I still fly IL2/FB/46 offline single player, one mission almost every day.
I change up the campaign and aircraft once in a while, but still the same modded game.
I've tried others, but always come back.
No pressure, just the joy of flying the WWII sim, and the aircraft of that era.
If it gets old, I just give it a rest for a week or so, then come back.

Still have never tried online flying, but would like to.....some day.

I guess it's just me, I'm hooked.

It's like we've heard some politicians say, "I didn't leave the party, the party left me." That applies to tactical shooters and flight sims.

My interest in gaming started to seriously wane when the types of games developed and sold changed. All time greats like the original Red Storm versions of the Rainbow Six and Rogue Spear, and Ghost Recon series were dumbed down and made more arcade-like with travesties like "Vegas" and "Lockdown." All of a sudden, scripted like a Hollywood movie FPS like COD and BF became all the rage. Raven Shield kept me hanging on. Siege just doesn't make it for me. I don't have "buddies" who want to play these games and the strangers you wind up joining on coop -even at the lowest skill level-- are extremely arrogant and impatient if you're trying to learn as you go.

With flight sims it's more a matter of a constant stream of technically accurate but non-immersive titles. U.S. companies that understood immersion stopped making them. The Russians and other eastern European companies who do great technical stuff don't get immersion. It's a cultural difference, I suppose, but their sims leave me cold. There is no feeling to them. I can't suspend disbelief because they lack "atmosphere." They should take a look at sims like Janes WWII Fighters and EAW to understand immersion. I've purchased only 8 games over the last two years and 6 of them are still unopened. It is so difficult to feel any sense of immersion. I do a little bit of P3D 2.4 every now and then, but that's about it.

I don't know what's left. I suppose racing sims, but even they lack immersion. I miss the heck out of Papyrus, Red Storm, Microprose, Spectrum Holobyte, Dynamix and all those other great companies that knew we wanted and delivered.

I miss the hell out of really immersive single-player games where you could do almost anything and everything your way.

What happened was the big publishers started making mega bucks and decided they'd rather not waste time and money on a title that costs a couple of million and makes double that when they can spend tens of millions and make many times that. So the companies with the resources to make a sim that was both accurate and something people wanted to play stopped.
Meanwhile, the independents kept on making them but couldn't afford to make sims like that. So they focused on accuracy and latterly visuals (since those two things were what the loudest voices cried for), relying on the end user to make the game actually "fun".

Modern flight sims are more like ACTUAL sims as opposed to the older sims that tried to replicate being a pilot in a conflict. They give me the feel of going and sitting in an accurate cockpit in a converted hangar and flipping switches while I shoot down bandits, but look to your side and there's some old guy in coveralls standing there watching you. Wingmen, intelligent movement of ground units, great carrier ops (I never played CFS2, but the last I recall was PAW1942!, all of that is missing now.

The sims feel sterile, like a professional procedures trainer.

On the other side, the realistic shooters lost out to the over-the-top productions introduced by the MoH games and then perfected by the same guys after they went from EA to Activision and made CoD. The R6 games decided to compete with them, while EA saw MoH die and replaced it with BF.
So who makes good realistic shooters? Indies, of course, like BIS' Arma or some of the other small-time companies.




The Jedi Master

I lost interest in games when they focused on competitive play/multiplayer. There was a time when the single player experience was the priority. I miss the powerful editors enabling the community to make their own campaigns and modules to share.

The last major disappointment for me was "Sword Coast Legends". I read too many negative reactions about the editor. All I want is the ability to make my own version of the game with an overarching story straight from the depths of my depraved mind. I miss the community appreciating my work, loving the characters I created and wanting more.

I enjoyed being a top modder (most downloads and high rating) than being at the top of a multiplayer ladder.

Generally, I suck at multiplayer games because there are many youngsters who devote themselves to competitive play. However, I can never bring myself to seriously play a game. I'd rather devote any serious effort to real life work (still getting contracts from time to time to do some research).

When I don't have contracts and only my portfolio, I guess that's when I'm susceptible to gaming.

The last PvP MP game I spent any appreciable amount of time on was Battlefield Bad Company 2. I tried to like Battlefield 3, but the user base was just so, so terrible to deal with online that it sucked the fun right out of it. One day I just realized that I was too old to listen to kids the same age as the ones in my classroom tell me in such horrible grammar what they were planning to do to my mother. I turned off the game and never went back.

I bought an Alienware Alpha to game on. I'm waiting for my PS3 to die. I don't plan on replacing it. I spent most of my time flying around in SF2 until the GeForce drivers irreparably broke it. Now I'm debating on whether or not to play LOMAC 3 (DCS World). I have a G27, so I'm set for racing around as long as the quality we all have come to know and love from Logitech holds it together. These days, unless it can be controlled by an Xbox 360 gamepad, I generally avoid it.

Why? I'm 43 years old. I am blessed with two wonderful children that we homeschool. I have a stunning wife who enjoys spending time with me. I'm about to wrap up a master's degree in counseling. I have a full plate. Get back to me when gaming isn't centered around ADHD-afflicted teens riddled with parental issues.

I`m 49 and for me, it`s partly true.

Bought my first PC in 1993 mainly for X-Wing, had my jaw dropping when I first saw Doom. Became a member of an online-squad when Il-2 came out. Few years later, when the activity of said squad dried out, I too lost interest in online-gaming, too much wait and too many idiots.

Shooters don`t interest me anymore, occasionally I play Fallout, Far Cry 3 or Tomb Raider (hate these cut-scenes though, I`m currently stuck in a scene, where Lara has to be manouevered through a forest hanging under a parachute).

Still play Rome TW II SH4 and TrainSimulator at times, but the most time Elite Dangerous, solo though. And most of the time im out exploring, so I even don`t have to deal with AI.

But mostly one hour/evening.

Might have to do with the fact that our company switched the ERP system at the beginning of the year and the last six moths were very stressful with long working days, as I`m the one responsible getting the data from the old system to the new one.

I'm the same age as you, but I lost interest in MP online back around 2003 I think, so you outlasted me by over a decade. I also have lost interest in almost all games that are played with a gamepad, I'm kb+mouse only 99% of the time now.
It's not that I don't like gaming, because I can load up an old game to replay and make it all the way through the dozen-plus hours it takes to finish it, but the newer games are all flash and no substance, no depth, no replayability. I'm interested in the new Doom game because it looks like an old school FPS, and I also like the open-world FPS games like Far Cry and Just Cause

I've not tried to fly SF2 in literally over a year so I have no idea if current GF drivers have broken it or not. It would suck if I can't fly it anymore, but the fact that I haven't for over a year at the same time indicates it won't be a great tragedy.



The Jedi Master

I havent lost my interest in pc games just yet. However, i have lost interest in certain types of games. On the other hand, i've also started to follow game development a bit more. Thanks to that I've come across a number of interesting games in production that at least interest me.

It will be very interesting to see what happens to the PC gaming hobby once our generation of gamers (roughly people over 35) move on/die off.

My problem is that as games have kind of left people like me behind, I've developed other interests, like photography. My plastic model collection is also calling out to me and that's something I can do with my son. So, games are really kind of taking a back seat these days.

Heh, that was my hobby until I got my first PC. I wish I still had my 1:32 scale MiG-29 and 1:48 scale B-17.

I've always been the type of gamer/simmer who sticks to one, maybe two sims, and tries to be great at it. This was great for racing sims in the past since there were two or three options for great racing titles. rFactor(1), GTR2, and iRacing come to mind. I concentrated on rFactor for about 10 years. The mods were easy to install, and the racing was great. We could fill up a weekly MP race with 20+ drivers from all over the world through SimHQ and SimHQ Motorsports. Then the devs caught on that it was getting popular and now we've been sold three or four partially completed, potentially awesome at some point in the next few years, racing sims that have split the communities. Everyone who used to like rFactor now thinks one of the new sims is so much better than maybe the one I like, and everyone is trying to stick to the one that they think is the best so far. I like all of the three or four new sims, but like I said...not one of them has gone "gold" in my opinion and they've been released for a year or two.

So, one reason I'm not big into gaming anymore is partially finished sims that are released, and are nowhere near complete. I like DLC, but if I buy a new super sim I shouldn't have to worry about that right out of the box. Sure, most sims I've played over the past 20+ years have needed a patch or two and that was to be expected. These new titles need patched every couple of weeks. Then the patch breaks something that was working before and now needs another patch...rinse...repeat.

I'd like to do more MP racing, but every event scheduled included new downloads and installs, and jumps among the three or four different sims that have different setups and configurations...ugh.

So that is added to my lack of time I mentioned earlier.