What prevents you from gaming more often?

its not the fact that we dont have free time.. its the fact that we have to work more to afford more expensive games.. then the cycle continues.

my laptop makes the same noise as a plane taking off when playing and my GF is prone to migraines and really sound sensitive.
But now with the deck I can play a little more easily.

I can't play too much because neighboring country attack our energy system

For my region games are too expensive, one AAA game for like 60$ is like ~25% of an average monthly salary.

This dying 1060 3GB, I dont know why but every GPU that I buy lasts 4 years, and problems start right after warranty expires. The money that I had saved for a 3060 all went to medical costs thanks to delta and omicron

I took a break for more than ten years, and it wasn't even a choice, it happened because I was immersed in so many other things. There's no shortage of entertaining games these days, but they're lost in a sea of money-grabbing silliness. Centuries ago, in a previous geological era, when I was young, buying a game cost a kidney, half a liver and an eye without too much myopia, today, with bundles, building an endless collection is within the reach of even those who don't own anything similar to the Money Bin of Scrooge McDuck.

Regular power outages due to russian missile attacks on energy infrastructure, which is already destroyed by more than 50%

Free time, bandwidth limitations and budgeting the use of electricity.

When I first joined, I was under the impression this site was mostly kids (who have lots of time for games, but not much money to spend on them).
But after seeing some age polls, came to realize this is very far from the truth.
Roughly 50% of the site are people above 35-40.
And kids below 18-20 are a small minority here.

So if most people are adults (20+), many have kids, jobs, families, obligations, etc.
It makes sense that thing people are most missing is free time to play games (and not money to buy games for example, which would be the case for most kids).

I've got a cute little cabbage patch goblin to raise.

I hope this will be seen by the OP, the new "Fanatical Lunar Sale" image/banner is wider than the site and it causes a horizontal scroll bar to appear (at least on 1366*768 screen res)

2 kids(one being 2 months old), 2 dogs, a full time job, and an old house that needs fixing

Don't have a high spec computer yet

Dude, one old man to another....jk. You just haven't found the game genre you like that all :) I used to play many games/genres, but as I got older/busier, the list became smaller, and you just know if you will like the game or not, so you don't waste time.

Owning a Steam Deck increased my available gaming time since I don't need to be tethered to one spot for hours and hours. I can get back from a hike, grab my Deck and then head back outside. I can bring it with me camping. I can play between contracts. On road trips. Etc...etc...

And I can still play at home as well, but maybe I also have a show on the tv, or food cooking in the kitchen. Or what have you.

Prioritize other stuff mostly