Maybe this doesn’t need to be said but this is a different question to which video game genres do you enjoy. For example, I enjoy playing Dota 2. Every few months or so, I’ll play it for a couple of weeks and put it back down. I’ll never play more than two or three matches and I feel ‘present’ for the duration.
Paradox grand strategy games (especially EUIV), however, I can start playing at 7am and in a blink of an eye it can be 11pm and I won’t have eaten or used the toilet or anything. I can do this for multiple days in a row. Furthermore, I don’t often feel like I’m ‘enjoying’ it. I’m just consumed by it.
I’m intrigued to hear whether or not anyone recognises this difference in themselves. If you have any insight as to why you’re consumed by some games and not others, I’d be very interested.
Transport Fever 2
Oh my god, same. Tycoons, City Builders like Transport Fever or Cities Skyline. I don’t play them for months or years, then I spend like a week playing for hours and forgetting time, then I stop again for months
Factorio does this for me, you just forget time and suddenly it’s 3 am and you are about to finish yellow science but you could still optimize a lot.
City builders and colony builders are major time sinks. Anything with micro-tasks. I just need to finish this one building, I just need to finish this prisoner recruit, I just need to … And then it’s 3 am and you have to wake up at 6 for work. Civilization games do this to me too.