College student lost interest in video games?

I don't know if it is just me or if this has been with other college students, but I am just really not excited about video games anymore. Geology courses have taken up much of my time during the school week, but on the weekends I prefer passive entertainment such as college football/ NFL or watch star craft 2 matches (I don't play. And yes I know I am a weirdo). I just don't buy video games anymore, which is probably the reason I am personally more interested in the Xbox one than the ps4.
It wasn't always this way, and it kinda sucks because I want to be interested after watching all the content the guys put up.

So I have a bunch of questions: Do any other college students also feel this way? How about former students? Did your video game drive die down for reasons other than money? If so,did you regain your interest increase after you got out of college?

I had a period back in 2004 where my PS2 died and I didn't see the need to immediately replace it with something. Was spending every spare minute usually just dicking around on the internet or watching TV, as well as some semblance of having a social life. This all went to shit and I had a week off work with no intention of leaving the house, so I decided to buy an Xbox. Saved!

Really, the joke's on her. But I've said too much!

I'm halfway through my college career and last year, I just stopped playing games. Been going out a lot and also doing a decent amount of work. Sold most of my games but not all, and would only play occasionally. Then the beginning of this year I got the spark again, got more games and am enjoying them again. It may be the college thing, as it happened to me and a few friends as well, and liking games may or may not come back.

I remember when I got Halo 3 at a midnight release and I got the RROD starting it up on my 360. That started the trend for to do things other than play video games (giving me the chance to do other things didn't give me much urge to continue gaming when I had gotten a new one a few weeks later). Being in college during that time didn't leave me much time or money to play many games (other than Bioshock & Mass Effect). The schoolwork and wanting to down alcohol at any given moment took priority at the time. However, since graduating 1 year & a half ago I have been making an effort to get back into video games (building my own pc for one). A fixed income certainly helps and it's a nice escape from the realization that I am beginning to age and I'm sure my hair will begin to fall out soon.

If I get stressed at work, like layoffs or some bullshit make-work coming my way, I usually don't want to play video games for awhile. I can read about them, study them, but no interest in actually trying the game out. In fact a lot of different media gets dull: movies, music, just sort of lose interest in all of it. I think I can read stuff, that's about it. I guess it's a rut.

I'm going into my 3rd year of college, and yeah, I don't play games anymore really. I play maybe an hour a week, and that's being kind of generous actually. Personally, none of the games that are coming out interest me enough for me to dedicate the little free time I have to play them, with the exception of a few indie games. It kinda bums me out, but at the same time, I'm doing more productive things with my days off now, like working on personal projects, seeing friends, or even developing my own games.

I've been down on games for two or three years now. For the longest time nothing would get me excited. I'm pretty stoked after E3 though. I sort of feel like this generation went on too long and companies were just putting out the same stuff. Now that new hardware is coming people are getting fresh ideas about what they could do with it.

It happens.

I seem to have lost most interest in games as well. I keep trying new things and they do nothing for me. I try games in genres I love and they do nothing for me. I don't know what it is but nothing seems to get me excited anymore and nothing I have seen coming out is doing anything for me either. I like to think it's just the depression that has made me lose interest, but even on the good days it just feels like a chore to play games. Which really sucks because I have such a huge f-ing backlog and I feel like shit everytime I buy a new game when I still have hundreds sitting on the shelf collecting dust.

Nope, i fucking love video games. Something must be wrong with you!

The only real game related interest I have today (and have had for a good long while), is watching things like Bioforge with Vinny and perhaps the odd quick look of say Euro Truck Simulator. As well as the bombcast.

Other than that I just check out a few interesting and novel things every couple of months or so. Often indie games but sometimes bigger games like The Walking Dead (or classics I used to play, like Dungeon Keeper). As long as it works on the mac because I didn't even bring the xbox when I moved to where I am.

Maybe I'll get into it more in the future but it seems like a fool's hope to think that the industry is going to mature to the point where it's worth investing in the hardware.

I pretty much stopped playing games in university. Which is too bad, because that was the prime era of the PS2. Going to uni is a unique experience, and I don't think there's anything wrong with putting off other stuff you can catch up on to get the full extent of it. That means both the social & studying aspects.

College is a time of big changes. You are most likely going to have a lot less free time and money so spending both of those on games can seem like a lot bigger thing than in high school. Personally I didn't have that experience in college but I was a game design major so my social situations involved playing games not clubbing.

Complete opposite for me. Games help me escape all that shit. Get my mind onto something else.

Happened to me in college due to being completely packed, schedule-wise. Then I played Snake Eater and that set me straight.

I stopped playing games after twilight princess (right before college) until portal 2. During my time away I got a lot of perspective, and realized that I don't like a lot of games. I still am pretty casual, picking up about 1 big game every month or so, and sticking to more imaginative, downloadable stuff. I've had enough shooters.

College's videogame-O-Meter its mysterious, no scientific metrics can be obtain. It is what some scientist call anecdotal perception.

I crashed hard on video games when I learned to see games for their mechanics rather than being immersed. When I realized that developers balance the enemies specifically around the levelups and powerups your character finds, the magic of attaining "special powers" or "epic loot" was lost. And when I realized that every other player was seeing the exact same plot events as me, the idea that I was embarking on a special adventure was also lost.

Like learning a magicians' tricks, the magic was gone. Nowadays all I can play are Moba's, plot games, oddball games I can't predict, and the occasional weird RPG.

I read the thread title as "college student LOAN interest in video games." Shows where my head is these days.

@dgtlmeatloaf: I just graduated and, yeah, that happens. I had entire years where I had zero interest in video games, but it would always start up again, sometimes for a while and sometimes for weeks to months. Just this year, my senior year, I actually sold my PS3 and my 360 and didn't play a damn thing the entire year, but now I'm playing through Bioshock Infinite and loving it. For me, I always found it was just that I had things that sounded more fun I could do, and there wasn't that one game that really grabbed me. Even now, I know on an academic level that The Last of Us is amazing, but I really don't care that I can't play it. That being said, I pre-ordered a PS4 and am really looking forward to the newness of it all. When new consoles launch EVERYONE talks about them, an effect you can see now all over the internet, and this holiday season it'll be huge, so that'll probably spark it all back up for me. Totally normal dude.

It seems like almost everyone hits a point in their late teens, early twenties where they suddenly lose interest in video games for some time and then they come back to play them later.

Yeah, that sounds perfectly normal to me. Which makes me weird, because it either never happened to me or hasn't happened to me yet.

Yeah, college has been rough on my game playing habits. I've luckily also arrested my game buying habits as well, so I'm not too sad about it all.

Because of my Degree I have classes that take up much of my time throughout the day. I do, however, have 3 day weekends. The classes bite into my free-time (which I used to have a lot of). During the school-week for me I only play games that I can get enjoyment out of for a couple hours (at most) of play. During the weekends I game whenever and for however long I wish.

Pretty soon with my chosen school path and career path of medicine I may not have time at all for video games. Seems like my childhood of gaming for 70 hours of so a week will never happen again. I suppose I just grew up.

I'm done with college and I work, but when I was in it my graphic design work and other school work took priority. It wasn't so much an issue of interest as it was time.

Never really stopped playing entirely.....just play an hour or two a week or play some retro games.....no one forces someone to play games if you don't want to then don't

Totally dude - I haven't played a full, proper game in years. My last game, of ANYTHING, I played was Dota2 and even that was like 10 months ago. Life's busy - my last semester of a Computer Science degree, working as an Android programmer, life is really opening up and as much as I still love the industry and know a lot about gaming, I just don't play that many games anymore. I think I've clocked up more hours on GiantBomb watching videos than actual gaming.

Wow, that's a bunch of great responses! I hope that I'll get the itch eventually. Till then I'll just be looking at rocks and researching water shortages!!!!!

For what it's worth, when I was in college I almost never played video games in my free time. They're too much of a time suck when you need to study. Once I was finished, I regained my desire to play video games again. They're especially useful for getting together with friends online that I would rarely have the time or opportunity to see otherwise.

If I lose my job, escaping only makes it worse for me as that new job still has to be found & no
money will be coming in to pay the bills. So I have to take my free time & study tech stuff
for a future job, update the resume, & check with network contacts about other work. It's a big
hassle & the problem is that a layoff has been looming over me for several years now, each
year passing just puts it closer. Seems like that is all my company does is find ways to
lay people off all the time, just hasn't happened yet. This last layoff was protracted over a
period of 6 months...probably the slowest, most painful layoff process to ever shit down
the pike. And I wonder if that will be the norm moving forward. So the thought of joblessness
makes it hard to relax. If I think I can forget about it during the day, it just comes to me in
my subconscious through early morning anxiety, destroying my sleep.

@dgtlmeatloaf

I've ended up wondering that myself a few times too (~6 years past college for reference). My conclusion, so far, is that my taste and finickiness with how game systems work is the part that has changed a lot. But when the right title comes along, I'm still completely into it and enjoying myself just as much as my 8-14 year old self. The part that gets weird is when I try to force the issue of buying and playing games that have a good reputation (since they seem incredibly cheap post-college). When I do that, I just go through a pile of games that are not enjoyable ("this call of duty modern warfare 2 thing is supposed to be really good....."), and that leads to wondering whether I have any interest still.

The thing to do is to not force it, and wait and only pickup titles that really speak to you (not in the "everyone on the internet is saying this is great way"). It does take some time to get there, but the big thing is to keep in mind that what is going to work for your personally is going to come from a sensibility that is very different than a person with more time to kill, or who is neck deep within the industry as a day job. For me, it ends up being one game very few months that really interests me, and I've found that if I don't have a modern game to play, just going back to something from a previous era can help.

I think this happens to everybody at some point. It definitely doesn't hurt to step away from a hobby for a while. Personally, I never completely quit games, but I've had a few 2 to 3 month periods where I barely played them. Back in 2011, I had a Gamefly account and more time than I really needed. I ended up playing almost every game as they came out. As you can imagine, by the end of the year I was completely burnt out on video games. I ended up stepping away for awhile and when I came back I had an entirely new invigoration for my favorite hobby.

The worst thing you can do is force it on yourself. You could probably ignore them for the next 4 to 5 months and by the time your interested again, the new consoles will have come out. Speaking from experience, if you feel the urge, I would advise you to not purge all of your game related stuff, as you'll most likely regret it later. Only get rid of the things you know you won't miss

@themanwithnoplan said:

Sums it up nicely.

I'm at a point right now where all I'm playing Dota 2 and I'm finding my spare time much better spent reading, writing, or doing things online. School made it so that I didn't get to play much over the past year and it's helped me focus on my artwork a lot more as a result. It'll come back, though. I'll play something and that'll suck me back in. It's happened before and it'll most likely happen again. Don't sweat it or anything. Enjoy your time away from it and it'll feel fresh when you go back.

I think what works for me is "less is more" - as in only purchase or play 1 or 2 games at a time and only if you want to play them. After graduating and getting a full time job, I found that I lacked the energy to play games after work, although at work I would read about them still.

Having income made me purchase all these games I read up about but never had the time to play them. The end result made me have a gigantic backlog across all systems - this stressed me out a lot because I jumped to about 5 different games within a few hours and couldn't decide on one, so barely any progress would be made. So I got rid of some of them (mainly the xbox and tons of ps3 games) and narrowed it down to only a few games.