How do you decide on what to play?

As for what I decide to play, well, I follow both what people talk about here on the mapcore, gametrailers.com and this podcast, and if something seems appealing to me, I pick it up.
Sure, it's hard to find the time, but I love games so much I always manage to sneak in some time for gaming almost every single day.

I am very proud to say I still play as many games as I always did. I make sure I'm playing through a game at any given time, if it's a RPG and it takes me months to finish it, then be it, and in those cases I fill the gaps with something a little lighter like Walking Dead or The Wolf Among Us, also those (story driven) games are great if your significant other enjoys watching video games, because watching someone play an RPG is as exciting as watching paint dry.
Having consoles at home helps a ton, you just grab the pad, press the button in the middle and you're immediately in the menu of your console, not to mention the comfort of a couch, big TV and proper speakers.

What I don't want to see happening to me is for me to completely stop playing games, I actually know a couple of game developers who haven't played a single video game in years, I will switch industries before that ever happens to me. I honestly don't get people that make games for a living, and don't play any game at all, it's like being a chef that hates to eat.

Last year I got into a little bit of game collecting as well, and you'd be surprised how much fun it is to go back and play older games, you discover old gems and you also discover how fucking horribly some games aged, some examples that comes to mind is Goldeneye and Turok on the N64, the controls are so bad, it's borderline unplayable, ahah

PS. Going to "howlongtobeat" to check how long a game is and make a decision about whether or not to pick it up based on that can be bad idea tho, I mean, how many of us here finished Skyrim? I didn't, but I still had a blast.

Games from a few of my fav devs, Bioware/Blizzard/Valve/Bethesda etc go without any real thought into it, then a few game series I really like and will check out if I hear about sequels like Anno, Everquest etc, finally, Total Biscuit covers most newer big titles and popular indy games, so I'll check that out in his WTF is series. Very occasionally I'll checkout a game that my friends and colleges go on about, but that's not so common because usually it's games I don't really enjoy playing.

These days I play less games and invest more time in each one that I do play, rather than tons of short games, because honestly so many games are copies of copies anyway, I prefer to master games than play lots of similar stuff just to complete it quickly. I look for games that I can invest a lot of time and effort into, than quick fixes that I'll forget about next week.

Quote from Vilham

Good open worlds don't give me fatigue, ubisoft era open world does, which is why I don't think I would enjoy batman arkham knight.

I quote the first part, but as a fan I wouldn't say that Arkham Knight is the typical Ubisoft pinata at all! If anything, I think they've found the way to push you more into the story than ever in a free-roaming, since side-missions you have basically to discover them when in proximity (mainly radio clues, but some visuals as well). Only when you postpone them for very long they give you a hint and a marker on the map, or when the story is for some reason paused (Batmobile upgrades).

I for long thought that sandbox games are the ultimate game, but I always envisioned something like the first Mafia, deeply revolving around story. I must have a little bit of fatigue, but stuff like Just Cause 2 was quite constantly fun.

Quote from Sprony

Just want to state that for the record. Even after I die people will be hearing this when they lower my casket into the ground:

Haha! This is the best image

Myself I pretty much just play CSGO with a few friends. If more of my friends are online at the same time (pretty rare these days) we all choose a game and play it. So most of my time is spent in online games like CSGO, Chivalry, Civilization etc...

Being single with no kids or anything I do get a fair bit of free time. I normally pick up the latest greatest games I feel are worth it, hype normally gets the best of me for the most part. I seemingly rarely finish games though unless I get properly into it. I think the last single player game I completed was the last Tomb Raider. I've played the Witcher 3 etc but games like that are so big that I generally find something else to take it's place before I finish it. However, I did really enjoy the game, it's just I'm normally in some online game.

Fallout 4 is going to be an exception for me. It's going to drag me offline for quite a while I imagine. I can't wait

My backlog of games I really want to play is huge so I usually just pick from that. I've certainly got into selection paralysis when trying to decide what to play next but this year I've kind of said fuck it and just ask myself what I really want to play right now. I find that often I know what I really want to play, I'm just not being totally honest with myself.

I rarely finish singleplayer games these days, only the ones I really care about or that are unique enough that they deserve my attention all the way to the end, be it story-wise or art-wise. The only games I play for pure pleasure are games that are more esports kind of games like Heroes of the Storm, CS:GO, SC2 or Civilization. Playing short sessions of these games frequently really pays off.

Usually, for long games at home I prefer to play JRPGs for several reasons, the most important being the fact that grinding doesn't require much brain power. Those days when I feel like playing a game but don't feel like thinking too much, I just grind a little

Maybe one day when I'm retired and have a lot of free time on my hands I'll go over my steam backlog... for now, games like The Witcher 3 I stay away like if they were the plague.