Burnout and finding a new gaming path

By Troy Hill

I had to face a stark realization recently. I’m in gaming burnout.

That’s not surprising looking back at the last three years. When the pandemic hit, a lot of gamers went from 60 to Zero in the blink of an eye. We needed our gaming fix! But how?

We overcompensated, at least I did, by hobbying in so many other ways. Three-D printing was coming into it’s golden age, and like so many other gamers lurking in our little zones of no-people outside the bubble, I have printed a huge “pile of opportunity” in my my little gaming cave. And I’ve got another HUGE “pile of opportunity” in plastic figures from a variety of games, all waiting for paint, and for table time.

Sooooo many games to learn. So many games to play. And, now that the world has opened up, soooooo many cons to attend.

And then the record screech sound effect echoed, and I realized I was in a big pit of gaming burnout.

But what is it, and how to get through it?

Burnout is a popular term, in both professional and hobby circles.

It’s when you... just… can’t… any more…

Looking back, I should have seen it coming when I decided to painted a full eight-month slow grow painting challenge in two months last autumn. That’s a lot of painting little dudes in a hurry. This was when dove into Kings of War. Yep. That was a sign. Rushing to finish a project isn’t new. But I never paint that hard, nor for that long. I’m a slow and steady painter.

But I managed to shift gears and go full-tilt into a new game. I did already have my dwarves for KOW painted. I didn’t NEED another army. But, you know, gamers gotta game. I didn’t realize that I was really fighting against what was already seeping into my energy pool. Burnout was starting to push, and I was pushing back by grabbing a new game with gusto!

The before times:

Seeing companies pump out gaming content during the pandemic should have given me a hint that we were going to hit a rough patch after we got back to normal. I bought way too much. I still do. Soooo many little dudes to paint. I’ve got four WWII armies in various stages of completion. I’ve got boxes and boxes of WWII and Fantasy figures yet to assemble and paint. That’s not to mention the ships, the planes, the horses, and the tanks.

Following the reopening of the world, game conventions sprouted like dandelions on that one guy’s lawn. Cons were back with a vengeance. I swear I could have been at convention every weekend last year just on the east side of the Mississippi River.

It’s partially the painting aspect. I’ve got too many games to play. And too many game minis and terrain pieces to print and then paint for each of those games. I feel like Gulliver in the land of the little people. The Epic Scale little dudes are definitely looking rather threatening right now. I’d best not sleep in the gaming den, lest I find myself tied down with twine, and the entirety of Lee’s little army charging across my chest to get to Cemetery Ridge.

Plus, all of the 3D figures I’ve been printing. Why stop with just one? It’s fun to make little orc and goblin dudes! I might drop a few and break them. Better print an extra batch. And print that batch, and another batch. Oooo! Look. More STLs to print!

Yeah, I’ve got a few too many minis to paint.

A Plethora of Choices… is that too many?

And it’s not just the painting part of the hobby. It’s the gaming. I play a LOT of games. Or, at least I want to. Our local historical gaming group shifted from Bolt Action (which they’d been playing before the pandemic, and when they could during, and after)… over  to Saga. And ADLG. And Victory at Sea, and Blood Red Skies, and Chain of Command… and … you get the idea… I’ve got three, no five warbands for Saga in various stages of painting, and haven’t even played two of them…

And the conventions, and the game days, and the organizing the local group when they start to drift away…

And then it hits

The recent Bolt Action tourney I ran at Rumble on the Rivers was situated near to the the Saga tourney run by members of our local game group. We had local gamers in both groups. We play a lot of different games. The convention drew players from across Indiana, Michigan, and Ohio. We had close to 40 players between those two tourneys. And I was responsible for one of them. Fortunately, day of, I had help from two other Warlord Raiders. I might have melted down into a gibbering puddle of Army-Painter-Dark-Wash stained denim had it not been for the help of Paul and Jeff.

I’m not Johnny-on-the-spot in all things, but I shoved the planning and preparation to the week before the convention. Even running a Blood Red Skies learning event the night before felt like a chore. But I had made a commitment to do so, so I did what I promised. And that entire weekend drained my bank of gaming energy. The tank was running on fumes before, and I had to hid the reserve tank to get through it.

Not because of the event. But because I’d spent all of gaming energy I had left from the previous months.

It was there at the convention that I realized I was more than my normal level of Dwarf-without-an-ale level of surly. I just don’t want to META any more… I don’t want to list build… not that I did that with META in mind anyway. I don’t want to think strategy, nor how terrain will affect my unit placement. Double or triple that once I hit empty in my gaming energy reserves. I… just… can’t…

I don’t want to have to run the events, or answer rules questions, not right now.

It was just after that weekend at Rumble on the Rivers when I realized I was getting grumpier because I was in the deep burnout pit. I’d gone too hard into the gaming scene, after two years of minor gaming contact during the pandemic.

I’m not one for simulators like STEAM’s TT Simulator nor Ultimate Battles. So I had no social interaction during the pandemic, except for a couple of online gaming sessions with friends from California. But they weren’t for me. Perhaps for RPGs, but not minis. When I game minis, I want to be with people, and have real dice.

So, after the world opened up, I hit the ground running when it was time to game again. Too long without gaming, and then too much, and too many in the post pandemic phase.

I thought back to the Michigan GT, where I gamed with my Army of Nightstalkers – the ones I whipped out in two months of painting frenzy – that was the last point of fun I had. Everything after that was a slow simmer to realizing that I was in burn-out.

And I still had a tourney to run. One last obligation…. and that was about the beginning of when I realized just how bad my case of burnout was. It was Rumble that showed me I’d hit the pit. And down I fell…. Kicked into like I was in SPARTA!

I tried to hobby-on right after Rumble… but the painting pile was touched only because of the month-end deadline for the Slow Grow on the Counter Charge podcast page.

Everything, all the games, all at once…

It’s not the painting, yet it is… I could game with what I’ve got… but not even that sounds fun right now. And in the hobby den, the nerd bunker, it’s the painting little orcs, or terrain, or reading new rules that just… make… me… not… want… to…

It’s not the meta-gaming aspects of trying to number-crunch, plot and plan, figure terrain into the equation… and yet it is. I… just… can’t…

The energy isn’t there right now. The pit of despair may not have the six-fingered-man ready to suck a year of my life away, but it sure feels like it when I look at the pile of shame. It’s no longer the pile of “opportunity…” It’s the pile of I just can’t…

One can search the YouTubez and find a number of vids on hobby burnout. Most of them center around painting, because so many of the content creators in the gaming space are painters.

Uncle Atom at Table-top Minions has a good video on the topic.

But, I’m not just in Painting Burnout. I’m in full hobby burnout.

What to do, once it hits…

A lot of the content I found in our hobby space suggests to slow down before it gets too bad aspects of burnout. You know, do another project, instead of that pile of 3,000 little green goblin bodies you have to paint. But what about all of those orcs I 3D printed?

Do just an hour of hobby a day, every day that you can… Good advice to get stuff done. But it’s too late… My gaming energy is empty. The pit is deep. I’ve been doing too much, painting, prepping, playing, organizing, demoing…

My plan was to head to Hoosier Storm, a Kings of War gaming event in February here in Indiana. And I was going to take 2300 points of ORCS… Yeah… those orcs I want to paint up. Some from Mantic, and some I’d 3D printed.

And… I…. just… can’t

Maybe I can take my finished Nightstalkers to the two-day tourney. Maybe. We’ll see. I mean, I still want to be in the hobby, see my friends… but, burnout… And I have Orcs to paint if I want to play a new army… No? take the same army I played before? Maybe… but the orcs are still there. I know they’re naked. Tough. Not now Orcs.

It’s not just the painting that I’m burnout out on. It’s… well… everything.

Climbing out of the Pit

In my “day job” I’m an indie-author. I sit in the basement and word the words, and play with plots, and make the characters in my books deal with all sorts of strife. And Burnout in the author community happens often. So far, I’ve been lucky to avoid it. Usually by taking month-long writing breaks, and redirecting my energies into my hobbies for that time.

One of the business coaches in that space tells us, that when in burnout, the process to reset is finding ways to climbing out of the pit of burnout. She admits that’s a long task. And one does the climbing by building a ladder up and out through finding “energy pennies.”

Just like your favorite video game character running across the gem/box/golden-cowpie or whatever that gives them extra juice for a brief time, someone in burnout needs to find those moments that give them joy/energy. Find their little energy pennies that give them some Oooompf! to zoom past the next task.

Then take that energy to build another rung on the ladder out of the burnout pit. Don’t do anything that put one into the burnout pit. Do other things. Other activities. Because if you do what put you into burnout, you risk burning your  ladder out of the pit.

So, what can I do to build my ladder?

I’ve got other hobbies. I’m building a model railroad in the nerd bunker. It’s getting a lot of my attention – WHEN I can focus enough to want to hobby in an adjacent-to-gaming hobby. The railroad overlaps the hobby side of gaming, with its focus on terrain. But, Model railroading is different from gaming. I only have to worry about ME. Not about groups. Nor about opponents.

In that hobby there is no dice rolling, no meta thinking about what my force can do against that other force. I can draw the lines, and see where the track goes. No one else is affected by those decisions.

So I can hobby in a different direction, and grab those golden railroad spike energy pennies. But I can’t do too much. Burnout is contagious, and spreads from one activity to another. I don’t want to burn out on model railroading too. I can get some hobby time, and not think about the pit…

After all, there aren’t 3000 of Pickett’s Confederates on my railroad layout… yet. Someday, there may be. But I don’t want to think about painting that many little dudes right now.

Where else can I find some magical stash of energy? Perhaps… ?

I started playing with the idea of doing some gaming, but not the parts I’m burned out on. You know, avoid painting, large events, game-after-game days… leave those alone for now. But, can I find a part where I can enjoy rolling a few dice, and not feel like I need to out meta-game my opponent?

What about table-top Role Play?

I gave away all of my D&D 3.5 books a long time ago, back when the wife and I moved out to California. Back then, I was the go-to DM for my gaming group. I helped run the “Living” RPGA campaigns in my local area. I burned out with that hobby, and haven’t picket it up in a decade. but maybe it’s time again… ?

That convention where I realized I was in a big pit of Burnout… Rumble on the Rivers… That’s in the same facility as where a now-defunct Gaming Convention named PentaCon used to happen. On the same weekend as Rumble, no less. I’ve got a ton of fond memories playing RPGs and running Living Arcanis, Living Greyhawk, etc in that space.

Maybe Rumble was both a curse and a blessing. My memories of RPGing at Pentacon brought back a desire.

Yep. I bought a new book.

Thanks to pop culture, and to nerdom being cool again, there is a plethora of TT-RPGs to be had.

I did some looking around, and found a local group running Pathfinder Society games.

At the time of this writing, I’ve signed up for my first RPG game in a decade. And I don’t have to GM it. I can just show up with a character sheet and dice. Maybe I’ll paint up a lone goblin in a few weeks. Maybe. We’ll see.

Perhaps in the next few weeks I can write about the experience of getting back into RPGs. I might even go to a con or two if I don’t have to be the one doing.

Over this past weekend, I got to play a round in the Pathfinder Society RPG “Living” style, and I feel like I’ve assembled the first rung on my ladder out of the burnout pit. It was fun, and it woke up some long-slumbering interest. This could be the way up and out.

Maybe.

We’ll see how long it takes.

Don’t remind me about the WWII armies I haven’t finished yet, or the ACW Epic dudes, the epic Napoleonic dudes, or the Orcs, or about the 3,000 goblins still waiting on paint. They aren’t where I need to focus right now.

Right now, I need to do the things that bring me the energy-pennies to build the next rung up out of the pit.