The Case for Taking Breaks from Games
Why do I stop playing games I’m enjoying?
Playing video games is my oldest and favorite hobby. I still get excited to buy new releases on their street date, I still watch the E3 press conferences, and I still occasionally preorder an overpriced deluxe edition. But recently I’ve started intentionally taking a break from games I’m enjoying. I don’t mean taking 30 minutes to get some fresh air during a play session; I mean intentionally saying “I’m not going to play any more of this for a month or so” even if, at the time, I’d really like to continue. This sounds counterintuitive but I think it’s helped me enjoy games more and save some money too.
The State of the Industry (and my life)
A quick trip to HowLongToBeat will confirm your suspicions that games are getting longer. In the time it’ll take you to beat Assassins Creed Valhalla (2020) you could’ve beaten Assassins Creed (2007) a good handful of times. Red Dead Redemption 2 has a completion time nearly triple that of the original game. This trend comes alongside an increasing number of games being made and increasing accessibility through the likes of Microsoft’s Game Pass.
My time has also become a lot more scarce. I’ve recently left University and started my first 9–5. After spending a lot of the last 2 years under lockdown I’m also keen to see my friends and make use of the attractions in London a lot more than I’ve been able to.
These factors combine to make it so that completing a big AAA release can take me months whereas it used to take me weeks or even just days. I found myself consistently getting burnt out on games that I had been really enjoying and abandoning them for some new release. I accumulated a shelf of unfinished games (and lots of store credit at GAME).
So now when I’m playing a game, if it’s the right kind of game, even if I'm really enjoying it, I’ll force myself to take a break of at least a month once I get to the right stopping point.
When it works and when it doesn’t
This tactic is definitely better suited to some games than others. I’ve never suffered particularly from forgetting the control scheme and muscle memory when I step away from a game but I don’t want a disjointed story experience.
The kind of game this works for is something like Red Dead Redemption 2. For those few who haven’t played it yet, RDR2 follows Arthur Morgan, a member of the Van der Linde gang as they run from the law and continually attempt one last score in the twilight years of the wild west. The story is divided into a prologue, six-core chapters and an extensive epilogue set a few years after the main game. During the review cycle, the story and writing were frequently compared to an HBO TV show. This was meant as praise of the quality but I think we can compare Red Dead with a prestige show in another way. In most of the chapters, the gang moves to a new location and has a new immediate antagonist; the chapters begin with some calmer missions and end with a big climax. They remind me of the format of each season of Breaking Bad. There is even a lot in common between RDR2's epilogue and ‘El Camino’ the film that follows up to Breaking Bad set after the series finale and focusing on sidekick Jesse Pinkman.
So, as I would when watching Breaking Bad, I took series breaks between all the chapters of Red Dead.
A few other examples of games I’ve played recently and how I split them up:
- Persona 5 Strikers is divided much like Red Dead 2 into chapters set in different locations with different antagonists. This one is pretty exposition-heavy so I didn’t need to use any outside resources to catch up on the overarching plot after returning.
- Assassins Creed Valhalla is divided into a series of campaigns, each centered around areas of England, that you can complete in a somewhat customizable order. This game is very much singing from the Ubisoft hymn sheet, the stuff to do in each county is pretty similar so taking some time away after each campaign was a great way to avoid burnout.
- Ghost of Tsushima is split into three acts set on each of Tsushima’s three islands. I was actually forced to take a break after each act as I moved back and forward during England’s lockdowns.
Of course not every game is suited to walking away halfway through. I recently played Horizon Forbidden West. It took me about 50 hours and I played it all in one go. One reason for this was that a friend at work was playing it too and I was enjoying being able to talk about it as we both progressed. The other reason is that I never really found a natural stopping point; quests keep leading into the next and I was worried if I took a pause I’d never be able to tell my ‘Hephestus’ from my ‘Gaia’ or my ‘Zero Dawn’ from my ‘Far Zenith’. As my playtime grew I could feel myself getting burned out; I was playing far fewer side-quests and eventually knocked down the difficulty to expedite the end.
Some other games I had to power through:
- The Last of Us Part 2 has you switch player character about halfway through but Ellie and Abby’s stories over the 3 days in Seattle are so intertwined that the game really needs to be consumed as a whole. I ended up finding it a bit over-long despite really enjoying it.
- God of War (2018) has a pretty focused narrative. Given the camera follows Kratos in ‘one-shot’ there aren’t really any natural breakpoints.
A natural question to ask is “Why don’t you wait till you’re bored to take a break?” I’ve found that if I’m left with a bad taste in my mouth I’m hesitant to return and end up just buying something new instead. PT Barnum once said, “Always leave them wanting more”; I try to leave myself eager for more of the game on my shelf.
Obviously, for some games, the problem is the game, not me. Plenty of games genuinely outstay their welcome or are just not very good. There’s nothing wrong with not finishing a game you’re not getting any enjoyment out of. Most recently I did this with Dying Light 2, after about 20 hours it just wasn’t doing it for me.
Completing the Final Quest
If you find yourself frequently abandoning games before you see the credits, even when you think they’re really good, I hope you’ll try out my strategy.
If you’ve enjoyed this article you might enjoy my story on Cyberpunk 2077 and how its failure was due to bad Software Engineering practices or Why the hype for an upcoming game can be bad even if the game ends up being a hit.
