Game Compulsion

I don't even find games interesting anymore.

After seeing the guts of a game and understanding how everything works behind the scenes, the game loses its magic. It seems contradictory that I'm so interested in figuring out the puzzle of how games are packed/encrypted then, once doing so, I lose a lot of interest. But hey, I can't win them all can I?

It was just this past week when I was looking after game after game after game on Steam looking for an interesting one to play. After searching for about 2 hours I finally concluded that there are plenty of interesting games, just none that are interesting to me. So the thought of playing GTAV doesn't sound nearly as interesting to me as learning moar Russian.

Now playing a video game feels like going on a treadmill where the more you play it the more an integer increases. After a while, you stop caring about the integer. There's nothing special about the integer. Anyone can increase it. What if it's by a factor of skill that it gets increased? That makes me want to see what other people can do to push the limits of the game. This is why I'm still interested in competitive gaming (LoL, Brood War, SC2) even if I would never play the games myself.

What limit's do you suggest? Gaming in general has bored me as of recently as well. The only games I play are BF3/BF4, Generals zero hour, pokemon and fire emblem. Although the last two are more about integers increasing, they still have this character aspect that was simply good writing.

I'm just curious from a coder standpoint, what would blow your mind? Did skyrim do it for you for a period of time?