[andrenotgiant]

This got me thinking: Rewind 25 years, I can easily imagine 15 year-old me sinking DOZENS of hours into playing this "game". I remember I put much more time than that into a free game that came in a box of cereal[0].

Today, I loaded the site up and spend about 30 seconds on it before deciding "this is cool!" and moving on, probably never to return.

What changed? I guess it's a mix of: (A) How I value my time. (B) The bar for "what pulls me in" in terms of gaming. (C) Some other factor around me just having already burned enough hours on games.

I'm not really sure how much each factor contributes.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chex_Quest

[zdc1]

Opportunity cost and perspective. We've probably played enough games to know how the cycle goes; there's a little voice in our heads now telling us that it's all just a big pixel hunt and the next few hours will be more of the same (my interest in a game fades once I learn the meta). And then there's so many games these days... so the other question is why not play something more interesting or exciting?

[Cthulhu_]

I think that's it, when it's new you explore, but when you know what to expect or seen it before, exploration is no longer interesting.

That said, there's some games out there today that draw me in just as much as others did 25 years ago; I've spent hundreds of hours in Factorio, I can't imagine how much I'd be into it 25 years ago (...assuming I would have understood it back then). Likewise, I'm sure I'd be a lot more into Minecraft if I was 25 years younger.

[CamperBob2]

This particular site reminds me of The Messenger ( https://messenger.abeto.co/ ) which was on HN not too long ago.

If this is the sort of thing you like (or in your case, used to like), you will like The Messenger too, probably more.

[Twisol]

> What changed?

Personally, I feel too guilty about everything else I'm not doing. (This results in me feeling maximal guilt and doing minimal anything at all.)

[tokioyoyo]

Same here. It's a very sad realization, and I'm envious of people who don't feel this way sometimes. Nice to have company in misery at least though.

[irrationalbrain]

I used to believe this about myself as well, but later realized it was a rationalization. The reality is it's because leaving hacker news for extended periods (more than a minute or two) results in dopamine withdrawal. I feel a powerful urge to return to browsing links and my brain makes up a reason along the lines of "you're wasting time by staying on this site instead of going back to hacker news." It's a similar thing that drives me to "skip ahead to the good part" in youtube videos rather than watching the whole thing, evidenced by my doing it even on videos that are very short.

[mosselman]

That doesn’t sound healthy man. Unless that other thing you should’ve been doing is giving CPR or something then stop feeling guilty.

“Productivity” is not the end goal, you are allowed to play games in life. In fact, shouldn’t work be about enabling you to enjoy life?

[Twisol]

Weirdly, playing games is typically something I the feel least guilty doing, precisely because it's a distraction from the other stuff I'd otherwise not be doing. There's just a lot of stuff I want to do, that I struggle to do, and so I feel guilty about not making progress on that stuff. Then, whenever I try to do something else, I feel too guilty to do that something else.

It's a real self-reinforcing negative feedback loop. I agree that it's not healthy. It's just hard to break out of.

[coldfoundry]

I deal with the exact same mental model. I think for me, while actively gaming I do have fun. It’s only after the fact I look back on the time wasted gaming and think “wow, I really should have worked on that project I want to build instead of playing a game”. It’s also hard to rationalize time spent gaming when you have nothing to show for it afterwards.

If you ever figure out the solution to this negative thought-loop, let me know please!

[haritha-j]

Ditto. its a bit sad. I miss not knowing about all the things i could be doing.

[tobinfekkes]

I absolutely LOVED ChexQuest. It was fantastic. Just played it recently, in fact.

I was roaming around RE-PC in Seattle eons ago, and found an old CD of the game for $1. Snatched that sucker right up.

[nylonstrung]

ChexQuest is so much better than it has any right to be. Loved it as a kid

[komali2]

Did you have access to as many games back then? Maybe the novelty is less for this game?

If I wanted to play a game like this I'd play Lonely Mountain: Downhill, which has waaay more content.

[61j3t]

It's called growing up

[jader201]

I dunno. I see many “grown ups” replacing video game time with just more time scrolling on their phones, or maybe on the TV watching YouTube or some streaming service.

I think playing (some) video games can be a bit better for your brain vs. the above alternatives. At least many of them require thought and/or coordination.

Again, there are exceptions, where they’re not much better than doom scrolling. But it’s not hard to find some that require some effort and thought.

[rajamaka]

That's me, 2 kids and no time to game. Yet find 2 hours to doomscroll twitter every day.

[amonith]

Same but with 1 kid and different websites (including HN, which is equally bad!). Actively fighting it though. Slowly removing all social media accounts, now just need to figure out how to block stuff permanently on my phone. On a desktop I did it with changing my hosts file to point everything to 127.0.0.1. Need to figure out how to do this also on mobile without an additional network device that would disrupt things for my wife.

[BeFlatXIII]

Are those 2 hours of doomscrolling consecutive? That's the big difference in finding time to game.

[qoez]

I think it's in large part just having to do with us developing our frontal cortex and like impulse control. I would have probably gotten dopamine addicted to it 15 years ago, as well as wouldn't have some nagging back-of-mind thoughts about having to use my time to be converted into money to survive at that age.

[nurettin]

Your wonder and discovery phase is over.

[mikepurvis]

I dunno; I'm 39 and just spent 50 hours in Arc Raiders, much of it in a state of wonder and discovery.

I think there's definitely a raising-the-bar effect here too.

[BeFlatXIII]

I miss the days when I'd click every link and follow every rabbit hole. 100% completionism of collection games. It's shaped how my life has turned out, for better and worse.

[cr125rider]

I was going to show it to my kid. I bet she’d love it!

[bobsmooth]

You got older.