I'm audhd but I'm have noticed similar with one ADHD and one officially neurotypical but suspect friend. Particularly in Fat Shark games I can "read" the environment very easily to see how to progress while they blindly bumble around and get distracted constantly.

Personally I have trouble with getting bored in the pauses. Whether it's having to wait to progress through text boxes or gameplay is just slow and enemies have long windups (looking at you fromsoft), I get distracted and end up losing interest. Stuff like the combat speedup settings in Rogue Trader are great for me.

Oh, and too long boss fights, staying concentrated for that long is hard.

Never finishing a game, because you get distracted by something else for a time, and on return completely deleted how you play it from your brain.

I'd say that's more a symptom of gaming inexperience than ADHD. Especially older games like the ones you mentioned don't hold the player's hand as much as modern ones and I'm sure the retro art style takes some getting used to.

I have ADHD but I usually don't have any trouble navigating videogames. But I've been playing since my childhood.

Some people with ADHD like my wife have difficults with navigation. Some people like me with ADHD are particuarly above-average with navigation. So it just depends.

The major thing I have trouble with is that having a high IQ, as a kid I never had to study all that much. In college, I did for the first time - and I didn't have the skills or patience. And even to this day: I have low patience to learn a new videogame, and even lower patience to try and try againt o beat it. I hate losing, and I play mostly simulation games or games like GTA where I can cheat and just wander around an open world. I'm not proud of this, it's just fact. Dont' think I'm bragging about my IQ, either, that has limited benefit and my life is pretty shitty - mostly unemployed most of my adult life, I'm 51 now on dialysis and I'm most likely going to be dead within the next decade thanks to all that shit that ultiamtely is due to having ADHD.

I doubt that was because she had adhd and was actually because she doesn't play video games much and not used to the navigation tools. Biggest problem I have is staying focused on a single task when there are so many things to distract me (usually more tasks).

I have ADHD, and I also happen to have an absurdly good sense of direction.

My biggest problem with video games isn’t losing track of where I am, it’s losing track of when I am.

Video games, especially the Civilization series, and MMOs, make it incredibly easy for me to lose track of time. I’ve stayed up late and ruined countless nights of sleep from those.

I have ADHD and have a great sense of direction, but my partner who also has it has a horrible one. I don't think that's necessarily a common ADHD trait, though it's a spectrum of disorders and often has many comorbidities like autism, OCD, RSD, and many others and could have some that give better or worse spacial orientation, sense of direction, etc.

That said, my most common issue is repetition and grinding. It equally bores me and makes me anxious. I want a game that takes minimal skill developed through repetition and muscle memory, and more that have multiple ways to approach and solve a "problem" and throws lots of variety at you so others can't become too good for me to compete with by simply memorizing patterns or similar strategies but people with general strategy skills can win even with minimal experience learning the game (of course some is always required but if it takes 100hrs of grinding to even be a real competitor, I'm out). For example, I hate chess because good players have just memorized some moves to get out of very specific situations and don't actually have to think and adapt much on the fly. This applies to a lot of FPS, platformers, online RPGs, etc. It's usually also why I prefer coop games to competitive ones.

Getting lost is not an ADHD thing. I've had ADHD my whole life and literally never get lost.

Like other have said she is probably just lost because she doesn't play games often.

My biggest issue is that I don't finish games. It feels like I've completed about 1% of the games I start :D And I've re-started many as well, multiple times...

Most of my problems are with working memory. I also get lost a lot, forget quest descriptions / hints, can't remember what NPCs told me to do, forget I have key items, get frustrated by reading or long cutscenes, skip all tutorials and then call the game unfair when I lose.

Most challenging genres: metroidvanias (basically the entire game is about remembering where you can backtrack to), some puzzle games, walking simulators, heavy narrative or text story games, some simulation games. Stuff that makes you sit still and pay attention like school

Most compatible genres: open world RPG, rhythm, PvP, action, management. Stuff you can just play around with and figure out intuitively

My biggest "issue" (it's not an issue for me, but it's infuriating to people who watch me play) is spending huge amounts of time faffing around with stuff that has extremely little impact on the game. I have over 80 hours in Fire Emblem: Fortune's Weave and have not finished Part 1 on any route. I'm checking out Aion 2 and have spent ages walking around harvesting ingredients and clicking on minor collectibles and grinding enemies for pet souls instead of doing the main story that rewards the lion's share of XP, so I'm basically not really progressing at all.

I'm not lost, but it might look like I was lost if you were watching over my shoulder and wondering why it is taking me so freaking long.

Those are not consequences of having ADHD but of not knowing how to play video games. Video games have rules, expectations and clues non-gamers don't consider or know how to handle. The issues arising from that lack of experience may be made worse by having ADHD, but are not caused by ADHD.

If a game is too long what will happen with me is I will get distracted before I finish it, step away for a number of months, and by the time I feel the drive to return I'll want to start back from the beginning rather than pick up where I left off. As a result I very rarely actually finish such games.

I don't get lost but I do have a hard time staying on task for obvious reasons.

I’m inattentive and I have absolutely no problems navigating, in fact I think I’m better than normal people.

I get lost A LOT.

And of course, too many words. Blah blah blah. Let's get on with it and let me play the game!

I'm also not very good at combos, but maybe that's just me. Hitting a specific combination of more than 4-5 buttons is near impossible. It's usually just easier to avoid using that move than to try to try to build up the muscle memory.

These issues sound like not being familiar with mechanics common to a certain type of game. I have horrific ADHD and I spend an embarrassing amount of time playing video games, but I hate some of the things and genres you mention, so I wouldn't have had a great time either.

The primary deficits I have are with working memory and executive function. Platformers are a fucking nightmare if you don't have working memory. The executive function challenge makes games with rigid tactics and paths not very fun. I hate controllers, it's unintuitive. That might just be because I've been gaming on a PC for nearly 30 years 🫣

What kinds of games do I like? Going off my Steam play time: the fallout games, for some reason I really liked TF2 but probably because it is silly and my friends were playing it so would play together. Satisfactory, Cities Skylines, Transport Fever, Tropico, Dawn of War, supermarket simulator (lol). I've been playing Roller Coaster Tycoon on my phone lately (DID YOU KNOW YOU COULD DO THAT? ITS THE FUTURE!)

So games with many paths and not a constant sense of urgency. Games are escapism for me.

My spouse who also has ADHD is very comfortable with a controller and loves games where he has to figure out the "trick" behind beating bosses. He loves rouge - like games and gets obsessive with dark souls and that whole genre. He just finished the latest Control. He loves to experience mechanics and level design and appreciates and analyzes games as art. He doesn't mind putting in effort to get that payoff, whereas I want a break from effort and the chance to explore at my own pace.

things I struggle with in games likely due to or exacerbated by ADHD:

• tutorials that give too much info at once
• prioritizing targets when fighting multiple units in RTS/hack&slash/beat-em-up/etc.
• remembering where the ever loving fuck my units are in RTS/TBS
• figuring out efficient paths/orders of operation to complete multiple quests (I often just ragequit rather than backtrack)
• finishing main/major quests in open world games
• either reading no text/dialogue and missing out on the lore, or reading it so much that I never finish the game
• taking forever in item shops, item customization screens, crafting benches, etc. Or the opposite, getting overwhelmed by them and giving up and just rawdogging fights with shit items instead
• rarely finishing games :(

If I have to customize a character, I give up on the game.

This just sounds like someone without much gaming experience to me. My dad was pretty much the same when he tried Mario 64

Have ADHD. Almost never get lost. Only time I ever get lost is when I'm in some stupid thought and blow past my exit and zombie drive for 15 minutes before I realized I missed my exit. The problem is I would be so deep in my thoughts that I would make turns and exits and not remember doing any of it.

remember that video games' UI and UX design are not creations of physics nor biology. they were intentionally built by just a few ppl (in the context of Human history). the game designers haven't done brain scans & interviews with every gamer who ever lived. so their design wouldn't reflect anything specific about "normal" brains.

and each player's info processing is uniquely developed from their brain structure and their experiences. even neurotypicals are widely varying in their communication and brain processing style.

tl;dr - idiosyncrasy in gaming is not enough info to attribute to ND symptoms/characteristics. combine the data with more from all areas of life.

When it comes to games I usually get bored quickly. Usually my limit for a game is one to two weeks. That's why I mainly play short games or games with a lot of variety to entertain my brain.

For me at least this does track. I often get lost in video games or miss out on clues the should guide me to the solution. I think this can be partially attributed to hyper focus on one specific thing (the “I was supposed to go right” in your example) but also to to my mind wandering as I play (“gee, I wonder who voiced that character” or “oh that was a lot like that movie we watched last night, I meant to look up the plot on Wikipedia because I think I missed something”).

Honestly, this is a large reason I just don’t play a lot of games. I enjoy them generally but it takes so long to make progress and I get stuck in ways that friends don’t do it makes me feel dumb. It’s better now that I have medication to help but I still gravitate to “easy” or more casual games (I love the Two Point series of games, and the LEGO Star Wars games but many see them as childish or too easy).

crash bandicoot brings back memories. i would say RS boss battles, alot of them required timing to avoid massive attacks form the boss.

It takes me a little while to learn a map (I get turned around easily), but once I learn it, I know it by rote (could probably navigate it in the dark). The mini map is harder for me to follow, but I think that just might be my eyesight not being what it was (depends on the game). I have trouble with motion controls (like on the switch) but I'm fine controlling the camera via keyboard and mouse input or controller button/stick input. When I was a kid I used to invert the control schema (somehow that helped me), but that's not something I do anymore.

Muscle memory is a big deal for me as far as game play is concerned.

Some of this mat just be familiarization with the types of games and their normal game mechanics. I'm not sure how much of it is actually ADHD related.

Developing a sense of place in video games take a lot of experience. Most "gamers" dont think about it much bc it's something they learned as children. You'll have to be patient and help her get comfortable

It could be because she doesn't play much, but I still believe ADHD could be part of it. Maybe she doesn't get lost, per se, but rather that she doesn't pay enough attention to what around her character. I have ADHD , and distractability in video games is something very familiar to me. Sometimes, the correct route seems obvious to other people, but I can run around in circles for quite a time before realising I'm not going the right way. It's often a question of slowing down and observing carefully what's being shown to me on screen. I never played Crash Bandicoot, but in certain games, I need as much info as possible on the minimap if I want to orient myself correctly. Again, I don't think it's a matter of getting lost; I got a pretty good sense of orientation in everyday life. Navigating video games without getting distracted is something else entirely, though.