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Ever have that feeling of gaming ennui? Don't worry! |
Listed in: PS3, Wii, PSP, Xbox 360, MMORPG, Nintendo DS, PC Gaming Tags: Gamerscore, homebrew community, Ponies and Kittens
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You may not know it, but ennui is something you've probably experienced at least once in your life, but have you ever experienced it as a gamer?
Ennui is boredom. The dictionary defines it as a "feeling of utter weariness and discontent resulting from satiety or lack of interest." As gamers, we've all probably gotten bored with a game... but rare is the occasion when we've grown bored of actually playing games or of doing something game related.
For instance, ennui sets in for online gamers when they realize that everything they do inside the game doesn't actually have any appreciable impact on the world around them. For console fans, it's probably come across in the form of frustration, or simply the sudden inability to care about what happens to Link, or to your Gamerscore, or to your plans for another ultimately awesome installment of Ponies and Kittens homebrew. Well, either boredom or despair, but they tend to be the same thing in this sense.
In either case, the feeling of WANTING to play seems to disappear out the window for most of us, and it's a shame, because there's something missing in our play that we don't completely understand. It's not the purpose, because the purpose behind play is always there. It certainly isn't the feeling of satisfaction of downing a boss with a well-timed Tatsumaki Senpuu Kyaku- Shouryuken- Hadouken combo.
In fact, no matter what reason you have for stopping, or whatever feelings you've got inside over your current pasttime, let me tell you something very important: it's okay.
Yep. The world (of Warcraft) will keep running without you, and the games you love, the guilds you cherish, and the respect you pick up from the homebrew community will remain intact even if you're not there for a little while. The important thing about games, which we sometimes forget in this day and age of trying to make games more mainstream and worthwhile, is that the worth of a game and the pasttimes we love come from the fun we derive from it.
Our suggestion: do something you haven't done yet. Your pasttime will welcome you with open arms, and you can tell us what else you've been up to. In the meantime, tell us about your stories of gaming ennui. We certainly would like to know how you got past your period of gaming ennui.
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Errrrr..........
Yeah, thats about it....
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I think I may be depressed right now, and this is a side effect of it.
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Relax. Try to think of the cause and then accept it, and then see if you can't try something new while you sort it out.
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I loaded up GTA LCS the other day for the first time in 4 months (I haven't finished it), and got past the mission that made me put it down 4 months ago so the game has come back to life for me. The reason I loaded this up? We had a house fire and so our house is in complete disarray being cleaned/decorated/refitted etc. and we have been so busy sorting out that I hadn't put the PC back together (normal gaming fix latest DoW, HL2 episode, or Carcassonne on a German game site). I found the PSP tucked in a packing box and thought "I wonder if it still has juice?", low and behold up came GTA LCS and I played for what seemed 5 minutes but was in fact 30 minutes. So my gaming boredom/frustration disappeared and I have picked it up regularly since then (trying to find the charger was a nightmare!).
The word "Ennui" seems to imply more meaning to your boredom in my mind.
Found this about it: Ennui pronounced "on-we," this French word comes from Old French enui, root of the English word 'annoy'
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All the extra stuff in twilight princess is a great example, I used to love just playing games to 100% complete every side quest and optional extra, with TP I've found hardly any of the poe souls yet i really cant be bothered to go round looking for them, or even to complete it anymore. I want this feeling to go away! I used to love playing games right up til the end.
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What i do is when the whole NEW CONSOLE!!!/HD TV!!!/ NXT GEN!!! blah blah gets old, i downgrade.
yep, i skip the current trend and jump back a page... Currently the world is on the PS3 vibe, Im packing a Saturn and loving it. The fun soon comes back, you get to hunt out old favourites, swap stuff for 'unwanted' games with your mates, and (most) the games are only pennies!
just for the record, while everyone jumped on 360, My n64 came back to life!...
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hehehe, no seriously, just reading the above has scared me. i dont feel like half as bad as you lot but still get bored wi games.
hehe, anyway.....good luck wi your 12 steps course.....an if it dunt work dont worry, ill join u in a few weeks if i dont get rid o me gameplay blues.......;-)
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i'm gonna give GTA4 a shot when it comes out, but nothing else really excites me. i'd rather hit the gym, earn some money, or chill with my friends. but sit and play madden for hours? can't do it.
and i don't know why.
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wake up people, video games don't even come close to satisfying every need in your life. Your life shouldn't be measured by looking at the periods in which you were bored with video games and what you possibly did during those desperate times. Instead try weaving in video games here and there when you are bored with your life, not the other way around.
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I know once those games come out, I'll be gaming like crazy again..... I hope =/
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Sometimes you realize, at times while playing, at other times from having not played, that you really don't give two craps about what's happening in that game. I think this is even worse for people who download their games. I think when you spend hard-earned cash on a game, there is more determination to play it through. There is a psychological need to extract from the game the perceived investment. You play it through to rationalize having bought it (assuming the game is decent for the most part). When you download a game, you don't have this investment, both financially and psychologically , to account for so there is a large portion of the motivation removed. Although this isn't what we are thinking about when we play these games, I think these feelings exist on a subcontious level.
Other times, the reason for letting a game gather dust is just a lack of connectivity. If you don't feel a connection to your characters, you are unlikely to get too involved with the game. If you feel your actions don't have a connection to the world your character lives in. If you feel the goals you are trying to acheive aren't worth acheiving. Sometimes the difficulty of a task far outweighs any possible benefits that could be gained from it.
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I have had nothing to do for the past month either, so my gaming apathy has been driving me nuts.
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I have as well, I will sit there sometimes thinking about all the games I have and which one to play and I start to go play one then decide man Ive played it before and then run through the list again.
Then start getting a bit depressed I guess cuz I don't know what else to do outside of gaming but if I don't want to game I just sit haha. I will sit at my computer and stare at it just to be close to it even if I don't do anything with it.
Well maybe this is something different.
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I find this the most convincing answer because i remember i used to love playing games like Croc (around age 11)(played it for months) and now im playing something more absorbing (and complicated) like oblivion(still, not playing it the same amount of time as i played croc. even though oblivion is arguably 124836234023650 times better). and now even if i force myself to play a game like croc, id probably rather sit down and stare at the wall.
This might eventually happen to me even with Oblivion and eventually end up not playing games anymore (nooooo)
Christopher
(age:18... sadly?) haha
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games felt borin for some reason and didnt want to play
but them started playin and it went away :)
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Never been bored with gaming since that. If releases are slow, I'll buy an old classic that I've never tried. If releases are really dire, I'll get another old console. It keeps me very satisfied.
Even if the process of playing games is starting to bore me, I'm always interested in the industry. The compromise between creativity and making profitable products is very interesting, and with technology changing so rapidly, it changes daily.
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i'm 21 now and my PS2 is about a couple of years old and i also have lost the drive to actually WANT TO play a game on it even though its a fantastic console... i just lost it and cant seem to hold the controller for more than a few minutes. its also probably related to the fact that i've got a full-time job and a lot of my attention goes into it...
now here's my cure, i picked up on the things i left behind while bashing happily away on a controller, like that book i wanted to read and the profile i left undone, then after that i got myself a PSP. now while at work i can pick up on gaming and that gradually built up on my gaming high again. right now i'm finishing FF12 and started on Rogue Galaxy. ^_^
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I have 2 psp's always up to date with the latest hacks, custom firmwares and games but I don't even play it. I have a slack job where I have about 2 - 3 hours a night where I have nothing to do, just sit on my ass and wait around but I still don't play my psp. The game I have played more than anything else on my PSP in the last 6 months is Who Wants To Be a Millionaire, sad isn't it.
I have the money to pre-order a PS3 right now here in the UK and have been waiting for a long time to do so, but now I have changed my mind. Instead I was going to buy a triplehead2go setup for my pc so that I can play Live For Speed properly but I have even changed my mind on that now, gonna pay off my student debts and save for a real car instead. Get out of my room and see the world, maybe that will make me happy.
I'm 26 BTW.
It never used to be like this.
'(^_^)'
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bought gears of war
havent played it since the first week i got it
borrowed saints row, its laying collecting dust
im only playing madden, but i get bored real quick
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All I want is a game that can fully utilizie a "rush guage" a la Bujingai, and dragon ball advance adventure(dueli ng mode), as soon as a game that comes out that can master that sort of system, I will die a happy gamer. :(
Maby the new euphoria system made from lucas arts can surprise me who knos, *SIGH*
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I have so many fkin games to play, i have my suped up psp... my nintendo wii and my 360
i have about 10 games that id like to finish but i dont feel the greatness from games anymore. Alough i really want to play games and get satisfaction because about a month ago when i was playing i couldnt wait till i could save and turn it off..
i need a cure :(
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To this very day, I still find myself playing Castlevania III, Jackal, Gradius and Contra on the good ol' NES for hours and hours over the likes of GTA and Warcraft III (though Warcraft III can get pretty fun).
Which kinda leads to my theory on this "ennui": I think we're all getting bored with games today because we never had to have high-expectations for games back then (with a lot of quality and originality had being put into those 8/16-bit retro consoles and games, why should've we?). Now these days, all we ever see anymore are cookie-cutter fighting games and first-person-shooters developed as cash-ins on popular genres. I think the entire video-game industry needs to focus on new ideas rather than remake the same games over and over again.
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Oblivion has fancy graphics, but Morrowind was a better designed game.
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