My gaming habits have changed over the years, probably due to many factors including the amount of  time I have to play in one sitting and the explosion of niche and indie games. Based on my Steam statistics, you can see this change happening.
I used to be much more involved in first-person shooters or other large game franchises. I still do enjoy them, but it seems I lose interest quicker now. On the other hand, I'm finding myself putting a lot more time into strategy and niche games, possibly even some games I would have openly mocked before.
Here is a quick overview of my total play time on some choice games based on my Steam stats:
- Dishonored: 41 minutes played (Granted, I did just buy it recently.)
- BioShock Infinite: 4 hours played
- Borderlands: 9 hours played
- Borderland 2: 11 hours played
- Crusader Kings II: 35 hours played (and I bought this one no more than 2 weeks ago.)
- Euro Truck Simulator 2: 42 hours played
- Sid Meier's Civilization IV: 46 hours played
The list doesn't include any non-Steam games, like Minecraft and The Sims series, but the pattern continues. My habits seems to be leaning towards more strategy and games I can easily jump into for a small chunk of time. Have you noticed a change in your gaming habits as you got older?
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I don’t know that the ‘what’ component of my gameplay has changed too much — other than, I guess, the dramatic reduction of my game time consisting of MMO play over recent years.
But certainly the ‘how’ and to what extent I prioritise it has changed rather dramatically.
I’d be willing to chalk up the how changes to growing older, but I think my drifting from MMOs (and perhaps the slightly reduced attention span on individual games, which I sometimes have noticed like you) has more to do with ‘been there, done that’ rather than any component of growing older.
No matter how hard we try, there is no way to fully recapture that sense of naive wonder the first time you experience a game world in an MMO or certain elements of other play styles. Which is a shame. I still remember my wide eyed wonder the first time I truly started to realise the scope of Asheron’s Call game world, where all I had to compare it with was the size of Quake levels. xD
That’s true, too. I forgot about MMOs. I have been drifting from those, too. I haven’t played WoW in over 6 months now and the other ones I’ve tried just don’t do it for me anymore. You’re right, there is never going to be a time like logging into WoW for the first time and being in awe of everything.