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Hello, Lain. Is there anyone here with similar experience like mine? Basically, taking a long break from video games (1+ year) and coming back again, only to find that you can't enjoy any video games at all anymore. How do I get "immersed" in video games again? I have been honestly using video games as my escapism for as long as I can remember, and now returning to play again feels really weird because the experience is.. different than before. I'm not fully immersed in anything that I play. It's like only half-focusing on the game and I hate it. I want to enjoy games again. Maybe I need to keep playing enough to get hooked again? Does anyone have any ideas what to do?

Yeah, enjoyment of videogames for me as well as the kind of game I'm into depends a lot on my current mindset and temperament. I hardly feel like playing videogames out of the blue nowdays as an adult, everytime I pick something new up and enjoy it is because I was craving a specific kind of feeling and enjoyment, and that particular game was able to fulfill it. Example - wanted to feel like going in an adventure and see interesting places and landscapes - Dark Souls was enjoyable, until a week ago. Current me no longer feels like playing it or other DS games now because that itch was already scratched.

I'm not sure. I stopped playing videogames many years ago. Not entirely sure why, I just stopped finding them interesting. But that wasn't necessarily a bad thing, because I found other uses of my time. Now I do art, write, read, listen to music, and do things in real life too. Maybe take this as an opportunity to try out different hobbies? Find something else to take your mind off things.

Any video games at all? Surely there's a genre you never tried or didn't care for much in the past, OP. Perhaps now is a time to give it a new consideration?

>>11260 I think that's pretty normal. As an oldf*ck (I suppose this is relative), I went back some years ago and played through all the games of my childhood for NES, SNES, PS1, and GBA for a couple years. Then I just didn't care anymore. I think most people only really get into games during childhood, then go back for a nostalgic visit once in a while later in life. This is fine. Don't stress about it.

It's a dopamine/brain chemical thing. Did drugs and it brought back the feeling when playing games, full immersion and concentration for a long time. Cant do it sober, feels like i'm wasting time and brings on suicidal thoughts.

I have also had a similar experience from getting older. What really helped for me was the side effect of getting a Steam deck to see how Valve's doing on hardware design and linux. I bought or dug up from my library backlog several smaller games that work better as a mobile experience to use with it, and found that I enjoyed them much more than the desktop competitive multiplayer or heavyweight rpgs I used to play. They take much less time of reading about or playing to get into or don't need you to remember where you were if you drop it for two weeks to work on a project. Part of the problem with trying to enjoy games again is if you pick something that takes work to have fun with you'll be too distracted by the work to focus on the fun, making more memories of being exhausted by it than enjoying it. It's a compounding spiral that you need a strategy to break. I installed space cadet pinball and can just jump into it and have a good time whenever I like, and realized that, being a smaller game, it did just that.