What are your average gaming sessions like these days?

What time of the day/night do you generally play games?

For the past few years, it's been 11PM-1AM, that tends to be the slot. Usually 1-2 hours. I don't play games during daylight hours for various reasons. On weekdays my day job is from 8AM-5PM, no gaming during that time. In the early evenings I am busy with various chores and spending time with my wife or other family. She goes to bed at 9PM, then I tend to mess around on the net from 9PM-11PM. And afterwards I will play a game if I'm feeling like it. (Or read a book.) That's the general routine. I would prefer to game from 10PM-1AM more often though, to get longer stints to finish more games than I have lately. On weekend daylight hours, I'm usually busy doing chores or outdoor hobbies, or stuff with family. So I don't tend to play video games during daylight hours on the weekend either.

How many hours a week are you averaging in gaming lately?

About 10 hours over the course of seven days. I'd like to bump that up to 15 hours a week, so I can finish more games in my considerable backlog library.

Are you gaming more often, or less often, than you were a few years ago?

Less often. The reason is, I engage with a wider variety of evening hobbies than I used to. Aside from playing video games, I play a lot of analog (board/card) games, sometimes solo ones. I never used to analog game like I have been in recent years, that's a new thing relatively. I also read books more than I used to. But the biggest evening time-drain is watching streaming media while messing around on the internet at night. I don't mean Netflix binging. I watch news media and documentaries mostly, while randomly researching stuff or talking on forums. That's fun to start doing at 9PM, but before I know it doing that, it's already 11PM or later. I spend too much time evening internet/streaming lately and need to curb that back.

Do you find yourself gravitating to any shorter or longer genres than you used to play?

Overall I'd say longer. When I was younger, I played pure aught action games (especially FPS) quite often. This means that I missed a large portion of WRPGs/JRPGs from the past. (Not that I haven't beaten many RPGs, it's just that there are MANY RPGs out there.) I prefer RPGs for their world building and long-developing narrative. That aspect coupled with wanting deeper more complex game systems, has me gravitate to wanting to play them more often. However, I do still mix it up with action games as well. Ideally there should be a balance, don't want the reflexes waning as one grows older.

Do you expect your weekly gaming time to increase, decrease, or remain the same in the future?

I'm hoping to increase it slightly going forward, to about 15 hours a week. Just gotta cut back on the internet/streaming stuff at night. Although there are times where I just don't feel like playing video games at all. If I'm very tired physically, or stressed mentally, I find my desire to play a game is null. Sometimes I go three or four days with no pixel play. During that time instead I'm reading a book or finishing an analog game campaign. Or I might be on the road for work/vacation, and when I'm away from home I don't play video games at all.

Any thoughts on your current level of enjoyment with this hobby? Still love it as much as you ever did, even more now, or has your enjoyment level waned? If waned, why?

When I am fully engaged with a video game, I enjoy this medium as much as I ever did. However, it is rarer for me to be that engaged with a game nowadays. I've been into this hobby for four decades at this point, so it's all too easy to start a new game and it's instantly "been there, done that, bleh". In other words, a large part of what excites people with gaming is the constant novelty, be that new-to-them gameplay concepts and/or bedazzling graphics. For us gaming grognards, that novelty is now rarely there. I'm not saying it's never there, I am on occasion still surprised by a new concept even these days. But that's the exception.

So rather my enjoyment comes from more of a comfort food perspective. Playing a game that fits a mold I've already experienced dozens of times before, but it fits that mold so well it manages a pleasant familiarity. That is not to say I seek comfort food, I prefer games that challenge me in some manner. Be that my perceptions or simply legitimate difficulty. When I am challenged by a game I am most-engaged. All that said, I am not enraptured by this medium as often as I was as a kid, or even as a young man. And yet I am on occasion still enraptured. By no means would I say that BS that other older adults pull, where they say they "grew out of" video games and don't play them anymore. Those people were never even true gamers to begin with. The only thing they "grew out of" was a passing interest in a medium they barely understood.