Sulphur on 31/5/2020 at 15:46

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While that could be one of the reasons, I doubt it unless it comes with the anhedonia and general fug of depression. The lethargy was something I felt a while ago specifically for gaming because I was at a natural ebb like the others describe; as long as everything else is okay, that enthusiasm generally comes back. It's dependent on a few variables though, for sure.

Anarchic Fox on 31/5/2020 at 16:36

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There are some types of games I find soothing to play obsessively, when depressed. Classic roguelikes come to mind. I would never have ascended in Nethack if not for depression. :p

Anyway, for me depression doesn't lower my overall time with games, but it does make the thoughtful and engaging ones much harder to play.

Harvester on 31/5/2020 at 17:20

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When I was depressed in my mid to late twenties, for a long time I played Half-Life 1 single player mods during the night. There were review sites for those user-created single player levels, and I pretty much played anything that got a halfway decent review. Helped to take my mind off things, but I'm glad those days are long gone.

Anarchic Fox on 31/5/2020 at 20:38

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I think such games are like anesthesia: addictive, perhaps dangerous, but... what's wrong with sparing yourself pain?

Gryzemuis on 2/6/2020 at 13:08

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I got a similar thing. Games don't grab me anymore.

For a part, it is because of me. But I also think it is because of the games.

I started playing games in December 1998. Half-Life 1. It was recommended to me by a guy who had just joined the company I worked for. 1999-2005 I played lots of great games. Thiefs, Morrowind, Oblivion, Deus Ex, etc, I'm sure you know them all. In 2005 I started playing WoW. I played that on and off until spring 2010. I probably played ~10k+ hours of WoW. That's 5-6 man-years. And I probably spent another 2k+ hours just reading about WoW.

In 2010 some stuff changed in my life. And of course I stopped playing WoW. I still played games, but maybe a little less frequent. And not as intense as before. In 2014 I did play WoW (Pandaria) for 8 months, and 1 month of the new expansion pack (Warlords). I haven't played WoW since December 2014. In 2015 I played and finished The Witcher 3. And I played some GTA V.

GTA V is like a thermometer for me. I like GTA V. It's impressive. I think it's awesome. But for some reason, I can't play it for more than a few nights. After that, I just have no drive to start the game. Maybe it's because of the controls. You really need a gamepad to drive the cars. But even when I bought a gamepad last year, I still don't feel the drive to play. Normally I would have bought RDR2 and played it. I'm sure that's an awesome game too. But I know that when I buy it, I will hardly play it.

Since the end of 2015 I have played only a few games. The Witness in early 2016. The three Dark Souls games. Ashen. Dishonored 2. No Man's Sky. That's all I played. Since then I have played all three DS games multiple times. To get all the achievements, to do NG+/NG++/NG+++, etc. I even did SL1 runs in DS3. In january I did another run in DS2. I'm kinda done with DS now. But for some reason, I can't get myself to play other games. So I spent ~1k hours play DS[123], in 4 years time. That's not a lot.

It is a weird feeling. I want to finish GTA V. I want to play RDR2. I want to play Demon Souls in the PS3-emulator (got that working, it's why I bought a gamepad last year). I want to finish Dishonored 2 (I got through 50% of the game in 2016). I want to replay Thief 2 (I replayed Thief 1 in 2014 or so). But I just can't set myself to do it. I don't know why. I rather watch some TV series, call someone on the phone, or do something else.

There are lots of new games that I'm not interested in. Games these days seem different than before. Easier. Simpler. Shorter. More boring. And a big difference is that game companies are all trying to milk their games for every penny they can get. Not fun. I don't mind paying 50 or 60 euros for a good game. That's fair. I pay the price, and I receive the full game, and 1-2 months (or more) of fun. But with all the DLCs, the micro-payments, the extra services, I don't find most games fun anymore. It's too obvious how companies want to milk me. That irritates me. No, thanks.

To be honest, I don't really mind that I'm not gaming anymore. It's been a fun 10 or 15 years. But games can take a lot of time, energy and focus. I quit my last job a little over a year ago. I plan to start working again later this year, after the summer. If that's possible (it seems lots of (small) companies are not hiring right now). We'll see. Last year I wrote some software myself (32k lines of C in 2 runs of 10 weeks each), just for fun, just to prove to myself that my code is better than most/all commercial implementations. If I can't find a job, I'll start working on that code again. Looking forward to that, I feel 10x more enthousiastic about coding than playing another game.

I think it's actually good for me that I lost the drive to play games.