You’re sitting on your couch. The controller feels familiar, maybe a bit oily from a late-night snack, and you’ve just booted up the biggest release of the year. Within twenty minutes, that nagging sensation hits the back of your skull. You know exactly where the hidden chest is. You know the boss is going to grow wings during phase two. You’ve played these games before, even if the title on the box is brand new.
It’s weird.
It’s not just "deja vu." It’s a systemic byproduct of how the modern games industry functions. We live in an era of "formulaic comfort." Developers spend $200 million on a project, and when that much money is on the line, they aren’t looking to reinvent the wheel. They’re looking to polish the wheel until it shines so bright you don’t notice it’s the same one from 2014. If you feel like you’ve played these games before, you aren't imagining things. You’re reacting to the "Ubisoft Tower" effect, the "Soulslike" surge, and the homogenization of user interfaces that make everything feel like one giant, continuous experience.
The Architecture of Familiarity
Every open-world game now follows a specific blueprint. You start in a secluded area. You meet a grizzled mentor. You climb something tall to reveal the map. Honestly, it’s getting a bit exhausting. This isn't just laziness; it's "Risk Mitigation."
According to industry analysts like Mat Piscatella from Circana, the cost of game development has ballooned to the point where a single flop can shutter a studio. This leads to what I call the "Safe Sequel Syndrome." When you play Horizon Forbidden West, you are essentially playing Horizon Zero Dawn with better textures and a few new gadgets. You’ve played these games before because the investors demanded that you feel safe.
But it’s deeper than just sequels. Look at the "Soulslike" genre. Since Elden Ring shattered records, every third indie release features a stamina bar, a cryptic story told through item descriptions, and a dodge roll with specific invincibility frames. When you pick up Lies of P or Lords of the Fallen, that muscle memory kicks in instantly. You haven't played these specific titles, but your thumbs remember the rhythm. They remember the punishment.
The UI Problem
Have you noticed how every RPG menu looks the same lately?
The "Destiny Cursor"—that little circle you move with the analog stick to select gear—has spread like a virus. From Assassin's Creed to Hogwarts Legacy, the interface design is converging. Designers do this because they don't want to "re-teach" the player how to use a menu. They want you to spend your cognitive load on the gameplay, not on figuring out how to equip a pair of boots. While efficient, it contributes heavily to the feeling that you’ve played these games before. When the menus, the map icons, and the skill trees all share a DNA, the games start to bleed into one another.
Why Our Brains Crave the Loop
There is a psychological component to why we keep buying things that feel familiar. The human brain loves pattern recognition. It releases dopamine when we successfully predict an outcome.
When you enter a room in a horror game and see a bunch of shotgun shells and a large health pack, you know a boss fight is coming. That "aha!" moment is a micro-reward. You feel smart. You feel prepared. Game designers leverage this. They use "affordances"—visual cues that tell you how to interact with an object. Red barrels explode. Yellow paint means "climb here." Blue cracks mean "use a grenade."
If a developer changed all these universal rules, the game would feel frustratingly "wrong." We say we want innovation, but often, what we actually want is "innovation within a framework we already understand." This is why the sensation of having played these games before isn't always a negative critique; sometimes, it’s the reason we find a game relaxing after a long day at work.
The Case of the Yearly Cycle
Sports titles are the worst offenders. Madden, FC (formerly FIFA), and NBA 2K. These are the literal definitions of having played these games before. In these cases, the familiarity is the product. You aren't buying a new game; you’re buying a roster update and a slight tweak to the physics engine.
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- Roster Updates: The primary driver for sales.
- Mechanical Tweaks: Often subtle, like "ProPlay" in NBA 2K24.
- Live Service Elements: The real reason these games exist in their current form.
The industry has moved toward "Games as a Service" (GaaS). This means instead of a revolutionary new experience, you get incremental updates. If you’ve played Fortnite in 2020, you’ve basically played Fortnite in 2026, despite the map changes and the new skins. The core loop remains static because the loop is what makes money.
Breaking the Cycle: Where the New Stuff Lives
If you are truly tired of the feeling that you’ve played these games before, you have to look away from the AAA space. The "Triple-A" world is a museum of perfected tropes. The indie scene, however, is a chaotic laboratory.
Take Balatro, for example. It’s a poker-themed roguelike. On paper, it sounds like something you’ve seen. In practice, it breaks your brain because it twists the fundamental rules of card games in a way that feels genuinely alien. Or look at Pentiment, which uses a 16th-century art style to tell a detective story. These games don't trigger that "I've been here" feeling because they refuse to use the standard industry shortcuts.
The problem is that these "weird" games often struggle to find the massive audiences that Call of Duty or Grand Theft Auto attract. We, as consumers, are part of the problem. We vote with our wallets, and usually, we vote for the thing that looks like the other thing we liked.
The Impact of AI on Game Design
As we move into 2026, generative AI is starting to play a massive role in world-building. This could go one of two ways. Either AI allows for infinite, procedural variety that makes every playthrough feel unique, or it automates the creation of "generic" content.
Currently, it’s leaning toward the latter.
If a developer uses AI to generate 5,000 "fetch quests," those quests are going to feel incredibly similar. You’ll definitely feel like you’ve played these games before because the AI is literally trained on existing game data. It can only replicate what has already been done. To get something truly new, you need a human designer to take a risk and do something "illogical."
How to Enjoy Games Again When Everything Feels the Same
So, what do you do when the burnout hits? When you look at your Steam library and everything looks like a reskin of the same third-person action-adventure?
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Stop playing for the "Checklist."
Modern games are designed to be "cleared." They give you 100 icons on a map and tell you to go get them. This turns gaming into a chore. If you want to break the feeling that you’ve played these games before, change your playstyle.
- Disable the HUD: Turn off the mini-map and the objective markers. Force yourself to look at the world, not the UI.
- Self-Imposed Challenges: Play a "no-kill" run or a "no-magic" run.
- Genre-Hopping: If you only play shooters, go play a narrative-heavy visual novel or a complex factory simulation like Satisfactory.
Nuance matters here. We often blame the developers for the lack of variety, but the mechanics of play are a two-way street. If you interact with a game the same way you interacted with the last ten, you are going to have a similar experience.
Actionable Steps for the "Bored" Gamer
If you are genuinely feeling like the magic is gone because you’ve played these games before, take these specific steps to reset your perspective:
- Audit Your Library: Look for "copycat" games. If you have three different open-world survival crafters, finish one and delete the others. Stop spreading your attention across clones.
- Follow Directors, Not Studios: Just like movies, games often reflect the vision of a lead creator. Follow people like Hidetaka Miyazaki, Sam Lake, or Lucas Pope. Their "authorial voice" is often strong enough to cut through the industry noise.
- Research "Anti-Design": Look for games that intentionally break conventions. Games like Baba Is You or The Stanley Parable exist specifically to subvert your expectations of how a game should work.
- Limit "Live Service" Consumption: These games are designed to be "forever games." They intentionally use repetitive loops to keep you engaged. If you feel like you're on a treadmill, it's because you are. Drop the "Daily Logins" for a week and play a standalone, 4-hour indie game.
The feeling of having played these games before is a signal from your brain that it’s time for a "palate cleanser." The industry isn't going to stop making "safe" games because "safe" pays the bills. It’s up to the player to seek out the cracks in the system where the weird, fresh, and genuinely surprising ideas are hiding.
Find the games that make you feel like a beginner again. That’s where the real joy lives.