I don’t feel compeled to play any online game at the moment except if a friend asks me to play with them. Even then, the only part where I am having fun is when some weird shenanigens happen which doesn’t happen at all given how sanetized and “ballanced” games are. I just want to see a funny ragdoll fly off one side of the map, or get an op weapon and listen to trash talk by the enemy team as I obliterate them (or the opposite). I want to mess around with other players and try dumb strats with my pals. Not every modern game is that way but they tend to get fewer and fewer as time comes…
I started feeling this way a while back and eventually realized it wasn’t the games that had changed so much, but me. Getting older really does change your interests and how much you have fun with different playstyles.
I used to not want to play games if they didn’t have some form of multiplayer, but these days if I get to game at all, all I want is a quality single player experience.
Likewise, as one ages, different components of games become more or less important.
Example - used to hate sitting through cutscenes and dialogue (it was just reading back then, but I was a big reader so that wasn’t the issue), would skip whatever I could and get frustrated when I couldn’t. But these days I actually like a good story-focused game (botw, horizon), and don’t skip through it in any game unless the story is garbage… although I love largely story-free games as well (dysmantle is the current passion - there’s very minimal story that you have to piece together, and most of it is obtained through exploration rather than quests or interaction)
I also haven’t played online in years - since my wow days (vanilla and first expansion, then gave it up, so like 2008). Other people ducking around tends to detract from the game for me, and I strongly dislike PvP because I’m terrible against humans who don’t follow specific patterns… now I get frustrated when I accidentally buy a game that doesn’t have offline/single player content. If I could host my own servers for them though……
Indeed. While many years ago I was playing almost only League of Legends with friends every evening after school, now I’m more enjoying the quality in note/totk, Celeste, and co. I also feel like online games aren’t anymore the places where you could get to know strangers and make online friends. LoL has gotten too toxic and competitive. And Minecraft servers have a 5oo young demographic for me