Games Get Boring Too Fast: Preventing Burnout

Gamers Nexus: "Members of the Gamers Nexus team will unanimously agree on one thing: We get bored of games faster than companies can make them. It's a problem we've opted to call "game burnout," and has side effects of empty wallets, rivers tears, and wasted gigabytes. Thought Skyrim was good? Twenty hours was enough for me. Liked Battlefield 3? Eh, it was all the same after eighteen hours."

[5yN4MWQU]

Games used to be a lot more interesting to me. I was able to figure out what made me get bored of them in the first place: I was grinding quests and trying to "win" every game. This guide really helped me figure out how to make my games last longer.

[arcsoft]

This definitely speaks to me. I lost interest in Skyrim after about 30 hours but I'm gradually getting back into it by wandering places.

It's kind of fun to go wherever you want and see where you end up on the map.

[Velox]

Evry game is soooo repetitive these days. Kill the thing that's marked with a quest marker on the map , turn it in , repeat

[Marquis_de_Sade]

"Evry game is soooo repetitive these days"

Are you implying older games aren't repetitive? If so, that's laughable.

[5yN4MWQU]

Agreed! I gave up on the quests (I felt overwhelmed by the quest log) and started getting more into my character from an RP perspective. It is a role-playing game, after all. :)

[kza]

Get a job lol then games last abit longer befor we get bored

[Hicken]

Having a job is irrelevant. When we were kids, we had school and who knows what else. Still, we didn't get bored with games as often: we could put 200 hours in Final Fantasy or play Zone of the Enders seven times.

Now, even with jobs and other responsibilities taking the place of school, games just don't hold a person's attention span for as long. Well, most of em, anyway.

[5yN4MWQU]

@KZA: My average work week is 50 hours. I spend the rest of my time writing articles and playing games. Having a job, as Hicken stated so well, is not relevant.

It's a matter of design and repetition.

KZA is obviously just flamebaiting.

[TheSanchezDavid]

I actually have an issue with some games where I tend to switch to something else after I've already invested some time into one game. I think that's because I'm such a huge indie game fan, though, so I'm used to playing smaller games. Still, I recently started playing inFamous for the first time, and it's kept me entertained for several hours, and I actually plan on finishing it without moving on to something else mid-game.

[Voxelman]

You could always just play something different, try a new genre etc. Most gamers will have a few genres they play and get really good at etc, that leads to boredom go out and play something in a genre you haven't played before.

[ssb3173]

For me, games need a good storyline to be interesting. I found myself hooked on xenoblade and the last story, and uncharted and halo prove to be good. If a game is all repetition then its just going to get boring.

[Sidewinder-]

Brilliant article that I can relate to.

It's a strange feeling. A lack of drive, and you end up blaming the game. Maybe it is, maybe it isn't.

Gonna think on this. Might even come back and read it again for refreshed tips.

[5yN4MWQU]

I originally faced sort of a crisis: I wasn't sure if I was "getting too old for games" (many people seem to think games are only for children - they're wrong). I eventually realized that, in part, it was the game's fault and it is also a problem with having played so many hundreds of games throughout my life. I think a lot of people on this site can relate.

[ShaunCameron]

Meh. All games get repetitive and old after a while. Aside from sports games, I rarely play a game more than once.

[Garethvk]

Thats a great article. Even in the media with so many games to review, you can burn out on a title fast.

[banjadude]

Because of my perfectionism, it's so true about the "being best" part. It happens a lot to me in RPGs. I'm obsessed with trying to keep up with everyone else, in making a "perfect character" that I end up getting so overwhelmed, I lose interest in the game altogether.

[eak3]

I remember playing the original Metroid through some 9-10 times. Doom countless times and Kings Fields I and II over and over. Now I can barely get through a game. I did clock in 100 hrs on Skyrim, over 3 toons and I have about 100 hrs in BF3. I think boredom is just from years of being over saturated with basically the same games just different looks.

[trenso1]

A good story mode gameplay hooks me in like kingdom heart or mgs4. When a game has a good story I find my self playing it at least 5 times over. Sometimes more.

[PersonMan]

I loved inFAMOUS 2 sooooooo much. I played through the story twice (once on infamous and once on hero), but once the game is over... there's literally NOTHING to do. You can fly/grind around all day or shoot pedestrians, but that's about it. Since it's essentially an open-world game, the developers should've thought about putting more enemy encounters or extra activities in the game.

[MkaY]

We always want more. Even though I have huge barrage of games, still I like to play the new ones a bit more than the ones I've enjoyed already (and could still be enjoyed).

Maybe it is the marketing? :) Working in marketing myself has lead to the conclusion (backed up by research) that such people does not exist who are completely immune to marketing.

[mttrackmaster38]

I have a massive backlog that I racked up starting when I got a ps3. I bought a lot of open-world games thinking that I was getting more value for my money, and usually didn't end up finishing them (I only put 27 hours into Kingdoms of Amalur for example).

I think my problem is that I bought a lot of free-roam games with boring stories. Great gameplay is no longer enough for me keep playing something, I need a compelling plot, which is something really missing nowadays. When I was a kid I replayed the hell out of my games, with no signs of boredom at all.

[ACEMANWISE]

I miss games that made me think. I feel insulted when they hold your hand through a game or dumb down a well known series for deep gameplay. I understand not everyone is an advanced gamer but that's what game difficulty is for. For example, Final Fantasy XIII felt extremely linear and straightforward with an onslaught of help text. Why couldn't that be the easy mode? You know, the difficulty setting should be used more like this so that normal gamers don't need to sacrifice their gaming experience for the mass market.

I can play games like Deus Ex and nearly any past gen title for hours. Why? Well the game makes you think. It's not all about visual action. I can put in theme hospital, sim city, sim ants, civilization, and just play for hours and never get bored. I can put in good story driven games like Metal Gear and Heavy Rain and still enjoy it till this day. Even games with puzzle solving like Silent Hill, Parasite Eve, and Soul Reaver still have entertainment for me. Visual action and direct action control schemes are exciting but lose it's appeal. Why? Well once you see the spectical than that's the depth of value you will see. I'm not saying it's not important but it needs to be founded by something more.

[Sander_Noordijk]

It would already help if studios didn't insist on taking you by the hand and walk you through the game. What happened to the excitement of finding your own way?

[Kiwi_Blue]

Sometimes I find myself not finishing a game, not because I am bored with it, but because I don't want it to end!