I know it's a thing generally these days because of how shit multiplayer especially has gotten but if I see something that's 'online' now I don't want anything to do with it. Every new release it's the same story, they can barely be called games anymore they're more like a live service with some minor gameplay elements tacked on in the most half-arsed way imaginable. That goes for a lot of supposedly singleplayer releases as well depending on the company.
I think I'd much rather pour my free hours into something like Microsoft Flight Simulator because then I'd at least gain a valuable skill from it and I've also found myself delving back into the good stuff that was the early 2000's releases. Even if you see something that looks vaguely promising it inevitably gets annihilated by the DEI contractors that plague this industry now.
It's extremely ironic that the games industry is trying to cater to anybody who isn't a gamer and they seem to be all mentally ill weirdos to one degree or another who have an addiction problem and fleece them for all their money before moving onto the next cringey fad. I'm sorry for coming across too black pilled, but if a game does well it seems like that developers will go out of their way to ruin it because yet again, they've shown that gamers do not matter and we're nothing more than a vehicle for hype to get their product into the normie sphere who just want to college digital items all day instead of play the fucking game.
Frankly, I'm starting to just get bored with fictional, imaginary, and simulated amusements in general.
And not just because of the drop in quality over the years, but simply me realizing how goofy, wasteful, immaterial, and utterly life consuming it truly is.
Or maybe I've just not been achieving the proper balance. It's all too easy to end up gorging on even a healthy "gourmet" game, to the point to where you've been taking reality for granted.
That's the right attitude, it is all about balance, you can get away with it in your childhood because you don't really have anything going on. Even adults though who don't go out much do have their responsibilities and also adults if they can earn the money do have more freedom to do stuff.
A lot of driving games for me unless they're ludicrous for example kind of lost their appeal for me because I can drive a real car now. I'm also going to be getting a motorbike license and that should let me do even more. I could go out and find a track day and do racing if I really wanted to and had the buzz to do something.
Stuff like sci-fi and fantasy though? Can't do that really RL, still fun but it's also worth pointing out if you've played old games to death modern games are almost all objectively shit and this is partly why I encourage people to try out game dev. We need to make our own games that cater to us, because the studios are all targeting mentally ill whales.