Disposable short term entertainment & Long term heavy investments

JJ Styles

JJ Styles

The Phenomenal Darling
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    No fancy and/or cringy header this time. Just keeping things simple today.

    There are 2 kinds of things where people treat certain games - Disposable Short term stand-ins and Long term extensive investments.

    Disposable short term entertainment or stand ins:
    basically you play this for a couple of days or maybe for a couple of weeks, then after you drop and forget.

    Long term investments:
    You play this game for a very long period of time mainly for several weeks or moreso with heavy investment.

    Basically, in this thread, we discuss which games you tend to heavily invest a lot of time and energy with (Extensive Long term), and which games you basically just treat as a sort of a one-off or a one-time stand (Disposable short term). So fire away. Of course I'd give my input but its much more important for the community to say their pieces first.
     
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    Games with a lot to invest in like collectibles, open-worlds, or personalizing, I do majority of the time, like Pokemon (of course), and also Kingdom Hearts, Final Fantasy etc. Shorter-term games, ones that I beat and then drop entirely, would be, I dunno, more Western games? Assassin's Creed, Tomb Raider, Grand Theft Auto..
     
    I have a very poor attention span, so I struggle with long term goals that would be associated with long term investment video games. I tend to play a few hours of a game then never touch it again. Although there are games I come back to repeatedly such as Skyrim and Minecraft, I'm more prone to make a new character/world than pick up where I left off months, even a year or more, before.

    Games like League of Legends are perfect for my style of play. The skills and strategies and knowledge you accumulate all carry over game to game, but each game is a fresh start where you can decide to do something completely different from the last match.
     
    I struggle also with an attention span in games but my best long term games are pokemon, elder scrolls, and dragon age 3

    Short term is literally all other games HA
     
    I tend to dedicate more time to open-worlds, shooters and multiplayers, especially the ones with high customization (hence the 2k hours on TF2).

    Usually drop a game after finishing the main storyline or if I just don't like it after fiddling with it for a couple of minutes.
     
    I can be very invested in open world RPGs - they may have a main questline but once I've done that they're usually still very replayable, with tons of other side quests and places to explore. With games like Skyrim, I also enjoy making new characters to explore the other skill trees, trying new builds and other ways to play the game.

    Sandbox survival games too, by their nature are usually very long term investments and I love returning to build on what I started, building up my base, exploring the world, gathering materials for more building and exploring, etc.

    Shorter term investments would be the linear, story driven games - while I do love them as well, they do have less replayability and once I feel like I've exhausted every option and seen everything, I'm good with shelving it. If it was a really good one, I might dig it up after a while to relive the story and all, but they're usually just not designed for infinite replayability.
     
    Yey responses. I might as well give my own view. Also, sorta bump too.

    Short term stand ins:
    * Retro games. There's a reason why I would rather just use an emulator if I were to play some NES, SNES, PSX and other classics rather than go to the trouble of using a virtual console or in some cases where retro games can be bought in Steam. Mainly since emulator roms, isos, and whatever forms are there, and since I can just freely download them, I can easily either drop them or play them until the very end before the eventual shelving. Also, I'm not a speedrunner that's why I shouldn't even bother filling up my library out of retro titles nor actually spend on an antique console to do the same D:

    * Free to play MMOs. I admit, I used to be heavily invested in MMORPGs way back in high school and I would remember spending loads and loads of hours trying to be the best that I could be, and even using it as a way to build some sort of virtual social life. Heck, some of the friends I met are the people i played MMOs with. However, I simply don't have the time for such MMOs right now especially the Free 2 play ones which admittedly I can easily drop out off if I do not genuinely enjoy it.

    Right now, I'm in the funny journey of playing EVERY SINGLE F2P (and obviously Pay2Win) MMO FPS game to see which game deserves to have a long term investment. ALL OF THEM have been disposable night stands btw.

    Long Term Investments:
    * Competitive Multiplayer games I genuinely enjoy. I don't think i need to say much about these kinds of games. I enjoy them for a reason, and its that I feel that its worth my time in getting good at. There's a reason why I love playing League of Legends since not only do i enjoy League as much as the next guy does, but I just simply love how every experience in League is a different clown fiesta than the previous game. Sure the meta does get stale, but metas don't exist without players ;). Also, I'm still finding my FIrst Person Multiplayer avenue for me. As much as I do enjoy Overwatch, I feel that i need to find a game that would be more fitting to me. Of course that's for me to find out on my own journey of self-discovery (Or Rainbow Six Siege). This is pretty much how i feel about every single multiplayer game for me. Every game is a different experience from the last. You'll never ever know what pops into that queue.

    * Path of Exile = Oh boy. PoE. I could never ever not stop playing PoE during my off-days simply because this is the game that told me that Loot Based RPGs are still great. Despite PoE being rather repetitive like most Loot Based Diablo-esque action RPGs are, the number of different builds and other ways to play the game is just so limitless, and Grinding Gear Games, the developers of PoE do an excellent job in supporting the game and of course giving every exile a reason to be exiled to Wraeclast once again.

    * Games with very expansive Modding communities (Though not PokeROmHacks. Sorry guys. Inb4Triggeredmembersdownvote my thread) = Classic Doom being one great example of a game with a VERY EXPANSIVE modding community. You'll never know what comes out of that ModDB page. I get heavily invested in playing said game and its mods in order to learn about the tenets and facets of game design in the perspective of game modders. Heck, Brutal Doom was a Doom mod that rekindled my love for Doom AGAIN, and game modding in general. There's so much to learn about game mods and the game engines that are being taken to the next level by modders and gamers alike.
     
    I mainly play games under a long term investment. I've bought SSB4 when it launched and still play this game extensively online. There's so much depth and there's always the desire to improve.

    It has been a long time since I've picked up a game, only to drop it shortly afterwards. The last one I remember was playing Shovel Knight with a friend for a bit and then abandoned it.
     
    When I play a game I usually invest a lot of time and normally beat it in a couple weeks. The only games that I could think of, that I spent a lot of time over the course of a couple months are Pokemon and Smash 4.

    As for throw away games, those are usually the ones where I randomly get the idea to pick one up only to shortly realize that I don't actually have the desire to play them, anymore. Stuff like Kid Icarus and Shantae come to mind.
     
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