video games aren't fun anymore.

Sorry this video is a bit more serious, next video is a return to form. I just felt like I needed to talk about this heading into the rest of 2022. Hopefully my story resonates with a few people, and hopefully i've convinced you to try out some other genres of games.

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I’ve been playing video games for, as long as I can remember. I can remember the first time I held a controller in my hands vividly. The sheer size of the Duke way too massive for me at the time, but all that was just background noise in my head compared to the fresh sights and sounds of what is now my second favorite entry in my favorite franchise ever. Gaming during this time period was, limitless. I had no concept of developer or hardware restrictions, the limits of pre-generated responses from NPC’s or content in the game to consume. Halo was an infinite universe to create in and experience, Spyro had no end to the amount of dragons I could rescue, hell I can remember using an action replay in Pokemon Platinum, using the walk through walls cheat, and accidentally finding shaymin at the end of this long path of flowers.

Come early 2021 it was time for me to upgrade, and after managing to walk into a best buy and just randomly come across a 3090 that I wasn’t even looking to buy at the time, I knew it was time to go all out. I managed to get a 5950x, the best motherboard I could buy at the time, and some sick RAM, there were NO compromises to this system, besides the fans I was running out of money. I built the computer, ran some benchmarks, and then didn’t play any games. At first I assumed I was just unmotivated, or maybe even burnt out, but over time I came to realize that I just wasn’t enjoying games anymore. I got scared, scared that I spent all of this money on a hobby I wasn’t interested in anymore, scared that the youtube channel I wanted to start was already dead in the water, scared that I’d be giving up a huge part of what formed my online identity.

I calmed myself down, and took a step back. It makes sense that I’d start feeling this way about gaming, doing anything pretty much every day for long enough would ultimately become mundane and boring, what can I do to have fun with playing games again. For awhile I was stumped, but during my time I decided to just take a break and work on my Ultrakill video, and while that was technically still gaming, it was mostly for work and I could take the time to figure out what I wanted to really do about my problem.

What I found though is that as I was taking a break from playing games for the most part, my desire to play them started rising again. But once I actually managed to get into a game and started playing, my desire to continue playing them would immediately fall, and I’d get off of it within 30 minutes.

What I came to realize is that I had no variety in what I was playing. I would get on my computer and boot up the same FPS games, or just open up Minecraft, which I’ve been playing for years as well. I decided to actually take the the time and figure out other genres of games I could play, and I’ve never been happier for it. I realized that what I was experiencing overall wasn’t me not finding games fun anymore, I just wasn’t finding FPS games as interesting.

Throughout 2021 I decided to take the effort to branch out into different video games, and what I learned was that I still enjoyed playing video games, I just needed a breath of fresh air. I played games like Forza Horizon, Monster Hunter, Ghostrunner, Spent some time on Spyro, replayed Sonic Generations, Sonic Unleashed, Cities Skylines, Dark Souls, Demon Souls, all of these games made me appreciate just, playing playing games in general, and reignited my love for the hobby.

This peaked when Halo Infinite was released. For 6 years I waited for a follow up to Halo 5, I watched any lore video I could come across, scoured reddit posts and twitter threads that discussed what would happen in this game and tried keeping up with the game as much as I possibly could. I’ve already talked about Halo a lot on my channel, so keep my bias in mind, but this game gave me hope for new releases. Did I have issues with Halo Infinite’s campaign, of course, but how GOOD the gameplay was kept me from noticing them as much as I could have.