Poll Question 347 – Do you ever get Gaming Overload?

19th May 2016

I’ve been following the comments about Doom by Maki and Crowbar in this month’s general chat post.

It got me thinking about how much I play and the is “Not very much at all”.

Running the site takes most of my “gaming” time but I do remember that in the past I reached a point where I didn’t want to play anymore, either that day or that week.

In fact, I got “Archer” overload a few months back when I watched about 4 seasons in a very short period of time and had to stop. It was just too much.

This is not really a problem for gamers as they don’t get their gaming in episodes but it means that gamers have to control themselves and when a new game is released it can be hard to stop paying when you are having so much fun.

What do you think would be the number of hours per week you feel you could play before you felt it was too much for you?

Time to vote

Do you ever get Gaming Overload?

  • No, I can play forever! (10%, 9 Votes)
  • Yes, occasionally. (71%, 63 Votes)
  • Yes, often. (19%, 17 Votes)

Total Voters: 89

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10 Comments

  1. the thing is I never play that much. I only play when I know that I have 100% fun. When I’m bored and have nothing to do, but am not really in the mood for playing games, then I just don’t.
    Also when playing a new release I just play that game maybe 1-3 hours per day depending on the game. Games like Doom or Dark Souls 3 are the exception there because they are just amazing and I can keep playing them forever.

    I actually immediately started a new playthrough after beating both. Just beat my second playthrough of Doom and now I’m trying to beat it on Ultra Nightmare (where your save file gets deleted when you die).

    I have some multiplayer games I sometimes play to “fill” the gaps, like Rainbow Six Siege at the moment, but most of the time I’m mapping or watching some videos. I play a lot btw 🙂
    According to Steam I played 50 hours in the last 2 weeks, and that is just the games I play on Steam (which is the majority of course).

    Sometimes when there aren’t any new games coming out and I played the games I have, then I get this “Overload” feeling. But that’s good too, because at those times I do completely different things 🙂

  2. So, by gaming overload you mean the feeling you played too much and have to stop for a while because you’re tired/bored? ( I hope so because all the rest of my comment is based upon this :p )
    If so, it happens to me often, yes, but it depends of the game and of the part of the game I am currently in!
    I am currently playing Dishonored, and I tend to play it for very short sessions, because I get bored and tired quite quickly. The reason for that is I try to explore everything, take every possibles objects, talk to everyone, read everything, swim everywhere… :p It’s not that funny, and the game itself isn’t entertaining either, but I’m just happy to go to the next map safe in the knowledge the one I’m currently in has been completely inspected.
    For games such as Cry of Fear, I usually can’t play more than 10 minutes without stopping for a day. It scares the hell out of me so much that I need to stop to get some rest. :p
    For strategy games such as Age Of Mythology, one ~30 minutes game is usually enough. It demands so much concentration, focus and reactivity that I’m just dead afterwards (and angry if I lost :p ).
    The Half-Life games and mods, with their linear maps, simple designs and simple gameplays are really easy and enjoyable to play and I can play on these games for long times as well, although I’d say I get tired more quickly than with Deus Ex games.
    Indeed, for Deus Ex Human Revolution or Deus Ex Goty, I can play much longer. Simply because these games are really entertaining and their atmosphere compelling. The Deus Ex games have awesome musics as well, and God it helps a lot.
    Now it depends on the part of the game I’m currently in. When I first tried to play Deus Ex Goty there was a period of time where I would only play for 5 minutes, because I was stuck (didn’t know where to look for the NSF’s chief at the very beginning of the game). When playing Human Revolution the first boss was so difficult to beat for me with all the lags I was having that I was stopping after 10 minutes.
    Currently, I am stuck in Cry of Fear, there is one boss so difficult to beat and it’s been months I’ve been trying to beat it. But we’re obliged to watch every time the same cinematic before the fight so it’s really boring and it’s rare that I try more than once in a row.

  3. Kinda. What usually happens to me is, I get a new game or restart an old one, play between 50 to a hundred hours of it if it’s really good, and then burn out so completely I drop it for ages. If a game has New Game+, it’s even worse; I’ll play it through the first time, love it, then start New Game+ immediately and abruptly stop that playthrough all of a sudden.

    That said, I never do stop playing videogames, no. It’s just my hobby, and it’s less time-consuming and exhausting than making comics with a videogame, so there’s that. I have, however, stopped playing PC games for months now since my job already entails staring at a computer screen in a desk for 8+ hours a day.

    Archer overload, though: never. I watched the first five seasons in a couple of days. Archer is amazing, the only reason I haven’t watched the rest yet is because season 6 is not on my country’s Netflix and I’m too lazy to acquire it by less legal means.

  4. I usually play games almost religiously, but even then it can come to a point where I burn out, that just means I need a recharge period on that game specifically. Meaning I will switch to another game.

    However there is some games that just say burned out for almost always, for instance I love half-life 2 and its episodes, but its really hard to play them now. Making maps for them is still fun to some point though.

  5. I actually had to put Doom aside every now and then because it is a rather exhausting game. With each level being about an hour long and involving tons of combat, secret hunting and exploration, I’d pass through a couple of them and I’d be done.

    Course, I whittled away about 3 hours in Snapmap yesterday so…

  6. I do sometimes get really bad migraines from playing a certain mod over and over again out of frustration….i usually end up stopping my gameplay and just let my eyes rest…when my migraine is gone and im cooled down i will usually get back at it again

  7. I’m kind of a wanna-be completionist. On paper, I think of myself as the kind of person who scours every nook and cranny looking for items. In reality, I rarely get 100% of all hidden items.

    So the first time I tried to complete a 100% run of Metroid Prime, I found everything except for one single missile expansion. I looked everywhere, but I had no idea what I had overlooked. Worse, I hadn’t mapped out which items I had already found, and there’s no system in-game to do that as far as I know. I was wandering an entire planet, looking for a single item somewhere. It got so bad that I started having dreams about it. After that, I was sick of it and my enjoyment of the game actually diminished. I skipped the item and I still haven’t completed the game 100% yet, though I think I’m much better now! Since it’s been a few years since I burned out, I could probably pick it up again.

    Similarly, I think for a while I was “burnt out” of Half-Life and Half-Life mods. I’m worried about that happening again, now that I’ve been playing more mods and making maps. Seeing the same enemies and hearing the same sound effects starts to wear on me after a while and eventually I need to try something new. (Thankfully, there’s a lot of variety in Half-Life mods!)

    I hate the feeling of getting lost, so that will usually lead me to stop playing and come back to a game later. Last night I was playing Doom, but I could not for the life of me figure out how to get into a hidden room with a Doomguy action figure. I didn’t want to keep progressing without it, but I also could not conceivably find a way in. So I had to quit.

    I think I also get gaming overload from exceedingly long play sessions, but unfortunately I haven’t had as much time for those in a while. I suppose that’s the kind of problem I want to have, because it means I have too much time to spend doing things I enjoy and don’t know what to do with it. When I do get that kind of gaming overload, I think mapping is a good outlet.

  8. Nah , I don’t get gaming overload , i can play as many game as I want without being tired . On the other hand , sometimes I have a specific game overload , that’s when I only play one game for a way too long time without playing something else , when that happens I completely abandon the game form one week to even two months. Am I the only one ?

  9. I rarely do so, but I admit I have the bad habit of getting sucked into the games I like too much. Looking at you, STALKER…

  10. I usually get in a couple of hours every weekday night, then as much time as possible at the weekend.

    During the week, I often feel as though I don’t get as much time as I would like, especially with Fallout 4 and other open world games that reward exploration.

    At the weekend, I usually get a lot more gaming time in (family life permitting) and I usually feel burned out with it on a Sunday afternoon. That’s when I would then jump into hammer or get voice work done and so on.

    I’ve not got DOOM yet, but I can imagine I’d play that in much shorter bursts. Same as when I play round based games like Rocket League or Rainbow Six Siege.

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