I can understand the love for Skyrim, but to me it breaks immersion way too much. For one, quests are just a string of events that once done, no matter how huge the accomplishment, nobody talks about or mentions again. Another thing is there's no restrictions. Want to be a badass warrior...fine. Want to be a warrior that also is the head of a mage academy...fine. Want to be a vampire hunter while also being a vampire...fine. It makes no sense and kills immersion. That's why I still say Morrowwind was the much better game. It had limits and your choices had meaning and consequence.

Best life advice I ever heard was to have a job with regular income, have a hobby that brings in subsidiary money (youtube in this case) then have a hobby just for personal fun (learning an instrument, a new skill or something social, a club, sport or similar). Having the split of three things and ensuring you do all three in equal measure is good in so many ways but I've found mostly having three things prevents you mentally getting stuck on one path at it dominating your time (a rabbit hole I've then been known to fall into and get consumed by). It was about balance for me and having multiple things to juggle meant I was forcing my brain into different mental states for differing periods of time during a singular day. Fun, puzzle solving, concentration being examples then to something physical and challenging. This prevented that intensity building up to focus one one thing only and also prevented me fixating and getting so deep in something, I'd ordinarily got frustrated yet carry on anyway under the guise there would be some benefit or reward at the end. As you said in your video. With this, I'd already be onto something else before that happened. It made times where i had nothing to do filled and planned in advance. There were other benefits like i could fall asleep in 30mins not 3 hours. Other Just getting more and better quality sleep had so many positive knock-on effects . Benefits are too long to go into here but it provides a structure and one that promotes and maintains variety. That aside some personal experience from someone a bit older to anyone who's got this far, on a more general note, don't turn a hobby you love into a job as the restrictions that inevitably come with it (and a lot you didn't even consider) will make it the thing you end up hating. I don't know anyone who has done it that didn't eventually regret it. I'm pleased you are re-assessing based now on objective fact and obviously being very self-aware is a skill to harness, which will prove you good in the long run. Wishing you all the best and a great decision for you I think based on the reasoning and thought processes you've shared.

I Will continue to enjoy your unique voice as frequently as you share it. Thank you for sharing your journey with us.

I struggle with anxiety too... and i hope that this new development gives you peace and tranquility.

I can relate , now I get immersed in alcohol , cocaine and hookers 😢😢😢

I love the transparency. A lot of things you talked about are very relatable. Being a KZfaqr can be extremely stressful, with no certainty on how a video can perform, your left with anxiety and uncertainty. I know for me personally, KZfaq will always be a side hustle with the opportunity to be much more but I’m not counting on that. I’m seeing where things go and I’m taking my time. I love the videos dude I’ll watch everything you put out 🤙

thank you for sharing all this ❤️ take your time and enjoy life, we'll be here when it's time for another great video 😊

AC Odyssey is the greatest game of all time.

The internet world is pure insanity. Good on you, live a Real Life and find happiness with family and with God. Outside of the darkness of the internet and media, there’s a lot of good things that will make you feel a lot more fulfilled.

Do what you gota do, king! Appreciated the videos and best of luck throughout your journey and what it holds

Always should take a space and redial! I think KZfaq, or really anything, is something you really don't know the reality of until you do it! You make incredible things and have a beautiful body of work man! It could be a hickup to a realization of content you'd want to make, another career path opening up, or anywhere in between! As you know, the skillsets you've acquired to do what we do are invaluable in itself and I genuinely think you are equipped to do anything you set out to do! I'm really happy to have had so many insightful conversations with you, share advice, and all the little gaming debates we've had over the past year or so! To whatever's next man! :D

Gaming was obviously better before the constantly online bullshit ruined everything. We used to get innovative and creative games, now we get the same generic garbage with a new texture pack and filthy casuals only play Fortnite.

Pokemon X/Y must've been your first Pokemon game because it's literally the worst one I've played. Black and White were 10 times better, along with Gold and Silver.

Ive always enjoyed your videos. You have a vary mature perspective and your writing is very good. You live your life for you, not for us. Cheers from Washington state!

Pretty cool to see transparency and how open you are with everything. I'm sorry youtube hasn't been working as you expected it. I hope your future plans with university goes well! I just graduated my bachelors degree a week ago so it's pretty cool to have that degree with you

Thank you for being so open. All the best and do what makes you happy. Plenty of videos of yours I can re watch ❤

Thanks for telling the truth about what being a KZfaqr is really like. It's not easy and there's only a few that can make a decent living from it.

Am i the only one that finds gta online to be boring if you dont have any friends that play the game?

Take some strong edibles beforehand that works for me

I can relate to this so much. I really immersed myself in oblivion...creating your character, skills, appearance, actions etc. but I didn't take to Skyrim the same or fallout for that matter. I think it has something to do with the more depressing environment and setting but also due to the fact that I have already experienced that level of immersion and I wonder if it isn't so much about getting older but of already having that experience and maybe we can't get the same satisfaction from it as we did the first time?

I feel like gaming is dying for me the older i get. Idk if games are just worse or at 26 with kids i just cant get into any game and immerse myself like i could being a kid with a big imagination. Great video though, i feel alot of what your saying.

I feel this. But it's depression that robbed the immersion for me :(

While I loved the Fallout games I see where you are coming from. At a certain time I was burned out by all these games, and did not enjoyed myself like I did before. Then I took the bold move to dive into the JRPG genre. Yep - Most games look really cartoonist, but I just wanted to give them a chance. What did I had to loose? And so the very fist thing I dived into was the Trails series from Falcom. Those games have a slow start, but getting more and more crazy as you go through the story. All the games have a chronological order, so it's not for people with very little time. For those there are the Ys series (Ys VIII - Lacrimosa of Dana is recommended). For just some relaxation and fun I like to play the Atelier series from Gust. All those games just ignited the spark of enjoyment for gaming again for me. It will maybe not your "cup of tea" but I like to give some hope in the sense that maybe, going completely out of the path you walked so far, could very well ignite that same fresh spark for you too...

I’ve had trouble immersing myself most of my life with everything. Super Mario Wonder did immerse me though. I was able to focus on ff7 rebirth too. Focus, not immerse.

Games have been worsened by “the message” and monetization, and lack of innovation. They come up with a formula and stick with it for decades. Once you’ve played a few you feel like you’ve “been there” “done that”… As a kid it’s all new, I see it in my kids today they are completely immersed in the worlds, even Minecraft with terrible gfx they are completely lost in it role playing for hours … It seems like the games that capture us adults are much more narrative driven or really well polished rpgs because we want to see where the story goes more so than the gameplay is immersive.. Tarkov for me brought me back the last few years to feeling like a kid again - it offered so much new to the generic fps that it really captured me. But now I’ve been there done that as well…

I dont get immersed as much these days. Cyberpunk and The Witcher 3 are probably the only two to do it recently

My top 3 is 4 Origins 3

You just need to play brotato

Just out of curiosity, what is the average view time you get on a video like this?

Red Dead really was my world on first play through. My reality around me was falling to shit. Job wasn’t advancing my girl was cheating and we lived together it was a whole mess. But I do remember this game being my escape for a few months. I believe GTA 6 will have the same effect.

As an adult, I still get immersed into good cRPGs like Baldur's Gate 3 or Pillars of Eternity 2.

100.

Great nod to AC2. RDR2 n AC2 are the best gaming experiences I’ve had. That said, I’m more into history than gaming so that plays into it.

I can't enjoy gaming anymore. I have between one to two free hours a day for myself. I'm so stressed with life that I can't even relax enough to play.

What is boring is watching an hour long video that just talks about how great some old game is that is irrelevant to the majority of the viewers Please change the title to how amazing Skyrim is so I don't have to waste my time again

For me it was Elden Ring that proved to me the magic of gaming isn't dead yet. But at the same time I do not feel the desire to play the DLC lol

Kingdom Come Deliverance is extremely immersive, imo. It's Skyrim/Oblivion without fantasy. Another immersive gem to look forward to will be Stalker 2.

1. Breath of the Wild 2. Witcher 3 3. Elden Ring Best open worlds for me. I don't like RDR2 or Skyrim, just never got into them. (i tried 50h+ skyrim and 15h+ RDR2)

no joke i think everything you touched on is howi feel about games now the only game i have been properly immersed in was cyberpunk im not saying i havent played good games but i havent found a game besides cyberpunk that makes me crave to get back into the world

1. Odissey 2. Black Flag 3. AC2. This is the proper list. Everything else is meh in comparison.

I feel this with everything, games, movies, tv shows and music. It’s a me problem though.

You mean the new ones right?

why you call a biscuit a scone? lol

Only way for me to feel immersed these days is by playing VR and even then the pool of games is shallow. This made even harder by growing responsibilities like family, work and trying to maintain friendships.

This is so relatable.

I'm a millennial. When I was a kid I felt 100% immersed into a lot of games like Donkey Kong Country, Final Fantasy III and Actraiser. As I got older, the sense of immersion lessened and grew less frequent, before pretty much stopping by the time I was finished with college and looking for work. What breaks the immersion for me is just that I've become more aware of entertainment as a product. When I see something breathtaking in a game, I'm thinking about the art direction. When I see my character effortlessly pulling off walljumps and flying kicks, I'm thinking about the actors performing those moves in mocap suits. When there's a gripping story, I think about how that's a variation on old story tropes I've seen a hundred times before. The only thing I've found that puts all that to the back of my mind and rekindles that sense of being part of the game's world is by playing VR games. I have a Quest, but I'm seriously thinking about hooking it up to my PC and using VorpX to play all of my regular games in VR too. It completely shuts out the world around you, it's like having headphones for your eyes.

There’s just not enough time to get immersed anymore. Like everything in life enjoy it while with parents lol after that life gets hard at time managing and having guilt just clicking Play at some big tittle game when you can barely dump 1 hour a day if that. That’s why mobile industry is making such huge amounts of money. They are milking busier people , dads , moms too , cause phones are in your pocket tapping into that dopamine spot. Every time I open the laptop I close it cause I know it’s even hustle to sit normally and actually play anything.

The templars won

There are two types of open world big with nothing to do or medium with fucking a lot of collectible nothing makes me bored of a game when i see a popup with 1/250 fucking soda bottle or whatever

26:14 I was waiting for you to mention this title, I used to be tired of games, fed up with them, like, every other game was the same but packed differently, then my friend kinda force me to play outer wilds, but there was one rule, no "googling", dude I was out for a few days, the felling I got was like someone just gave me second life