FOMO stands for Fear Of Missing Out.
I’ve tried playing some JRPGS because they are considered classics and detective games like LA Noire before realizing the genre just wasn’t for me.
I’ve also been stuck in the mentality of if I want to play a game in a series I need to play the prior games. I’m doing this currently for Deus Ex, the Witcher, and Splinter Cell. I guess I’d consider that FOMO to a degree.
Edit: I meant FOMO as in the fear of missing out on something relevant. Not necessarily something that is intentionally being time limited like raids or micro transactions.
Surprisingly, Baldur’s Gate 3. I absolutely love D&D, but I tried playing through the Pathfinder video games, Pillars of Eternity, Divinity: Original Sin 2, and nothing stuck with me. I just wasn’t a fan of the CRPG genre, despite me playing in-person tabletop RPGs multiple times a week.
I bought BG3 thinking I probably wouldn’t get hooked, but I didn’t want to miss out when literally every one of my friends is playing it. Well, I am absolutely hooked and have 40 hours in the game and will likely do multiple playthroughs, and I kind of “get” the genre now. I know PoE, PF, or DOS2 may not be as good, but I feel a lot more confident at the prospect of playing them now.
So in this case, FOMO helped me a great deal.
I’m in the same boat, I’ve been playing Death Stranding and a few other indie games once every weekend or two… or three. Now every one of my friends and coworkers are talking about hundreds of hours in BG3, I’ve bought and downloaded it last night to catch up.
The genre itself appeals to me, but the amount of time and concentration it takes me to get into a game nowadays, maybe this gets a kick start.
Minecraft.
Way back in its beta days, a couple of mates couldn’t put it down. They couldn’t explain why digging holes was fun nor placing cubes. I really didn’t get it after a demonstration from them. Eventually had a LAN with a mate that was vaguely curious but also didn’t think it was going to be interesting.
We didn’t sleep for the next 36hrs, nor notice it was a new day until my family got up and started making breakfast.
Did you two play much afterwards? I’ve played a few times with friends but I find it usually fizzles out after a couple months then it’s just me who hosts occasionally messing around.
Fully the same here. Sometimes I get bouts of inspiration to hop on the server or organize to do something with the group we have, but always fizzles out after a few months as you say. Which is fine really, a lot of other good games I tend to circle back to over time just like minecraft.
Diablo 4. Played it for 10hrs then I got bored of running 30m, fighting a group of demons, running 30m, fight demons, repeat. Haven’t touched it since.
I did that same thing with Diablo 3 and overwatch.
They’ve improved monster density, but it’s still just… meh. I picked it up because I didn’t want to miss season 1. I was seriously forcing myself to play it and decided to just quit.
Cuphead and I fucking hated it. Lovely art style and retro feel but my god. I play video games to unwind and have fun. What the hell maaaaaaaaaan.
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Umm. It sounds more like that you are just trying out new things and genres and finding that it’s not always a hit with you. That’s healthy.
When you put it like that yeah but I was forcing myself through games I wasn’t necessarily enjoying.
That’s not really FOMO. FOMO would be like, pre-ordering a special edition of a game you aren’t even sure about wanting for $90 because there’s a “Preorder-Only” in-game perk and you just have to have, or falling for those “Limited Time Only” microtransactions in FTP games.
I guess I meant it more so in the fear of missing out on something culturally relevant. Whether it’s a modern multiplayer game like Destiny 2 or a classic that is frequently referenced like Half Life. Not being able to be part of the conversation when it’s brought up
I guess I can see where you’re coming from. Kind of the fear of missing out on being a part of the gaming zeitgeist.
There’s an important moment where you have to ask yourself…
“Is this story so bad I’m not invested in it anymore?”
“Is the gameplay bothering me so much that it feels bad or unfun to me?”
If the answer is yes to both of those, you may feel free to drop the game with full confidence you’re not gonna play it again.
I get what you are saying but a lot of the time it’s just a mediocre experience and I’m not necessarily disliking it. More indifferent than anything. Occasionally a game has made a pretty solid turn around in the last act
It’s okay to stop playing a game after you’ve played enough of it to understand it isn’t for you.
I think I had about 10~12 hours played of Diablo 4 before I noticed it wasn’t for me and stopped. Still enjoyed what little I played of it, but wasn’t motivated to continue.
Cyberpunk 2077. I was pretty skeptical of it before it came out (didn’t really feel like it was doing anything unique), but it was such a big release I picked it up to have an opinion on it.
Don’t think I’m gonna do the same for Starfield, though, that’s just a pass
I think for me it’s going to end up depending on the modding community and how linear the game feels.
I played The Outer Worlds due to the hype around Obsidian releasing a game but it just felt kind of flat and lifeless. Maybe it’s just because it seems similar in atmosphere but I’m worried Starfield is going to end up feeling the same.
Even though I agree for the most part about Cyberpunk,I did finish it ,but skipped parts of story by doing the worse ending. I intend to start a new game after Phantom Liberty dlc comes out just cause I’m curious about the improvements.
Starfield… Now I never liked Bethesda games and could never finish most. I did finish FO4,but was very very bored by the end and rushed it. Starfield is just so bland and has so many mixed ideas and mechanics from other games it just feels like it can’t make up its mind what it wants to be. And the combat… Cyberpunk feels like a combat masterpiece compared to Starfield and Star Citizen the same (despite all issues) for the space part. Starfield just can’t draw me in.
Edit: autocorrect
Nier Automata. I really hated the replaying it part. The combat gets incredibly boring after the first two playthroughs. I also found the supposedly “deep” story to be extremely lacking, very on the nose and, like way too much japanese entertainment, bipolar when it comes to emotions.
FO76 and had paid the pre order and I was hoping to do roleplaying but it was so buggy and the controversies made me no longer play it.
Have you played since the release of the Wastelanders DLC? I’ve heard that was the turning point for a lot of people
Among Us. But it was free and I only needed a couple of rounds to figure out I don’t enjoy it much
Elden Ring
The glowing review and how people say its the best time to try a souls game made me buy it.
Not a game for me.
(Just in case people start saying I need to get good. It has nothing to do with the difficulty. I am thoroughly enjoying AC6 now.)
No worries! I’m a big fan of FROM and you are absolutely right, they just aren’t for everyone. I honestly wish more people would see that a game can be good but you don’t have to enjoy it. That’s me and a lot of strategy games like Crusader Kings.
Mass Effect Andromeda. The reviews convinced me I’d hate it, but I couldn’t stand the thought of possibly missing some lore after I loved the first 3 so much. Turns out it was actually pretty good.
No Man’s Sky. It looked slow and grindy but people kept hyping it up. I caved, and forced myself to play 20 hours trying to find the good bits. I never found them.
Flying around in VR in space in NMS is amazing. I think I lost interest because of the unnecessarily cumbersome crafting and item management though.
That’s not what fomo means. I have a bad case of FOMO right now with Genshin Impact. I genuinely like the game, but it forces me to login twice a day with the resin system (basically energy that accumulates over time), otherwise it caps and I lose progress. Also a lot of their content is in the form of limited time events. They do this for the obvious reason of it being extremely profitable. This is why you should be very cautious about getting into live service games.
Welp, I was interested in trying GI until reading this.
Subnautica, because lots of people said it was a great game and there were things that could be spoiled, so that indicated a neat story. The beginning was freaking awesome! But I hate crafting survival games, so I didn’t play for very long.
The grind and particularly the inventory management make me never want to play Subnautica games again despite loving the first one. I hope they sort this out for the next game in this style if they do it again. The base needs to have a shared inventory that it pulls from when crafting, and preferably stacks of items are shown instead of individual items.
That said, I don’t know if they’ll do another survival game again. They made Natural Selection before it (which is awesome and still has a community) and have made Moonbreaker now. They tend to jump around to a ton of different styles of games.
Fallout 3 was one. I had just transferred to a new college and was dorming. Several of the guys were playing FO3, so I decided to get it, even though I knew almost nothing about FO games. But I knew it’d be something to talk about with people. And it worked, even though I didn’t get that far into the game. Made friends; some that 15yrs later I still talk to on occasion. As far as the game itself, I haven’t played another FO since; just generally not my kinda game.
My gaming buddies now, who I’ve known them for several years, have the attention span of goldfish, so I’ve largely stopped FOMO games purchases. I can’t keep spending money on games they’ll play for a week or two, or less. Though if it appears there’s some longevity, then maybe I’ll jump in. Barotrauma and Project Zomboid are a couple where the FOMO eventually won out, but it did pay off. We’ve sunk hundreds of hours into each game over the last 2-3yrs.
Fallout 1 and 2 are 2D isometric turn based games, while 3 and later move to a first person perspective so you might enjoy the classics… Unless you just don’t enjoy the setting - in which case fair enough.
Really? I do enjoy turn-based games, so that’s good to know! It’s definitely the first-person perspective that I think I just don’t care for. The post-nuclear apocalypse setting I’m into. Looking at some pics, I’m kinda reminded of Shadowrun Returns, which I enjoyed. Is that an apt comparison?
Fallout 1 & 2 are absolutely phenomenal classic games, but they are very old school (they’re 90’s releases, after all) so you have to be up for that. Not just graphically, but game design too. If you’re okay with that, they’re really worthwhile experiences, and I might even prefer Fallout 2 over unmodded New Vegas.
As is usually the case with games from this era, look for the unofficial patch and the Restoration Project, too.
Pretty much any game made by Valve. I have a bunch of friends that are really fans of them and I gradually started enjoying them as well.
Nice. That’s one of those games I wish I got into at the same time as my friends. Portal co-op looks like a lot of fun