Videogames are boring once you embrace RPG?

[Ezequielramone]

This is just a theory based on a chat I have with a friend las week. And I want to know if someone else feel something similar.

I started playing Pathfinder RPGs at 20, now I'm 26 and playing both PF and D&D 5th ed. Before that, I used to play millions of hours per day to videogames. Last month I realized that very slowly I stopped enjoying video games.
Today if I see a trailer or something I could feel enthusiastic about the game, but after a few hours I don't want to play it anymore it feel like a waste of time. Nor do I want to find new games.

Last week I talked to a friend he told me that it is the same for him. When we think about it, we realized that we started to "not enjoying so much" videogames when we started to play RPGs. We are just two guys, and maybe there could be other factors like, for me, start traveling, learning to play music and stuffs that make me happy and not only entertain me for a few hour (RPGs are one of those things that makes me happy of course), and maybe, just maybe, videogames only kept me distracted.

Have anyone of you experience something similiar? Do you think that RPGs could be the reason, or one of the reasons, we (or you) stopped liking video games?

 

[TerraDave]

Mostly, yes.

 

[Ralif Redhammer]

Not really – they both provide different experiences for me. RPGs are very much a social experience, whereas videogames are more for unwinding at the end of the day (though I'm not sure how much unwinding I'm doing now with Dark Souls 3).

But I also spend relatively little time playing videogames. An hour a day, max (aside from those rare weekends where I've got nothing planned and no obligations), and that's only after I've done all the adult stuff I need to do.

That being said, if someone gave me the choice between playing videogames and sitting down to play a tabletop RPG, I’d absolutely choose the RPG.

It's funny...back in the day I remember having conversations about how videogame graphics can never compare with D&D's theater of the mind. Of course now, they totally can...

 

[Flexor the Mighty!]

Not really. I don't play that many PC games these day but that is mostly due to lack of time, I've been playing both for a long time.

 

[darjr]

Mostly yes. I'm in this boat. Note though I run and mostly like to run games.

 

[Jago]

I've been experiencing this a lot lately. I'll sit in front of my laptop and literally just stare at my Steam Library for an hour going "I have no clue what I want to play", all while thinking about characters/settings/storylines for Tabletop.

The biggest thing for me that highlighted this was when I got the entire Witcher trilogy on Steam sale. Awesome, I've never played a single one, was excited to check this out.

I literally played the first one about an hour or two into the first town and then haven't touched it since. I have no drive or motivation to want to continue it, and it has very little with me not liking the game. I enjoyed the plot, the characters were decent, even for an older game it looks good. Gameplay was interesting, but ... I don't know, it just doesn't grip me like sitting down to play a 6 Hour+ Tabletop session would.

For me, I find myself more looking at video game trailers and upcoming releases and such as "But what would that look like as a Tabletop game?" I was immediately smitten with the aesthetic and idea behind We Happy Few: a freaking dystopian psychedelic romp through 60s Britain where the core story element centers around "Is it okay to have feelings?", a game that doesn't glorify or even expect violence and makes you just a frail person trying to survive in a nightmare scenario, all under the wash of Mod Culture Clothing and the mystery of a "Very Bad Thing" that nobody wants to even remember? Consider me Snug as a Bug on a Drug!

... And then I immediately began thinking "Imagine this in World or Darkness. Or take the psychedelic drug-aspect and make it something off the wall like Don't Rest Your Head." I was thinking less about the gameplay and the interesting mechanics and visuals and more on how they could be interpreted in ways to explore other stories, explore other characters and concepts.

I'm not sure if Tabletop is related to this, but I do know that I enjoy discussing and thinking on Tabletop gaming far more than I do sitting down in front of my computer or console nowadays. I haven't even purchased a new console since the original PS3, and my library is quite small there, and I don't really feel the drive to go buy a new console either.


The only things I'll say that really capture me a bit more are things that are harder to replicate in Tabletop games, games like the Total War series, or Endless Legend/Space. Sure, you can have empire building and mass combat in Tabletop, but let's be honest, most systems are not good at representing this smoothly and easily without needing literally hours for just one battle, whereas Rome 2 let's me conquer most of Italy in about a few hours and then gives me the motivation of "But there's still more to do".


It also comes down to MMOs too. I don't really play them, I'm probably the last person on the planet that hasn't even so much as tried WoW, but I did play TOR for a long time, and I definitely enjoyed it. But it was the same feeling as always: Beat 2 storylines, tried a handful of others just to see, I did the Guild Play and the Endgame stuff and I just ... got bored. Now granted, I have friends telling me that the latest expansions breathed new life into this, and I am a huuuuuuge Star Wars fan so that was already a massive draw to me ...

But do I really want to go back to TOR when I can instead play Edge of The Empire and make my own characters, my own stories, my own sagas? Nine times out of Ten, I want to make my own, I get much greater satisfaction from just coming up with concepts than I do with video-game style progress.


I'm not sure if this is an actual phenomena, or if it's just that I'm well into my mid 20s and I'm losing the time I had when I was younger to dedicate hours to video games a day (I get maybe about 30 minutes to an hour of time a day for stuff like that), but whereas I couldn't wait to plow through Fallout 3 and New Vegas, again, I haven't even so much as looked at Fallout 4, a setting I'm incredibly fascinated by ... but have no drive to actually purchase and play through.

 

[Ezequielramone]

I've been experiencing this a lot lately. I'll sit in front of my laptop and literally just stare at my Steam Library for an hour going "I have no clue what I want to play", all while thinking about characters/settings/storylines for Tabletop.

THIS, as a DM this happend to me (but with my GoG library.

Thank you all for your comment. I believe that it really depends on the specific person.

 

[Umbran]

For me, no. They are fundamentally different experiences.

Mind you, I don't do a whole lot of videogame playing.

 

[gamerprinter]

Well, I'm an old guy (relatively speaking) in that I started playing D&D in 1977, and for the most part (beyond Pong) video games didn't exist when I started playing RPGs. However, even after digital games came into existence, I've never had interest in them. I have never purchased a console game system, and never have been attracted to do so. I can honestly say that the one and only time I've ever played a console video game was in 2014, when I was commissioned to create all the multi-player maps for Call of Duty: Advanced Warfare Strategy Guide, where I spent 8 days at Activision Video Game Studio in Santa Monica, CA playing that Call of Duty Game as research prior to do the actual cartography work.

Philosophically, I completely agree with the OP, in a video game what you can and cannot do is predetermined by what the game programmers have input into the game's code. In tabletop roleplaying games, what you can and cannot do is only limited by your imagination (and what your GM wants to allow). For that reason alone, tabletop games trump any kind of enjoyment (at least to me) that one might derive from a video game. I am sure others gain pleasure from them, where I cannot...

 

[evileeyore]

Have anyone of you experience something similiar?

Impossible for me as I started playing rpgs in 1980 and video games as we know them now wouldn't exist for another 20 years... and I lurve video games.

Though if given my choice, I'd chose non-computer rpgs over computer games every time.


I do get the moments of 'frustration'. Like, it's [current year], why can't we have dynamic climbing or branching story paths in every crpg yet?!?!?!