Are gamers getting older? It would be interesting to see how this breaks down by age.
I'm getting older. I have 3 kids and no time. 10 years ago I had no kids and 3 time. Now when I play, I just put it on the easiest setting and play it like an interactive movie.
Na, gaming is where I can realise great strategy I cant do in real life. I've never been at work going "just want to do this" before I go home and sleep
Yeah, I’ve played plenty of Civilization over the years, but I’m married now. I have a kid. I keep a note with what I’m doing because it might be a couple months before I play again. I could play more, but I want to spend time with my wife and my kid. Usually when I take time to play I want to play again the next night, but that’s often not feasible, and then it turns into weeks again.
I started playing Morrowind maybe 6 months back, got hours into the game and was having a good time. Then I didn't get a chance to play for a month, now I haven't gone back because I have no idea what I was doing since half the stuff doesn't seem to be written in the journal, and when it is, it assumes I remember who the person is or where I was supposed to be going. So I just haven't picked it up again.
To be fair, Morrowind is just that kind of game. It's been many years since I've played it, but I remember it being one of the last truly open world experiences I got from playing games. The plot drops you off in the first city and kind of just let's you go at it. I remember hours of just wandering until I ended up at the city of vivec, which is the mess of floating pyramid temple lookin jobbies out on a lake somewhere. I didn't know shit about anything but it was awesome and that was enough for me. Elden Ring almost brings this feeling back sometimes.
It was great while I remembered what was happening! But sometimes your only reference to a quest is something that says "Go out the door, take the third left, and look for an orange door" and you just have no idea even what city you were in when you got that note 😆
During the couple of weeks I was playing it, I didn't actually feel lost at all. But now trying to return to it just feels more like a chore than a good time. I'm playing Baldur's Gate 3 now instead, I'm back in the era of quest markers!
You can add map markers with custom descriptions in Morrowind. I use them to leave little "what the fuck am I doing" notes for myself before leaving the game if I don't know I'll be back on within a couple days
For real though it can be a hard game to jump back into if you've had it on pause for a while. I usually just make a new character at that point see where the new adventure goes. There are so many factions and places to explore no one character can experience the game in full anyway