Have you ever given up playing video games?

[Rhindle The Red]

Have you ever been so fed up with video games that you just gave them up? How long before you got back in, if you did?

 

Maybe other things took precedence and you just didn't play for a few years. Why?

[+FujiSkunk]

You can have my video games when you pry them from my cold dead hands!

[bedouin]

I don't play every day, nor every week sometimes. Oftentimes I just get into a mood where I want to play, and do it for hours one day. It's not a conscious decision, and I've never given them up.

 

A lot of it probably has to do with being mentally distracted. I think about too many things are once to really concentrate on a game for a long period of time nowadays. That might be one reason I end going back to more basic Atari-like games that don't require long-term involvement to enjoy.

[liveinabin]

What a good question.

 

yes, in fact, I did. It was all about computer gaming in UK (console's weren't at all popular until the Megadrive really) and, in about 1991, after I'd got truly sick of the Amiga, gaming was a very solitary and fruitless exercise and the new 16-bit systems seemed to just offer unimaginative platform games at ludicrous prices, I went off to art college and (apart from a Tetris watch I had) I didn't play anything really for years.

(Man that was a long sentence)

 

I got a job in a store in late 97 and it was Final Fantasy VII that got me back into gaming. So that, what, 6 years?

[JagFan422]

i play something every day, even if its only a pick up game here and there.

[Zwackery]

Have you ever been so fed up with video games that you just gave them up? How long before you got back in, if you did?

 

Maybe other things took precedence and you just didn't play for a few years. Why?

Well, I've "given up" games both voluntarily and involuntarily, but not from being fed up. If one game frustrates the piss outta me - damn you Mace Griffin: Bounty Hunter! - I'll put it down for a day or two or maybe even a week before going back to that particular title. If I heavily invest in a time-intensive game, like last summer with GTA: San Andreas, then after I'm done I will typically take a break for a week or so just to adjust from the experience (plus, I'm getting older and after pushing the mouse around for 6 hours I start to feel the burn). Ironically, I haven't played any games for the last 2 1/2 weeks because I've been going to media conferences and discussing video games! So it makes me itch to play 'em. Today I just picked up a couple of DS titles, so I may throw them in my travel bag because I'm hitting the road again tomorrow and am having gaming withdrawal.

[+Nathan Strum]

I've "not played" for awhile, but haven't made a conscious decision to actually "give up" on playing video games. Sometimes I don't have the time or interest to play them, but I'll come back to them eventually.

[sega saturn x]

I'm awfully close as of now, even if i don't give them up I can't seem myself buying as many as I did in the past. I can only play so much of the same thing before I just don't care anymore. It feels more like I'm going through the motions than actually having fun.

[jaybird3rd]

I ended up getting away from games for the last couple years, but not because I was "fed up" with them and not because I made a conscious decision to.

 

I returned to school in 2001 to complete my bachelor's degree, and despite my best efforts, there just weren't enough hours in the day after that for game playing (or for the homebrew development I had hoped to start on the 7800). Now that I'm in grad school and have a little more free time, I'm starting to pick up the homebrew thing again and am getting more playtime out of the collection I slowly built up during my undergraduate years.

 

One thing I have decided, though, is to pretty much walk away completely from modern games and systems. I've tried playing them, but they are way too expensive and just don't hold my interest like the classics.

[Tickled_Pink]

Yes. During my depression. Was about 2 - 3 years before I got any enjoyment out of games again.

[Cybergoth]

I didn't play any games for some 2-3 years once I finished school. I was way too busy experimenting with sex, drugs and alcohol then

[Student Driver]

In the past, I've given up games out of boredom or frustration. The longest stretch was from the middle of the 16-bit era through the price-drop of the PlayStation to $150. The Genesis/SNES rivalry bored me to tears (though I enjoyed the TG16), and I completely lost interest in the field. I didn't even look at another console until my (now ex-)wife purchased a PlayStation for me as a Christmas gift. Even though I wasn't to receive it for a few months, I began buying magazines again, haunting game shops, picking up bargain-basement titles... I had a library of 30 or so games waiting for a system on which to play them, and my fever was temporarily rekindled. I ended up with about 100 Saturn titles, 200 PS titles, and was getting into Dreamcast collecting when fortune stepped in the way, handed me the means to start going to school, and took away my free time. I've been juggling school, work, a social life for four years now, and haven't had time to turn on a console once. I keep up on reading about games by hitting the Internet when I've got a few minutes between classes, but that's all the time I'm able to devote to games anymore. (It got even worse last semester, when I took on a teaching gig on top of work/school/social life.)

 

God, I can't wait until I can graduate... I still haven't tried a good 50% of my PS and DC collection.

[Flojomojo]

I often go for a few days at a time without touching a game, despite carrying a GBA with me most places and reading about them on the web. I guess I yearn for a long, uninterrupted stretch of time that I could fill up with a long, rich game. I don't think that's going to happen unless I end up in the hospital, though.

 

They're a colossal waste of time, but that's what I enjoy most about them!

[Room 34]

I said "Yes, for more than a year," but that's not entirely true. If you're talking CONSOLES, well then I pretty much gave them up for about 15 years. When I got my first computer in 1987, I switched to computer games, but I never played them as fervently as Atari. It wasn't until I really got into collecting in 2002 that I started playing a lot of games again, and it really stepped up when I got my GameCube in 2003.

[SteveW]

I've never stopped playing games, but I have gone into lulls in my interest in gaming. For example, I didn't buy any game consoles between the Jaguar's release and the Dreamcast, and once the Jag was gone and I couldn't find games for it I was only playing games on my Mac. I'd slow down on playing new games when my Mac wasn't fast enough to run the latest ones, and rarely bought any old games. But then, I bought a Dreamcast, and my gaming interest picked up again. And now that I've started thrift store shopping, I have huge amounts of games to play. And now that the modern game market is so heavily saturated with titles, there's huge amounts of cheap games available. I've got a stack near me of 10 games that I still haven't taken the shrinkwrap off of. I haven't played them yet, because i've been pulled back into playing Phantasy Star Online yet again.

[doctorclu]

My approach to this was I took a break from gaming when my first systems, the Atari 2600 and Atari 400/800 twinkled off into nothing. No internet then, so I believed I was the last Atari user in Dallas in 1989 or so.

 

Throughout the 90's I went on to college, and in the middle of that I went to Guam as a missionary. I actually saw an Atari 800 in a pile of stuff at a Goodwill in Guam around 1994 or so.

 

Glimpsed an Atari Jaguar in 1995 in a pawn shop. Figured there was no way it could be Atari, since Atari died off in the late 80's.

 

Finally in 1999 after graduating from college and then spending a year completing a personal goal of mine, I found there were still some Atari things going on. Picked back up the 8-bit, and got a Jaguar.

 

So for about a decade I played games every now and then on the Macintosh, but the closest thing to anything as good as Atari gaming was Arkanoid, and a Star Castle game on the 68030 Macs. So I'd say a decade really.

Edited March 15, 2006 by doctorclu

[vdub_bobby]

I've probably gone without videogames for a few month-long stretches here and there over the past 5 years or so. Kids, new house, life, etc. take up time that might otherwise be spent in front of a TV.

 

Never really "given up" video games though. But I can see myself giving them up someday, maybe when I'm old(er).

 

Probably not, though.

[AussieAtari]

Marriage, house renovations, kids etc put my gaming, both on computers and consoles, on hold for a couple of years as it was considered a pretty solitary, almost selfish pursuit.

 

Then my daughter from a previous marriage came to visit with her DS and my wife got hooked. Now we are planning our games room, building a MAME cocktail cabinet and she plays games more than me.

 

We are looking forward to the kids getting older and all of us sitting around the N64 with Goldeneye.

[ATARIPITBULL]

I love video games ever since I was a kid and still play them now.

 

[Lauren Tyler]

Well, not entirely. In 2000 I considered giving up video games for Lent, but I decided I was too hardcore for that, and just gave up my NES. In 2001 I gave up Genesis. I believe in 2002 I either gave up SNES or N64, I can't recall. In 2003 I gave up Sega Master System, and in 2004 I gave up Atari 7800 (that is, I could still play my 2600 games on it, since my original doesn't work, but no 7800 games.) Last year I gave up Sega Saturn, and this year I gave up GameCube.

 

So I've never given up gaming completely, but I've done it in a sense.

[Dusk2600]

i dont think that ive ever "given them up" there were times i didnt play them but i still had tons of games

[Famicoman]

Kinda. I get really pissed at people on XBL.

[SHAGOHOD X99]

Yes, for several months.

...in fact, I still do this more or

less. Sometimes I don't power

up ANY system for 4 to 8 months

then play like a mofo. The older

I get the more responsibilities I

have and no matter how much I

love to game, the magic it

(gaming) once held for me is just

gone. I mainly collect games to

have them for when the mood does

strike to play... well, they're there.

[TheHoboInYourRoom]

Sometimes I won't play for a few weeks, but I've never really given up. Besides, homebrew games are just too fun to pass up .

[liquid_sky]

i just dont have time anymore, with work, workouts, training, the dojo and the girlfriend