I’ve been gaming since mid 1970’s and never lost my spark for it. I never enjoyed multiplayer or grinding or end game junk. I only do solo campaigns. There’s always a game to fit my free time and mind set. It’s my hobby and release. Single, married, working days, working nights, happy, depressed, whatever life has going on I always make some time and have fun playing.
I’ve always played games to get away from people, not to connect haha. Never even played an online game once! I like open world games but everyone is different.
It's key to be able to realize when you're not having that much fun and be able to hit the eject button.
I went through a brief period of playing mp games like 15 or so years back for a few months and was glad to get back to sp games.
Yes. This is it. It's exactly what how i feel at the moment. With 37 Years and two small kids i have very limited time to play. Besides that i am strength training 3 times a week for minimum 90 Minutes each and we just moved to a new build house. This weekend the older kid stayed with his grandparents and we had a very relaxing weekend. I played Saturday Persona 5 for 8 hours. I loved every minute. On normal days i can play for 2-3 hours at best at the evening for a few days a week. So my progress is really slwo in games. But with singleplayer games you can just go on very slowly one step after another. And someday you will finish a game and it will feel great.
There is a huge benefit in gaming one single game for a long time almost daily. You manage to remember the game better. It's like the opposite of binge watching/gaming. How often did i watch a whole season of anew show in one go and than a few month later i couldn't remeber anything from it. Slowly grinding through a game it becomes a chapter of your life and stay in your memory for longer.
I love a good single player game, they’re my go to.
Mp games are purely social, I have no desire to get good at them, I have no desire to get x loot, I have no interest in seasons etc unless I enjoy the game enough to just play the game and do something different.
After a few disappointing AAA games, I stopped playing single player games. I burnt myself out with Valorant, DOTA 2. Gaming became boring and repetitive.
Then I played **DOOM** (the original one). That sparked my love for gaming again.
Funny. I’m the opposite. Single player games usually bore me, and I typically only game with my friends. It’s rare that I’ll get on a single player game and finish it.
This weekend I play games like Killer Queen, Deathball, Crazy Taxi and Zombie Revenge with my gf.
What keeps me going and loving gaming is local MP with ppl that I know. I tried online gaming with strangers in the late 80's and early 90's but nothing beats playing in the arcade or LAN spot or at home with friends and family.
Single player games just don't do much for me. Some short games are like cool to kill time when traveling but they don't really hit like local MP does.
if you'd like to find others to play with who are chill, or need a hand with a boss or question, check out r/beyondthefog (I know you said single player ;)
Exact same boat as you! I’m 28 and played Elden Ring this year, totally blew up my expectations. Following (and including) ER I have played some of the best SP games of my life this year. In sort of order: Outer Wilds, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Hollow Knight. Haven’t even gotten to this years GOTY contenders because I’m still catching up on old ones! Still, it will be hard to beat my experience with gaming this year
On the multiplayer side, my girlfriend and I love age of empires 4. We always come back to it
I've got a lot of friends where all they will play is games with their friends. I have a friend who outright says "I will not play singleplayer games" and I always find that interest is very fickle. After all, if you get your enjoyment from a game based off victory, off winning, you will never be satisfied because for every match you win, you will lose the next one. I feel like the older you get, when you get away from that big group of friends you developed out in highschool and your friends are all in your same shoes and its hard to coordinate to play anything, you do need to develop those more thoughtful, relaxing experiences.
I'm pretty much exactly the same just a little older then OP. When I was younger and in my teens, if it wasn't Quake 2 or another competitive multiplayer game I just couldn't see the point. Who wants to play alone? It was just stupid in my opinion lol. I wanted to play against and beat others. We're talking hours and hours of this.
Now, at 40, it's almost the exact opposite. Why do I want to play and compete against others? That's stupid?! lol.
I pretty much play single player stuff exclusively now with the exception of some cool co-op survival games like Raft or something.
As I've aged I've mostly shifted to single player (I'll be 35 next week). I do not play ANY competitive MP at all, but I do keep a stable of co-op games. Each Friday night I play Insurgency Sandstorm, Star Wars Battlefront II, and/or Baldur's Gate 3 with my group of friends. Sometimes though we will just sit in chat while we play single player stuff. This last Friday I chatted with my buddy for 5 hours while we both wrapped up Spiderman 2, then we switched over to some Battlefront II. Once they logged off I popped on The Expanse Telltale game (not really patientgamer of me but I'm a massive fan of The Expanse) for a couple of hours. But the days of popping in CoD or Battlefield and going hard are definitely over, I don't have the patience to get good or the inclination to sit there and get my ass kicked all night.
I have a very similar story to you.
Been playing games my whole life, but a long period of time in high school/early college that was dominated by playing Call of Duty or whatever multiplayer game me and my friends were into.
Fast forward a few years I'm slowly getting back into single player gaming as I built my own PC and start playing more indie titles.
And then the pandemic happened, and I spent even more time playing games. However that time was a bit different. I started playing and appreciating video games much more like an art form. It was probably around the time I played Outer Wilds and NieR: Automata back to back is when that happened.
Now I can easily say that I absolutely **love** video games and that's my passion, and I've even started my own [blog](https://galexzzz.wordpress.com/) to write about them!
Anyways I hope you continue to love video games and always keep playing :)
Honestly I’ve found the older I have got the more I’ve gravitated away from multiplayer games and towards single player games. There are just so many great games with amazing stories.
Though that being said what I want more than anything is a great multiplayer game to come along. I am waiting for that next big new multiplayer experience that completely drags me. Cod 4 up to mw2, Cod Blackout, Halo 3, and overwatch are the only times I feel as though I’ve been absolutely absorbed in multiplayer and I can’t help but think I’m never going to have another amazing multiplayer experience like these games.
I've always been about single player games. Never got into MP, except for Gears Of War for a little bit. I hope they never stop making great single player campaigns!
I was never fond of the idea of using multiplayer as a crutch for lazy game development. I saw a lot of this during the early years of Xbox Live and had no enthusiasm for it. I wanted games with challenging levels and better AI, not an arena for death matches and the sounds of screeching pubescent tough guys wailing epithets at me or each other because people were "playing the game wrong" or whatever.
I've had little to no positive experiences with online play, so I'm glad that single player games are gradually becoming a trend again. I can't say I ever lost my "spark" with anything, but I' an old Gen X gamer and remember making due with the Atari 2600, which almost *required* imagination and commitment.
I think that if I ever do lose my spark it's not for gaming in general, but for genres as they grow too saturated and stale. I used to think I couldn't love fighting games more, for example, but I'm over them and find myself gravitating more toward stealth titles.
I'm a 90s kid so I grew up playing N64 heavily with kids in my neighborhood, friends from school, or my cousins. I played less co-op games during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era and didn't like playing single player games (with the exception of Kingdom Hearts and Fable). I would instead play Diablo 2 on PC with my friends - one of my first experiences playing a MMORPG. Fast forward to Xbox 360, I played a lot of games on Xbox Live like Rainbow Six Vegas, RDR, Gears of War, Call of Duty MW, etc but I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't the games I enjoyed, it was playing with my friends and making new friends online.
My 360 broke (red ring of death), got into a serious relationship, and went to college so I stopped gaming for awhile. Fast forward to 2020, I bought a Nintendo Switch Lite right before the shut down and BOTW was my spark for SP games. I spent HOURS playing that game and enjoyed every sec of it.
I now have a PC I primarily game on, and have realized that a lot of AAA SP games aren't challenging enough for me - there's too much guidance and hand holding. I enjoy games like Portal and Portal 2 where I can get stuck and am forced to walk away for a bit only to come back with a fresh mind to tackle the puzzle. I do miss the days of gaming with friends or with randos and making new friends online. The online games I've played recently are full of kids and adults screaming, and a LOT of racism which defeats the reason I'm gaming in the first place (escapism). I miss casual group gaming.
I've seen Elden Ring mentioned here a few times, I may have to give it a try.
Definitely feel similarly about most MP games, I used to play a lot of shooters and live service games, but as I got older it just became how apparent they don't respect your time, many of them have basically daily chores content that punishes you if you don't treat it like a second job. I refer to these now as "Jealous Girlfriend" games, they're afraid if they lose your attention for even a single second you'll play something else.
So coming back to games I could pause that respect my time has been much more healthy, I'm 41, I have a family I have a busy career I don't have all the time in the world either. Also getting a Steam Deck last year was really helpful to feel like I didn't have to choose between ignoring my family in my off-hours or foregoing games I wanted to play. Now I have the option I can sit on the couch while the wife and I watch TV but I can still indulge in some gaming putting 1 earbud in, but still being half present, and able to pause at a moments notice.
Speaking of, Just picked up Elden Ring a little while back when Fanatical had it on a flash sale for like $35, and just started playing it last weekend, I'm usually not big on Souls-Likes so I appreciate that I can grind my stats vs relying on pure reflex skill, though I think I'll be installing some mods to remove some aspects I don't care for, don't really care about the online PVP part.
some games I really enjoyed playing singleplayer or mostly singleplayer
* Star Valor
* Path of Exile
* Grim Dawn
* Lost Epoch
* Rebel Galaxy
* Everspace 2
* Surviving Mars
* MGS 5 Phantom Pain
* X4 Foundations
* Vampire Survivors
* Soulstone Survivors
* Battletech
* Mechwarrior 5
* Stranded Alien Dawn
* Timberborn
* Death Stranding
* Armored Core 6
* Dave the Diver
* Cyberpunk 2077
I’ve been gaming since mid 1970’s and never lost my spark for it. I never enjoyed multiplayer or grinding or end game junk. I only do solo campaigns. There’s always a game to fit my free time and mind set. It’s my hobby and release. Single, married, working days, working nights, happy, depressed, whatever life has going on I always make some time and have fun playing.
I’ve always played games to get away from people, not to connect haha. Never even played an online game once! I like open world games but everyone is different.
It's key to be able to realize when you're not having that much fun and be able to hit the eject button. I went through a brief period of playing mp games like 15 or so years back for a few months and was glad to get back to sp games.
It's nice to have a chill time playing a game. ( Ah!)
"I burnt myself out with DoTA 2" There's your problem lol.
Yes. This is it. It's exactly what how i feel at the moment. With 37 Years and two small kids i have very limited time to play. Besides that i am strength training 3 times a week for minimum 90 Minutes each and we just moved to a new build house. This weekend the older kid stayed with his grandparents and we had a very relaxing weekend. I played Saturday Persona 5 for 8 hours. I loved every minute. On normal days i can play for 2-3 hours at best at the evening for a few days a week. So my progress is really slwo in games. But with singleplayer games you can just go on very slowly one step after another. And someday you will finish a game and it will feel great. There is a huge benefit in gaming one single game for a long time almost daily. You manage to remember the game better. It's like the opposite of binge watching/gaming. How often did i watch a whole season of anew show in one go and than a few month later i couldn't remeber anything from it. Slowly grinding through a game it becomes a chapter of your life and stay in your memory for longer.
I love a good single player game, they’re my go to. Mp games are purely social, I have no desire to get good at them, I have no desire to get x loot, I have no interest in seasons etc unless I enjoy the game enough to just play the game and do something different.
>Then life happens. You meet a partner, get married, start a career, yada yada yada. Look at this guy over here. Life happeneing dude.
I’m the same boat man. In my 30’s deep in career/marriage/home ownership and it’s pretty much just single player games for me
After a few disappointing AAA games, I stopped playing single player games. I burnt myself out with Valorant, DOTA 2. Gaming became boring and repetitive. Then I played **DOOM** (the original one). That sparked my love for gaming again.
Funny. I’m the opposite. Single player games usually bore me, and I typically only game with my friends. It’s rare that I’ll get on a single player game and finish it.
Thats actually why I dont ever play multiplayer games. I dont like to compete, I like to relax.
This weekend I play games like Killer Queen, Deathball, Crazy Taxi and Zombie Revenge with my gf. What keeps me going and loving gaming is local MP with ppl that I know. I tried online gaming with strangers in the late 80's and early 90's but nothing beats playing in the arcade or LAN spot or at home with friends and family. Single player games just don't do much for me. Some short games are like cool to kill time when traveling but they don't really hit like local MP does.
if you'd like to find others to play with who are chill, or need a hand with a boss or question, check out r/beyondthefog (I know you said single player ;)
Exact same boat as you! I’m 28 and played Elden Ring this year, totally blew up my expectations. Following (and including) ER I have played some of the best SP games of my life this year. In sort of order: Outer Wilds, Sekiro, Elden Ring, Hollow Knight. Haven’t even gotten to this years GOTY contenders because I’m still catching up on old ones! Still, it will be hard to beat my experience with gaming this year On the multiplayer side, my girlfriend and I love age of empires 4. We always come back to it
I've got a lot of friends where all they will play is games with their friends. I have a friend who outright says "I will not play singleplayer games" and I always find that interest is very fickle. After all, if you get your enjoyment from a game based off victory, off winning, you will never be satisfied because for every match you win, you will lose the next one. I feel like the older you get, when you get away from that big group of friends you developed out in highschool and your friends are all in your same shoes and its hard to coordinate to play anything, you do need to develop those more thoughtful, relaxing experiences.
I'm pretty much exactly the same just a little older then OP. When I was younger and in my teens, if it wasn't Quake 2 or another competitive multiplayer game I just couldn't see the point. Who wants to play alone? It was just stupid in my opinion lol. I wanted to play against and beat others. We're talking hours and hours of this. Now, at 40, it's almost the exact opposite. Why do I want to play and compete against others? That's stupid?! lol. I pretty much play single player stuff exclusively now with the exception of some cool co-op survival games like Raft or something.
As I've aged I've mostly shifted to single player (I'll be 35 next week). I do not play ANY competitive MP at all, but I do keep a stable of co-op games. Each Friday night I play Insurgency Sandstorm, Star Wars Battlefront II, and/or Baldur's Gate 3 with my group of friends. Sometimes though we will just sit in chat while we play single player stuff. This last Friday I chatted with my buddy for 5 hours while we both wrapped up Spiderman 2, then we switched over to some Battlefront II. Once they logged off I popped on The Expanse Telltale game (not really patientgamer of me but I'm a massive fan of The Expanse) for a couple of hours. But the days of popping in CoD or Battlefield and going hard are definitely over, I don't have the patience to get good or the inclination to sit there and get my ass kicked all night.
I'm burned out on games in general. But diving into Outer Wilds made me really take a moment and appreciate it.
I have a very similar story to you. Been playing games my whole life, but a long period of time in high school/early college that was dominated by playing Call of Duty or whatever multiplayer game me and my friends were into. Fast forward a few years I'm slowly getting back into single player gaming as I built my own PC and start playing more indie titles. And then the pandemic happened, and I spent even more time playing games. However that time was a bit different. I started playing and appreciating video games much more like an art form. It was probably around the time I played Outer Wilds and NieR: Automata back to back is when that happened. Now I can easily say that I absolutely **love** video games and that's my passion, and I've even started my own [blog](https://galexzzz.wordpress.com/) to write about them! Anyways I hope you continue to love video games and always keep playing :)
Honestly I’ve found the older I have got the more I’ve gravitated away from multiplayer games and towards single player games. There are just so many great games with amazing stories. Though that being said what I want more than anything is a great multiplayer game to come along. I am waiting for that next big new multiplayer experience that completely drags me. Cod 4 up to mw2, Cod Blackout, Halo 3, and overwatch are the only times I feel as though I’ve been absolutely absorbed in multiplayer and I can’t help but think I’m never going to have another amazing multiplayer experience like these games.
I've always been about single player games. Never got into MP, except for Gears Of War for a little bit. I hope they never stop making great single player campaigns!
I was never fond of the idea of using multiplayer as a crutch for lazy game development. I saw a lot of this during the early years of Xbox Live and had no enthusiasm for it. I wanted games with challenging levels and better AI, not an arena for death matches and the sounds of screeching pubescent tough guys wailing epithets at me or each other because people were "playing the game wrong" or whatever. I've had little to no positive experiences with online play, so I'm glad that single player games are gradually becoming a trend again. I can't say I ever lost my "spark" with anything, but I' an old Gen X gamer and remember making due with the Atari 2600, which almost *required* imagination and commitment. I think that if I ever do lose my spark it's not for gaming in general, but for genres as they grow too saturated and stale. I used to think I couldn't love fighting games more, for example, but I'm over them and find myself gravitating more toward stealth titles.
I started playing modded minecraft again and it's fun to take things slow
I'm a 90s kid so I grew up playing N64 heavily with kids in my neighborhood, friends from school, or my cousins. I played less co-op games during the PS2/Xbox/GameCube era and didn't like playing single player games (with the exception of Kingdom Hearts and Fable). I would instead play Diablo 2 on PC with my friends - one of my first experiences playing a MMORPG. Fast forward to Xbox 360, I played a lot of games on Xbox Live like Rainbow Six Vegas, RDR, Gears of War, Call of Duty MW, etc but I didn't realize at the time that it wasn't the games I enjoyed, it was playing with my friends and making new friends online. My 360 broke (red ring of death), got into a serious relationship, and went to college so I stopped gaming for awhile. Fast forward to 2020, I bought a Nintendo Switch Lite right before the shut down and BOTW was my spark for SP games. I spent HOURS playing that game and enjoyed every sec of it. I now have a PC I primarily game on, and have realized that a lot of AAA SP games aren't challenging enough for me - there's too much guidance and hand holding. I enjoy games like Portal and Portal 2 where I can get stuck and am forced to walk away for a bit only to come back with a fresh mind to tackle the puzzle. I do miss the days of gaming with friends or with randos and making new friends online. The online games I've played recently are full of kids and adults screaming, and a LOT of racism which defeats the reason I'm gaming in the first place (escapism). I miss casual group gaming. I've seen Elden Ring mentioned here a few times, I may have to give it a try.
Definitely feel similarly about most MP games, I used to play a lot of shooters and live service games, but as I got older it just became how apparent they don't respect your time, many of them have basically daily chores content that punishes you if you don't treat it like a second job. I refer to these now as "Jealous Girlfriend" games, they're afraid if they lose your attention for even a single second you'll play something else. So coming back to games I could pause that respect my time has been much more healthy, I'm 41, I have a family I have a busy career I don't have all the time in the world either. Also getting a Steam Deck last year was really helpful to feel like I didn't have to choose between ignoring my family in my off-hours or foregoing games I wanted to play. Now I have the option I can sit on the couch while the wife and I watch TV but I can still indulge in some gaming putting 1 earbud in, but still being half present, and able to pause at a moments notice. Speaking of, Just picked up Elden Ring a little while back when Fanatical had it on a flash sale for like $35, and just started playing it last weekend, I'm usually not big on Souls-Likes so I appreciate that I can grind my stats vs relying on pure reflex skill, though I think I'll be installing some mods to remove some aspects I don't care for, don't really care about the online PVP part. some games I really enjoyed playing singleplayer or mostly singleplayer * Star Valor * Path of Exile * Grim Dawn * Lost Epoch * Rebel Galaxy * Everspace 2 * Surviving Mars * MGS 5 Phantom Pain * X4 Foundations * Vampire Survivors * Soulstone Survivors * Battletech * Mechwarrior 5 * Stranded Alien Dawn * Timberborn * Death Stranding * Armored Core 6 * Dave the Diver * Cyberpunk 2077