after 20 some-odd years, "innovation" really isn't all that innovative. Whee, more polygons. Whee, bigger textures. Whee, real-time everything.

Woo.

I think as the case with many things, less is more. I've enjoyed gaming much more since I quit trying to play many games. I love shooters, but I love them more, if I play one every year or so. Maybe every other year. I check sites like this one, and find one that seems to really have something going, and play it.

Yep, I'm missing tons of great games, but I am enjoying the ones I play much more. I gave up PC gaming more than three years ago when I got a Mac. recently I upgraded to a new Intel iMac. Once I got XP going, I started checking out PC games, to see if I could find something that I had been missing. It was pretty depressing to find out that there really wasn't anything out there that excited me at all.

So, I'm still gaming on my Xbox, and playing WAY TOO MUCH poker on my Mac. But even on my Xbox, I rarely buy new games. Gaming is much more fun once I stopped trying to buy all of the latest greatest games. I'll pick them up now, in bargain bins.

How anyone can get tired of PC games when there are titles like Armadillo Run is beyond my imagination. Fools!