For me it was Terraria, Satisfactory, Tetris Effect Master Mode, Minecraft with Mekanism mod & CSGO / CS2 (almost 2000 hours in CS alone).
Edit: There are so many answers that I might only reply if I have something interesting to say. I will read all of your answers though. 🙂
Edit 2: It has become too much for me and I have to disable notifications. Thank you for the massive response and please continue to discuss with everyone here. ❤️ 🫡
I’d say the first one that really got me was Roller Coaster Tycoon when I was a kid. It got to a point where I was playing so much that my dreams were all in isometric grid form. Mostly about park designs, but even other dreams were set in that reality.
After that, it was WoW for my first 3 semesters of college. I didn’t go to class most of the time and got academic suspension for a year. After that I was very cautious with MMOrpgs. Never got too invested into a guild again.
Factorio. I blinked and a month went by the first time I played it. It ruins my sleep schedule like no other.
Absolutely love it
There is a reason we call it Cracktorio
Your iron plate production is looking a little lackluster there, bud
Have you tried invading and exploiting the resources of multiple planets to keep up your green chip addiction?
Steel pan music
I can’t enjoy Factorio… It just feels like I’m at work. I don’t even think I’ve finished the tutorial levels yet.
Wait, you guys are enjoying it? (Source: 500 hours of gameplay)
I resisted it for a while for the same reason. But after a few hours it felt like the best parts of working :)
After playing Satisfactory I thought I’d love factorio too, but somehow never really got into it.
Maybe try again? I played satisfactory at first and thought factorio looked stupid, but having a roboport network for the first time felt soo goooooood
My friend was the same way, largely due Factorio being in 2D. He was able to get into Satisfactory due to it’s 3D nature.
Oh I don’t care about the graphics at all, as long as I know what I’m looking at. I should try again.
Think they mean 2d as in your basically walking on a map whereas in satisfactory it’s a 1st person world with height.
I had the same experience, but the other way around. I started losing interest in Satisfactory after I found out the map was static.
Honestly, the good thing about that is that everything is hand crafted. So exploring is really rewarding IMO. A good example is an area where you find tons of power slugs.
I can appreciate that. Maybe I’ll revisit my spaghetti base one day and try to finish.
I played Factorio first and since my friends are “done with Factorio” (not sure what’s wrong with them but I think I need new friends) I agreed to play satisfactory with them. It was fun for a couple of hours then it just started tobuild up rage inside of me because of so many strange or stupid design decisions the devs made. When we got to trains and I started building that was when I hit my rage limit and boiled over. My god those stations are huge and the unloading was the most stupid shit ever. Then all the small finicky tricks you can do to slim your builds… And this you want to learn/do since blueprints are small. Don’t get me started… Never started the game again after we were done but have a couple of hundred more hours in Factorio since then :)
Rocket league. Scrolled all the comments and slightly disappointed to not find this one :/
This was a game I was truly addicted. Uninstalled it many times recognising it as an addiction but kept coming back to it. I feel lucky that I could break out of it. It was THAT addictive. Around 1200-1300hrs on that game.
Minecraft, holy shit, I have a singleplayer, creative world that I spent hours every day building on for 8 years or so.
That map is gigantic, and I even saved it from a hard disk crash
Is that a vanilla world, or how have you gone that long without your world hitting lag death? I mod the fuck out of my worlds, so I generally don’t get more than 3-6mo before the game starts to become unplayable.
100% Vanilla world, no extra tools or mods
Have you kept it on the same version of vanilla MC for the last 8 years? Or do you upgrade to newer versions periodically?
When a new version came, I upgraded
Then, if you ever get bored of regular minecraft, the mods come in.
Modded Factorio. I did 450 hours of pyAnodon’s recently and it just broke me. I didn’t win the game. I feel like I lost at it and life.
It seems impossible to manage the side products properly. Ridiculous amount of materials that are all interrelated means that if you are low on one thing, it is very hard to fix it because you need the thing to work to make anything.
Too many recipes means it is very difficult to make modular, adaptable designs to copy and paste. Advanced recipes seem better, but they end up just exacerbating the issue even more.
AuDHD means every game is part of an addiction phase. I will binge a game for like 100hrs then drop it out of nowhere. Then return right where I left off anywhere between 6 months and 4 years later.
Then return right where I left off anywhere between 6 months and 4 years later.
Unless the return consists of restarting the game, or trying to play for an hour or two then quit out of frustration because you have no idea what the fuck was going on here, I just can’t relate.
That was me and Hollow Knight’s difficulty. I just could not retrieve my competence out of a lack of patience to rebuild it.
Interesting. I have been diagnosed with ADHD since childhood and besides rare Hyperfocus, this doesn’t happen for me. But everyone is different, of course.
You probably need to find the genre that tickles your brain just right. I found that automation games are like crack to my brain. Since you mentioned minecraft and satisfactory, have you played Factorio or Astro Space Colony or Dyson sphere program? Those are games in a similar automation vein and are other ones that gave me the same feeling as the other two (currently playing Minecraft again rn)
I tried factorio and didn’t like it. I really enjoyed mindustry though. I have Dyson sp widllisted, maybe that’ll be the next game I try. Thanks for your recommendations. Have fun in Minecraft 😊
I love this thread, so many people passionate about their experiences with games makes me happy.
Most games that spark a Tetris Effect with me, where I’m still playing them in my mind while I’ve put them down hours ago, are industrial automation games. So the likes of Factorio, Satisfactory, Captain Of Industry.
World of Warcraft. I don’t even try to think about quitting anymore.
I once calculated my Minecraft hours across all platforms I’ve played on and it’s over HALF A YEAR. I was like mega addicted in middle school, I still play often.
servers SUCK now though, they’re all pay to win and have custom texture packs that look horrible :(
the best one I’ve found (that isn’t private) is UltraVanilla, and I actually found it from firefoxes “Minecraft Indy wiki redirect” plugin which crashed once and there was a little box on the side which mentioned the server bc the person that made the plugin is an admin of the server. When I joined the discord I had already interacted with several members from other modding discords.
As far as I know im the ONLY person that checked it out due to that popup lolI don’t play on that server because some friends made a different (private) server.
I was in university and had just passed my midterms and as a treat for myself picked up both KOTORs. Mainlined that shit.
Factorio, Europa Universalis IV, Victoria 3, Baldur’s Gate 3 when it was new, and special shout-out to Outer Wilds which hooked me unforgettably
Diablo 2, Skyrim, BL2, BL3, Tiny Tina’s Wonderlands, Valheim, V Rising, Oblivion Remastered, D3, and now Helldivers 2. Roughly in order.
I spent over a decade addicted to World of Warcraft. Like, I would come home from work and immediately jump on WoW and do nothing else until bedtime.
Thankfully, Activision buying out Blizzard and then ruining the game made me eventually quit. I’ve tried to go back, but I can’t get into it anymore. It’s just no fun.
The last few expansions, I’ve spent a week burning through the main questline, then I walk away until they announce another expansion. Endgame content is not interesting enough to keep me after the main story is over. I never even finished the last two expansions; I checked out partway into the story. I think I’m officially done buying expansions for WoW and hoping I can get back into it.
Other games that I’ve been addicted to in recent times have been Satisfactory and Enshrouded. Both base building games that have no end, but rely on your creativity to enjoy.
I have ADHD (the hyperfocus type) and Satisfactory really scratches that itch. Focusing on minute details, trying to make a seamless, efficient, organized factory to produce an end product. And the sky’s the limit (literally). You can build hundreds of factories across a massive map and get really creative about style, design, efficiency, etc. it’s a really fun creative game.
Enshrouded is the same, except instead of efficient factories, you’re building homes, villages, castles, etc. in a fantasy medieval setting. With questing and monsters and magic too! It’s been loads of fun and my friends and I have been super addicted to that game for a while now too. I actually just posted a review about it in !games@lemmy.world yesterday.
On a side note, I find it interesting to see Minecraft mentioned a lot in this thread. That game first came out when I was in my 20s (I’m in my 40s now) and it was pretty popular when it first dropped. I played it a bit, but besides running around and digging (mining?) a bit, there wasn’t really any direction or goals or anything, so I kind of lost interest. I found out years later there’s a whole endgame to it, but without any in-game directions, there was no way I would’ve ever progressed in that game without online help.
Decades later, Minecraft got a resurgence of popularity with younger generations and now it’s suddenly the game of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. One of my baby nephews is addicted to that game now and speaks of almost nothing but Minecraft. Crazy how it can continue being so popular across multiple generations like that.
Maybe it is a good thing that Activision ruined blizzard, if wow was consuming so much of your life. I lost interest in Satisfactory when there was nothing cool to unlock anymore. And I think Minecraft remains so popular because it is the most modded game in history (I think). I am in my early 30s and only play single player modded. Tech mods can make Minecraft incredibly complex, but even without mods it is crazy what people have built in that game (like a working computer and pokemon red, the whole game, just with Redstone and command blocks).
You’re right, the modding community is probably why Minecraft continues to be so popular. Without mods, Minecraft is kind of boring. At least, in my opinion.
Minecraft’s core gameplay sucks, it is only the genius and freedom of the general design coupled with mod support that sustains it.
I have played countless hours of minecraft but these days I don’t see the point when I can play Vintage Story or Luanti.
https://content.luanti.org/packages/wuzzy/mineclone2/
(Luanti works on Android too!)
The engines of both games are far more capable than java minecraft.
well said! I should check out Enshrouded. I just bought Factorio after finally learning it never goes on sale, lol. and then immediately got lost in two other gangs, now doing a fourth Stardew Valley playthru
also fyi there’s no hyperfocus type of ADHD; that’s just a broad effect of executive dysfunction
I just bought Factorio after finally learning it never goes on sale, lol.
I always try to buy games on sale, so I’ve been avoiding Factorio on principle. Their developers refuse to lower the price because they feel there no point in setting a price for a game, then discounting it every once in a while to draw in new players. They believe it’s a $30 game, so they want everyone to pay $30 to play it, period.
Fortunately, I won a Steam key for it in a raffle, so I got it for free. And I’m glad, because I don’t feel it’s worth even $30. It’s not a bad game, but I personally would’ve paid $10-15 max for it.
fyi there’s no hyperfocus type of ADHD; that’s just a broad effect of executive dysfunction
True, but explaining the nuances of ADHD in a thread that’s not specifically focused on it is complicated. Especially since we’re still trying to define the vague differences between ADHD, autism, ADD, and a few other cognitive disorders. Some things are merging under umbrella terms (e.g. ADD doesn’t really exist anymore; it’s now a form of ADHD) and other distinctions are getting blurry, with too many cross-over symptoms to clearly define. Much easier to just point out that one of my greater symptoms of ADHD is hyperfocus.
Bruh Factorio is a fantastic game
No doubt, it’s a fun game, but not $30 fun.
Then again, my idea of game prices is a bit skewed. I don’t think ANY game is worth $60. I buy all my games on sale, and for most of them, I wait until they’re $20 or less before I buy.
At a full price of $30, I’d expect to eventually find it on sale for $5-10 if I waited long enough. But the developers don’t plan to ever lower the price, which is a big negative for me. If I didn’t get a copy for free, I’d probably still not own it.
As far as gameplay itself, I’m annoyed at the random swarms of bugs attacking my factories. I just want to build and create, but having to also defend from attack and then repair my stuff afterward… that makes Factorio frustrating for me. But that’s my own personal opinion, I know that’s what makes the game fun for so many others.
That’s why I like Satisfactory so much. The wildlife is only aggressive if you bother them, and there aren’t packs of them roaming around. You can relax and enjoy the atmosphere and get lost in your build process without being bothered.
You can play without biters. Just pick the option before you start the map. Or pick friendly mode to have them there but they never bother you until you attack them is also an option. A lot of settings before you start a new game, check them out :)
I wasted some 2-3 years of my life in CSGO too when I was younger. All my free time, down the drain basically. It wasn’t even fun after a while, just a hard, tiring grind. Attempted to compete on semi-pro level, somehow got it to my head that it was possible. Did compete ultimately, but none of my teams made it. Never got anywhere and the day I finally got off it was the best day of my adult life. It was bad.
I feel ashamed to admit this out loud. It’s just so cringeworthy. But it does some good to keep my head level and remember the shortcomings of my younger days.
Nowadays the closest I get to “addiction” level is bingeing a few months worth of evenings on the likes of Crusader Kings 3, M&B Bannerlord, Stellaris or Rimworld. Much more sane since it’s not as intensive, it can be paused at any moment, and ultimately there’s an end to it, so it just naturally withers away from my days eventually.
