For me a lot of it is just weird motivations. I have a laundry list of games that sound interesting to me - really good in fact! And that I absolutely want to play, but sometimes that particular game just isn’t clicking for me, so I put it back on the list and I’ll try it later. Don’t be afraid to shuffle things around and try out different things until something sticks.

Lately I’ve been trying a lot of different genres that I never thought would appeal to me. I hate the actual sport and concept of playing golf but I will totally obsess over Hotshots. Same with racing. Was never a huge racing fan but something about the simplicity and focus of Trackmania really clicks for me. And bullet hells. Thought I’d find them waaay too difficult for my tastes, but it turns out memorizing patterns and getting into a flow state while some of the best 00’s electro you’ve ever heard fills your ears is pretty therapeutic.

Try changing the way you approach gaming.

Another thing I’ve really been enjoying is setting up EmulationStation Desktop (ES-DE) with RetroArch backend and building out a full retro collection. When I don’t want to play games directly, I can still sift through them. Download a completed Sega Genesis/Mega Drive collection, scrape the boxart and manual data, fix titles, patch fan translations. And if I see something interesting while I’m doing this that I’ve never seen before, I’ll pop into the game and poke at it a bit to see if it clicks and maybe THAT will be my thing for a bit. Look up some articles for best hidden gems on the PS1 and see if there’s something new, or get into a system that you’ve never touched before like the TurboGrafx-16. Discovery can be part of the fun, too.

I know we’re all burnt out and frazzled, sometimes forcing yourself to play that one game that you’ve been meaning to play and want to enjoy is just the wrong ticket and only puts too much pressure on yourself, further disincentivizing you.