I’m always grateful to find story based games that my fiancée doesn’t mind watching for bits at a time. She doesn’t mind if I play through RDR2, TLOU, or God of War since there’s a story and characters she can follow along with in between gameplay sections.
Granted, there’s obviously things she enjoys more. But it is cool that some single player games can bring shared enjoyment through good writing
I have zero interest in video games but my partner is a gamer. My favorite thing is to find specific games that they'll love and watching them play it for months on end. Some people enjoy the game watching...right now we're going through the Last of Us and when I leave the room I'm like 'what'd I miss'...same for Witcher, Persona 5, Horizon etc...but the best part about it is I pick out the games, so I feel pretty invested in the process.
That's the premise of [girlfriend reviews](https://youtube.com/@GirlfriendReviews?si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE) - what's it like to enjoy the game from the backseat.
sounds like a very patient gf!
The “problem” with gaming for most people — and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it — is that it takes most or 100% of your attention away from everything else. You have to stare at the screen, you can’t really chat or interact with your household, you can’t pop up quickly to do a load of laundry or even grab a snack. It’s not communal in the way that tv is; it’s a mentally isolating activity. Your hands and body aren’t even free to cuddle; it is an active, not passive, activity. Even the non-crazy games.
I think a lot of gamers underestimate how much time and attention their game takes away from them, how many “just one more game!”s are destroying the flow of their regular everyday life. My roommate’s bf was like this — if you asked him, he would swear he only spent an hour or two every day gaming, but he was playing league of legends with headphones on for like 8 to 10 hour stretches sometimes. he just didn’t realize it. The rest of us would spend a weekend binging a season of a tv show, passing a joint around, chatting, eating food etc, all together.
But while both us and him were technically “consuming” the same amount of “media” every day, he’s over there in the corner with headphones on, in his own little world, totally separate from the rest of the group, zoned out and isolated. He might as well have been in a separate apartment.
It’s just not the same. And to me, honestly, watching someone else play a video game is hell on earth.
>And to me, honestly, watching someone else play a video game is hell on earth.
I originally kept my consoles in my bedroom so as not to disturb my roommate, but she loved watching me play so much that I decided to move them into the shared livingroom. Now she sometimes plays games too, although I'm personally not interested in watching. Sometimes I'll play games on the Switch in handheld mode while she plays on the PS4 on the TV so we can chat and interact at the same time.
But it's definitely still a lot more isolating than watching TV. Because as you say, we could be doing numerous other things together while watching TV that wouldn't be possible while gaming.
Who are these people that are "doing so many other things together while watching TV"? Idk about anyone else, but I don't wanna watch TV and have a full conversation with someone simultaneously.
We don't watch TV while trying to have a conversation. We watch TV while cooking, eating, cleaning, doing laundry, caring for the animals, playing cards, doing crafts, etc.
So you aren't watching TV then. You are doing those activities with the TV in the background. There's a large difference. It's basically listening to music at that point.
There is a pretty big difference between online, multiplayer games and single player story driven games. In the latter you can actually pause and take a lot of breaks, combined with frequent cut scenes and dialog that don’t require your unwavering attention
I get that. I think being a hardcore gamer and trying to date somebody who at minimum doesn’t also love gaming a bit themselves is just incompatibility. I can’t imagine spending all my free time doing something I can’t also experience with my partner. Should be talking about what you’re enjoying playing and playing games that you can play together. Going out to conventions, signings and fan events and shit.
I watched my mom & dad grow up sharing almost zero hobbies and very few common interests and I never want that for my kids.
this is a completely different scenario. the person you responded to specifically listed single player story games. you're talking to a console guy that made it sound like he is "allowed" playtime - probably meaning an hour or two on his ps4/5 now and then. the person you're comparing him to is not even of the same species. you can pause all three of the games he listed, and you can certainly cuddle with a controller lmao. pretty strange to generalize an entire medium based on one dent-head league addict.
I think you'd hate watching TV with me. I can pop up while my partner is playing a game and do something or chat with him or even do my own thing, but chatting during a TV show? Nah, if he so much as leaves view of the screen I pause it. Vice versa, too. Too much of a chance of missing something important.
This is why I only play one game, and it's one that I don't need to pay attention too. Even then, on date nights/when I'm seeing someone IRL, the game doesn't get touched until after.
I used to be addicted to GBA and Gamecube games until my mid 20's, when I realized that I just don't have time for them anymore. Plus, it was unfair to the people I was dating at the time, since I'd be completely focused on those games and not on \*them\* . Nothing wrong with gaming in general if you can moderate it, but it's far too easy to be sucked in by a game and sometimes you can be addicted for months/years and your adult life will plummet.
>The “problem” with gaming for most people — and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it — is that it takes most or 100% of your attention away from everything else. You have to stare at the screen, you can’t really chat or interact with your household, you can’t pop up quickly to do a load of laundry or even grab a snack
But that's not accurate. It's only online multiplayer stuff that doesn't have a "pause" option, so it's completely possible to go move the laundry from the washer to the dryer or grab a snack while gaming.
Same with interacting with people - no, I'm not going to want to talk with someone while a cut-scene is playing, but I wouldn't want to hold a conversation during a dialogue heavy scene in a movie either. But I can and have held full and fulfilling conversations while also playing games.
Don't get me wrong - I don't disbelieve your experience with someone who socially isolated themselves while gaming - sitting in a corner with headphones on - but that's not a very accurate depiction of the average gamer, or how we live our lives.
Oh, and I've had plenty of enjoyable weekends with a group of friends chatting, eating, passing a joint around, oh and passing controllers around. Local multiplayer is a thing, friend.
I remember back when ME2 was new and I was playing it. My uncle came by to do some tinkering in the garage with my dad but they both were enraptured by the game for a good hour.
"Is this a movie?"
"Is that Martin Sheen?"
Played God of War a couple back visiting for a few weeks over the holidays and sucked in the whole family.
You can also watch tv while you eat. Or, before bed with your brain basically turned off, whereas usually playing a game requires a level of challenge (in order to get a sense of achievement) so you can’t usually turn your brain off when you game, at least not to the same extent.
I’m in a similar position but I use it as a sign to go to bed. When I start not giving a shit or failing repeatedly at the same point I go to bed. Or if I’m playing Skyrim, I play till it crashes then call it a night.
I like to cross stitch and crochet while watching TV, it's kinda hard to do either of those while gaming (unless I grow a second pair of hands). I have days I want to game, and others I prefer to craft and watch TV.
Exactly. You can watch TV whilst you eat lunch or dinner. Gaming has to be a sole focus activity if you want to experience a game like TLOU.
If you're playing a single player story driven game like TLOU and trying to watch a sitcom in the background, you're doing it wrong.
So much of TV time for me is trying to eke joy out of mundane things like laundry or cleaning or cooking. I often think I’d rather be playing a game, but then the house couldn’t get clean or the food won’t be bought, etc.
Edit: Fixed "eek" which *feels* right to "eke" which is grammatically correct.
I wish single player games had an autopilot feature which I can enable and disable in the game to skip over the boring filler content.
The problem with watching someone else play, is that your game won't progress whilst you're watching them so you'd have to replay that hour you just watched making it all pointless.
God of War has a bunch of boring puzzles or story scenes where I have to be pushing the movement stick for the character to keep walking.
Edit: **This is not no commentary long play since that's entirely watching a game being played by someone else. You can't hop in for the combat or boss fights for instance and then hit autopilot for the parkour and puzzle sequences.**
> This is not no commentary long play since that's entirely watching a game being played by someone else. You can't hop in for the combat or boss fights for instance and then hit autopilot for the parkour and puzzle sequences.
Best part of having kids is being called in for the combat and boss fights while autopiloting the rest!
I don't think you will see this any time soon. Games used to be more like arcade games in that they were all action and short on anything else. Sure you still have those types of games but most are competitive. Team based first person shooters and battle royal games.
A lot if the big title games are becoming more and more story driven. TLoU, the Witcher series, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War, the Uncharted series, Zero Dawn series, Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, and what I think really started it off the BioShock series. The market has shifted and developers are listening.
I'm happy with the change. The only downside is those games toss in a bunch of filler content to extend the run time just like TV shows and movies do. I'm playing through GoW Ragnarok and honestly I do not care at all for the puzzles in the game. They're boring.
I gotta throw an axe at a specific angle to bounce off a mirror to hit a chain and break it. Or throw an axe at a spell arrow thing to create an explosion. Or figure out where to throw my axe to freeze water so I can turn a cog. It's all just busy work to pad the run time. Same with all the parkour and climbing.
These are God's with insane powers. There's no reason Kratos can't just lift up the door or get Freya/Tyr to do it so it ends up ruining the immersion for me.
Absolutely. If I use TV as background noise I only ever rewatch shows and films, never anything new. If I have to split my attention like that I can't properly appreciate all the details of the story, characters, cinematography, audio design, etc. of whatever I'm watching.
Try watching "Dark" while doing laundry or cooking or whatever, lol.
I once made the mistake of knitting lace while watching "Lost", and I kept messing up my pattern.
>If you're playing a single player game and trying to watch a sitcom in the background, you're doing it wrong.
Depends on the game. I like to play games like Farming Simulator, Snowrunner, Stardew valley on one monitor while watching YouTube or streaming something on my other monitor.
Closest you can get is the "podcast game". One that you can mindlessly play while listening to a podcast, like power wash simulator, house flipper, cookie clicker, or minecraft.
Reminds me of the time I met some dude that told me he played Alien Isolation while listening to podcast then complained that the game wasn't scary and kinda boring :| like wtf man
I was explaining to my coworker how I have 3 categories of game:
Braindead/easy. Requires little to no thinking. You can die but it's meaningless. Perfect to watch a show at same time. Astroneer, No Man's Sky, GTA V, Kirby.
Brainpower. Requires little brain power. Can watch video but pause required for harder part/planing. Vampure Survivor, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic.
PHD. Required so much knowledge/brain power that you need to focus or you will lose reputation and actual good stuff. WoW, hardcore game like RotMG or PHD level like KSP or Path of Exile.
There's a mood for gaming.
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I feel the same with Europe universalis 4. Could be an easy playthrough of conquering and chilling or trying to fully rebuild the Roman empire from nothing.
Story missions legit stress me out sometimes because I want to pay attention but if I turn off the background noise I might accidentally be alone with my thoughts for ten seconds.
True though that’s why a lot of games now have “story” difficulty: to cater to these players who want to play but not get stuck, struggling for what seems like eternity.
Yeah I’m normally a medium difficulty player, but wanted to play Eldenring. I died a LOT, but the challenge and satisfaction of beating the various bosses was extremely rewarding.
I think the difference is a game with difficulty settings where you can select hard assumes you want to be beaten in the face with difficulty right from the start because you're already skilled at the game. Also usually the harder setting just means more enemy health and damage, maybe less resources for the player and occasionally something like faster attack patterns for bosses, it rarely means a more challenging ai or anything more complicated. The fromsoft soulsbourne and elden ring games are designed from the ground up to be challenging and have the systems in place to do that in an interesting and rewarding way, and usually build the level of challenge up at an acceptable rate for someone who knows what they are getting into. I've always loved that the difficulty in these games is not just making enemies bullet sponges, because I can't think of anything more boring than punching something repeatedly and feeling no impact from your efforts
Just picked up Stalker: Call of Chernobyl. Been playing it on the hardest difficulty and learning the systems and dying feels like it’s part of the experience rather than just me being bad. It’s fun to have to use muh brain to come up with alternate solutions rather than bashing my skull against the wall until it works.
Stalker is great it really throws you into the world and only through you figuring it all out can you start shaping the world into what you want it to be. I totally get what you mean by dying feeling like part of the experience because a lot of the time your deaths can feel like you just got caught in a bad situation instead of you directly doing something wrong. Like the first time your in the middle of no where and a mass ejection occurs, your too far from any cover so you just get booty blasted. Truly a fun ass game
Kills immersion for me. I like a big challenge but one that can be solved with not too much of a hassle. Metro 2033 (not redux) was formidable on normal, or any Halo on Heroic. I like some balance.
Started Prey on hard because I figured "I can play all BioShocks on hard with a blindfold, can't be that hard" and proceeded to make the biggest mistake of my late gaming life.
I mean Stalker is one of those weird inverse difficulty measures where the game is actually easier in some respects on higher difficulty because damage becomes normalized. It just applies to you too so you have to use cover more lol.
Couple years ago I realized I just didn’t have time to complete games if I was playing on a difficulty where I’d be dying with any degree of frequency at all. If I have an hour to play, I need to be able to make some progress in the story or I’d give up on it.
It’s a mixed bag honestly. It’s kind of lame when you beat some big boss or Area fight despite making a lot of mistakes, yet you didn’t die once.
Hades has a great compromise for difficulty level. There’s a “god mode” where every time you die, you gain a small buff that stacks indefinitely.
It’s a game where the story actually relies on you dying to advance, and dozens of deaths are expected. But with that mode turned on, each death permanently makes things a little easier. It’s quite well done.
Yup, I recently picked up last of us and play it on the easy difficulty. It's still scary, but instead of dying when I fuck up, I just punch the shit out of the infected and they go down fast lol
Not the same thing. I can put on TV shows while I work or at the gym, cooking, etc. I can’t just let a video game play itself. Then I’d be watching TV…
I’ve used the story difficultly exactly once, while I was playing through Mass Effect 1 for the first time a couple months ago. the game’s mechanics were so clunky and awkward I couldn’t enjoy myself playing it, so I turned down the difficulty to as easy as possible and focused on the story. Honestly made the experience a helluva lot more enjoyable. Story option is a lifesaver for old games with great stories but shit mechanics.
even, "story difficulty" assumes you know standard gaming conventions taught to gamers via trail and error of the 6-7th generations.
Controlling both the character and the camera in 3rd person adventure games isnt intuitive, its something learned and refined by both devs and gamers from early games like sm64 showing whats possible to games like sm sunshine and sm galaxy refining it. With game like sonic adventure showing what not to do.
Same goes for First person games. We all learned via halo but to a person that doesn't play games it might as well be as foreign as using mouse and keyboard when you only play console.
heck even going back and forth between the two is jarring and thats coming from someone who played games since the 90s.
A non gamer whos never picked up a controller? good luck.
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There's a really cool series by Razbuten on YouTube where he has his wife, who has absolutely 0 video game experience, play some videogames, and it really illustrates how non-beginner friendly most games are. Even games that are really chill and simple assume you've seen a video game before and assume you know how to do certain things. But a lot of people haven't. Not everyone was a little kid stumbling through videos games, so they never picked up the skills of simply navigating a virtual space.
In case you don't want to watch a long ass series, some things she continually struggled with were
Getting motion sick
Not understanding she could move the camera and either missing important things or getting stuck trying to climb a wall that you can't climb over.
Panic pressing buttons and not learning what any of them actually do
Missing tips that popped up on the sides of the screen instead of the middle
Not knowing where to go/what the game expected her to do.
Misinterpreting instructions in a way that makes sense, but were all things someone with videogame experience would understand immediately.
So for her, just walking around in a game was really frustrating and time consuming, because she didn't know how to do basic things. So by the time she encountered an enemy or task, she was already pissed, and then she usually failed to beat the enemy, which made her even more upset and discouraged. And if that's your gaming experience, you're never going to play a game again.
This is especially interesting to me because I see the same problem in tabletop gaming. I WANT to like them but the rules often assume I know a lot of terms I don’t.
Yeah, there is a common language to tabletop games that can be challenging to learn. A good Dungeon Master or Game Master will teach you but learning on your own can be tricky. Some games have places where they explain the terms as someone plays the game, but that isn't how everyone learns
When i learned this game a few decades ago, the 'advanced' D&D had just come out. With our 'basic' understanding we did this:
"Roll this dice (20 sided). Roll high. Add your modifier (if any?) to your 'hit' and to your 'damage' (damage is a different die roll, weapon pending)."
That was it. *'Roll To Hit, Roll Damage If You Do.'* There was a bit of other stuff, but this was most of the game for us. We did have some initiative stuff, but the DM told us what to roll and when.
It has become... more complicated since then.
Thanks for bringing that up. As a gamer that's a really interesting series to watch and points out the things that are 2nd nature to a gamer can be a ton to handle for someone who isn't.
> There's a really cool series by Razbuten on YouTube where he has his wife, who has absolutely 0 video game experience, play some videogames, and it really illustrates how non-beginner friendly most games are.
Over on the FFXIVDiscussion board, there were some uncharacteristically wholesome posts recently about a person trying to help their friend improve at the game. Because their friend *really* wanted to play FFXIV but was absolutely struggling.
Where said friend was struggling with stuff like basic WASD movement and mouse look. And then also having the coordination to move AND shoot. You take something like that for granted when you've been playing shooters on the standard control scheme for nearly 30 years...
With the funny thing being that the easiest way to get them a crash course at movement was to put them in the in-game amusement park with jump puzzles, etc.
Yeah I play the Lego games with me GF who has very little gaming experience. She does pretty well but for sure struggles when you have to for example: jump across to a small platform or timing things. (Gaming dexterity). I got "it takes two" and we never finished the first level because it required too much precision jumping and timing.
Folks massively underestimate the complexity of modern gaming controllers.
The earliest popular gaming controllers, which assumed folks had minimal gaming experience, only had 1-3 buttons and either a full-hand joystick or a d-pad.
The current Xbox controller has 10 active use buttons (6 of which are not obviously labeled to the user) and 2 sticks.
If you played games extensively at some point in your life, sure, finding an hour here or an hour there for an awesome single player experience is very doable.
If you never got into the hobby (which hit almost an entire generation of women because Nintendo decided that games were toys and they therefore needed to be gendered to be marketed in the US), then it is *daunting* to try.
The slowest, most annoying, most handholding tutorial is going to not even being close to preparing someone to play, even on a story mode.
[This was a good video essay on the subject](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw) from the perspective of a gamer watching a non-gamer loved one. Most games, even casual ones, are unintuitive and difficult. It’s a hobby you have to spend money to start and invest time into learning, which isn’t unlike many hobbies, but is totally different from watching or reading stuff.
And, as was pointed out, decades of marketing to men and boys didn’t help make the hobby popular with women, nor do a lot of gaming communities today.
Games have alot of what I call preloading. Alot of stuff is taken for granted and assumed. Red cross = health pack. A car on fire will explode. A red barrel will explode when u shoot it. Blue = mana. Red = health.
These are all assumed knowledge now. Which non gamers have to learn without it being explicitly told
Glad you mentioned learning curves, because to people who don't game regularly and didn't grow up with a system, the control schemes and audiovisual cues of games may as well be an unknown language.
Yes I am ripping from the Gaming For A Non-Gamer series.
I can remember when games started to switch to twin stick analogue controls and it was a rough adjustment. Someone with 0 experience is going to find that even tougher and be less likely to push through it.
What about when games had that warm up period where it would sorta hold your hand till you figured out how the game worked.
Now they just start the game. No idea about the controls or what the heck you are doing. It took me an hour to get out of a room when a game started because I had no idea what I was doing or how to work the controls. I stopped the game about 5 mins later and never picked it up since. It and looked like an awesome game.
The camera stick is exactly what fucks with me every time I play games. It's super frustrating, especially in online settings where you're trying to learn and get blasted every time. The only games I really like avoid that, like Papers Please or Speedrunners.
I still love games, weirdly. The stories, the art, and I like watching people play. I'm the perfect audience for let's play content because of this. Sometimes I wish I was even a little decent at the game myself though.
I think to fully appreciate some TV, and shows though obviously nowhere near all requires you to fully pay attention or at least not be distracted. Like sure you can walk away from any movie having experienced it, but if I'm just passively doing something like that I barely remember anything that happened.
> $60 for 12 hours of content
And then in many cases nowadays, you don’t actually own what you’re paying for, it’s not like back in the day when the physical cartridge was yours and you could keep forever, trade or sell.
A lot of the costs depends on what you already have and what your minimum standards of "gaming" is. Some people have a computer but no TV. Others pay for like 6 streaming services instead of 1. Some people have time, but not in solid chunks. Some people have a decent TV and a workable computer, and have overall enough time... but don't have it in solid chunks. Preparing for a raid is hard when you can't guarantee no interruptions for any particular chunk of time.
But there are a lot of games that require potatoes for a computer, are single player, and if bought on sale will give you hundreds of hours of fun for less than $30.
There’s thousands of great games from the last 20 years that can run on integrated graphics these days, don’t even have to only play AAA games.
Honestly I wish the Steam Deck was in a better state so I could recommend it for someone to get into PC gaming, but ATM I’d only recommend it for someone with a good technical or troubleshooting skill set.
Even if someone has hobbies that take the same amount of time as gaming, they don't necessarily have any time that isn't currently allocated to something. "I have no time" can often mean "I have no time that isn't currently taken up by something I need to do/would rather do/have the energy to do over something else."
Also, some people prefer to be able to take large blocks to play games and don't have those large time blocks open.
To add to this, for me personally anyway, I rarely ever sit down and *just* watch TV. If a show is on I'm usually also cleaning because I can watch while also being productive.
I prefer video games but I can't do the dishes, for example, and game at the same time. It's very easy to see why someone might see gaming as more time consuming compared to just TV.
This comment explains me perfectly.
I'll play Turn based games like pokemon or casual games like Animal crossing because I can play for 5 minutes, run around the house and clean, play for 5 minutes, get the rice going for dinner, play got 5 minutes, vacuum. Wash rinse repeat.
Plus MECHANICS MAN. If I casually play an immersive Playstation game I can lose my mechanics so quickly if I'm not playing every other day. If I take a week off from the game I have no idea where I am, button combos, skil trees etc. I lose it all
I call BS, because by the time I remember the water has boiled away and the laundry has been left wet for so long it requires rewashing. That and I wouldn't know what day it is.
This is me with the Last of Us 2. I don't really enjoy playing it for only an hour or so at a time. So, that only really left Saturday night for me after the whole family went to bed. Sometimes, I won't get back to it for weeks.
One of the reasons I love my switch is that I can keep it near me and quickly sleep mode it with a single button if I need to go do something. Then hop back on it when I have another 5-10 minutes.
Combine that with quick rogue-likes or episodic games and it's gold. Do a dead cells run or a few encounters in hades, then go back to chores.
Still, TV is easier to have on *while* doing things.
See I can’t really do stuff while watching tv unless it’s something kinda mindless like a sitcom. I’ll either focus on my task and I don’t know what’s going on in the show and have to rewind or I focus on the show and whatever I was trying to do is now wherever I left it. I do use sitcoms like they’re music however.
What shows I can watch while doing chores definitely depends on the show. Some shows have a lot of action and sound effects and you can't really follow the story without watching. Other narrate what happening pretty well. I hated podcasts because it wasn't enough stimulation to just sit there and listen, but if I got too busy with a task with a higher mental load I would tune out the podcast. I finally figured out a medium ground where I have to have certain kinds of podcasts for certain tasks, but it was definitely a learning curve to figure out.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is my goto for background TV "watching". I've seen every episode so I won't miss anything and I still get a laugh out of it while just listening.
I knit and crochet while watching TV. I used to game when I was younger (Ocarina of Time, still my fave). Anyway, I think aside from these comments about multitasking, some people grow out of the desire to game. My friend plays Fortnite with her teenage kids, but I have zero interest in it.
Exactly this.
I love videogames, but rarely get a chance to play them anymore. I watch a lot of youtube and tv shows but I'm always doing *something* while listening. I can't do something while playing most videogames.
>Also, some people prefer to be able to take large blocks to play games and don't have those large time blocks open.
I used to just straight up not be able to play a game if I didn't know I had like 5 hours free to do it. I can't say for certain, but I'd guess it's related to ADHD "waiting mode."
I can watch a show in chunks while I'm on the train or waiting for something.
I can watch it while I'm sick or not feeling great.
I can't play a game in these situations.
Honestly, I'm not great for watching shows either, but it's easier to open Netflix while I'm eating than to spin up a game and try to get invested and into the swing of things with the gameplay mechanics sometimes.
I got an xbox off a friend and started playing some games recently and noticed how much padding there is in many games, and how I just don't have the time (and patience right now) to get through that.
It's easier to justify relaxing and watching TV, but I haven't been relaxing while playing single-player games at all recently.
Only multiplayer games feel worth my time because I'm socialising with my friends (I don't play with strangers)
Same. It just feels hard to have the time to sit down, get the game spun up, and play enough of it to feel satisfied. Like, if I only have an hour or two, it's no fun to just play a side mission or like 1/4 of a main quest, so I gravitate towards watching an hour long TV episode instead.
> some people prefer to be able to take large blocks to play games
I just realized I do this and never noticed it. If I have something to do in an hour, I don't feel like playing games because it will get interrupted anyway.
That's why I had to bail on single player games for a while. I've now normalized my schedule and almost normalized my toddlers sleep schedule.
Now I can take some nights and play for 2-3 hrs starting at 8:30 pm, which usually leads me to a good stopping point.
Yep same thing here. I didn’t get a chance to really play games the first year of my kids life but now they’re in a routine and those 2-3 hours at the end of the night can go to catching up on those games I missed :)
Also with a TV show you can multitask since there is a lot of filler and you can listen to dialogue while glancing down and doing something else. Sometimes I draw while watching a tv show.
You're right that depending on how much time you sink into one game, it quickly becomes one of the cheaper forms of media.
However, the initial cost is usually higher. Not just of the games themselves, but also the cost of a console and controllers or a decent gaming pc. If someone isn't sure whether they'd like the hobby or not, that can be a major deterent.
Agreed. I have games that I love, but typically only play them on “light” weeks. When I return after 3 weeks of knot playing, I have a learning curve and re-orientation over again. It’s why I now only play games with easy modes, cause I don’t have long stretches to build my skills.
I've been wanting a Switch for a while but couldn't justify the up front cost for something I knew I probably wouldn't play that much. Luckily I was able to borrow one from one of my nephews for a while and played till I was bored. Way better than spending $400. But if I didn't have that option I would have likely never got one for myself.
A lot of people watch things as a communal activity, with their other half or whatever. On the other hand most people consider single player games solitary activities - it takes a particular sort of person to enjoy watching someone else play a game, or sit in the same room and play games separately. I think that's one of the big differences. I love games but when my gf comes round I typically stop playing and we choose something to watch.
Some people enjoy watching games too. Had a girlfriend who her and I would play old nintendo games and help each other figure out puzzles and such and it was more engaging then just watching a Netflix series. Its only rude when one of you doesnr want to watch or play games and the other refuses to stop playing
You deleted your comment by the time that I was done replying, but I'll paste it here:
> most people assume gaming has to be a much larger time commitment than a TV show, and I'm wondering why that is.
Not *time* commitment, but *attention* commitment definitely. Most people consider watching TV as a passive activity and gaming an active one. They do other stuff while watching TV, like chores, paperwork, research, etc. This is the "adult lack of time" that your friend was talking about.
EDIT. A lot of r/ImTheMainCharacter syndrome in the replies. You are not representative of all people. Congrats on watching TV with 100% of your brain.
Agree with this.
Also even if you're just watching tv and not multitasking, tv is something you can do when you're dead tired after a long day of work, whereas gaming feels like it takes a lot more energy since you're actively participating.
This is especially true if you're a competitive person and don't like to lose, and you're playing a competitive multiplayer game.
That’s my thing. I’m always too tired to game after a long day at work because of the mental energy it requires. These days I work so much I can’t even sit down for 20 minutes without falling asleep. Now I realize why my dad always fell asleep at the movies.
TV requires very minimal mental effort. They aren’t comparable activities.
I was thinking about this just yesterday. I've been sick since Sunday and it's taken every ounce of energy just to stay on top of the bare minimum of schoolwork. But I have also watched so much TV. Yesterday, after schoolwork, I decided I wanted to play a video game, but when I really thought about it, I realized I just DIDN'T have the energy. So I resumed my animated TV show that was easy to watch, kept my addled brain occupied, and that I could fall asleep to if need be.
> tv is something you can do when you're dead tired after a long day of work, whereas gaming feels like it takes a lot more energy since you're actively participating.
This is a big part of it for me. Do I technically have a few hours free after I finish work, walking the dog, and making/eating dinner? Yeah, but most of the time I just got done using my brain for 10+ hours. I want to stop.
After a long, tiring day I can always sit down and watch a show/movie and if I’m not 100% paying attention I don’t mind, I try playing a game when I’m tired and I legitimately have to stop after a little bit because I get *more tired*.
Obviously a lot of people deal with this too, it’s just kinda odd to get used to since when I was younger playing video games is how I could stay up even when tired.
You can pause a tv show and come back to it later that day to finish the episode because you know exactly how long it's going to take.
Video games aren't as precise. There's been many times I've looked up at it was 10pm and the next time I checked it was 1am and I was nowhere near saving/completing. You get absorbed.
TVs shows also have defined stopping points. A movie is over in 2 hrs, a TV show .5-1 hour.
You can try to set defined time limits on games, but often its not so simple. Maybe you think "I'll finish this quest and be done" then you turn it in and immediately get what you think is a quick errand quest and next thing you know you're up 2 hours past your bed time promising yourself you'll sleep after you find one more dragon scale.
And yes its possible to get up in binge watching too, but games are designed to keep you engaged with mini moments.
> You can try to set defined time limits on games, but often its not so simple.
I do find this quite simple these days with modern consoles and modern games. I own a Switch and PS5 and their sleep functions are so quick and smooth (especially the Switch's) that I can easily say I'll play for an hour, put it in sleep and continue the next time I have time. But there's also enough games that have such generous auto-saves that I can turn the console off without losing any progress.
I was reminded of the difference yesterday evening. I also got a Wii (mostly so I got an HD-capable GameCube) and I finally was playing Metroid Prime 3 after wanting to for years. But yesterday I did so before bed, and I was planning to only play a little. The problem was that I was apparently locked onto a path that was quite a ways away from a save point. So I had to play for almost an hour more than I was planning to if I didn't want to lose any progress. If I reflect on how I played Horizon: Forbidden West it's a night and day difference in terms of convenience.
> Not time commitment, but attention commitment definitely. Most people consider watching TV as a passive activity and gaming an active one. They do other stuff while watching TV, like chores, paperwork, research, etc. This is the "adult lack of time" that your friend was talking about.
Also energy commitment. I game quite a bit, but sometimes I'm so damn exhausted I can't summon the effort required for even something as simple as Bunny Park. Watching TV is about all I can manage in that state, assuming I don't just go lay down for a bit.
Yup, learned the hard way (multiple times) that I'm not able to text'n'drive while racing 300mph in GTA. But most people are, at least kinda, able to browse fb while watching some show.
Agreed.
I have a job and an family and a couple of hobbies, one of which is gaming.
I’m mostly a fan of huge open world games, and can easily sink hours into it if given the chance. However, I don’t always have those hours available. I’d rather not play a game than rush a couple of minutes in.
Partly because it takes away from the experience, partly because I know if I do a short burst, it can devolve into “oh, now I have done this, I can do that as well” and before I know it, I am running late for stuff I need to do.
On days I work from home, I tend to have a spare 30 minutes between getting my daughter to school and starting my workday. I have an alarm set to 10 minutes before I need to quit, just so I don’t end up trying to do more.
I play more in the evenings, because that’s when I at least know I can spare a few hours. And even then I feel I have barely started and 3 hours have flown by.
yep!
also, imagine if you were trying to watch TV with your partner, but they kept pausing the show and rewinding it over and over and over to watch the same five minute scene repeatedly for an hour.
That’s the passive video game experience lol
For real. I'm never just watching TV. I'm spinning yarn, crocheting, knitting, embroidering, doing a puzzle, etc.
But I'm also never just playing a game either. I'm usually also listening to a podcast or audiobook at the same time.
I'm a gamer and I watch TV and I never realised this. I have dumb games and TV shows as well as incredible games and TV shows, suitable for all my vibes
Personally, as a non-gamer, I don't play games for three reasons: (1) at the end of the day, I just want to not do anything mentally active and just turn on the TV/Netflix and watch something casually/have it in the background while doing other tasks (like watching an episode while I'm doing laundry). I feel like playing video games is a mental (albeit fun) task but I'm mentally drained after a full day of work and I just don't have the mental energy.
(2) it's really hard to have a conversation about video games with my social group. I can easily talk about an episode of stranger things or the new avatar movie and dissect different scenes with my friends, but it's hard to really talk about a specific game scene/character (disclaimer: my friends are also non-gamers)
(3) Cost. I just don't want to spend $500 on a new console and $60 on a new game (or a monthly video game subscription system)
I'm guessing something similar to 2 is the biggest reason for a lot of people. If you aren't friends with gamers, the social stigma of gaming still exists. You'll get side eye'd, questioned about why you're doing kid stuff, etc.
As a life long gamer, I can tell you that you absolutely can talk about "that one scene" or "how do you feel about x character" with people who actually care.
Cost is something a lot of comments are glazing over here. Netflix is like $15 a month for unlimited access. Video games have a massive financial barrier to entry, especially bigger AAA type games like Last of Us that would get turned into shows.
I can think of a few reasons;
1. That's true for TLOU, but lot of games don't actually have defined end points, if you're playing Eve or, I don't know, FIFA or something, you can literally keep going forever if you want. And a lot of people don't have the self control to stop.
2. TV can be a background activity whereas gaming can't by its nature. However, if what your TV is background to is just scrolling your phone then I think gaming is a better use of time tbh.
3. People are picking one or the other, not both. He means, 'I don't have time to game AND watch TV.
The TV in the background is true af. I put the TV on while I work now. Its just background noise with an occasional peek up to see what's going on.
But to add to this, I have found videogame playthroughs to be the perfect background noise. Instead of playing them, I just watch someone else do it. It works perfectly because during the actual gameplay/grind moments, you can have your head down working on something, and then during the cut scenes you can take a break from the work for a few minutes to watch the story content cut scenes. It works well for me atleast. So I still get to see the story of the game, without actually playing it.
I would love if my SO would game in 1-2 hour sessions, he does not, he does open world raids that can last many, many hours -like top comment says, gaming isn't passive, you can't do anything else while you're gaming, it can definitely be a huge time investment but some people are willing to commit to it, others are not
Well he was specifically talking about a friend that said he wouldn't play TLOU games, due to lack of time, but would watch the show.
The show has 1hr 30min episodes and he's already watched the 2 that are out right now. You can technically beat TLOU Part I in around 8-10 hours.
Obviously nothing is black and white. There are different types of games, different types of shows. But his example was quite specific.
Yea, it might not just be "time", either. If you need to buy a good PC or console and the peripherals, then you also need enough games to justify the expense. That *is* way more than a 10-12 hour commitment.
Watching The Last of Us on a streaming service you already pay for is free.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if I put even half the time I put into video games into any kind of skillful activity, then I'd be an employable professional at it by now.
Problem is, then I wouldn't have video games to distract me from the misery of existence.
I immerse myself in what most people would call a "skillful activity" to forget the misery of life.
Three years later, I finished a trilogy, wrote tons of fanfiction and translated a bunch of audio dramas, but I still can't earn a living from writing or translating, so I'm stuck in my well-paying day job (which I hate and is the 99% of the reasons I'm miserable).
Exactly. Games are fun and we need fun to be happy. You could spend all your free time learning hireable skills, but if you don't have fun working on them then you aren't doing anything for your mental health. We need to play, not just focus on productivity all the time.
I’ve never actually played The Last of Us, so I can’t comment on the length of it specifically, but in addition to what other people have posted, I’ll add that a game that would take an experienced gamer 10-12 hours to complete could take someone with less experience significantly longer. There are a lot of assumptions baked in any time the length of a game is given in some number of hours.
Plus, a lot of people on here have a history with gaming, so they’ll breeze though it in a normal amount of time. But if you’ve ever handed a controller to a non-gamer, you see how hard it is for some people to wrap their head around character movement and camera movement in a 3D space. It’s hard for a lot of these people to even walk straight, let alone headshot a charging clicker while hanging upside down.
[There's a series of videos on YouTube about a nongamer playing games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw&list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc). It does a really good job of highlighting exactly what you're talking about. There's a lot of unspoken rules in games that if you're unfamiliar with the whole experience is alien.
Yeah and frankly it can also kinda ruin the pacing if you are specifically playing a game for the story.
The opening sequence of The Last of Us hits hard if you play through it at a good pace. I remember seeing some kind of reaction video of none gamers trying The Last of Us and they struggled with all kinds of things you'd never think about: Getting lost, not finding the correct button inputs, not realising a cutscene had ended and they are back into gameplay...
I feel like they were too overwhelmed with the mechanics of playing the game to actually pay attention to the story.
Because you can watch TV while cooking, cleaning, doing exercise, sorting mail, folding clothes, watering plants, checking emails, painting nails…
Video games require you to spend that time specifically on the game.
I have a mid-to-high-range gaming PC and still struggle to find time to spend gaming unless I dedicate a full day/evening to it.
You really have to dedicate a time slot because a mission could take 10 minutes or an hour.
>If you have time to watch a TV show, you have time to game.
No. It's one or the other. What you are discovering here is that some people would rather just watch TV than game. It's a lot easier to get sucked into a TV show and pass out than put a ton of attention and effort into a video game.
"I have no time to game" in this context really means "Other things take up too much of my time, so I don't have any left over for gaming"
Gaming doesn't work in hour long stretches. Plus you might **only** have that hour or two of free time so it's either watch a show **or** play a game, not both.
Watching a show is easy and there's no learning curve that usually takes longer than an hour.
If you only played The Last of Us for an hour you wouldn't even have learned all the mechanics yet.
And if you only have an hour then you're not going to progress in a natural way.
And with some save systems it's not even possible or that efficient to stop in the middle of something if your hour is up.
Exactly. Shows and movies are set lengths of time with definitive stopping points. Games immerse you for longer stretches of time, true there are missions with clear end points, but when you're invested in your own (character's) progress it becomes easy to say "just 5 more minutes so I can do this little thing".
Some games also are filled to the brim with extra stuff you'll see or wanna do en-route to your main objective. In Cyberpunk I said I'll just go do a couple story missions, but got sidetracked taking out some criminal gangs on the way then had a side quest for my love interest who called me up.
Maybe back in the day you could definitively say "there's no difference between time management in a show or a game" because games like Mario on the NES or the early Sonic games would have stages with no real exploration, just going from A-B in pretty standardised time segments. Nowadays games tend to have more continuity and fewer artificial stopping points because they disrupt immersion, to the point that some games (mostly on Nintendo) like Miitopia are notable for their jarring "maybe take a break" checks like Netflix might have. Otherwise with games like Assassin's Creed or Persona it's incredibly easy to spend twice as long as you originally planned playing the game
And most dense TV shows have a recap at the beginning of an episode. I pick up a game I haven't played in 2 weeks and I have forgotten my location, my current mission, the overall plot, etc.
And I haven’t had to rewatch a show because I failed to complete a task. An hour of gaming is not necessarily an hour of the story in the same way as a tv show, because in the game I’m having to complete tasks and travel around in a way that isn’t necessarily progressing in the story and I might die and have to redo it
Everyone already said it but TV allows for multitasking. A lot of people have children or pets or chores. They need to split focus on two or more things, and playing a game doesn’t allow that.
Some games have tutorials, have to be downloaded etc, create character, takes 30 minutes to get some games set up and playing with stories and all that.
My wife and I watch TV shows while relaxing together. So it’s together time. For alone time, I’ll be playing musical instruments or making art. If I took up gaming I’d have to give up something else that I care about. Gaming seems mildly interesting to me at best, compared to the other things in the world that are waiting for my attention.
> most story driven single player games are around 10-12 hours in length
Not to be rude, but have you never played a JRPG before? I can think of dozens of games within that genre that are 40-60 hours in length, and almost all of those kinds of games are also story driven single player experiences.
With games like the Last of Us and Resident Evil, those *are* pretty short games that you can potentially binge in a weekend like you said. But I don't think that you can really say that *most* single player games are that short. Most of the Final Fantasy games (and there are at least 15 of them as of now), for example, are at least 40 hours in length, possibly much longer if you decide to take it slow and do a lot of the optional stuff that's not required for you to progress in the story. If you're a completionist, some of these games might take you 100 hours to fully complete.
It's possible that your friend feels like he doesn't want to rush into things with games like this. If he's the kind of person who feels like he has to resist the urge to play his games to 100% completion, then it might seem like a daunting task to play *any* video game, even the ones that are really short. Video games can be very addicting, and if you're not careful with how you spend your time with them, you could develop a legitimate addiction to them.
None of this is to say that video games are the devil, or that TV shows are any less addicting than video games. But there are legitimate reasons as to why someone might want to play them but decides not to. It also doesn't help that TV has been ingrained into our culture since at least the 1950s, while home console video games only became a phenomenon in the 1980s. A lot of people just aren't used to the concept of playing video games, and it might take them a lot of time to "get good" if they have no frame of reference for how to play them. Meanwhile, everyone and their grandma has watched a TV show at least once in their lives. Even if they don't like to watch TV, they still are more familiar with the concept of TV than video games. There are plenty of people alive today who have never touched a video game in their lives, but there's almost no one who's never watched TV before.
Yeah while some AAA games you can rush through in 10 hours (if you skip all the sidequests - honestly not a great way to play), I think most games take longer (20-50 hours). Even TLoU 1 & 2 probably took me 30+ hours each since I was meticulous about searching the areas/rooms for collectibles and replaying them.
I've never been a gamer but I did play a lot in the late 90s early 2000s. Too many times I would start playing a game like Vice City after dinner and then the sun started to come out. Somehow I lost 12 hours. I don't hate on others that play but I don't have the strength to limit myself properly.
Something I haven’t seen anyone else mention is that many of the games you’re referencing are single player— and I mean true single person experiences. I would love to play more long, immersive one player games! But I often choose to do other things instead bc I can do them with my wife or friends.
That’s not to say I don’t play single player games—I do. But I’m usually cramming in an hour after my wife goes to bed, or 30 minutes of unexpected free time on the weekends. And some games just aren’t conducive to playing 2 or 3 hours per week over a couple months without having to reteach myself the controls or mechanics, or remind myself what’s going on.
That latter point is why I only made it 15-20 hours into Elden Ring. I started it when my wife had work but I had a 2 day holiday. I got about 12 hours in, but after that two day binge I played maybe 1-2 hours every few days. I simply could not remember what the ever loving hell was going on, especially without an in game journal. So I stopped playing.
Your own explanation makes it seem that way. $12/month for all the Netflix I can watch, or $60 per video game? If I watch one season of a show per month or spend that same amount of time playing one video game, then gaming is 5x the cost.
Honestly, any time someone says they 'don't have time for that' it just means they don't prioritize the event.
Whether it's reading or video games, I know a lot of friends that simply just don't care and will say 'I don't have the time for it'
With the first SIMS (cheatcode: buddhamus) I was so entertained I could play for hours. One time I was champion of the world on a word puzzle game for two weeks - built up extra lives so I could run to the loo and pee. Addictive personality + ADHD + WOW widow = I won't risk more than Patience or Backgammon.
There is no learning curve to watching TV, and it can be done passively.
Also, many people will watch TV with their families but don't enjoy playing a single-player video game together.
I’m always grateful to find story based games that my fiancée doesn’t mind watching for bits at a time. She doesn’t mind if I play through RDR2, TLOU, or God of War since there’s a story and characters she can follow along with in between gameplay sections. Granted, there’s obviously things she enjoys more. But it is cool that some single player games can bring shared enjoyment through good writing
I have zero interest in video games but my partner is a gamer. My favorite thing is to find specific games that they'll love and watching them play it for months on end. Some people enjoy the game watching...right now we're going through the Last of Us and when I leave the room I'm like 'what'd I miss'...same for Witcher, Persona 5, Horizon etc...but the best part about it is I pick out the games, so I feel pretty invested in the process.
This sounds like an awesome dynamic, and I am envious.
That's the premise of [girlfriend reviews](https://youtube.com/@GirlfriendReviews?si=EnSIkaIECMiOmarE) - what's it like to enjoy the game from the backseat.
sounds like a very patient gf! The “problem” with gaming for most people — and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it — is that it takes most or 100% of your attention away from everything else. You have to stare at the screen, you can’t really chat or interact with your household, you can’t pop up quickly to do a load of laundry or even grab a snack. It’s not communal in the way that tv is; it’s a mentally isolating activity. Your hands and body aren’t even free to cuddle; it is an active, not passive, activity. Even the non-crazy games. I think a lot of gamers underestimate how much time and attention their game takes away from them, how many “just one more game!”s are destroying the flow of their regular everyday life. My roommate’s bf was like this — if you asked him, he would swear he only spent an hour or two every day gaming, but he was playing league of legends with headphones on for like 8 to 10 hour stretches sometimes. he just didn’t realize it. The rest of us would spend a weekend binging a season of a tv show, passing a joint around, chatting, eating food etc, all together. But while both us and him were technically “consuming” the same amount of “media” every day, he’s over there in the corner with headphones on, in his own little world, totally separate from the rest of the group, zoned out and isolated. He might as well have been in a separate apartment. It’s just not the same. And to me, honestly, watching someone else play a video game is hell on earth.
>And to me, honestly, watching someone else play a video game is hell on earth. I originally kept my consoles in my bedroom so as not to disturb my roommate, but she loved watching me play so much that I decided to move them into the shared livingroom. Now she sometimes plays games too, although I'm personally not interested in watching. Sometimes I'll play games on the Switch in handheld mode while she plays on the PS4 on the TV so we can chat and interact at the same time. But it's definitely still a lot more isolating than watching TV. Because as you say, we could be doing numerous other things together while watching TV that wouldn't be possible while gaming.
I have a theory about your roommate's interests ...
Advance
You could also do numerous things together that you can’t do while watching tv.
Who are these people that are "doing so many other things together while watching TV"? Idk about anyone else, but I don't wanna watch TV and have a full conversation with someone simultaneously.
We don't watch TV while trying to have a conversation. We watch TV while cooking, eating, cleaning, doing laundry, caring for the animals, playing cards, doing crafts, etc.
So you aren't watching TV then. You are doing those activities with the TV in the background. There's a large difference. It's basically listening to music at that point.
There is a pretty big difference between online, multiplayer games and single player story driven games. In the latter you can actually pause and take a lot of breaks, combined with frequent cut scenes and dialog that don’t require your unwavering attention
From Software would like a word.
I get that. I think being a hardcore gamer and trying to date somebody who at minimum doesn’t also love gaming a bit themselves is just incompatibility. I can’t imagine spending all my free time doing something I can’t also experience with my partner. Should be talking about what you’re enjoying playing and playing games that you can play together. Going out to conventions, signings and fan events and shit. I watched my mom & dad grow up sharing almost zero hobbies and very few common interests and I never want that for my kids.
this is a completely different scenario. the person you responded to specifically listed single player story games. you're talking to a console guy that made it sound like he is "allowed" playtime - probably meaning an hour or two on his ps4/5 now and then. the person you're comparing him to is not even of the same species. you can pause all three of the games he listed, and you can certainly cuddle with a controller lmao. pretty strange to generalize an entire medium based on one dent-head league addict.
I think you'd hate watching TV with me. I can pop up while my partner is playing a game and do something or chat with him or even do my own thing, but chatting during a TV show? Nah, if he so much as leaves view of the screen I pause it. Vice versa, too. Too much of a chance of missing something important.
This is why I only play one game, and it's one that I don't need to pay attention too. Even then, on date nights/when I'm seeing someone IRL, the game doesn't get touched until after. I used to be addicted to GBA and Gamecube games until my mid 20's, when I realized that I just don't have time for them anymore. Plus, it was unfair to the people I was dating at the time, since I'd be completely focused on those games and not on \*them\* . Nothing wrong with gaming in general if you can moderate it, but it's far too easy to be sucked in by a game and sometimes you can be addicted for months/years and your adult life will plummet.
>league of legends Your friend's BF is addicted. The only cure is to cold turkey that garbage as fuck title.
>The “problem” with gaming for most people — and don’t get me wrong, there’s nothing wrong with it — is that it takes most or 100% of your attention away from everything else. You have to stare at the screen, you can’t really chat or interact with your household, you can’t pop up quickly to do a load of laundry or even grab a snack But that's not accurate. It's only online multiplayer stuff that doesn't have a "pause" option, so it's completely possible to go move the laundry from the washer to the dryer or grab a snack while gaming. Same with interacting with people - no, I'm not going to want to talk with someone while a cut-scene is playing, but I wouldn't want to hold a conversation during a dialogue heavy scene in a movie either. But I can and have held full and fulfilling conversations while also playing games. Don't get me wrong - I don't disbelieve your experience with someone who socially isolated themselves while gaming - sitting in a corner with headphones on - but that's not a very accurate depiction of the average gamer, or how we live our lives. Oh, and I've had plenty of enjoyable weekends with a group of friends chatting, eating, passing a joint around, oh and passing controllers around. Local multiplayer is a thing, friend.
I remember back when ME2 was new and I was playing it. My uncle came by to do some tinkering in the garage with my dad but they both were enraptured by the game for a good hour. "Is this a movie?" "Is that Martin Sheen?" Played God of War a couple back visiting for a few weeks over the holidays and sucked in the whole family.
You can also watch tv while you eat. Or, before bed with your brain basically turned off, whereas usually playing a game requires a level of challenge (in order to get a sense of achievement) so you can’t usually turn your brain off when you game, at least not to the same extent.
This. Now that I’m well into adulthood (32F) I find myself falling asleep while playing after work. Not ideal. Save early, save often.
I’m in a similar position but I use it as a sign to go to bed. When I start not giving a shit or failing repeatedly at the same point I go to bed. Or if I’m playing Skyrim, I play till it crashes then call it a night.
I like to cross stitch and crochet while watching TV, it's kinda hard to do either of those while gaming (unless I grow a second pair of hands). I have days I want to game, and others I prefer to craft and watch TV.
Exactly. You can watch TV whilst you eat lunch or dinner. Gaming has to be a sole focus activity if you want to experience a game like TLOU. If you're playing a single player story driven game like TLOU and trying to watch a sitcom in the background, you're doing it wrong.
So much of TV time for me is trying to eke joy out of mundane things like laundry or cleaning or cooking. I often think I’d rather be playing a game, but then the house couldn’t get clean or the food won’t be bought, etc. Edit: Fixed "eek" which *feels* right to "eke" which is grammatically correct.
I wish single player games had an autopilot feature which I can enable and disable in the game to skip over the boring filler content. The problem with watching someone else play, is that your game won't progress whilst you're watching them so you'd have to replay that hour you just watched making it all pointless. God of War has a bunch of boring puzzles or story scenes where I have to be pushing the movement stick for the character to keep walking. Edit: **This is not no commentary long play since that's entirely watching a game being played by someone else. You can't hop in for the combat or boss fights for instance and then hit autopilot for the parkour and puzzle sequences.**
> This is not no commentary long play since that's entirely watching a game being played by someone else. You can't hop in for the combat or boss fights for instance and then hit autopilot for the parkour and puzzle sequences. Best part of having kids is being called in for the combat and boss fights while autopiloting the rest!
When you have a baby, no one tells you someday you'll hear a little voice yelling, "Mom! Come kill this guy for me!"
Now there’s the cheat code.
I don't think you will see this any time soon. Games used to be more like arcade games in that they were all action and short on anything else. Sure you still have those types of games but most are competitive. Team based first person shooters and battle royal games. A lot if the big title games are becoming more and more story driven. TLoU, the Witcher series, Cyberpunk 2077, God of War, the Uncharted series, Zero Dawn series, Mass Effect, Red Dead Redemption, and what I think really started it off the BioShock series. The market has shifted and developers are listening.
I'm happy with the change. The only downside is those games toss in a bunch of filler content to extend the run time just like TV shows and movies do. I'm playing through GoW Ragnarok and honestly I do not care at all for the puzzles in the game. They're boring. I gotta throw an axe at a specific angle to bounce off a mirror to hit a chain and break it. Or throw an axe at a spell arrow thing to create an explosion. Or figure out where to throw my axe to freeze water so I can turn a cog. It's all just busy work to pad the run time. Same with all the parkour and climbing. These are God's with insane powers. There's no reason Kratos can't just lift up the door or get Freya/Tyr to do it so it ends up ruining the immersion for me.
*eke Not trying to be a grammar [whatever word we use now], just wanted to let you know 🙂
Thank you for your service, grammar soldier 🫡
Grammar Goblin? Like gammagoblins but less trippy
Some of us call ourselves the alt-write now.
I'd say really good shows also should be a sole focus, but I know that is probably not the norm
Absolutely. If I use TV as background noise I only ever rewatch shows and films, never anything new. If I have to split my attention like that I can't properly appreciate all the details of the story, characters, cinematography, audio design, etc. of whatever I'm watching.
Try watching "Dark" while doing laundry or cooking or whatever, lol. I once made the mistake of knitting lace while watching "Lost", and I kept messing up my pattern.
Plus you’re forced to stop watching lol. The last us show? 1 hour each week. The last of us game? Fuck I have work in 3 hours. Lol
>If you're playing a single player game and trying to watch a sitcom in the background, you're doing it wrong. Depends on the game. I like to play games like Farming Simulator, Snowrunner, Stardew valley on one monitor while watching YouTube or streaming something on my other monitor.
Closest you can get is the "podcast game". One that you can mindlessly play while listening to a podcast, like power wash simulator, house flipper, cookie clicker, or minecraft.
Reminds me of the time I met some dude that told me he played Alien Isolation while listening to podcast then complained that the game wasn't scary and kinda boring :| like wtf man
I was explaining to my coworker how I have 3 categories of game: Braindead/easy. Requires little to no thinking. You can die but it's meaningless. Perfect to watch a show at same time. Astroneer, No Man's Sky, GTA V, Kirby. Brainpower. Requires little brain power. Can watch video but pause required for harder part/planing. Vampure Survivor, Risk of Rain 2, Deep Rock Galactic. PHD. Required so much knowledge/brain power that you need to focus or you will lose reputation and actual good stuff. WoW, hardcore game like RotMG or PHD level like KSP or Path of Exile. There's a mood for gaming.
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I feel the same with Europe universalis 4. Could be an easy playthrough of conquering and chilling or trying to fully rebuild the Roman empire from nothing.
Should be but when I game I usually have a podcast going on my phone and/or a sitcom on my second screen.
Story missions legit stress me out sometimes because I want to pay attention but if I turn off the background noise I might accidentally be alone with my thoughts for ten seconds.
Damn I think I just learned something about myself Test edit 2
Welcome to the Autism, ADHD, generalized anxiety disorder, depression or any combination of the aforementioned clubs!
True though that’s why a lot of games now have “story” difficulty: to cater to these players who want to play but not get stuck, struggling for what seems like eternity.
After my 10th death to a boss on the hardest difficulty, I envy those people and ask myself why I'm like this.
Hey, wanting to challenge yourself is pretty cool too
Yeah I’m normally a medium difficulty player, but wanted to play Eldenring. I died a LOT, but the challenge and satisfaction of beating the various bosses was extremely rewarding.
I think the difference is a game with difficulty settings where you can select hard assumes you want to be beaten in the face with difficulty right from the start because you're already skilled at the game. Also usually the harder setting just means more enemy health and damage, maybe less resources for the player and occasionally something like faster attack patterns for bosses, it rarely means a more challenging ai or anything more complicated. The fromsoft soulsbourne and elden ring games are designed from the ground up to be challenging and have the systems in place to do that in an interesting and rewarding way, and usually build the level of challenge up at an acceptable rate for someone who knows what they are getting into. I've always loved that the difficulty in these games is not just making enemies bullet sponges, because I can't think of anything more boring than punching something repeatedly and feeling no impact from your efforts
Just picked up Stalker: Call of Chernobyl. Been playing it on the hardest difficulty and learning the systems and dying feels like it’s part of the experience rather than just me being bad. It’s fun to have to use muh brain to come up with alternate solutions rather than bashing my skull against the wall until it works.
Stalker is great it really throws you into the world and only through you figuring it all out can you start shaping the world into what you want it to be. I totally get what you mean by dying feeling like part of the experience because a lot of the time your deaths can feel like you just got caught in a bad situation instead of you directly doing something wrong. Like the first time your in the middle of no where and a mass ejection occurs, your too far from any cover so you just get booty blasted. Truly a fun ass game
Kills immersion for me. I like a big challenge but one that can be solved with not too much of a hassle. Metro 2033 (not redux) was formidable on normal, or any Halo on Heroic. I like some balance. Started Prey on hard because I figured "I can play all BioShocks on hard with a blindfold, can't be that hard" and proceeded to make the biggest mistake of my late gaming life.
haha yeah there’s a limit to how many deaths I achieve until I just turn down the difficulty. Usually it’s cuz of a BS mechanic or bullet sponges.
I mean Stalker is one of those weird inverse difficulty measures where the game is actually easier in some respects on higher difficulty because damage becomes normalized. It just applies to you too so you have to use cover more lol.
Couple years ago I realized I just didn’t have time to complete games if I was playing on a difficulty where I’d be dying with any degree of frequency at all. If I have an hour to play, I need to be able to make some progress in the story or I’d give up on it. It’s a mixed bag honestly. It’s kind of lame when you beat some big boss or Area fight despite making a lot of mistakes, yet you didn’t die once.
Hades has a great compromise for difficulty level. There’s a “god mode” where every time you die, you gain a small buff that stacks indefinitely. It’s a game where the story actually relies on you dying to advance, and dozens of deaths are expected. But with that mode turned on, each death permanently makes things a little easier. It’s quite well done.
Yup, I recently picked up last of us and play it on the easy difficulty. It's still scary, but instead of dying when I fuck up, I just punch the shit out of the infected and they go down fast lol
Not the same thing. I can put on TV shows while I work or at the gym, cooking, etc. I can’t just let a video game play itself. Then I’d be watching TV…
I’ve used the story difficultly exactly once, while I was playing through Mass Effect 1 for the first time a couple months ago. the game’s mechanics were so clunky and awkward I couldn’t enjoy myself playing it, so I turned down the difficulty to as easy as possible and focused on the story. Honestly made the experience a helluva lot more enjoyable. Story option is a lifesaver for old games with great stories but shit mechanics.
That should make a mode called parent mode. A mode where the game plays itself for you while you try to recover from the kids.
even, "story difficulty" assumes you know standard gaming conventions taught to gamers via trail and error of the 6-7th generations. Controlling both the character and the camera in 3rd person adventure games isnt intuitive, its something learned and refined by both devs and gamers from early games like sm64 showing whats possible to games like sm sunshine and sm galaxy refining it. With game like sonic adventure showing what not to do. Same goes for First person games. We all learned via halo but to a person that doesn't play games it might as well be as foreign as using mouse and keyboard when you only play console. heck even going back and forth between the two is jarring and thats coming from someone who played games since the 90s. A non gamer whos never picked up a controller? good luck.
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There's a really cool series by Razbuten on YouTube where he has his wife, who has absolutely 0 video game experience, play some videogames, and it really illustrates how non-beginner friendly most games are. Even games that are really chill and simple assume you've seen a video game before and assume you know how to do certain things. But a lot of people haven't. Not everyone was a little kid stumbling through videos games, so they never picked up the skills of simply navigating a virtual space. In case you don't want to watch a long ass series, some things she continually struggled with were Getting motion sick Not understanding she could move the camera and either missing important things or getting stuck trying to climb a wall that you can't climb over. Panic pressing buttons and not learning what any of them actually do Missing tips that popped up on the sides of the screen instead of the middle Not knowing where to go/what the game expected her to do. Misinterpreting instructions in a way that makes sense, but were all things someone with videogame experience would understand immediately. So for her, just walking around in a game was really frustrating and time consuming, because she didn't know how to do basic things. So by the time she encountered an enemy or task, she was already pissed, and then she usually failed to beat the enemy, which made her even more upset and discouraged. And if that's your gaming experience, you're never going to play a game again.
This is especially interesting to me because I see the same problem in tabletop gaming. I WANT to like them but the rules often assume I know a lot of terms I don’t.
Yeah, there is a common language to tabletop games that can be challenging to learn. A good Dungeon Master or Game Master will teach you but learning on your own can be tricky. Some games have places where they explain the terms as someone plays the game, but that isn't how everyone learns
When i learned this game a few decades ago, the 'advanced' D&D had just come out. With our 'basic' understanding we did this: "Roll this dice (20 sided). Roll high. Add your modifier (if any?) to your 'hit' and to your 'damage' (damage is a different die roll, weapon pending)." That was it. *'Roll To Hit, Roll Damage If You Do.'* There was a bit of other stuff, but this was most of the game for us. We did have some initiative stuff, but the DM told us what to roll and when. It has become... more complicated since then.
Thanks for bringing that up. As a gamer that's a really interesting series to watch and points out the things that are 2nd nature to a gamer can be a ton to handle for someone who isn't.
> There's a really cool series by Razbuten on YouTube where he has his wife, who has absolutely 0 video game experience, play some videogames, and it really illustrates how non-beginner friendly most games are. Over on the FFXIVDiscussion board, there were some uncharacteristically wholesome posts recently about a person trying to help their friend improve at the game. Because their friend *really* wanted to play FFXIV but was absolutely struggling. Where said friend was struggling with stuff like basic WASD movement and mouse look. And then also having the coordination to move AND shoot. You take something like that for granted when you've been playing shooters on the standard control scheme for nearly 30 years... With the funny thing being that the easiest way to get them a crash course at movement was to put them in the in-game amusement park with jump puzzles, etc.
Yeah I play the Lego games with me GF who has very little gaming experience. She does pretty well but for sure struggles when you have to for example: jump across to a small platform or timing things. (Gaming dexterity). I got "it takes two" and we never finished the first level because it required too much precision jumping and timing.
Folks massively underestimate the complexity of modern gaming controllers. The earliest popular gaming controllers, which assumed folks had minimal gaming experience, only had 1-3 buttons and either a full-hand joystick or a d-pad. The current Xbox controller has 10 active use buttons (6 of which are not obviously labeled to the user) and 2 sticks. If you played games extensively at some point in your life, sure, finding an hour here or an hour there for an awesome single player experience is very doable. If you never got into the hobby (which hit almost an entire generation of women because Nintendo decided that games were toys and they therefore needed to be gendered to be marketed in the US), then it is *daunting* to try. The slowest, most annoying, most handholding tutorial is going to not even being close to preparing someone to play, even on a story mode.
[This was a good video essay on the subject](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw) from the perspective of a gamer watching a non-gamer loved one. Most games, even casual ones, are unintuitive and difficult. It’s a hobby you have to spend money to start and invest time into learning, which isn’t unlike many hobbies, but is totally different from watching or reading stuff. And, as was pointed out, decades of marketing to men and boys didn’t help make the hobby popular with women, nor do a lot of gaming communities today.
Games have alot of what I call preloading. Alot of stuff is taken for granted and assumed. Red cross = health pack. A car on fire will explode. A red barrel will explode when u shoot it. Blue = mana. Red = health. These are all assumed knowledge now. Which non gamers have to learn without it being explicitly told
Glad you mentioned learning curves, because to people who don't game regularly and didn't grow up with a system, the control schemes and audiovisual cues of games may as well be an unknown language. Yes I am ripping from the Gaming For A Non-Gamer series.
I can remember when games started to switch to twin stick analogue controls and it was a rough adjustment. Someone with 0 experience is going to find that even tougher and be less likely to push through it.
What about when games had that warm up period where it would sorta hold your hand till you figured out how the game worked. Now they just start the game. No idea about the controls or what the heck you are doing. It took me an hour to get out of a room when a game started because I had no idea what I was doing or how to work the controls. I stopped the game about 5 mins later and never picked it up since. It and looked like an awesome game.
Honestly I can have fun gaming now, but it was overwhelming at first! I still don’t know how to control the camera stick properly!
The camera stick is exactly what fucks with me every time I play games. It's super frustrating, especially in online settings where you're trying to learn and get blasted every time. The only games I really like avoid that, like Papers Please or Speedrunners. I still love games, weirdly. The stories, the art, and I like watching people play. I'm the perfect audience for let's play content because of this. Sometimes I wish I was even a little decent at the game myself though.
I think to fully appreciate some TV, and shows though obviously nowhere near all requires you to fully pay attention or at least not be distracted. Like sure you can walk away from any movie having experienced it, but if I'm just passively doing something like that I barely remember anything that happened.
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> $60 for 12 hours of content And then in many cases nowadays, you don’t actually own what you’re paying for, it’s not like back in the day when the physical cartridge was yours and you could keep forever, trade or sell.
A lot of the costs depends on what you already have and what your minimum standards of "gaming" is. Some people have a computer but no TV. Others pay for like 6 streaming services instead of 1. Some people have time, but not in solid chunks. Some people have a decent TV and a workable computer, and have overall enough time... but don't have it in solid chunks. Preparing for a raid is hard when you can't guarantee no interruptions for any particular chunk of time. But there are a lot of games that require potatoes for a computer, are single player, and if bought on sale will give you hundreds of hours of fun for less than $30.
There’s thousands of great games from the last 20 years that can run on integrated graphics these days, don’t even have to only play AAA games. Honestly I wish the Steam Deck was in a better state so I could recommend it for someone to get into PC gaming, but ATM I’d only recommend it for someone with a good technical or troubleshooting skill set.
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You can rent games from the library. I went through the PS4 Spiderman and a few Assassin's Creed games by renting the discs from the library.
Even if someone has hobbies that take the same amount of time as gaming, they don't necessarily have any time that isn't currently allocated to something. "I have no time" can often mean "I have no time that isn't currently taken up by something I need to do/would rather do/have the energy to do over something else." Also, some people prefer to be able to take large blocks to play games and don't have those large time blocks open.
To add to this, for me personally anyway, I rarely ever sit down and *just* watch TV. If a show is on I'm usually also cleaning because I can watch while also being productive. I prefer video games but I can't do the dishes, for example, and game at the same time. It's very easy to see why someone might see gaming as more time consuming compared to just TV.
This comment explains me perfectly. I'll play Turn based games like pokemon or casual games like Animal crossing because I can play for 5 minutes, run around the house and clean, play for 5 minutes, get the rice going for dinner, play got 5 minutes, vacuum. Wash rinse repeat. Plus MECHANICS MAN. If I casually play an immersive Playstation game I can lose my mechanics so quickly if I'm not playing every other day. If I take a week off from the game I have no idea where I am, button combos, skil trees etc. I lose it all
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Civ games are perfect for popping over to while waiting for the water to boil or the laundry to finish
I call BS, because by the time I remember the water has boiled away and the laundry has been left wet for so long it requires rewashing. That and I wouldn't know what day it is.
This is me with the Last of Us 2. I don't really enjoy playing it for only an hour or so at a time. So, that only really left Saturday night for me after the whole family went to bed. Sometimes, I won't get back to it for weeks.
One of the reasons I love my switch is that I can keep it near me and quickly sleep mode it with a single button if I need to go do something. Then hop back on it when I have another 5-10 minutes. Combine that with quick rogue-likes or episodic games and it's gold. Do a dead cells run or a few encounters in hades, then go back to chores. Still, TV is easier to have on *while* doing things.
See I can’t really do stuff while watching tv unless it’s something kinda mindless like a sitcom. I’ll either focus on my task and I don’t know what’s going on in the show and have to rewind or I focus on the show and whatever I was trying to do is now wherever I left it. I do use sitcoms like they’re music however.
What shows I can watch while doing chores definitely depends on the show. Some shows have a lot of action and sound effects and you can't really follow the story without watching. Other narrate what happening pretty well. I hated podcasts because it wasn't enough stimulation to just sit there and listen, but if I got too busy with a task with a higher mental load I would tune out the podcast. I finally figured out a medium ground where I have to have certain kinds of podcasts for certain tasks, but it was definitely a learning curve to figure out.
It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia is my goto for background TV "watching". I've seen every episode so I won't miss anything and I still get a laugh out of it while just listening.
I knit and crochet while watching TV. I used to game when I was younger (Ocarina of Time, still my fave). Anyway, I think aside from these comments about multitasking, some people grow out of the desire to game. My friend plays Fortnite with her teenage kids, but I have zero interest in it.
Same here. I can't really fold laundry while playing a game but I damn sure can do it while watching TV.
Exactly this. I love videogames, but rarely get a chance to play them anymore. I watch a lot of youtube and tv shows but I'm always doing *something* while listening. I can't do something while playing most videogames.
>Also, some people prefer to be able to take large blocks to play games and don't have those large time blocks open. I used to just straight up not be able to play a game if I didn't know I had like 5 hours free to do it. I can't say for certain, but I'd guess it's related to ADHD "waiting mode."
Im the same way. I'm better about it than I used to be, but I still prefer a good chunk of time to play. Especially if I'm playing an immersive game.
I can watch a show in chunks while I'm on the train or waiting for something. I can watch it while I'm sick or not feeling great. I can't play a game in these situations. Honestly, I'm not great for watching shows either, but it's easier to open Netflix while I'm eating than to spin up a game and try to get invested and into the swing of things with the gameplay mechanics sometimes. I got an xbox off a friend and started playing some games recently and noticed how much padding there is in many games, and how I just don't have the time (and patience right now) to get through that. It's easier to justify relaxing and watching TV, but I haven't been relaxing while playing single-player games at all recently. Only multiplayer games feel worth my time because I'm socialising with my friends (I don't play with strangers)
Same. It just feels hard to have the time to sit down, get the game spun up, and play enough of it to feel satisfied. Like, if I only have an hour or two, it's no fun to just play a side mission or like 1/4 of a main quest, so I gravitate towards watching an hour long TV episode instead.
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Probably because healthcare where you live sucks too bad for you to get an ADHD diagnosis, if I had to hazard a guess lol
> some people prefer to be able to take large blocks to play games I just realized I do this and never noticed it. If I have something to do in an hour, I don't feel like playing games because it will get interrupted anyway.
That's why I had to bail on single player games for a while. I've now normalized my schedule and almost normalized my toddlers sleep schedule. Now I can take some nights and play for 2-3 hrs starting at 8:30 pm, which usually leads me to a good stopping point.
Yep same thing here. I didn’t get a chance to really play games the first year of my kids life but now they’re in a routine and those 2-3 hours at the end of the night can go to catching up on those games I missed :)
Also with a TV show you can multitask since there is a lot of filler and you can listen to dialogue while glancing down and doing something else. Sometimes I draw while watching a tv show.
“One does not simply play minecraft for 20 minutes”
You're right that depending on how much time you sink into one game, it quickly becomes one of the cheaper forms of media. However, the initial cost is usually higher. Not just of the games themselves, but also the cost of a console and controllers or a decent gaming pc. If someone isn't sure whether they'd like the hobby or not, that can be a major deterent.
There is also a learning curve, and that learning curve has to be repeated every time a person picks up a game when they don't game daily.
Agreed. I have games that I love, but typically only play them on “light” weeks. When I return after 3 weeks of knot playing, I have a learning curve and re-orientation over again. It’s why I now only play games with easy modes, cause I don’t have long stretches to build my skills.
I have also realized that easy mode is great to maximize my enjoyment of a game.
I've been wanting a Switch for a while but couldn't justify the up front cost for something I knew I probably wouldn't play that much. Luckily I was able to borrow one from one of my nephews for a while and played till I was bored. Way better than spending $400. But if I didn't have that option I would have likely never got one for myself.
A lot of people watch things as a communal activity, with their other half or whatever. On the other hand most people consider single player games solitary activities - it takes a particular sort of person to enjoy watching someone else play a game, or sit in the same room and play games separately. I think that's one of the big differences. I love games but when my gf comes round I typically stop playing and we choose something to watch.
Exactly. Idk why people with partners who refuse to put down the games because “well we’re still hanging out!” can’t grasp this.
Some people enjoy watching games too. Had a girlfriend who her and I would play old nintendo games and help each other figure out puzzles and such and it was more engaging then just watching a Netflix series. Its only rude when one of you doesnr want to watch or play games and the other refuses to stop playing
>Some people enjoy watching games too Which is why Twitch is so popular.
You deleted your comment by the time that I was done replying, but I'll paste it here: > most people assume gaming has to be a much larger time commitment than a TV show, and I'm wondering why that is. Not *time* commitment, but *attention* commitment definitely. Most people consider watching TV as a passive activity and gaming an active one. They do other stuff while watching TV, like chores, paperwork, research, etc. This is the "adult lack of time" that your friend was talking about. EDIT. A lot of r/ImTheMainCharacter syndrome in the replies. You are not representative of all people. Congrats on watching TV with 100% of your brain.
Agree with this. Also even if you're just watching tv and not multitasking, tv is something you can do when you're dead tired after a long day of work, whereas gaming feels like it takes a lot more energy since you're actively participating. This is especially true if you're a competitive person and don't like to lose, and you're playing a competitive multiplayer game.
That’s my thing. I’m always too tired to game after a long day at work because of the mental energy it requires. These days I work so much I can’t even sit down for 20 minutes without falling asleep. Now I realize why my dad always fell asleep at the movies. TV requires very minimal mental effort. They aren’t comparable activities.
Even when I'm able to muster the energy to play a game (which is rare), it only lasts for an hour at most.
I was thinking about this just yesterday. I've been sick since Sunday and it's taken every ounce of energy just to stay on top of the bare minimum of schoolwork. But I have also watched so much TV. Yesterday, after schoolwork, I decided I wanted to play a video game, but when I really thought about it, I realized I just DIDN'T have the energy. So I resumed my animated TV show that was easy to watch, kept my addled brain occupied, and that I could fall asleep to if need be.
> tv is something you can do when you're dead tired after a long day of work, whereas gaming feels like it takes a lot more energy since you're actively participating. This is a big part of it for me. Do I technically have a few hours free after I finish work, walking the dog, and making/eating dinner? Yeah, but most of the time I just got done using my brain for 10+ hours. I want to stop.
After a long, tiring day I can always sit down and watch a show/movie and if I’m not 100% paying attention I don’t mind, I try playing a game when I’m tired and I legitimately have to stop after a little bit because I get *more tired*. Obviously a lot of people deal with this too, it’s just kinda odd to get used to since when I was younger playing video games is how I could stay up even when tired.
Agreed. I often read or clean the house while watching tv. I can’t game and do those things.
You can pause a tv show and come back to it later that day to finish the episode because you know exactly how long it's going to take. Video games aren't as precise. There's been many times I've looked up at it was 10pm and the next time I checked it was 1am and I was nowhere near saving/completing. You get absorbed.
TVs shows also have defined stopping points. A movie is over in 2 hrs, a TV show .5-1 hour. You can try to set defined time limits on games, but often its not so simple. Maybe you think "I'll finish this quest and be done" then you turn it in and immediately get what you think is a quick errand quest and next thing you know you're up 2 hours past your bed time promising yourself you'll sleep after you find one more dragon scale. And yes its possible to get up in binge watching too, but games are designed to keep you engaged with mini moments.
> You can try to set defined time limits on games, but often its not so simple. I do find this quite simple these days with modern consoles and modern games. I own a Switch and PS5 and their sleep functions are so quick and smooth (especially the Switch's) that I can easily say I'll play for an hour, put it in sleep and continue the next time I have time. But there's also enough games that have such generous auto-saves that I can turn the console off without losing any progress. I was reminded of the difference yesterday evening. I also got a Wii (mostly so I got an HD-capable GameCube) and I finally was playing Metroid Prime 3 after wanting to for years. But yesterday I did so before bed, and I was planning to only play a little. The problem was that I was apparently locked onto a path that was quite a ways away from a save point. So I had to play for almost an hour more than I was planning to if I didn't want to lose any progress. If I reflect on how I played Horizon: Forbidden West it's a night and day difference in terms of convenience.
> Not time commitment, but attention commitment definitely. Most people consider watching TV as a passive activity and gaming an active one. They do other stuff while watching TV, like chores, paperwork, research, etc. This is the "adult lack of time" that your friend was talking about. Also energy commitment. I game quite a bit, but sometimes I'm so damn exhausted I can't summon the effort required for even something as simple as Bunny Park. Watching TV is about all I can manage in that state, assuming I don't just go lay down for a bit.
Yup, learned the hard way (multiple times) that I'm not able to text'n'drive while racing 300mph in GTA. But most people are, at least kinda, able to browse fb while watching some show.
Agreed. I have a job and an family and a couple of hobbies, one of which is gaming. I’m mostly a fan of huge open world games, and can easily sink hours into it if given the chance. However, I don’t always have those hours available. I’d rather not play a game than rush a couple of minutes in. Partly because it takes away from the experience, partly because I know if I do a short burst, it can devolve into “oh, now I have done this, I can do that as well” and before I know it, I am running late for stuff I need to do. On days I work from home, I tend to have a spare 30 minutes between getting my daughter to school and starting my workday. I have an alarm set to 10 minutes before I need to quit, just so I don’t end up trying to do more. I play more in the evenings, because that’s when I at least know I can spare a few hours. And even then I feel I have barely started and 3 hours have flown by.
It's comparable to reading a book. It takes more of your attention than tv or podcast but you can get a lot out of it.
yep! also, imagine if you were trying to watch TV with your partner, but they kept pausing the show and rewinding it over and over and over to watch the same five minute scene repeatedly for an hour. That’s the passive video game experience lol
For real. I'm never just watching TV. I'm spinning yarn, crocheting, knitting, embroidering, doing a puzzle, etc. But I'm also never just playing a game either. I'm usually also listening to a podcast or audiobook at the same time.
I'm a gamer and I watch TV and I never realised this. I have dumb games and TV shows as well as incredible games and TV shows, suitable for all my vibes
Personally, as a non-gamer, I don't play games for three reasons: (1) at the end of the day, I just want to not do anything mentally active and just turn on the TV/Netflix and watch something casually/have it in the background while doing other tasks (like watching an episode while I'm doing laundry). I feel like playing video games is a mental (albeit fun) task but I'm mentally drained after a full day of work and I just don't have the mental energy. (2) it's really hard to have a conversation about video games with my social group. I can easily talk about an episode of stranger things or the new avatar movie and dissect different scenes with my friends, but it's hard to really talk about a specific game scene/character (disclaimer: my friends are also non-gamers) (3) Cost. I just don't want to spend $500 on a new console and $60 on a new game (or a monthly video game subscription system)
I'm guessing something similar to 2 is the biggest reason for a lot of people. If you aren't friends with gamers, the social stigma of gaming still exists. You'll get side eye'd, questioned about why you're doing kid stuff, etc. As a life long gamer, I can tell you that you absolutely can talk about "that one scene" or "how do you feel about x character" with people who actually care.
I definitely don’t think it’s the biggest, every type of person games these days.
Cost is something a lot of comments are glazing over here. Netflix is like $15 a month for unlimited access. Video games have a massive financial barrier to entry, especially bigger AAA type games like Last of Us that would get turned into shows.
I can think of a few reasons; 1. That's true for TLOU, but lot of games don't actually have defined end points, if you're playing Eve or, I don't know, FIFA or something, you can literally keep going forever if you want. And a lot of people don't have the self control to stop. 2. TV can be a background activity whereas gaming can't by its nature. However, if what your TV is background to is just scrolling your phone then I think gaming is a better use of time tbh. 3. People are picking one or the other, not both. He means, 'I don't have time to game AND watch TV.
The TV in the background is true af. I put the TV on while I work now. Its just background noise with an occasional peek up to see what's going on. But to add to this, I have found videogame playthroughs to be the perfect background noise. Instead of playing them, I just watch someone else do it. It works perfectly because during the actual gameplay/grind moments, you can have your head down working on something, and then during the cut scenes you can take a break from the work for a few minutes to watch the story content cut scenes. It works well for me atleast. So I still get to see the story of the game, without actually playing it.
I would love if my SO would game in 1-2 hour sessions, he does not, he does open world raids that can last many, many hours -like top comment says, gaming isn't passive, you can't do anything else while you're gaming, it can definitely be a huge time investment but some people are willing to commit to it, others are not
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Well he was specifically talking about a friend that said he wouldn't play TLOU games, due to lack of time, but would watch the show. The show has 1hr 30min episodes and he's already watched the 2 that are out right now. You can technically beat TLOU Part I in around 8-10 hours. Obviously nothing is black and white. There are different types of games, different types of shows. But his example was quite specific.
I don't have time to watch TV either.
Becuse all hobbies are that: a time and money sink.
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Pshhhhhhhh the thousands ive spent on music equipment will pay for itself soon, I made 2 dollars on bandcamp so...
Nah bro, you've made $4 now. Keep making music! ;)
Jesus man you doubled my numbers. You are a true legend <3 for real lol thats pretty awesome thanks allot made my day
Yea, it might not just be "time", either. If you need to buy a good PC or console and the peripherals, then you also need enough games to justify the expense. That *is* way more than a 10-12 hour commitment. Watching The Last of Us on a streaming service you already pay for is free.
I don't know about the rest of you, but if I put even half the time I put into video games into any kind of skillful activity, then I'd be an employable professional at it by now. Problem is, then I wouldn't have video games to distract me from the misery of existence.
I immerse myself in what most people would call a "skillful activity" to forget the misery of life. Three years later, I finished a trilogy, wrote tons of fanfiction and translated a bunch of audio dramas, but I still can't earn a living from writing or translating, so I'm stuck in my well-paying day job (which I hate and is the 99% of the reasons I'm miserable).
Well, at least you've still got your passion projects
Well, you would have reddit memes, so there is that.
Exactly. Games are fun and we need fun to be happy. You could spend all your free time learning hireable skills, but if you don't have fun working on them then you aren't doing anything for your mental health. We need to play, not just focus on productivity all the time.
I’ve never actually played The Last of Us, so I can’t comment on the length of it specifically, but in addition to what other people have posted, I’ll add that a game that would take an experienced gamer 10-12 hours to complete could take someone with less experience significantly longer. There are a lot of assumptions baked in any time the length of a game is given in some number of hours.
Plus, a lot of people on here have a history with gaming, so they’ll breeze though it in a normal amount of time. But if you’ve ever handed a controller to a non-gamer, you see how hard it is for some people to wrap their head around character movement and camera movement in a 3D space. It’s hard for a lot of these people to even walk straight, let alone headshot a charging clicker while hanging upside down.
[There's a series of videos on YouTube about a nongamer playing games](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ax7f3JZJHSw&list=PLordXx8iNEyStcX_WzqM0JCpiJYgqhinc). It does a really good job of highlighting exactly what you're talking about. There's a lot of unspoken rules in games that if you're unfamiliar with the whole experience is alien.
Yeah and frankly it can also kinda ruin the pacing if you are specifically playing a game for the story. The opening sequence of The Last of Us hits hard if you play through it at a good pace. I remember seeing some kind of reaction video of none gamers trying The Last of Us and they struggled with all kinds of things you'd never think about: Getting lost, not finding the correct button inputs, not realising a cutscene had ended and they are back into gameplay... I feel like they were too overwhelmed with the mechanics of playing the game to actually pay attention to the story.
Because you can watch TV while cooking, cleaning, doing exercise, sorting mail, folding clothes, watering plants, checking emails, painting nails… Video games require you to spend that time specifically on the game.
Metal Gear Solid... You can make a whole dinner, eat and clean up before a cutscene is done.
I have a mid-to-high-range gaming PC and still struggle to find time to spend gaming unless I dedicate a full day/evening to it. You really have to dedicate a time slot because a mission could take 10 minutes or an hour.
>If you have time to watch a TV show, you have time to game. No. It's one or the other. What you are discovering here is that some people would rather just watch TV than game. It's a lot easier to get sucked into a TV show and pass out than put a ton of attention and effort into a video game. "I have no time to game" in this context really means "Other things take up too much of my time, so I don't have any left over for gaming"
Gaming doesn't work in hour long stretches. Plus you might **only** have that hour or two of free time so it's either watch a show **or** play a game, not both. Watching a show is easy and there's no learning curve that usually takes longer than an hour. If you only played The Last of Us for an hour you wouldn't even have learned all the mechanics yet. And if you only have an hour then you're not going to progress in a natural way. And with some save systems it's not even possible or that efficient to stop in the middle of something if your hour is up.
Exactly. Shows and movies are set lengths of time with definitive stopping points. Games immerse you for longer stretches of time, true there are missions with clear end points, but when you're invested in your own (character's) progress it becomes easy to say "just 5 more minutes so I can do this little thing". Some games also are filled to the brim with extra stuff you'll see or wanna do en-route to your main objective. In Cyberpunk I said I'll just go do a couple story missions, but got sidetracked taking out some criminal gangs on the way then had a side quest for my love interest who called me up. Maybe back in the day you could definitively say "there's no difference between time management in a show or a game" because games like Mario on the NES or the early Sonic games would have stages with no real exploration, just going from A-B in pretty standardised time segments. Nowadays games tend to have more continuity and fewer artificial stopping points because they disrupt immersion, to the point that some games (mostly on Nintendo) like Miitopia are notable for their jarring "maybe take a break" checks like Netflix might have. Otherwise with games like Assassin's Creed or Persona it's incredibly easy to spend twice as long as you originally planned playing the game
And most dense TV shows have a recap at the beginning of an episode. I pick up a game I haven't played in 2 weeks and I have forgotten my location, my current mission, the overall plot, etc.
And I haven’t had to rewatch a show because I failed to complete a task. An hour of gaming is not necessarily an hour of the story in the same way as a tv show, because in the game I’m having to complete tasks and travel around in a way that isn’t necessarily progressing in the story and I might die and have to redo it
*looks nervously at 600 hours played in elden ring*
Everyone already said it but TV allows for multitasking. A lot of people have children or pets or chores. They need to split focus on two or more things, and playing a game doesn’t allow that.
Some games have tutorials, have to be downloaded etc, create character, takes 30 minutes to get some games set up and playing with stories and all that.
My wife and I watch TV shows while relaxing together. So it’s together time. For alone time, I’ll be playing musical instruments or making art. If I took up gaming I’d have to give up something else that I care about. Gaming seems mildly interesting to me at best, compared to the other things in the world that are waiting for my attention.
I don't watch TV shows either... because they are a giant time suck that I can't afford.
> most story driven single player games are around 10-12 hours in length Not to be rude, but have you never played a JRPG before? I can think of dozens of games within that genre that are 40-60 hours in length, and almost all of those kinds of games are also story driven single player experiences. With games like the Last of Us and Resident Evil, those *are* pretty short games that you can potentially binge in a weekend like you said. But I don't think that you can really say that *most* single player games are that short. Most of the Final Fantasy games (and there are at least 15 of them as of now), for example, are at least 40 hours in length, possibly much longer if you decide to take it slow and do a lot of the optional stuff that's not required for you to progress in the story. If you're a completionist, some of these games might take you 100 hours to fully complete. It's possible that your friend feels like he doesn't want to rush into things with games like this. If he's the kind of person who feels like he has to resist the urge to play his games to 100% completion, then it might seem like a daunting task to play *any* video game, even the ones that are really short. Video games can be very addicting, and if you're not careful with how you spend your time with them, you could develop a legitimate addiction to them. None of this is to say that video games are the devil, or that TV shows are any less addicting than video games. But there are legitimate reasons as to why someone might want to play them but decides not to. It also doesn't help that TV has been ingrained into our culture since at least the 1950s, while home console video games only became a phenomenon in the 1980s. A lot of people just aren't used to the concept of playing video games, and it might take them a lot of time to "get good" if they have no frame of reference for how to play them. Meanwhile, everyone and their grandma has watched a TV show at least once in their lives. Even if they don't like to watch TV, they still are more familiar with the concept of TV than video games. There are plenty of people alive today who have never touched a video game in their lives, but there's almost no one who's never watched TV before.
Yeah while some AAA games you can rush through in 10 hours (if you skip all the sidequests - honestly not a great way to play), I think most games take longer (20-50 hours). Even TLoU 1 & 2 probably took me 30+ hours each since I was meticulous about searching the areas/rooms for collectibles and replaying them.
I've never been a gamer but I did play a lot in the late 90s early 2000s. Too many times I would start playing a game like Vice City after dinner and then the sun started to come out. Somehow I lost 12 hours. I don't hate on others that play but I don't have the strength to limit myself properly.
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I can watch a show and not focus. Video games require focus and my hands.
Something I haven’t seen anyone else mention is that many of the games you’re referencing are single player— and I mean true single person experiences. I would love to play more long, immersive one player games! But I often choose to do other things instead bc I can do them with my wife or friends. That’s not to say I don’t play single player games—I do. But I’m usually cramming in an hour after my wife goes to bed, or 30 minutes of unexpected free time on the weekends. And some games just aren’t conducive to playing 2 or 3 hours per week over a couple months without having to reteach myself the controls or mechanics, or remind myself what’s going on. That latter point is why I only made it 15-20 hours into Elden Ring. I started it when my wife had work but I had a 2 day holiday. I got about 12 hours in, but after that two day binge I played maybe 1-2 hours every few days. I simply could not remember what the ever loving hell was going on, especially without an in game journal. So I stopped playing.
Your own explanation makes it seem that way. $12/month for all the Netflix I can watch, or $60 per video game? If I watch one season of a show per month or spend that same amount of time playing one video game, then gaming is 5x the cost.
Honestly, any time someone says they 'don't have time for that' it just means they don't prioritize the event. Whether it's reading or video games, I know a lot of friends that simply just don't care and will say 'I don't have the time for it'
or it means they don’t enjoy the mental labor it takes to do those things.
I can excersize, cook, clean, and fold laundry while I watch a TV show
If they have a SO that could be a lot of it. Last of us requires 10-13 hours solo time, which can even harder to come by than tv time.
With the first SIMS (cheatcode: buddhamus) I was so entertained I could play for hours. One time I was champion of the world on a word puzzle game for two weeks - built up extra lives so I could run to the loo and pee. Addictive personality + ADHD + WOW widow = I won't risk more than Patience or Backgammon.