14 years I've been wandering about.

Operation Harsh Doorstop multiplayer - I can't get enough of Project Reality style semirealistic battlefield games.

Motortown: Behind The Wheel - the driving just feels so damn good...

Cataclysm Dark Days Ahead - specifically Sky Islands mod to give the game a more "run based" focused feel. This game has passed an event horizon of environmental richness no other adventure game comes close to, the landscape truly feels alive and it is very addictive in a good way.

Call Of Duty Mobile & Other Battle Royale Mobile Games - such as (now defunct) Apex Legends Mobile or Farlight 84, never spent money on it in addictive way I just find higher level competitive battle royale gameplay fascinating.

First was RuneScape, that lasted a month or so. Next was Civ V, that was a couple weeks. I learned my lesson.

Gemstone 3 mud back in the late 90’s. Had its claws in me for a few years.

As others have said slay the spire took over a few days off my life as did dicey dungeons, and Stardew valley.

Factorio. I blinked and a month went by the first time I played it. It ruins my sleep schedule like no other.

Absolutely love it

AuDHD means every game is part of an addiction phase. I will binge a game for like 100hrs then drop it out of nowhere. Then return right where I left off anywhere between 6 months and 4 years later.

I spent over a decade addicted to World of Warcraft. Like, I would come home from work and immediately jump on WoW and do nothing else until bedtime.

Thankfully, Activision buying out Blizzard and then ruining the game made me eventually quit. I've tried to go back, but I can't get into it anymore. It's just no fun.

The last few expansions, I've spent a week burning through the main questline, then I walk away until they announce another expansion. Endgame content is not interesting enough to keep me after the main story is over. I never even finished the last two expansions; I checked out partway into the story. I think I'm officially done buying expansions for WoW and hoping I can get back into it.

Other games that I've been addicted to in recent times have been Satisfactory and Enshrouded. Both base building games that have no end, but rely on your creativity to enjoy.

I have ADHD (the hyperfocus type) and Satisfactory really scratches that itch. Focusing on minute details, trying to make a seamless, efficient, organized factory to produce an end product. And the sky's the limit (literally). You can build hundreds of factories across a massive map and get really creative about style, design, efficiency, etc. it's a really fun creative game.

Enshrouded is the same, except instead of efficient factories, you're building homes, villages, castles, etc. in a fantasy medieval setting. With questing and monsters and magic too! It's been loads of fun and my friends and I have been super addicted to that game for a while now too. I actually just posted a review about it in !games@lemmy.world yesterday.

On a side note, I find it interesting to see Minecraft mentioned a lot in this thread. That game first came out when I was in my 20s (I'm in my 40s now) and it was pretty popular when it first dropped. I played it a bit, but besides running around and digging (mining?) a bit, there wasn't really any direction or goals or anything, so I kind of lost interest. I found out years later there's a whole endgame to it, but without any in-game directions, there was no way I would've ever progressed in that game without online help.

Decades later, Minecraft got a resurgence of popularity with younger generations and now it's suddenly the game of Gen Z and Gen Alpha. One of my baby nephews is addicted to that game now and speaks of almost nothing but Minecraft. Crazy how it can continue being so popular across multiple generations like that.

Minecraft, holy shit, I have a singleplayer, creative world that I spent hours every day building on for 8 years or so.

That map is gigantic, and I even saved it from a hard disk crash

Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Spent years on that one.

Stardew Valley. I have it on my computer and switch. I even made myself a perfection guide.

Fallout. I played 1 and 2 back when they first came out. Great games, great writing, seditious humour ad a real feel of a world.

But then came 3, FNV, and 4. Each of those I played through as my default 'helpful stealth archer' character, then a second time as 'evil melee' character, and then again to make sure I had maxed out each faction and got each ending. And then again, because I loved it, and again to collect all the bobbleheads, magazines, etc.

I'm in my late-50s. I'm already slowing down my career in preparation for retirement, and now I work as a freelance consultant which means I have some control over my working hours. I can't wait for Fallout 5. I will be probably take at least two weeks off work to binge the shit out of it.

Less so with Elder Scrolls 6, but I'll be taking at least a week off to play it when it drops.

For me, this only happens in story-based games. The most recent was Expedition 33. It’s also the first time a videogame has ever made me cry. What an incredible ride that was.

I used to play Tetris on my OG monochrome Gameboy obsessively. I would go through stages where I'd put a fresh set of batteries in and play until they went flat in one go. The only limiting factor on my game time was the availability of AA batteries in the vicinity. It got to the point where I'd be dreaming about playing it, and when putting things away I'd stack things Tetris style and get angry when things wouldn't fit together cleanly.

Then one day I just stopped and never felt the urge again. Thank goodness.

Hades, I spent like 6 months playing almost nothing else. Platinumed it and still couldn't get enough, and I'm not even that good at it!ಥ_ಥ I managed to get to 25 heat I think.

Modded Factorio. I did 450 hours of pyAnodon's recently and it just broke me. I didn't win the game. I feel like I lost at it and life.

It seems impossible to manage the side products properly. Ridiculous amount of materials that are all interrelated means that if you are low on one thing, it is very hard to fix it because you need the thing to work to make anything.

Too many recipes means it is very difficult to make modular, adaptable designs to copy and paste. Advanced recipes seem better, but they end up just exacerbating the issue even more.

I love this thread, so many people passionate about their experiences with games makes me happy.

For a while it was Elite Dangerous. Reached triple Elite, then eventually Odyssey drops and I stopped playing. After Elite was Baldurs Gate 3. Bg3 was the fastest 1000+ hours I’ve ever dropped in a video game

I wasted some 2-3 years of my life in CSGO too when I was younger. All my free time, down the drain basically. It wasn’t even fun after a while, just a hard, tiring grind. Attempted to compete on semi-pro level, somehow got it to my head that it was possible. Did compete ultimately, but none of my teams made it. Never got anywhere and the day I finally got off it was the best day of my adult life. It was bad.

I feel ashamed to admit this out loud. It’s just so cringeworthy. But it does some good to keep my head level and remember the shortcomings of my younger days.

Nowadays the closest I get to “addiction” level is bingeing a few months worth of evenings on the likes of Crusader Kings 3, M&B Bannerlord, Stellaris or Rimworld. Much more sane since it’s not as intensive, it can be paused at any moment, and ultimately there’s an end to it, so it just naturally withers away from my days eventually.

At different times:

Luanti (AKA Minetest)

0AD

Sauerbraten

Battle for Wesnoth

Shattered Pixel Dungeon

and further back:

Action Quake 2

WipeOut 2097 (AKA XL)

Factorio. At my worst, I was seeing conveyor belt patterns in my sleep.

Nothing will ever hook me as badly as Kerbal Space Program did. If I wasn't at work, I was playing Kerbal for five years straight. No breaks, didn't play anything else during that time. Once I got RealSolarSystem and RealismOverhaul working, you couldn't pry me away from the computer. I put in aver 10,000 hours, easily.

Path of Exile. And by extension Path of Building.

I've only played like 8 leagues (each league is around 3 months long) and I have almost 5k hours :/.

Usually if I decide to play a league, i will make sure I have no obligations for an entire month and then I will take the first week of the league off work.

Original World of Warcraft.

I put years into that game. Then I started a family and I just had to quit.

If my gf (now wife) played we'd probably never get anything done.

I bought No Man's Sky about a year ago. There's something comforting in the repeated tasks and exploring. I spend entire days just running around accomplishing nothing.

Cracktorio

Civilization, Civilization 2, Civilization 3 and FreeCiv

Just one more turn. Looks up. Where did the day go?

I finally kicked the habit with FreeCiv.

I think most here are too generous with the term addiction.

I had to uninstall Hearthstone years ago, because I compulsively played it multiple hours every single day, despite not really having fun playing it anymore. It was either grinding to get cards or tilting on ladder. That's what I would call an addiction.

Edit: After Hearthstone I played a lot of Slay the Spire and after that Marvel Snap. Never more then I enjoyed it, so I wouldn't count those.