The 2 week syndrome
Via Kotaku, I linked up to this great article in Wired
Its a musing by a game journalist as to why we sometimes get uncontrollably hooked on a game for a week or two and then put it away cold turkey style. Here is an interview excerpt from the article by Clive Thompson:
"....Jonathan Hayes, a forensic pathologist in New York, regularly falls hard for gorgeous-world games like Ico, and recently he was swallowed whole by Resident Evil 4. He thinks the reason he stops playing a game is that he's unwrapped every skin on its onion.
"You kind of see through the game to its underlying mechanics," Hayes says, "and it suddenly seems no longer worth the investment of time." This is much like what Ralph Koster argues in his Theory of Fun: We humans seek constant novelty, so only gameplay that has nearly infinite permutations -- like chess -- can hold our attention forever...."
In my case I feel like I can't play many FPSs, RPGs, and most platformers any more just because I'm so used to the mechanics. This most recently happened to me with Castlevania: Dawn of Sorrow which I creamed through in a week of constant play. At the moment, I see no reason to play with it. 6 Months later, I might pick it up again.