Getting older, with a broader range of responsibilities and activities is certainly a huge factor. So is the nagging feeling that games are a fun distraction but a bit of a waste of a limited resource... life itself!
So a five minute fix on a phone can scratch the gaming itch enough to bring you back to your senses.
These days I get more pleasure out of pedalling up the nearest hill and staring blankly at a sunset than I do firing up the PC for games, especially the flight and racing sims I used to sink a lot of practice time into. I'm still tempted to break into my strategic reserves to try VR, because cockpit sims are what VR is for, not 'job simulator'. But the cost of entry is way, way, way higher than impulse purchase territory, and the tech's nowhere near mature... anyone buying now *will* want the next version, and probably the next as well.
Having said all that, I bought Uncharted4 last week, and I never buy full prices games normally. Part of that's probably justifying my dusty PS4; part of it Naughty Dog fanboyism after being so impressed by Last of Us. And there's no doubt that I'm more drawn to narrative interactive experiences these days than skill-based gaming of any kind. I didn't get very far in Witcher2 though... got lost and bored in a forest if I remember correctly.
Games do still have their uses though, during a bad period in March/April when my mother's dementia nosedived and I had to have eight unpaid weeks off work, I sank about 130 hours into Torchlight2. Not because it's a great game to endlessly loot-loop through (though it may be if you're into that kind of thing), but because it was a great distraction from a miserable period and fitted easily into the short periods I had to relax in. It was challenging enough to occupy and distract me, but not challenging enough to lead to frustrations which pull me out of the moment and remind me I'm wasting time staring at a screen just moving my fingers. It's a form of meditation, but probably not the most relaxing one.
Of course I still buy very cheap games in Steam sales 'just in case' I need to fill my time. But seeing as I'm currently only able to work two days a week because of Mum's condition, and I'm still not finding much time for gaming, I should probably just admit I'm more at home staring blankly into the TV and occasionally escaping on my bike than I am pitching my wits and reactions against algorithms and pixels.
Intel have to take part of the blame too (for the length of this post as much as anything else! ;->) Half the fun of gaming was always keeping ahead of the hardware curve and improving the experience. But these days even this 4 year old Core2duo laptop with Intel graphics of some kind runs a lot of games acceptably at lower details, and my main machine back at home is an E8400 with a 5870 which struggles with very few titles, leaving the 2500k along the desk for sims alone... when I turn it on. Which isn't often now I'm only there for two night shifts a week.
I guess the VR hardware race will provide the upgrade incentive for some, but it's very early to be gambling on whether VR is going to be much more than a niche activity with permanently painful pricing and lacklustre games which struggle to avoid situations where nausea ruins the experience.
So... er... was there a point to this when I started? I think it could be summed up by one word... Life. Life gets in the way of things we
think we want to do. Then one day you wake up, realise you haven't played that game or guitar for a year and don't miss it at all.
Now, if you'll excuse me, I have to decide whether to buy the Assetto Corsa DLC while it's on offer, even though I won't drive it. He who dies with the longest unplayed Steam list wins, right?
For me it comes in cycles. I had a big lull in gaming in my mid 30s. In the last two years, however, I've gotten back into it more than ever. Mid life crisis, perhaps?!
