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Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

How old are you? In the same way that most teenagers enjoy playing video games more than doing work, most people in their 30s enjoy doing work more than playing video games. If you're only in your 20s or early 30s then at some point your brain may just flip on its own.

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Is that because they stopped playing video games or because they were part of a generation where it just wasn't as common? My brain never did that flip (though I don't mind work so much). I kind of expect to see video games start appearing in nursing homes around the time I have to go to one.

As an anecdata, I played games heavily as a kid, until my early 20s. I didn't stop completely, and I wouldn't say I enjoy working more, but I prefer many other things before I reach for a controller/mouse+kb. I don't know if the brain flip is accurate as it makes it sound sudden, but for me I just developed more interests all of which fight for ever-shrinking time.

I'm the same way; from ages ~5-21 or so, I played video games almost-daily, but now I tend to keep myself entertained by programming something...not necessarily for my employer, but also not necessarily not for my employer.

I can't quite tell if it's because I like programming more, or if it's because as I get older, I have trouble justifying stuff that I know won't help with monetary or intellectual fulfillment.

I think this is accurate. As you get older it’s more obvious that video games are kind of an artificial happiness, similar to doing mushrooms or something. It’s not that they’re not fun per se, but it’s hard to actually feel good about spending lots of time doing something that’s not going to contribute to your long term wellbeing.

Almost everything we do is technically artificial happiness, it just matters how personally satisfied you are with what you do for entertainment.

I don't think it really has anything to do with recognizing something as being artificial happiness. It just has to do with change. There are speedrunners who code for a living, come home and compete for the fastest times on any number of games, spend their time attending things like AGDQ or contributing to the various micro communities within the scene.

I think people tend to fall into either passive or proactive mindsets for their hobbies. And it's a sort of spectrum over time influenced by the communities you belong to. If you're part of a community for your hobby, then you get more out of it due to community momentum. Sort of like the person who plays games to relax after work, versus the person participating in a speedrunning community for a specific game.

Among other things, today's technology is simply not good enough to enable learning to show what wonders one may (with time and effort) achieve.

Fair, and kids have made it very difficult to play games. As have other hobbies, reading sometimes takes priority, etc. So maybe I'm similar. I still enjoy a good game every once in a while though and go through phases.

I would say that I don't get addicted like I used to when I was a teen. I've often attributed that to realizing it was a destructive behavior and learning from it though. If I had more time, I would probably play more though.

I played a lot of games as a kid, more than my peers. I still enjoy games, but I don't get much time to play them anymore. I have kids now, that takes a lot of time. As I've got older I've found other fun things that take my limited time too. It all adds up to my Xbox360 (remember those? It was last system I bought years ago) is sitting in a box in hopes that someday I can finish the games I started but never mastered.

There are already video game systems in nursing homes. They don't have much 3d shooters, but wii bowling is popular (or it was 2 years ago, since my grandma died I haven't had reason to visit).

I do enjoy my job, but I'd get burnt out doing it much more than I do.

There's a good discussion of research on this topic here [0]. My personal anecdata was: there was flip and it came when I didn't spend enough time playing to be competitive at multiplayer games.

[0] https://arstechnica.com/gaming/2019/01/tales-of-an-aging-gam...

I used to play games a lot as a teenager. Then I got more into creating rather than consuming, and now, I just have no desire to play any type of computer game at all.

I even try to play games occasionally because the idea is still somewhere in my brain that it would be fun and relaxing. I even usually overbuild my workstations to handle AAA games thinking I might just play one this year.

But they just don't hold my interest anymore. I don't really know why. That endorphin hit when playing just doesn't happen like it used to.

I'm 27 and so far, the older I've gotten the less desire I have to do work that needs to be done.

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