What prevents you from gaming more often?

free time is the short answer
but the real reason is money
if you are rich enough you don't have to worry about the job
you will have your free time. money is the real reason

For my region games are too expensive, one AAA game for like 60$ is like ~20% of an average monthly salary.

Modern games require more of your time, daily activities, timed events, I spent most of my time with these games, because I'm unable to not log in everyday due to FOMO. So I don't have time for others games anymore, and these never end, so, I'll never have time for other games.

Yes, I'm speaking of course of gacha hell.

I don't want to play games anymore. Playing games makes me feel bored

I am a truck driver and not having stable internet on the road, is a huge pain. Secondly, just long hours and lots of mental fatigue.

I game like 8+ hours a day so I'm not sure that this really applies to me, so I chose N/A!

Definitely my illness. I feel sick and weak almost every day, for more than 10 years. It sucks, but that's how life is.

Russian invasion.

All of the above x_x

It's hard to find a game that would interest me, so all this exploring requires a lot of time, which is better spent doing smth else, you also need a good gaming PC to explore the new-ish titles and not just 2D indies, which leads to a money problem, gotta buy the new PC and games.

I can't play as many games as I'd like, because chronic pain takes a lot out of me. My meds also make me a lil woozy sometimes.🥴 It mainly makes it difficult to play anything which requires twitch reflexes, such as Borderlands' raid bosses, higher difficulty in Left 4 Dead, and pretty much anything in Super Meat Boy.

Though I can play casual games, such as Viridi, Infinifactory and Spring Falls. I love those games. even though I suuuck at Infinifactory lol

I find myself trapped in the cycle of playing games that require constant attention (Destiny 2, PoE, Fortnite battlepass) and then I always tell myself I'll play more of my games and then something sucks me back in week to week, FOMO is real and it's addicting.

Severe treatment-resistant depression :) same as many here. Someone please come by clean my apartment. And unpack my Steam VR kit that came over a month ago, put it on my head and run Elite Dangerous. Pretty please?

Unlike life in a video game, our life is finite. Life is too beautiful to play video games all day.

50% Windows network troubleshooting

You mean like trying to get the COAX Lan to work properly? Ugh.

Ultimately I guess lack of time is the main culprit, but I do have time that I could use for gaming that I choose to use for other things. Like tabletop gaming!

Up until earlier this year I had a really bad PC from 2015, though saying it was from 2015 is a bit charitable as the only thing that was "up to date" when I got it was the graphics card (though it still was the main bottleneck for most games). Though after upgrading I don't spend more time playing games. Some of the games might look nicer, but I'm someone who can enjoy a game that looks like this

yeah, it's a combo of many rhings for myself.
I have played games since I was a kid but right now I have a job and less free time, that's the primary reason. There are interesting games but I kinda dislike taking up games from "unfamiliar" genres as I don't want to spend time learning them. Another reason is that I have never had an "up-to-date" pc so I've always played newer games on low fps and med to low graphics settings, so recently I couldn't stand that amymore and just lowered my play time and transitioned to watching films and tv shows. However, I did buy a ps5 a month ago, fulfilling my childhood dream, but I still play it from time to time due to me "not feeling motivated enough to play a game". So a combo of many things :)

I'd like to add, "I have a baby" to this list if it hasn't been mentioned already lol

I like the poll feature to be honest. I know a lot of people didn't find the feature interesting, but it's nice to see what the majority of people have voted on the website.

for me its mainly work. And in weekend i prefer to spend time and play online with my family abroad which usually ends up playing league of legends counterstrike of playing fortnite with my nephew :).

criminal activity

I wish to play more games.
Though can't for number of reasons.
Let's start with smaller issues. First of all, using Intel UHD 630 to play decade old games on the lowest setting in like 2022, 2023 is not the most enjoyable experience. I am still kinda ok with it since I never had a pc before. So a lot games I have played so far are old so sort of playable on igpu.

Secondly, financial reason. I can only buy from steam and most of my purchases are based on checking historial low on steamdb & hoping that the game has regional pricing. For example, Baldurs gate I got regional pricing in my region in 2022 😐 but It still hasn't reached its historical low for discount so still haven't bought it. Not gonna lie, kinda sad realizing how much I spend time trying to find what I can afford but at the same time not being able to play it.

Thirdly, life & health issues. The issue isn't even free time. It's life. Only child from a middle class family in South Asia. Gaming is a luxury or time waste when the average life expected in my country is study half your life, get a job, get married, have kids & die. You could have a million problems & people in my country will think to get you married & have kids and everything will be okay.
Basically I overthink a lot, stressed about my life & have anxiety about anything & everything that happened, might happen or will happen. So if I don't play games, I feel bad as usual. If I play games, then I feel bad since I ain't being productive.

I'm not prevented, that's the issue.

The last time I bought a game for myself was more than three years ago. Since then, prices have increased markedly, and I have a couple of children who need my attention.
If I can't play by myself, then maybe my Steam library will be useful to them

Well, for me it's a C-C-COMBO of many things:

• I'm from Ukraine, so...well, it's obvious with all the blackouts and bombings
• I'm unemployed right now so nearly half of the games are unreachable for me
• My PC was combined in like 2006/2007 and I was amazed that it was able to play some games from 2015, but right now when every other game needs x64 system it's also a matter of upgrading my PC, but, as I've said I'm unemployed right now so it's a problem

For me its 1 games are usually too expensive and 2 I dont always have time