askgaming

If the game is constantly pushing me to do something it starts feeling like a chore.

Like any mmo or live service game constantly trying to get me to log on daily to do those three things to grind out the next doodad that let's me log on to grind out a different three things. It's why although I love a few different MMOs I don't play them.

It's relaxing when I can just play the game. It can be linear like many RPGs, can be open world, can be whatever.

"Engagement mechanics" turn into chores almost immediately. And yet I can play a game like Slay the Spire or Monster Train forever.

It rarely ever feels like a chore… I'm actively hostile to genres that make gaming feel like a chore for me, and when I step out of my comfort zone out of curiosity and end up not enjoying a game, I drop it as soon as I can.

That said, I think of gaming as a hobby, but not a relaxing one, and I wouldn't want it to be relaxing.
If I want to relax, I'll read or watch something, not play.

I do, however, think of gaming as a recreational hobby. Like some kind of virtual extreme sport that completely sucks me in, disconnects me from the outside world, and lets me do low stakes awesome shit I can't do IRL.

It's not possible to launch evil people into the air and juggle them with a sword, but I can do that in action games, and it's fun AF.

Apart from just bad gamedesign which is subjetctive in itself i'd say it mainly boils down to genre preferences for me. I have my two and half genres which i really like and i'm really good at. With them its almost always relaxing.

But tbh the neat part with gaming is you can just walk away. Like sometimes i feel like to put in the work to overcome a challenge. eg i just finished NFS Most Wanted 05 last week for the first time even though i fucking hate the excessive rubberbanding and the police chases(controversial i know but thats my personal take). But the struggling was worth it in the end because i fucking love racing games and finally beating one of the most loved racing games of all time after 20 years was neat.

But there are so many games i just dropped because they annoyed me in some way or another. I seek fun. Either embracing the challenge is fun or its not. I'd rather seek a new challenge then embracing chores in my free time.

When it's a relaxing hobby and when it's a chore.

In Final Fantasy 7 Remake, in Sector 7 Slums I was asked to do various fetch quests unrelated to the story. That totally killed the vibe and the pacing. I stopped playing the game after that.