I feel burnt out on most video games.

I was playing Hogwarts Legacy today and I realized that I am not enjoying video games as much as I used to. Every new 'AAA' game feels like a rehash of older games. Using revelio in HL is the same as using witcher sense in Witcher games and using detective vision in batman games. Incendio is literally Igni. Protego is literally Quen. Depulso is literally Aard. Did the flying around (broomstick/quidditch) quests today and it felt like Harry Potter PS2 video game or Superman 64. Every part of gameplay just feels like something taken from other games. The best I can describe HL is like its a beautiful blond bimbo - nice to look at but no substance on the inside. All the secret areas in the game just reward you with some gold in a chest or a piece of gear in a chest. Nothing to get excited over.

Flying around on a broomstick should be fun but I get ptsd from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban video game's superman 64-like Hippogriff flying challenge. Flying through those gold rings in my nightmare.

Only games I am not burnt out on are roguelike and soulslikes. Games where I make incremental progress by dying over and over and getting better at the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is coming out in few months. I was so excited for it few years ago but now I am dreading it. Open world games feel like a chore: A list of things to do just to pad out time.

Anyone else experienced burn out? how do you deal with it?

Obviously everyone is different, but for me it's important to play a variety of game genres, styles, and lengths to keep it fresh. Also, playing fewer games and retiring games when I'm not having fun. Last year I went a month without playing anything besides a phone game every now and then, and when I booted up my Playstation after that everything seemed way more interesting.

There has definitely been stagnation in the open world genre in the last few years so those are particularly easy to get burnt out on.

I touched on this in another thread but AAA open world games have wore me out too. Everything feels the same and "safe".

We live in a state where large publishers aren't willing to take a chance on a new IP. They are more worried about infinite growth and record profits. People that dreamt of working on imaginative and fantastical games are stuck working on contrived and monetary based shovelware.

Look how celebrated the recent Hi-Fi Rush release was (even by me). The game isn't all that unique or innovating but we are starving for something different.

When I feel burned out I look to smaller developers for new experiences in gaming. There's loads of innovative and interesting titles in the indie space, especially on PC.

Edit: I agree with Pellaeon too. Retire games when you aren't enjoying them. There are so many games to play that it's just not worth it.

Edit 2: Ironically, I've been enjoying Hogwarts more than I expected to. I've never been exposed to Harry Potter so it feels more intriguing than the latest Horizon and God of War titles (both of which felt too samesy for me). I'm also only 3 hours in.

I was playing Hogwarts Legacy today and I realized that I am not enjoying video games as much as I used to. Every new 'AAA' game feels like a rehash of older games. Using revelio in HL is the same as using witcher sense in Witcher games and using detective vision in batman games. Incendio is literally Igni. Protego is literally Quen. Depulso is literally Aard. Did the flying around (broomstick/quidditch) quests today and it felt like Harry Potter PS2 video game or Superman 64. Every part of gameplay just feels like something taken from other games. The best I can describe HL is like its a beautiful blond bimbo - nice to look at but no substance on the inside. All the secret areas in the game just reward you with some gold in a chest or a piece of gear in a chest. Nothing to get excited over.

Flying around on a broomstick should be fun but I get ptsd from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban video game's superman 64-like Hippogriff flying challenge. Flying through those gold rings in my nightmare.

Only games I am not burnt out on are roguelike and soulslikes. Games where I make incremental progress by dying over and over and getting better at the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is coming out in few months. I was so excited for it few years ago but now I am dreading it. Open world games feel like a chore: A list of things to do just to pad out time.

Anyone else experienced burn out? how do you deal with it?

For me personally i avoid triple AAA open world games until i am in the mood for them. Usually indie games or linear games are more my kind of thing. I do research on what to play next and explore to find something interesting so i dont get burned out. Lately i have been trying a lot of different demos and prologues alongside the usual of finishing games. And i only retire games if they are not my style or have some faults i find are worth retiring the game for like a game needing a remaster or a game being too grindy and so on. In my head a ratio of 3,5 indie games per AAA game played and 10 linear/indie games per playing 1 open world AAA game. I usually like to play triple AAA games when i can but if they are open world i try to prepare myself to play them. Like finishing some short or linear games before hand. And the way i deal with burn out is by watching movies or tv shows. Usually i find it best to play games when you are in the mood for them rather then play them entire way trough in one sitting. As for roquelikes and soulslikes Steam is packed full of them so you can always find something on Steam to play. Steam is a gold mine if you are ever burned out,use your steam queue if you are ever burned out and try out some indie games you find.

I was playing Hogwarts Legacy today and I realized that I am not enjoying video games as much as I used to. Every new 'AAA' game feels like a rehash of older games. Using revelio in HL is the same as using witcher sense in Witcher games and using detective vision in batman games. Incendio is literally Igni. Protego is literally Quen. Depulso is literally Aard. Did the flying around (broomstick/quidditch) quests today and it felt like Harry Potter PS2 video game or Superman 64. Every part of gameplay just feels like something taken from other games. The best I can describe HL is like its a beautiful blond bimbo - nice to look at but no substance on the inside. All the secret areas in the game just reward you with some gold in a chest or a piece of gear in a chest. Nothing to get excited over.

Flying around on a broomstick should be fun but I get ptsd from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban video game's superman 64-like Hippogriff flying challenge. Flying through those gold rings in my nightmare.

Only games I am not burnt out on are roguelike and soulslikes. Games where I make incremental progress by dying over and over and getting better at the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is coming out in few months. I was so excited for it few years ago but now I am dreading it. Open world games feel like a chore: A list of things to do just to pad out time.

Anyone else experienced burn out? how do you deal with it?

I am also starting to get burnt out with the amount of open world games. Most of them feel tedious to complete, especially since most of my backlog consists of open world games. I have Assassin's Creed (at least 4-5 games), Dying Light 2, Gotham Knights, FFXV, MGSV, Horizon Zero Dawn, Days Gone, Fallout 4, and many more to play through. I am also playing Hogwarts Legacy and noticed how the gear/loot system is quite the same as other open world RPGs. Collecting, upgrading, and the usual grinding feels the same as in other games, which can become boring.

That's why I distract myself with other genres such as platformers, JRPGs, roguelikes, racing, fighting, rhythm, visual novels, and narrative-driven games. I tend to jump from one genre to another to not get burnt out. I also play retro games in between my sessions since playing an open-world game for a long time can be quite dreadful. I used to love exploring and completing side quests, but now, I feel like an errand boy in doing it. Indie games are also a great way to escape from the vast open world games that we currently have.

If you’re always comparing what you’ve played, or an element from it, to something else you’ve played, you might not enjoy it too much. That might mean that you need a break from the genre that you’ve been playing or from playing all together. At least for a little while. You might find that something else will draw you in when you get back to it.

For how stretched out my play time is I haven’t gotten to game burnout yet (although I think I will if I play another stud grinding Lego game right after my current one). However, I have gone through book burnout. There was a pretty lengthy series that I was reading that was 800+ pages per installment… perhaps it’s comparable to an open world game commitment-wise. After a few of those I felt like my head needed a break. I read something else with a different pace and did other hobbies for a while. I don’t remember how much time passed but when I went back to it I felt like my burnout had cooled off.

Like others have suggested, is there something else you haven’t spent time on in a while? Or maybe a game genre that you had a passing interest that you never tried? Something else to consider is that your tastes are shifting, which can also happen.

Thinking about this more, there was a game genre that burned me out: mobile. With the daily quests I was doing in them it became repetitive and stopped being fun so I now mostly play casual puzzle games which has worked out much better.

I hate retiring a game or book I picked up. Once I start something, I have to finish it.

After reading the replies. I realise I'm just burnt out on the open-world genre and triple A space.

I'll take a break from gaming for a week or 2 and watch some anime. Probably watch Jojo and Fairy tail.
I'm also interested in learning about greek mythology.

I hate retiring a game or book I picked up. Once I start something, I have to finish it.

After reading the replies. I realise I'm just burnt out on the open-world genre and triple A space.

I'll take a break from gaming for a week or 2 and watch some anime. Probably watch Jojo and Fairy tail.
I'm also interested in learning about greek mythology.

I agree with Pellaeon on this one. I used to have the mindset of 'I bought this game, I'm going to finish it even if I'm not enjoying it', and didn't retire anything. Over the years I've become aware of sunk-cost fallacy and realised life is too damn short to do this. I'd recommend setting a threshold - if you're not enjoying or feeling engaged with a game or book after X hours, why force yourself to suffer through the rest?

I'm also suffering from open world fatigue. It feels like a lot of developers force an open world into their game to provide more content, to keep you playing the game for longer, as if having a shorter, more focused game is a bad thing. I first really noticed it when Final Fantasy XV came out, and really strongly felt it when playing Horizon: Forbidden West last year. It's gotten to the point where I'm seriously wondering if this'll be the last generation of consoles I pick up, as AAA experiences feel stagnant, only separable or elevated by their story or characters. Like Hypo, I've really got to be in the right mood, which is why it took me so long to finish Forbidden West and why it's taking me so long to play through God of War: Ragnarok.

Personally, I'd strongly recommend what a few others have said in this topic - look for indie games, shorter experiences. Game Pass is fantastic for that, if nothing else, as is Steam. Some of my favourite games last year came from 5-10 hour indie games, rather than 30+ hour epics. There's a lot more innovation and fun to be had in the variety of indie games than a lot of the AAA industry nowadays.

That said, it looks like you've got your answer to me!

I agree with Pellaeon on this one. I used to have the mindset of 'I bought this game, I'm going to finish it even if I'm not enjoying it', and didn't retire anything. Over the years I've become aware of sunk-cost fallacy and realised life is too damn short to do this. I'd recommend setting a threshold - if you're not enjoying or feeling engaged with a game or book after X hours, why force yourself to suffer through the rest?

I'm also suffering from open world fatigue. It feels like a lot of developers force an open world into their game to provide more content, to keep you playing the game for longer, as if having a shorter, more focused game is a bad thing. I first really noticed it when Final Fantasy XV came out, and really strongly felt it when playing Horizon: Forbidden West last year. It's gotten to the point where I'm seriously wondering if this'll be the last generation of consoles I pick up, as AAA experiences feel stagnant, only separable or elevated by their story or characters. Like Hypo, I've really got to be in the right mood, which is why it took me so long to finish Forbidden West and why it's taking me so long to play through God of War: Ragnarok.

Personally, I'd strongly recommend what a few others have said in this topic - look for indie games, shorter experiences. Game Pass is fantastic for that, if nothing else, as is Steam. Some of my favourite games last year came from 5-10 hour indie games, rather than 30+ hour epics. There's a lot more innovation and fun to be had in the variety of indie games than a lot of the AAA industry nowadays.

That said, it looks like you've got your answer to me!

Yes I agree with you on everything you've said, there has to be a point in which you quit a game (forever or to come back later), and this just happened to me with Spyro's Remastered trilogy, I FC'd the 1st game, but at halfway of the second I just couldn't take it anymore, the same thing over and over.

So I quit (to come back later) and I've started playing OlliOlli, and I only stop playing when my fingers are hurting, it's just so much fun, so refreshing, a genre and style I haven't played in DECADES.

And I also can't stand open world games anymore, so fucking boring, I've come to appreciate way more a linear story than the cliche 1560 possibilities of endings! There is so much more attention to detail, more reason to spend your time.

And that's the reason I loved Death Stranding so much, while it is an Open World-esque game, it differs in every other aspect and gives you a truly unique experience, the only other game I'll ever play similar to it will probably be Death Stranding 2.

In all, playing games that aren't from the over-used genres, will keep you fully refreshed.

I hate retiring a game or book I picked up. Once I start something, I have to finish it.

After reading the replies. I realise I'm just burnt out on the open-world genre and triple A space.

I'll take a break from gaming for a week or 2 and watch some anime. Probably watch Jojo and Fairy tail.
I'm also interested in learning about greek mythology.

To echo Athruntalan, I used to do this too. I felt like once I started a game or a book I'm obligated to finish it. Maybe because I felt like the time I had invested would be wasted otherwise? It's ok if you need to retire something (although it took me a bit to feel ok about that). It's better overall for you to be spending time on something you're enjoying than something that you're not.

Instead of looking at it as something that you never finished, maybe you can look at it as an experience that you had. With the variety of media out there, there are many experiences to be had but a selection of those experiences to be enjoyed.

That being said, enjoy the break! You can always come back to it when you're ready. Also, if you're getting into Greek myths, other than the traditional folklore the Percy Jackson series is a fun time.

I experienced this a few years ago. The best thing I can suggest is to just take a break for a while and play whatever it is that you want to play in the moment. I used to have an ordered list of games that I would go through in sequence, but it felt too much like work. Nowadays I look at my shelf and think "what do I actually feel like playing?". Even if it's just a junk-food-style game that you've played a hundred times already (mine was Smash), that might be enough.

Maybe also consider trying a game that you wouldn't normally consider to be within your wheelhouse. I fell in love with the Professor Layton series last year, despite thinking I wouldn't care for it. I also find that when I get bored of my Switch, I swap to my 3DS (and vice versa), which means I'm always experiencing different types of games.

I was playing Hogwarts Legacy today and I realized that I am not enjoying video games as much as I used to. Every new 'AAA' game feels like a rehash of older games. Using revelio in HL is the same as using witcher sense in Witcher games and using detective vision in batman games. Incendio is literally Igni. Protego is literally Quen. Depulso is literally Aard. Did the flying around (broomstick/quidditch) quests today and it felt like Harry Potter PS2 video game or Superman 64. Every part of gameplay just feels like something taken from other games. The best I can describe HL is like its a beautiful blond bimbo - nice to look at but no substance on the inside. All the secret areas in the game just reward you with some gold in a chest or a piece of gear in a chest. Nothing to get excited over.

Flying around on a broomstick should be fun but I get ptsd from Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban video game's superman 64-like Hippogriff flying challenge. Flying through those gold rings in my nightmare.

Only games I am not burnt out on are roguelike and soulslikes. Games where I make incremental progress by dying over and over and getting better at the game.

The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom is coming out in few months. I was so excited for it few years ago but now I am dreading it. Open world games feel like a chore: A list of things to do just to pad out time.

Anyone else experienced burn out? how do you deal with it?

I was playing Hogwarts Legacy today

Well there's your first problem right there.

As someone who is about 5 years younger, I understand where you're coming from. It's hard to have faith in the AAA video game industry because of all of the bullshit that's become commonplace (monetization within games, expansion passes, cut content saved for DLC, UNFINISHED GAMES AT LAUNCH).

Hell, that's what the indie market helped circumvent initially, being a place for creative independent devs and publishers to create games but even that area of gaming has its own share of issues these days (kickstarter failures, copy-and-paste assets, oversaturation of shovelware, games attempting to emulate other games instead of being their own thing).

Genre oversaturation has become a problem too. Open world games are a dime a dozen but rarely do any of them utilize the world they create. Elden Ring and Breath of the Wild are what I'd consider to be well-done open worlds, being jam-packed with endless stuff to do that feels befitting of an open world. Every indie game and its mother seems like it's trying to be a rougelike or metroidvania these days and even as a massive Metroid fan, it gets tiring. Why do so many games need RPG-like elements too? God of War 2018 was great but did it really need a stat-based system for gear?

Frankly my friend, just do whatever you wanna do for entertainment. That goes beyond gaming. If you wanna not play a game and watch an anime or TV show, do it. I used to treat game completion like a mechanical task and sucked a lot of the enjoyment out of gaming for myself. For me, gaming became more about "beating games" rather than "playing games". I'm just now learning to retire games I don't enjoy or to not play games I'm not interested in at the moment.

If you'd like some suggestions on unique games that ooze with originality and that I find super engaging, I'd recommend the likes of: A Hat in Time, Pizza Tower,
Hollow Knight, Hi-Fi Rush, Darkest Dungeon (you sound like you'd really enjoy this one), Hades (you'd REALLY like this one), and Cuphead just to name a few.

Hope you enjoy Greek Mythology, that stuff gets crazy. :)

It depends on my general mood.
Some days I cannot focus on the game at all and pick up my phone every few minutes to scroll through Facebook et cetera, depsite the fact that I normally enjoy the current game a lot.
On other days I play for multiple hours straight without even noticing how much time has passed.

But in general I can relate to what the OP said. I'm 33 now, turning 34 in a few months and playing games 10-15 years ago was more...satisfying than it is today.
Plus, more and more I lean towards a mindset of "damn, I have to finish game X and then game Y in the next 3 weeks", which is massively contraproductive for simply having a good time.

Obviously everyone is different, but for me it's important to play a variety of game genres, styles, and lengths to keep it fresh. Also, playing fewer games and retiring games when I'm not having fun. Last year I went a month without playing anything besides a phone game every now and then, and when I booted up my Playstation after that everything seemed way more interesting.

There has definitely been stagnation in the open world genre in the last few years so those are particularly easy to get burnt out on.

I agree with your point about the benefits of mixing things up and playing a variety of games. My favourites are RPGs that are typically >40hrs in length, but I've recently made an effort to intersperse other kinds of game. That way, it doesn't feel like I'm completing marathon after marathon.

Ironically... I had been feeling burnt out on gaming in general for awhile and sort of in denial about it and hogwarts legacy at least at the moment has renewed my interest, maybe because I am just letting myself explore and keep finding things and being like "oh what's this?!" I am about 25 hours in and still look forward to playing it when I have time. Game is far from perfect, I think they could have made the open world puzzles less quantity and better quality, but it is still a lot of fun.

I was forcing myself to try to get through games, or frequently just staring at my ever growing collection of games wondering why I own all this stuff. People would bring a game up and I would be like "oh I own that" get asked about it and feel dumb telling them I have never even launched it. I would sit here for 2 hours after a 15 hour day of work and play Raid Shadow Legends and scroll youtube because nothing else interested me. Now I look forward to the couple hours I get after work or my days off when I get some time to play to jump in it and play, hope that continues and I find something else again afterwards.

When I was young I had this mindset to start a game and finish no matter what, but today this really doesn't matter to me, if I'm not liking the game I jump out with no remorse.
And this is the same for movies, series, books, sports on TV, etc.

If I feel burnout on a game that I like, I take a break and might come back later. If a game doesn't suit my taste, I drop it and make time for other games in my huge backlog.

Here are the methods that help me a lot:
- changing genre
- alternating between shorter and longer games
- changing game generation (i.e. picking retro games to play once in a while)
- trying out indie games which usually have more creative gameplay than most AAA games.

My greatest burnouts:
- Genshin Impact became Burnout Impact on me in 2021. I took a break for a few months, then came back later when a new character that I liked was introduced to the game (Kamisato Ayato). Right now I am feeling burnt out again, but I still play it because my friends are still playing, sunk-cost fallacy, and extrinsic rewards (primogems, in-game currencies). However, I am not sure how long it will last, and how impactful the next burnout will be.
- Final Fantasy VII Remake (main story) did not cause me a burnout, but translating the game did. I made a Thai language mod for the game and went through game's text again and again. So much so that I felt like it was a never-ending process. So after I finish translating the main story subtitles, I took a break and played a few games. Right now I pick it up again to play INTERmission (the DLC) before translating it. Hopefully it won't cause me a burnout, because the DLC story is not that long.

When I was young I had this mindset to start a game and finish no matter what, but today this really doesn't matter to me, if I'm not liking the game I jump out with no remorse.
And this is the same for movies, series, books, sports on TV, etc.

I still have this mindset to a certain extent even though I know it's not good to have. I just hate getting rid of things so even when I put down a game or book I'm not enjoying I'll still keep it in my library with the intent to finish it later.

yeah , im 33 years old and after playing so many games ( over 20 years of gaming ) i became very picky , i dont care for cutscenes unless they are very well done and great voice acting but even then i would rather play games likes Prey , Deus ex , divinity original sin 2 , wasteland 3 , talos principle , the witness

these games respect my intelligence alot more than a game like God of war , they also give me the freedom to aproach every situation they way i want , the game offers me a chance to use my imagination , instead of constantly guiding me it uses clever environmental storytelling to give you hints

Im not saying that i dont play games like God of war or the The last of us anymore but they feel like a drag , constantly walking slow for 10 min listening to someone saying something unimportant , solving the puzzles for me if i dont find the solution in 10 seconds , im 33 years old and i dont like to waste my time with this kind of stuff

The secret is to sprinkle some indie games along your gigantic AAA game. I mean, look at this. Or this. Or this!

I think that we're reaching a peak of videogame quality. Back on the Xbox 360 era, new games were ground-breaking. Stuff like Oblivion, Halo, Fallout and Assassin's Creed were mostly enjoyed by everyone. All had "revolutionary" graphics and gameplay.

In contrast to newer games released, they're almost always disappointing. Latest Elder Scrolls? Has been announced for years but still no new release. Halo? Mediocre at best in my opinion. Fallout? 76 is still kicking, even though the core gameplay was the problem to me. Assassin's Creed? Ubisoft is taking the series in different directions apparently.

Other new titles like Redfall and Back 4 Blood are universally looked at with dissatisfaction too. I think we've just reached a peak of disinterest as ideas are becoming less and less new. Indie games seem to be the most creative but they haven't reached the mainstream completely.

With anticipation, it becomes dangerous. Everyone expected Cyberpunk 2077 to be the best game ever made because of misleading marketing, so when its release was, to put it simply, not very good, I think that it made a lot of people more aware of poor game design and awful management decisions.

Sorry lol. Bit of a ramble but I found the point interesting.

TL;DR, I don't blame you. I feel burnt out all the time too.

I go through stages where I am hooked on a game and then for a few weeks I just focus on other things like grilling, disc golf, and sleeping. Games have become a chore to me sometimes with the long 100+ playthroughs but even the shorter games feel like a slog to me. I guess that is the adult in me going I should be cutting grass or enjoying time outside. Overall, keep things fresh. If you just played a large RPG try a racing game or a shorter action game to keep you moving in different directions. Variety is the spice of life!

I've been where you are, but it passed. I was burnt out on games for a couple of years, then my PC died and I basically couldn't play anything for a while. I took AGES to get around to building a new machine. I've fallen in love with Cryofall and I'm trying to 100% that. I've got some Civilization saves on the go, and after the next Eco update I'll be joining some friends to play that for a while. I think it's OK if interest ebbs and flows. Your library will always be there.

That is why I stopped playing triple aaa games mainly many years ago. I play a few here and there. Though I mostly play retro games.