Hi everyone! Welcome to t/suki. I’m exodrifter, the founder and admin of the forum.
I’ve been doing game development since I got obsessed with it in high school, starting off with Java, Swing/AWT canvases, Slick2D, and LWJGL. In college, I learned Unity3D which I then used for several years, including professionally working on architectural and data visualization applications. These days, I work as an indie developer making games in Godot and I share that game development process while pining for Haskell as a silly catgirl vtuber on Twitch most workdays.
Something unusual about me is that I don’t really enjoy playing video games that much, but I love making them (something that I wrote about in detail on cohost!). However, I love playing board games, especially the heavy, complicated ones. Among my favorites are On Mars, A Feast for Odin, and Great Western Trail. Lately I’ve been learning how to play High Frontier 4 All, which is a game about industrializing space:
i’m wondering what it is that you don’t like about playing videogames. i know my wife has been enjoying learning coding and dev bc its like a puzzle and it seems like you also like games that have heavy complicated systems so i’m wondering if it’s because the video games you have played have been too simple.
I always think it’s interesting what kind of games people play and why it is that they play them. I really only like games that either have a good story or an easy and fun play loop. If a game is too hard or has shooting game play which i find difficult i usually don’t play so because of this there is really only a certain type of game i play.
complex board games are always so impressive though. i’ve always been so intimidated by them
First, I’d like to say that I think short video games are great in the same way I think movies can be with storytelling. However, like movies, they don’t offer much replayability value.
Also, when it comes to just having fun, I especially like board games in the physical, social aspect. I enjoy spending time doing things with people I like and I can see the reactions of my friends when I’m playing. I like picking up pieces and moving them around. Sometimes it’s enough to touch a really nice component and put it in its place. You don’t really get that when you’re separated by a screen.
As for why I dislike video games, there’s a few specific reasons that come to mind (not exhaustive):
I don’t like long games. A good example are 4X games; games like Stellaris and Civilization are infamous for taking a long time. Indeed, I have before spent multiple evenings playing in the same game session. Games like Borderlands take a very long time to casually play to completion; that’s certainly not happening in an evening – it’s going to take days. As a counter-example to this, I love Thumper. It’s entertaining and you can play it in an evening. Board games tend to be constrained to being playable in a single evening so you can get them on the table and play them with your friends. It’s over in a few hours and then we can do something else!
They tend to involve micromanagement. Again, 4X games are a good example here. Stellaris and Civilization both involve tweaking lots of tiny things like managing build queues in every city. Admittedly, Stellaris and Civilization have both made some progress in automating this kind of stuff, but I would say that generally the design of the games prefer having the player make lots of tiny decisions instead of a few major ones. Board games tend to have more considered, impactful choices. Per Aspera is a particularly bad offender in this regard in recent memory.
They tend to be repetitive. I once played Guild Wars 2 only to be dismayed to find out that the exploration mechanic was copy-pasted from one area to another. Mechanically, in each new map, I was doing the same thing over and over. I would travel to a point of interest, do a task from a list of possible tasks depending on what the point of interest was, and then go to the next one. Rinse and repeat. In other words, I don’t like grinding; why would I want to do the same thing over and over again? Factorio is a notable exception – whenever you unlock a new tech level, fundamentally new approaches and puzzles become available so you never feel like you have to do the same thing again to progress.
A big thing I think for me when it comes to picking a game that tends to be a bigger problem for me with board games then with video games is a high point of entry for skill or knowledge. With very complicated board games you have to learn all of the rules and nuances of the game to be able to get started and i have been in a position of not understanding or zoning out during the rules when it is a new game so it takes too long for me to understand what i need to do and what i can do for it to be enjoyable for me. This is also happens with competitive online video games. Because of my lack of experience with fps i would never want to join a game like valorant because the skill gap would take too long to close for it to be an enjoyable experience for me.
I can understand the dislike for long games if you just want a single experience or a story and games like this do tend to lose their replay value within a certain time frame. The same can be said for repetitive games. Though some repetitive-ness can be meditative. Games like Story of Seasons, Palia, and Stardew Valley which are just farming/life sims are games where you’re pretty much playing the same game play loops but for many (including myself) its a very calming and enjoyable experience.
Games like Guild Wars 2 I almost exclusively play with friends. Even the story mode I do with my wife. I do think there are some games like that which are really repetitive and would be boring without having someone there that you can have fun with. Same thing for games that are really long. My wife and I are playing Baldur’s Gate 3 together and we’re currently at 200 hours and almost at the end of act 2.
Anyways, I’m not trying to convince you of anything or anything like that. I mostly just find it really interesting that we can play the same games and have very different feelings and experiences about it and I like hearing everyone’s thoughts and opinions. Perhaps one day i will get over the skill /knowledge gap that makes board games intimidating to me.
Yeah! I’ve talked about board game literacy here as well, and I think that’s one of the major barriers of entry for most people getting into designer board games. Most people are not exposed to very many board games, so it can take some time to learn the hobby when you get into it. I might regularly enjoy playing games that have very high complexity ratings on BGG these days, but I remember being terrified or intimidated the first time I played Agricola and Go (and more recently, High Frontier 4 All).
Unfortunately, I do not find repetitiveness meditative or enjoyable. For me, enjoyable but repetitive tasks quickly turn into a nauseous, sticky feeling that makes me feel physically sick. I start asking “Why am I doing this?” and wonder if I can automate the process somehow such that I can divest myself from the tedium. I suppose I am a programmer at heart
I don’t like long games. A good example are 4X games; games like Stellaris and Civilization are infamous for taking a long time. Indeed, I have before spent multiple evenings playing in the same game session. Games like Borderlands take a very long time to casually play to completion; that’s certainly not happening in an evening – it’s going to take days. As a counter-example to this, I love Thumper. It’s entertaining and you can play it in an evening. Board games tend to be constrained to being playable in a single evening so you can get them on the table and play them with your friends. It’s over in a few hours and then we can do something else!
They tend to involve micromanagement. Again, 4X games are a good example here. Stellaris and Civilization both involve tweaking lots of tiny things like managing build queues in every city. Admittedly, Stellaris and Civilization have both made some progress in automating this kind of stuff, but I would say that generally the design of the games prefer having the player make lots of tiny decisions instead of a few major ones. Board games tend to have more considered, impactful choices. Per Aspera is a 
They tend to be repetitive. I once played Guild Wars 2 only to be dismayed to find out that the exploration mechanic was copy-pasted from one area to another. Mechanically, in each new map, I was doing the same thing over and over. I would travel to a point of interest, do a task from a list of possible tasks depending on what the point of interest was, and then go to the next one. Rinse and repeat. In other words, I don’t like grinding; why would I want to do the same thing over and over again? Factorio is a notable exception – whenever you unlock a new tech level, fundamentally new approaches and puzzles become available so you never feel like you have to do the same thing again to progress.