I cant seem to be able to finish games anymore

Hi, I have been having this problems for over half a year now which is that i just cant finish most games anymore. it not that i am burnt out and i have finished a lot of shorter games(like bastion or limbo) but everything else i just play for a few hours and then never come back to

its not that i am board with them or anything and i am always thinking that i am going to come back to them later, like in a day or 2 , but that never happens.

I don't stop buying games either, just hoping that next big release that everyone is exited for is the game i will be able to play and finish.

My backlog keeps getting bigger and bigger, ranging from Witcher 2, deux ex human revolution, dragons dogma, Mass effect 3(which i was really looking forward to) , space marine, Rayman origins and a lot more.

I kinda just spend all my gaming time playing online games, like League of legends or Dota 2

I have been telling my self that i just need a break from video games but i cant seem to be able to do that either.

Does anyone else feel like this ? or felt like this ?

please share your experiences

I've definitely had this experience. For me, part of it was gaming fatigue and the other part was having too many games. I ultimately feel overwhelmed and end up selling my console vowing to never touch video games again. The best advice I could give you would be to try to limit your purchases. DON'T buy a game until the previous one is complete. And maybe find another hobby that would fill in some space between gaming sessions. Hope it helps!

you, sir, have a problem. you're an mmo junkie.

Just beat the game?

@xaLieNxGrEyx said:

Just beat the game?

I want to I really really do but i just cant bring my self to do it for some unknown reason

Yeah, when I was a WOW addict, all I played was WOW. I periodically still bought games, but I never played much of them. I felt guilty two-times over. First for buying games I barely played and secondly, when I would play them, I'd say to myself "I could be leveling". Finally, I woke up one day and never logged into WOW again. It wasn't a conscious decision, it just happened that way. When I realized that a month or more had passed WOW-free, I began to explore new games as well as many of the ones I shelved during my WOW obsession.

Now, years have passed since then and I still have a hard time finishing games, but it's not because I am consumed by any one game. It's just there's only so much time in the day to do all the things I want to or have to. I have to be choosey with my entertainment time. Additionally, I almost never buy any title until it drops into the $40 price range. I am more concerned with getting my money's worth from a game rather than finishing it. If I can experience even just a third of a game but still have a great time during those hours of play, I am happy. It's the journey that matters most.

Might want to pick some of the shorter length games that you can finish off over the weekend (ie. Bayonetta, Vanquish, any of the Lego games, indie steam games). Sometimes the RPG games like Witcher & ME3 have so much length to them that they tend to be stopping when you want to like most MMOs. You might also see what you want out of games like the Witcher or ME3 then remind yourself that at some point you need to finish the game to see what's left to see then if you want to spend more time in that game you can always replay it.

I do this too, it's like I have gaming ADHD. I will load up a game, play it for a couple hours, say "Oh man, that game's pretty good, I'll come back to it tomorrow" and then never pick it back up again. It's not that I get bored, I just never feel like playing it again, it'll sit on my desktop for months staring at me and my brain just refuses to click it.

@Aronman789 said:

I do this too, it's like I have gaming ADHD. I will load up a game, play it for a couple hours, say "Oh man, that game's pretty good, I'll come back to it tomorrow" and then never pick it back up again. It's not that I get bored, I just never feel like playing it again, it'll sit on my desktop for months staring at me and my brain just refuses to click it.

Yes, that is the exact thing that i am going through

I know where you're coming from. Lately I felt the same way. Know how I fixed it?

One day I just started up a game. And I played it. The next day I did the same thing. Just mix things up a bit man. Play a match of LoL then maybe 30 minutes of something else. I just finished Assassin's Creed and Walking Dead Episode 2 this weekend. I've got a huge backlog of games but I'm trying to work my way through them. Next up is Bionic Commando.

@Tfruit: I for one, thought it had something to do with age. Recently, my wife and my mother both confided in me that they truly believe I have a heavy case of ADD. They told me numerous accounts of evidence towards this, and eventually I brought it up to my doctor. I'm on Ritalin 60mg now, and in the past week have finished 6 games. This is coming from someone who hadn't finished a single-player game since he was 17 (I'm now 23).

I'm not trying to encourage the thought that you have ADD, but sometimes these types of concerns have a different approach - or remedy. Hope I was able to lend some insight :)

I'm with ya. I've decided to just go with it. If I have to talk myself into playing something, then I don't need to be playing it right then. If a game sits half-finished for a few months, then so be it. I'll get to it when I get to it, and I'll enjoy myself a lot more when the desire to play it comes naturally.

Don’t worry, games don’t have actual ending anymore, they have a "please insert DLC" message at the end.

I'll take massive breaks between finishing a game. It took me a good 4 months to beat Enslaved and about 3 to beat Red Dead Redemption+Undead Nightmare. Sometimes I can mainline a game in a few days, other times it takes a year.

Hell, I just finished Ghost Trick and I bought that at launch.

Just pick two games and play through them. If one is frustrating or boring, play the other. That's the path to finishing games.

Or, y'know, don't worry about it, and eventually you'll stop buying story-driven games and you'll keep playing multiplayer games like League or DOTA. That's all good, too.

I've been getting that lately. Its annoying as fuck.

thanks guys for the tips and I am glad i am not the only one feeling like this atm.

I have this "problem", but I've stopped seeing it as a problem with myself, and more than if a game can't keep my attention all the way through, it's probably the game. I move on, no regrets. I've already wasted so much money on bad games, or games I'll never play that I can't really stop and beat myself up over it.

But yeah every time I get a new game it seems that I will play the first hour, get distracted by hunger, then quit and never load it up again.

I bought Alan Wake 2 months ago and beat 4 of the 6 chapters in about a week. Then for whatever reason I decided to stop playing it until yesterday when i sat down and beat the other two chapters in one sitting. I have no idea why I stopped playing because the game was awesome. At least I beat it though. I think I just always get caught up in turning on games like BF 3 and Diablo 3 where you just can play without much focus and get addicted to the leveling and unlocks. If I can just get myself to turn on the single player game then I am usually ok.

I have to defer to the argument that there are only twenty-four hours in a day. As much as I would like to be able to have wrapped up Max Payne 3 in a few days, considering its length, it took me almost a month. Two jobs, a girlfriend who occasionally (and inexplicably) likes to do things outside of the house every now and again, and many other time-consuming hobbies mean that there are periods during which I don't turn on my 360 for a week or more at a stretch, unless I'm watching Netflix, or staring at the dashboard, thinking about maybe finishing Darksiders.  

I also think that sometimes games just aren't engaging to me right out of the gate. Sometimes. Your Mass Effects and Assassin's Creeds (two of my favorite current-gen franchises) are huge games dozens of hours long, but for whatever reason, they have all grabbed me and held onto me much better that anything Call of Duty could possibly hope for. They are wildly different games, for sure, but even after almost fifty hours in Mass Effect 3, I still wanted more. The last half of Modern Warfare 3 had me pulling my hair out, wondering, "Why isn't this over yet?" Didn't finish that one, either. At least, I don't think I did. It was a rental. Whatever.  The fact that I can't remember if I finished a blockbuster like that says (to me/about me) that I should avoid games like that altogether. 

Find something else to do for a little while.

It's just video game overload. I have had it too.

What I try to do is go back and play retro games like SNES and Genesis (Super Mario World, Sonic, Metroid, etc). Then you just wait for a game that you more than anything. I did that until Batman came out last year and now I feel quite a bit better about finishing games.

I feel it's a common thing among video games. People play too many video games, and the focus needs to be averted in a way so that you don't get burnt out.

Although, I will say that I recently picked up Darksiders, Alpha Protocol and Blood Money and I'm feeling pretty inspired to finish them one by one. Currently on Darksiders (mostly in preparation for 2)

I finish, like, 1/4 of the games I play. Not a big deal.

I know that feel bro. I'm kinda in that situation as well. I think it's because I've started so many different games ranging from LA Noire to God of War III (still haven't touched it since around late 2010) to Kingdoms of Amalur to Saints Row The Third. I've enjoyed playing most if not all of them but I can't seem to finish one (though I have recently finished AC Revelations, Arkham City and just last night, Lego Batman 2), meanwhile my backlog is getting bigger and bigger. I really should finish these games before August hits when the games I'm looking forward to comes out (Sleeping Dogs, Dishonored, Persona 4 Golden, Assassin's Creed III).

Your problem is that you have a game you're playing already online, and the other games are just distracting you from that game. This is why I try never to play games that do not have an ending. Also it really doesn't help that you keep buying new games before the other ones have been finished. Having a million things to play can feel overwhelming, and some people rather than choose just don't play anything.

I had been like this for awhile now and only recently its kind of clicked and instead of not finishing games i just do it now, and if the game is so boring or frustrating ect i delete the game or bury the game on my shelf and i don't feel bad about it any more.

It doesn't feel like a problem any more, i play games alongside playing a mmo so whenever im bored waiting for something or not playing that ill start going through a game on another monitor.

@Tfruit said:

My backlog keeps getting bigger and bigger, ranging from Witcher 2, deux ex human revolution, dragons dogma, Mass effect 3(which i was really looking forward to)

Maybe stop buying so many 100+ plus games?

I know exactly what you mean, I keep going back to Team Fortress 2 on PC or Fifa on the Xbox when I game even though I have several games to start or finish, yet when I come to do some of them, I end up back on Team Fortress 2 or watching dvds or something.

Ease up your attempts at playing for the moment, don't buy any new games for a few months, mark down a future release that interests you, and then wait for that game to be released, purchase it, and make a goal of finishing it. The anticipation of an exciting title along with abstaining from constant stimulation in videogame form and the bad habit of constantly buying new crap will do a lot for your ability to enjoy things. Life lessons.

I had this problem a while back with Rayman and Asuras Wrath but i pushed myself to complete Rayman loved it then completed Asura in two sittings.