ADHD gaming

This is why MAME emulation and classic arcade games are so addictive. They were no bullshit. They got you started right away.

It's so hard to finish long ass games....
- ...it didn't used to be. It used to be fun. Can I please have that back? Please...? Please...

Too god damn true. Some games back on the last two generations took so god damn long to load. GTA V took I believe like 4 minutes to load from cold boot? So I'd be lost in thought, and the bored by the time the game loaded up.

i mean, it's true, but why?
I need someone to explain it to me.

If a game takes 2 minutes to come to the menu, yes then i do lose interest in the game, not because of ADHD, but because i recognize it's inefficiently coded and probably will hang and lag like crazy later on.

YES!
I finished downloading almost 40GB of Call of Duty Mobile over mobile data on February 21st. I still haven't played it, and now it needs updates installed for sure.
Yeah, quite a big phone game.

That's why I like playing older games. You launch them and start playing immediately.

I don't have ADHD but it happens to me sometimes. Because all of these lengthy updates, shader caching, loading of game loader, loading of game, etc. By the time a game fully loads I need to go to bed.
- I played Roller Coaster Tycoon from 1999 recently. That was the exact opposite, and so refreshing. Its an efficient game, which I think it had to be to run well back then with the simulation of 1000 individual guests and the whole park on a Pentium 90 with 16 MB of RAM.
  I don't remember how it was back then, but now playing it on a modern computer, it just loads instantly. When I noticed how truly instant it was, I was so surprised that I just switched back and forth between loading two saves for a bit :-)
  
  It was written by one dude in assembly
- I quit playing the Sims 4, I am simply, a builder. I would go on a month binge, then not play for 6months. Sometimes I'd play once a month-
  But having to fix my mods every single time I booted was so much. I never had issue finding what was broken, it was just so time consuming. Then after two hours the game would be ready to play, and .. I would be instantly bored, forgot my house plan to the mind vortex, all energy spent, ugh. That game is seriously dead.
  I was beyond excited to move from xbox to pc with that game. amazing how it took no time at all for me to hate it.
  I also play PvE Rust, it takes like a half hour to load in, and i get a whopping 33FPS. Love that game so much, 20-30mins loading time is fine if I dont have to fix mods like a sleuth every fuckin time I want to play. Just walk slowly so the graphics can load in lmao
  I still load into Rust and immediately just, log off often. Hyperfocus just isnt there sometimes. Thats when I load N (it's free and fun!) and play short levels.
  
  I think you'd like satisfactory! It loads pretty quick too somehow.

You forgot to add:
read everything about the game before installing
check ALL mods, install them all, configure them all
explore options, configure it perfectly, run benchmarks
...and then your part 😁
- "This mod says it is incompatible with this version, but will it actually not work? I think it said that with the last version too."
  
  Well, after extensive comments-research on this problem, I might just try if it works 😁
- Doing this used to annoy me, but I've come to accept that the modding bit is just a hobby of mine. I enjoy the process of research, troubleshooting, and time spent finding, installing, and configuring mods. Then I'll play the game for a bit, maybe complete the first quest or something, and then it will sit untouched for the next year before I eventually uninstall it for storage.
  
  True. My last run filled about 700g or so. After said weeks of excessive tinkering. But at least I managed to game some hours in the end. Not counting all those "does it even run?"-runs....
  And yeah I've come to peace with that too. I love the tinkering and I love games that are exactly like I want them to be. 4 decades of gaming made me horribly picky 😁 Even if I then don't play them adequately long afterwards.
  
  This is me with skyrim... But I do play test for some hours write down what is bad and need to be fixed, start fixing the mods, find more mods, aaaand repeat. I just figured I like moding more than playing haha
  Last year when I did the same did I tell my self: this will be perfect and next time i play again then I can just play without putting time and effort into moding, maybe just update some. Lol I started over, again... And this time has it been a month instead of 2 weeks since I started and I am not done... I wonder if I will ever be done... More mods are just added and more merges and patches do I create. Maybe moding is the game I play 😂 I am scared of next year because I kinda double the time spent modding every year.
  
  This is exactly how it goes for me too

Processing Vulkan Shaders
- Processing any shaders...every load time. I guess the upside of spending too much on hardware it doesn't take as long as it could. I definitely ignored Hogwarts Legacy some game evenings cause it did that every time I played, it went away recently though and oddly I finished after being able to play right away.
  One of the one games I've finished in like 3 years, which I assume is also an add thing, I don't finish a lot, just try and get my entertainment value and hope for the best after. Currently not wanting to lock into the last mission of cyberpunk 2077 heh.
  
  Okay so its not just me that sits on the last mission of games for no real reason?
- Life quality improvement tip: disable that from steam download settings.

Me but with a half hour setup for a solo boardgame 😭
- Im interested in knowing what solo boardgames you like?
- I can never play solo boardgames tbh. If I am going to play something solo, I can play something more complex on the PC. In fact, many of the most popular BGs have very good apps for themselves too. And if one wants to play something specifically boardgamey, things like Slay the Spire exist.

Is it ADHD or is it depression 🤔
- Well both for some of us, but it's probably also the fact that you have no energy in your reserves to do your hobbies when everything is so fucking shite everywhere. Can't pay bills, tons of stress, videogames are now revenue generating devices instead of genuine entertainment, and social media on your phone delivers the same dopamine hits with much less effort. Your brain knows this so it makes it harder to work to play if that makes sense.
- Yes
- This is the ADHD memes community.
  It gets very frustrating when people comment on every meme suggesting that this feeling might be caused by something else. ADHD unfortunately has to fight pretty powerfully to occupy a space for just ADHD.
- Hey that's my line D:

That is why the first thing I do with ANY new PC game is to disable all those company logos and legal bumpers that are played before you even get to the main menu.
In most cases it is as easy as opening the game's files in explorer and deleting a few files, like "nvidia_logo.bik" or "legal.bik".

Get a Steam Deck, and you can press the power button whenever you want to stop playing and it puts the system on standby. Press it again and it powers on in a couple seconds right where you left it.

Game: optimizing shaders, please wait
Me: looks at phone
Game: loads into main menu
Me: jams to the main menu music while scrolling for 45 mins
Me: Nah I don't wanna play anymore

Curious, how are people with adhd supposed to read a book?
I'm not sure if I have adhd, but I sure do have trouble even trying to read a book.
A quick skim of a wikipedia page or news article is the best I can do.
- Here's a trick that works for me (who mainly have trouble getting started with things).
  Decide that you only need to do the thing for 10 minutes. Set a timer for 10 minutes and get started. Then when the timer rings you've gotten going and will likely want to continue (forever).
- The best time to read books for me, was when I was paid to do it.
  I worked the ticket booth at a state park. We had a lake, so we'd stay open even if it was raining. We'd have four or five boats come in the morning, I'd take their fees. The rest of the day I would sit in that booth making minimum wage, sitting in a small shelter from the rain, while being in the woods, and I'd read the whole time. I read 6 books that summer just from down time sitting in the booth
  Read on my own time? I can't remember to bring the book with me. I really just need to put one in my purse.. oh look, I forgot to do that .. again.
- Often, I will reread the same paragraph a dozen times because I either fail to comprehend it, or because I can't help my mind from wandering. Sometimes my mind will wander to thinking about what might happen next, instead of just reading it.
  If its a book or subject I'm really enjoying, this is a process I don't mind and even like doing. It's okay to just let your imagination run sometimes. But if it's a boring book, or it's something I'm totally uninterested in like required reading back in school, it's miserable and I've never been able to do it.
  Unfortunately this means I'm terrible at research unless it's something I'm super interested in at the moment.
- Find a book that really grabs you. When this happens, I usually don't know how to stop reading it.
- Depends. If it's a book I'm not interested in or that I need to read for some reason: hell no. Just repeating the same few sentences over and over until I give up. If it's something I want to read though, and I'm hooked by the plot and curious what happens next, it's another timehole where 5 minutes of reading suddenly last at least an hour.
- If it's something dry, like a textbook, same. I can devour books like The Hobbit in a couple hours.
- That's the thing: you don't. After reading the same page a dozen times over and still being unable to comprehend a single damn thing, you eventually get frustrated and give up.
  The only time I can get through a book is if it's on a subject I'm really interested in.

Or you're trying to mod skyrim for the first time in 10+ years and hyper focus on troubleshooting crash after crash for 36-ish hours.
Just a theoretical scenario...
- Hey there! In case you weren't aware, Nexus Mods has something like Wabbajack, that they call Collections. Literally click and install, and start playing! I've tried quite a few this way, and highly recommend it. No longer going through pages and pages of mods to find the "correct" ones that work with the version you are on! :)
  
  I did find my way to the nexus' collections (though thank you for the tip), which would've gone smoothly if I hadn't fumbled a fresh install beforehand with an issue I already addressed in the first install.
  Not a great feeling when you realize the last 10 hours of frustration are entirely self inflicted XD
- Last time I modded for weeks straight then played a day or so....
- Are not supposed to just highly optimize our games for 3 hours and then shut the computer off when you get the golden 60-120fps?

Fucking hate it when this happens
- happened to me 3 times in a row two days ago

Thank you lol I post enough here, I didn't wanna crosspost one that I made elsewhere immediately after making one before it
- I was wondering why you posted it in general gaming and not here :)
  It's not a big deal to crosspost immediately. It's not like I don't know you're a meme addict :D
  
  Still lol I like to spread the love around. After leaving Risa and the psychopaths running Startrek.website I like throwing shit basically everywhere and saying "Have fun" lol
  Or, like last night, making a dumbass meme about sending me pizza and then openly rejecting pizza offers.
  I need sleep.

Go into menus and clear the red dot notifications. Get my free daily stuff. Then close out

I don't really play anymore but occasionally I get the desire to play some Gran Turismo. The last three or four times I've had that urge, both the console and the game required rather large updates. Half an hour later, still not done updating.. desire to play gone with the wind. Rinse and repeat 3 months later.

This is an indicator of severe dopamine deficit. Maybe try with a few more games

Which is why I've mostly been a console peasant. PC games are like "So let's spend 5 minutes installing extra shit. And maybe 15 minutes screwing with the settings and fixing compatibility. Oh and are you ready for The Modern Scourge, the Hell that is shader precompilation? We'll be here for a while."
Modern games are a little bit better, but yeah...
- I don't know about AAA games, but I play mostly indies and I never have this issue.
- This has been the opposite of my experience. I played Bloodborne on a friend's PS4 and the load times were atrocious, sometimes over a minute to wrap between areas. I played it on my PC and all loading is 5 seconds or less

I really shouldve started playing _____. Closes X, boots ____ Dang, I was gonna check something on X...

I usually only get this when I'm overworked, a few days of staring at a wall usually fixes it until the next overtime wave.

So my overpowered PC is so I don't lose focus due to loading times.
- Mine loads fast too. Doesn't mean I don't lose interest, just means I lose interest faster. More efficient that way.

I remember back in the days of the Commodore 64, games still took 2-3 minutes to load.
- Prince of Persia on 2x 5.25 floppies needed about 8 floppy changes to load
  
  5.25 floppy. That's a name I've not heard in a long time... They called me that in elementary.

Don't forget to update steam and then update the game first