I honestly believe I am not alone in this, as we probably all know that feeling of scrolling through our Steam/PS/Xbox library, with hundreds of games to play, not being able to… actually find something we’re excited to play. We have the world of gaming at our fingertips, our backlogs have become astronomical, and we still can’t bring back that feeling of renting a game from Blockbuster back in the day – what gives?
In a way, it’s a natural evolution, because of course, games now feel different than they did way back when. When you were a kid, you had maybe three cartridges and a whole summer, mainly because your parents said so – tell me I’m wrong. So you squeezed fun out of every pixel because there was literally nothing else to play.
Now? You’ve got hundreds of games, every subscription under the sun, a backlog that could outlive you, and an attention span shattered by social feeds. Games aren’t a special event anymore; they’re background radiation. So yeah, part of the “games aren’t fun anymore” vibe is us. We’re overstimulated, tired, and trying to recapture a very specific kind of first-time wonder. That’s hard to manufacture on demand.
But that’s hardly the whole story, because it can’t just be that we’re tired of gaming, because there is the odd game I’m so desperately excited for that I will literally not play anything else during that release window. The way games are designed has changed, too, and a lot of modern design leans hard into a type of motivation that makes things feel more like work than play.
That’s what I wanted to explore with you, dear reader, so let’s dive in and find out why games just seem not to be fun anymore – and what we can do to change that.
Intrinsic vs Extrinsic Motivation – Your brain is tired of checklists
I intuitively didn’t want to go down that route, but to stop the debate in terms of games being worse than back then, we need to focus on the psychology of games, and psychology gives us a pretty useful lens here, it’s called intrinsic vs extrinsic motivation. Obviously, this isn’t just a gaming thing, but it can adequately be applied here.
Now, in Intrinsic motivation is doing something because the activity itself is satisfying. Curiosity, mastery, challenge, pride, pure interest, so exploring the game, because the setting is interesting, you want to test yourself, or you just want to get better at the game at play. A huge reason why the souls games have garnered such a huge fanbase, I reckon.
Extrinsic motivation is doing something to get something else in return: grades, points, money, loot, ranks, achievements, battle pass tiers – and this is where modern gaming companies come in. Older games, for all their jank, were mostly built around intrinsic motivation. You played because the playing was the point – the jump felt good, the puzzle was clever, the boss was brutal but fair. Beating a level was the reward.
Now look at a typical AAA HUD, or heads up display – our middleman to understand what otherwise would be pretty hard to convey, although games like Trespasser and Dead Space have figured out creative ways to do so. You’ve got your screen littered with XP bars, map markers, challenges, checklists, and your main menu full of daily quests, battle passes, and currencies, yes – plural.
That just means the game is constantly nudging you to do something, you know, do this to fill that bar, do that to get this skin, and do it all again, but on hard for the special thing that, truth be told, isn’t worth squat in terms of gameplay. So what exactly happened? We went from “well, this is fun to do, so I’m going to do it again!” to “I should do this, because the game told me to do it.”
The result? Classic extrinsic motivation. You’re playing for the rewards, not because the core gameplay loop is engaging or compelling. The nasty bit for me is that we know from motivation research that drowning an activity in external rewards can actually smother your intrinsic enjoyment of it. Once your brain is locked onto the prize in the game, the thing you used to love starts to feel like nothing but a chore. But there’s another, even more ingrained problem at hand – the story problem.
When the reward is just cutscenes
This is another big shift compared to the relatively simplistic gameplay loop of the 90s and 2000s: Finishing is now mandatory. Back in the day, the story was usually just a loose excuse for gameplay, and we’re going to refrain from quoting John Carmack here. You know the drill: Save the princess. Beat the eight robot masters. Punch/shoot everyone until the credits roll. Most people never finished games, and it didn’t really matter – the fun was moment-to-moment.
Now, games are structured much more like TV seasons or prestige movies. The story is the experience. You are expected to see it through, and if you drop off halfway, it feels like you “wasted” the game. Don’t believe me? Take something like The Last of Us. The emotional payoff comes from the story beats and the performances, with the actual minute-to-minute gameplay being fine – but you can’t tell me anyone is calling that loop revolutionary.
You’re pushing through the gameplay because you want to know what happens next. You’re not playing for the joy of the systems, you’re grinding the combat so the narrative will drip-feed you the next hit of feelings, and we’re not saying it isn’t good – the storytelling in Naughty Dog games, for example, is amazing, but gameplay-wise? Meh. When half the industry follows that template, it’s no wonder games can start to feel like interactive box sets rather than toys. Pure extrinsic motivation, people.
Open worlds and their weaponized completionism
I know I love to harp on the fact that I’m sick and tired of the same, non-interactive, empty open world design over and over again – but it has to be said. Once certain publishers realized bigger maps made people feel like they were getting more value out of the game, not to mention the great marketing phrases you can squeeze out of it, open world stopped being a genre and suddenly became the default setting.
But filling all that space takes time and money, and well all know how much investors apparently have neither when it comes to video games, so a solution had to be crafted. That solution can be comfortably called templates. You know, climbable towers, enemy bases to capture, copy-pasted side questions, the same three puzzle types in a different dressing – it’s a template, folks. And I don’t understand why, because Elden Ring made the open world formula work, without feeling formulaic – what happened?
Add collectible #133 of 200 in there, and you basically have a blueprint for numerous gaming worlds you have to edit, but not re-invent. Designers aren’t stupid, as much as we sometimes like to believe they are. They know humans hate leaving things unfinished. So they lean into that completionist itch, and therefore kill all curiosity, since you’re now just hoovering up meaningless collectibles because you can’t stand having that one last icon taunting you in the corner of your map.
When your favourite game feels like a second job
We’ve come to the culmination of all of these mechanics, and thy name is: Live-Service. Honestly, I don’t think I have to hone in on that issue as much, but it had to be mentioned nonetheless – you know, for completionists’ sake. It’s a little bit like that friend that likes you a little bit too much and expects an ongoing relationship with you – ideally one that involves you logging in every day and, you know, occasionally opening your wallet.
Battle passes, timed events, and limited cosmetics play right into the fear of missing out, so we get weekly checklists on top of daily challenges on top of seasonal grinds. The game isn’t saying “come hang out, have fun.” It’s whispering, “Do your chores, or you’ll fall behind.” That in itself might be able to kill your joy of gaming altogether, and because engagement metrics rule everything at the corporate level, more and more games are designed first as retention machines and only second as a love letter to the craft.
No wonder it doesn’t feel like fun anymore, eh?
So… did games stop being fun, or did we let them break our own brains?
The answer is…both. On one hand, games did change. Systems got more complex, the worlds we explore got way bigger, and games are now more of a business model rather than, you know, art to be consumed and enjoyed for what it is.
Especially for older gamers like me, who have experienced the rise of video games back in the day, it gets increasingly harder to stumble into that pure “I’m just messing around because the game feels good to play” experience, when everything is wrapped in progression bars and premium currencies, I need to even enjoy the game in the first place.
But, truth be told, we changed, too. We got older, we got busier, we got used to playing for something, instead of just playing because we felt like being a little Goblin in a virtual scenario for an hour or two. Our brains learned to chase extrinsic rewards, and now that loop is running on autopilot.
But I want to make one thing absolutely clear – games themselves didn’t get worse, because the amount of different games on offer has never been more diverse, and maybe we need to just train ourselves to not go after the next best triple AAA gaming trend, and go back to that childlike curiosity of renting a game over the weekend based on the box art alone – with no clue what the game was about. There are still good games out there; you just need to look past the biggest titles out there.
So, the real question shouldn’t be “why are games no fun anymore”, but rather “why am I playing this game right now?” If your honest to the holy spaghetti monster answer is: “to not waste the battle pass” or “because I’m like 94% done and I won’t be able to sleep if I stop”, that’s not fun – that’s a part-time job, my friend.
Our suggestion? Take a step back, and ask yourselves, why are you indulging in the games you play, and then try and find games that scratch the itch you’ve been longing for – even if that means replaying an old title that gave you that warm, fuzzy feeling of yesteryear. It’s your choice, at the end of the day – it really is.
