Gaming burnouts.

[Pyrax]

Picture the scene. You load up a game you love, get comfy in your couch/gaming chair and...nothing. You either just don't feel like playing or feel like you're forcing yourself to play. Have you ever felt like this? What was the cause? What did you do/play to regain your enjoyment?
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For me, it was about a month ago. I had just finished Persona 5 Royal and began another playthrough of SMT IV. For some reason, I just plain didn't have the motivation to play through the earlygame. I had been playing Royal for 2 weeks straight, so I figured that might've been the reason - Naraku's difficulty wasn't helping either. Long story short, I decided to take a break from gaming for a while. For the past few of weeks I've been occasionally working towards trophies in Okami HD instead ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

 

[prog rocker]

In my case, I just play different games, since my burnout is only directed towards specific games.

 

[Emmy]

Happens often to me, usually after finishing a long RPG.

In my case I either detox by not playing anything for a while, or by playing something really causal that doesn't take much effort like Clubhouse Games on the Switch.

 

[Insanish Danish]

Yep, this happens to me pretty often. Sometimes it's more specific than others - like back in early 2018 I played a lot of Super Mario Odyssey for almost three months straight and wound up not being able to even look at the game for a while after. But there have been other times where I simply lost all motivation to play any games at all (minus Animal Crossing since it's so low-effort). Being that I love video games as much as I do, it's not fun when it feels more like a chore.

 

[Blockhead Pippi]

I'm very much a gaming person, so any burnout is more to do with certain games and franchises. Which is perfectly natural -- I get super into one game/franchise for a little while, then the interest wanes and I move on to other games, and then eventually I become interested in that game/franchise again and want to play it.

How long it lasts depends though. Myself I've felt burnt out of Pokemon since completing Pokemon Sun, and that came out 4 years ago. Aside from a couple of titles, my desire to play Pokemon again hasn't really come back. I'm fine with that though as there's so many other great games I could play instead.

 

[ZinnLav]

I usually experience this with really long games filled with heaps of content, there's a few games that I still haven't finished just because the content overwhelmed me.
The Witcher 3 comes to mind, I've played most of the main story on two separate occasions but I just end up tired after the hundreds of side quests and collectables on the map. It's an amazing game, but it's so exhausting.
I also experience a similar lack of interest in games for awhile after finishing a particular emotional or moving game, such as Persona 5 Royal and other games with amazing stories, because anything I play after it just won't compare and will serve little enjoyment for even a few weeks until I feel that I'm ready to dive into a new game.

 

[CynthiaLover]

Considering I go through various "interest cycles" every so often (semi-monthly, give or take), it's bound to crop up with me every now and then. If a certain game isn't tickling my fancy for the time, then I just move on to another game. Considering I'm a gamer (because I have no social life... what a shock) it sometimes happens whenever I need a change of pace. However, the burnouts don't last long, as there is a certain... "issue" with me that forces me to focus on something quickly. As I've stated numerous times I get bored very easily, and when I get bored I get dangerous. I need to keep my mind occupied with something, otherwise I get very agitated (the quarantine certainly didn't help). But, for the most part, if I don't feel like playing a certain game, I just pop in another one from my rather large collection. Ultimately, it depends on my mood. If I feel like playing Crash Bandicoot, I play Crash. If I feel like playing Monster Rancher 4, then I play that (I even have a massive Word document on what DVDs/CDs/games I have that give what monster for said game). Overall, because I need to stay distracted, burnouts don't last long, but when I do get burned out I just shift gears and try something else. It really just boils down to the current day, mood, and situation at hand. So, yeah, I do get burned out every now and then, especially if I've been playing a certain game/franchise almost non-stop lately, but they don't last long enough to be a problem... otherwise I will have a problem.

 

[colours]

i don't really get burned out of games that often. maybe individual games (like, i haven't touched Octopath Traveler in forever despite meaning to at several points), but not really gaming as a whole. kinda hard for me to get burned out of gaming as a whole unless for whatever reason i'm going through so much irl that gaming won't help my mood, things like that.

 

[Poke Dragon]

I feel a burnout whenever something can feel like a chore for me to do. This is the main reason why it took me a year or so to finally start playing Mega Man X Legacy Collection 2 because I just didn't feel like having to worry about some of the more ridiculous Hunter Medals that made you start the game again. It's for this reason that I kind of hated Mega Man X7 due to the wonky camera making the game a chore to play through.

 

[Aulos]

I'm beginning to get burnt out of Animal Crossing New Horizons. I say it's been a good run. Over three months. NL did not last me half of that time IIRC.

 

[Fatima Shadow Frost Witch]

Fire Emblem Three Houses(810 hours)
Game is really only good for 4 runs(after that it gets to be really tedious)

Black Eagles
Blue Lions
Church
Golden Deer

Xenoblade Chronicles 2

After putting 295 Hours into it getting to be a little boring

 

[Lone_Garurumon]

Personally I don't recall ever getting burned out on games in general, but I'll absolutely burn out on a specific game. It only really tends to pop up on a game that has a particularly drawn out gameplay loop, like Monster Hunter. When that happens I just switch gears to a different game for a bit, and I'll generally be good to go back to it some other time.

 

[Felly]

I feel like this happens to me more often than not, unfortunate as that sounds. I'm not really sure I've found any real way to get past it yet, but I usually just try to find another game I'll enjoy. Sometimes it's just the difficulty of the game for me, other times, it's just burn out from playing too much. Sometimes it's just I get so caught up in reaching some kind of goal that I lose interest because it takes too long or it becomes too difficult.

 

[Torchic W. Pip]

It's been happening to me a lot, which is sad because I really wanna finish Pokémon Platinum and play White (I've had both games for, like, three years at this point)

 

[WilliG]

I was in the same boat, now I prefer to play with a team, it's more entertaining for me. I try to follow csgo live score at https://tips.gg/csgo/matches to improve my skills. Also it gives full access to the esports database with upcoming matches and teams analysis with ranking. Hope one day I'll will take part in premier tournament too. Btw here is promocode 76FCEF for new players, it gives 500 poins.

 

[Melli Enthusiast]

This happens a lot with me. Most recently, I was settling in to start up a new campaign in Civilization III.
I started up the game, began selecting map options, win conditions, and civilizations…and my enthusiasm went right out the window.

There‘a no question in my mind that it’s a symptom of my depression, since, around the same time, I lose all energy for gaming in general. The main problem that I find in these instances is that playing the games feels like so much effort and a lot of unneeded work. So, basically, instead of playing the game, I usually end up watching an LP of the game, even if I’ve seen that same LP before.

In any case, I don’t really sweat it when this happens, and I don’t force myself to play a game, because I won’t enjoy it, and it will ruin the game for me even when I’m in a better state of mind.

 

[Sheep]

Absolutely yes. I've actually been going through this right now, but I'm not fully sure if it's burnout... maybe the lack of attention span mixed with it? Only one game has enough of my interest lately (FFXIV) and any time I try to play something else, I can really only stick with it for an hour or so (or more if I'm playing multiplayer with the husband, since that keeps me motivated longer). I feel like I had much more energy for playing all sorts of games years ago, now I just feel more exhausted/burnt out. Still going through things though, just more slowly!