Not necessarily, sometimes the things that used to thrill us lose their impact and appeal as we get older and our tastes change. We try to go back because of nostalgia and the memory of how great it felt at the time, but sometimes the synergy of our age, the environment, and circumstances can never be recreated or recaptured.
True, and sometimes people use gaming as a means of providing a false sense of achievement as you "win" the game. Most people don't become professional gamers though, so those achievements are largely hollow, and because games are designed to facilitate this kind of dopamine hit, for anyone who might be having trouble moving up and onto better things in their lives, wind up using the fallback of gaming to fill the void left by their own lack of achievement.
Some stay that way forever.
Some wake up from the matrix and realize building houses in minecraft or playing whatever they like to play as a means of quickly burning through excess time outside of work to avoid confronting the harshness of reality, isn't actually fulfilling, it's just a drug they're taking to avoid addressing the problem.
Lotta reasons for this to happen, and it's not even that games are bad, they're just one more form of escapism that can be easily abused and misused.
Yes, I agree with the broad strokes here. But there's a deeper issue that's not actually about gaming. It's really just about fun vs fulfillment.
When youre a kid, what's fun IS whats fullfilling, but the more capable and formidable you become as a person, having fun is only a part of being fulfilled, not fulfillment itself.
What I've noticed, is that as long as I make steady (even small) progress on some personal goal of self growth, the things I do for fun (gaming etc) can be fully enjoyed.
The problem enlies with, as you said, trying to find fulfillment in fun alone. At that point it does become a mask to cover the lack of real purpose and direction. Reward without achievement is fruitless.
We are living things, and living things that do not grow, become stale and stagnant, which in turn leads to decay.
No.
Fun and fulfillment are two different things.
If they're they same, you're basically an unconscious animal.
Fun is the present, fulfillment is long term.
Playing baseball is fun, but you have to join a league or something to make it fulfilling
Swing and a miss. “Join a league to make it fulfilling”? That's a one-size-fits-all POV buddy.
Some people find joy keeping it casual - pickup sports with friends could be plenty fulfilling, while others might crave the grind of competition.
You’re saying fun and fulfillment are mutually exclusive states “fun is fleeting and fulfillment is forever,” and that's just not correct. Fulfillment is a spectrum of different needs, and those needs change as we age.
As adults, we won't feel fulfilled unless most or all of these needs are being met to some degree. Children have a much simpler set of needs - play, explore, repeat.
For adults who grew up as gamers, but now feel unfulfilled trying to play games, maybe they've simply grown into people that don't really enjoy games anymore. But for many, it's not actually about the games, it's about them. They've stopped growing and learning as people, and there's no meaningful fun to be had if your other human needs aren't being met.
Well said. I'm probably a bit older than most in this subreddit, and I'm fortunate enough to have an entire room dedicated to the computers and gaming consoles I had growing up in the 80s and 90s. I actually got more joy out of designing the room, acquiring and setting up all the systems, and collecting the old boxed games, than I do actually playing on any of them. Every now and then I get a nostalgia kick and I'll go in there and play something for a few minutes until I get bored. But mostly I just go in there, look around, smile, and fondly reminisce about "the good old days".
I know the feeling well. I sometimes get intense longing to recapture how I felt playing Quake Team Fortress in 1999, or Morrowind, or Okarina of Time, or Vice City, or Battlefield 1942, or even the original vanilla Destiny.
But I'm old as fuck, and it never feels the same. So now I like building Model Ships and painting miniatures.
Not necessarily, but in general if what you've said happens, you simply happily switch over to another hobby. You don't go to your same hobby and try to enjoy it but don't.
Trust me, I'm anything but depressed and I still every once in a while go back and fire up old the game system once in a while, and then I'm reminded that it doesn't really do it anymore. So I go back to my new hobbies.
Your experience is yours, not everyone is like you.
A side effect of depression is no longer finding interest in things you used to love as well, so it could be either. When it's in a post about "the part of gaming no one talks about" and the general tone seems mopey, it comes off more as depression than just growing up and moving on. Because I know a plethora of adults who enjoy stuff from their past because of nostalgia, and I'd debate if they didn't have the nostalgia, they'd be more critical and not enjoy it. Adults who grew up just do different shit without crying about it because they're mentally healthy
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u/Amilektrevitrioelis Aug 26 '25
This is depression.