For my money, I've found myself fascinated by the inner workings of games. Art directions, concept art, changes from beta versions, sound tracks, music theory of the soundtrack, and coding (panonenkoek, the guy who did watch out for rolling rocks in 0.5A presses). It lets me appreciate games that are pieces of art more richly and deeply. I know every surface texture and midi file of Majora's Mask. I have artist renditions of video game music on my playlists. Pallet Town on violin, Gusty garden galaxy on violin, song of storms on piano. I have a poster of a Pokemon card.

Do I play many games? No, not really. It doesn't mean the flame dies out, it just means my interests diverged and morphed. The appreciation never left. The same inner child who would be saddened by the departure would get a kick out of my writing. The same critic who didnt like Tales of Symphonia's sequel put their money where their mouth is and wrote about an ex-main character from an outside perspective. All of this lets me expect less from games and be able to see the effort that went into the individual parts. The dev team doesn't need to fill the open world with big laser beams, it can let me soak it in for a while.