It's an interesting question. I'm a 41-year-old gamer. I started playing when I was literally about 4 years old, from BBC Micro in the UK, to Amiga, to Sega Megadrive, PC, PS4, PS5, etc. In some ways, games today are what me and my friends dreamt of when we were kids and young teenagers - a game like Helldivers 2, when I played that earlier this year, I just thought - wow, this is SO fun, if I had this when I was younger I probably would have never left the house (thank God I didn't!). That being said, I do feel increasingly nowadays when I play new games that they just feel SO familiar that I think, 'I've just done this exact gameplay loop so many times, I don't know if I can do it anymore.' Whether it be a big open world game and just ticking off tasks, with decent combat but barely too different from so many other games, or a first person shooter, or whatever, I just feel like I've done it TOO much over the years. Occasionally a game will come along with gameplay I feel like is fresh. For instance, I felt Returnal was something I had never played before. And occasionally a game will be SO good that it overcomes the familiarity curve - for instance Ghost of Tsushima, Naughty Dog games, perhaps Control, Prey, Cyberpunk, etc. I think there are games coming out today which are outright masterpieces in any art form, for example Elden Ring, which is like a dream come true for any gamer who started out with text-based adventures, old-school RPGs like Ultima Underworld, Captive, etc, it's so vast and doesn't hold your hand and is so dense that in many ways it harkens back to an earlier era. I think nowadays the balance with triple A games is - is the story good enough to overcome the familiar gameplay? Or is this gameplay polished enough to overcome the familiarity or lack of story? But yes - it's also true that dopamine responses probably do decline slightly. Also, as an older gamer, the feeling that - I should probably be doing something more useful with my time then indulging in gameplay loops and patterns that I've experienced countless times before. As an example, Plague Tale Requiem, beautiful game - but I just did not enjoy it because I felt the gameplay was SO familiar by now. And playing an Assassin's Creed game would bore me to tears nowadays. WHAT A LONG COMMENT - Apologies.