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How do you guys and gals find the time to play games?
Drez
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Registered User regular
Maybe an unfair question as this forum represents so many different people at different stages of their life, but I'm curious.
The last game I really devoured was Persona 3 Portable and that was primarily due to its portability. (Well, no, it is primarily because it is a great game, but I was able to devote 100 hours to it by nature of its portability.) Before that was either Mass Effect 2 or Assassin's Creed II.
I find it increasingly difficult at the age of 30 to find the time to devote to gaming. I love it, but when? I work the usual dull 9-5 which also involves 2-3 hours of commuting each day. With everything else I have to do during the week - laundry, keeping my body looking like an adonis, going to the deli to buy Cheetos, and the occasional or often happy hour I find it hard to find time to play anything.
And yet I see other people doing all the things I do, including human interaction and socialization, and also seem to pull free time out of thin air to play games.
I'm clearly not understanding something.
I was going to post this in D&D or H/A but - despite my tone above - I'm not really asking for advice, and I am curious what you guys thing, as the primary gaming subforum here.
So what's up? Do you set aside time? How do you keep up? For me, time is the most expensive investment in video gaming, much more so than money.
The last game I really devoured was Persona 3 Portable and that was primarily due to its portability. (Well, no, it is primarily because it is a great game, but I was able to devote 100 hours to it by nature of its portability.) Before that was either Mass Effect 2 or Assassin's Creed II.
I find it increasingly difficult at the age of 30 to find the time to devote to gaming. I love it, but when? I work the usual dull 9-5 which also involves 2-3 hours of commuting each day. With everything else I have to do during the week - laundry, keeping my body looking like an adonis, going to the deli to buy Cheetos, and the occasional or often happy hour I find it hard to find time to play anything.
And yet I see other people doing all the things I do, including human interaction and socialization, and also seem to pull free time out of thin air to play games.
I'm clearly not understanding something.
I was going to post this in D&D or H/A but - despite my tone above - I'm not really asking for advice, and I am curious what you guys thing, as the primary gaming subforum here.
So what's up? Do you set aside time? How do you keep up? For me, time is the most expensive investment in video gaming, much more so than money.
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This. My wife usually goes to bed at 10 or 10:30 and I stay up gaming until 1 or 2.
On the weekends she'll usually visit her folks and I can get a good block of gaming in.
It's pretty much like any other hobby in that you just find time for it. I can't game as much as I used to, but I think that when I was gaming a lot it was due to depression and being single. What I do is find a couple of games I really want to play and devote what little time I have to those. Quick games like League of Legends are better for my schedule than an MMO that I just don't have the time for.
I either let games take a chunk out of my weekends, or set me behind in studying by keeping me up until 4:30 in the morning and ruining my sleep cycle for half a week. Thanks, Europa Universalis 3, you jerk.
Well, the average individual. I'm not married, but do have a kid.
I usually get about five or six hours of sleep a night. I've also got a terrible addiction to coffee. Mmmm.. coffee....
Everyone has their time-sinks and outlets that let you cope with the swathes of information you have to absorb - since my house is full of consoles, boardgames, and various other nerd accoutrement with the bonus of roommates to play them with, that pretty much selects my time sink for me.
Had a four year period where the commute was four to six hours on top of a full work day. Didn't do much in the way of social activities or gaming during that time.
At my house, the kids and wife all game, so we might have a board game going, some form of computer game where there will be two or more of us playing, playing something on the wii, or sometimes spectating on someone elses gaming session.
But again, it is going to depend on what you do to wind down.
If there was a way to double lime something, I would have. Also...
I have one waiting in my car right now so that I don't seem as sleepy as I am when I get home. The only thing my wife bitches about more then my late nights gaming is when I fall asleep too early the next day leaving her with baby duty.
As a guy that's 30 myself, married, with two dogs, in grad school and on the cusp of starting a grad assistantship, I've learned that gaming really isn't different from other hobbies so long as you don't play the kinds of games that demand your full, undivided attention for long periods of time. Or if they do, you have to block all of that out ahead of time; I've set up some longer online gaming sessions with buddies, and I treat it the same way I'd treat a night of hanging out—set a time and day, get everything else done beforehand. Some friends were trying to get me into Starcraft recently (the og Starcraft), and I quickly learned that trying to just do the "oh, hey, want to play tonight?" thing didn't work when trying to arrange a 3v3 comp-stomp that would take 90 minutes a clip, especially when my wife works full-time and needs my help around the house with things.
I think it also helps immensely to just completely stop trying to keep up with the latest releases; my past year in school is part of why I'm trying to redouble efforts on my backlog now. :P
So anytime after work when I'm not out with friends or doing somthing else I'm usually playing a game.
Also, your primary time consumers listed would be weekday activities. What about the weekend?
Yeah that's pretty rough. I live a 15 minute walk from work which helps (I've lived in places before where 3 hours of commuting was the norm, it sucks) and my girlfriend plays games almost as much as I do. The time most people use to watch TV, we usually use to play games together. I go to the gym, but I wake up early before work to go because I know I'm not really going to do anything else productive in the hours before I work (well, I suppose I could always sleep).
When I was dating my ex who hated games, we had two TV's side by side (not awesome cutting edge TVs, but they did the job). When she would watch the awful shows that she liked and I hated, that was my cue to play some games.
I just seem to be losing interest in the epic singleplayer story-based games and need social interaction with my games in some way. Of which, they don't make nearly enough online co-op games for PC. Which is why I am finding my interests and limited spending money better suited to board games, which unfortunately I can't play anytime I want and have to get my friends together.
Not sure if this applies to you, but the problem regarding time and gaming I have seen with some folks is how they play games. Some of my buddies are, um, completionists, and feel like they need to complete every aspect/achievement, etc of a game. I only mention this because you are asking how folks put 100+ hours into a game, and really, the only way most games (even in depth RPGs) require that much time is if you are unlocking all the extras (the primary exception being any Civ game where 100 hours is like a minimum).
My playing time during the weekdays generally comes down to 1-2 on any given night that I'm home and not watching football or just plain tired. I usually don't go to sleep till sometime after midnight and get somewhere around 6 hours of sleep a night. I live alone at this point so I have some free time during the late nights to get some gaming done.
As people mention, commuting and micro breaks are good opportunities for gaming on the go, which the iPhone and the app store is a great fix for!
Sigh... I remember in the 80s when me and my dad bought games with 300 page manuals which took a week to even learn the basics of... those games have disappeared and instead, stress has increased... not sure that's progress...
I don't get to game as much as I used to, but like others said I plan out times when my wife is asleep or busy. On top of that, I've become very picky... since time is limited, I only take the time to play the games that are the highest quality or have the highest appeal to me. Back when I was younger, I'd happily slog through something that was only kinda fun because hey, what else is there to do? But now, I don't have any patience for that. Nowadays, anything I'm not 100% certain about I put in my gamefly queue. If it doesn't completely grab me in an hour, I send it back.
And like Lunker, I tend to buy fewer and fewer games at release. Not only does it let me gather more post-play impressions from people to see if it would be worth my time when I finally get it, it keeps me working on my backlog.
Everytime I shoot someone while on patrol, I get 120 hours of rehabilitation (at my request) to come to grips with my actions and go out and do it again. I use that time to fill virtual bars with things like EXP.
I'm also not very social and the friends I do have are all gamers to some extent, so that helps.
Case in point, kids are in bed by 8:00, wife is in bed not to long after that, what else do I have to do?
Edit: I almost wish I could stick to one game. If I spent three hours a night playing Street Fighter I would be, well, slightly less terrible then I am now.
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Multiplayer wise, the time I get in is time I specifically set aside. My best friends and I try to set aside one night a week to just generally hang out and play games with eachother just so we don't drift apart.
Come to think of it, I have a lot of free time.
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This made me laugh way more than it should have
Ooh-rah?
My brother recently got back from Baghdad. He got a bunch of PSP / DS playing in, but his connection was too shitty to handle AvP.
Steam: Elvenshae // PSN: Elvenshae // WotC: Elvenshae
Wilds of Aladrion: [https://forums.penny-arcade.com/discussion/comment/43159014/#Comment_43159014]Ellandryn[/url]
I'm pretty similar, people would be surprised how much time they waste watching tv, especially when you factor in commercial breaks. I tend to watch things back on record so I have more time for games and reading.
Plus I don't tend to play through games more than once.
I want to know more PA people on Twitter.
Learning how to hold a sleeping baby on your arm and still work a dual-analog has saved my ass so many times.
which is why I've been playing LoL for a year and am only level 17
The scenario: Age 33, married, father of a 6 year old, and a full time job doing tech support at a college.
In order to get my gaming fix, I play games that don't take a long period of time to achieve things, and my normal gaming time is after everyone else is in bed. Recently I've been into the following:
-Team Fortress 2
-Quake 1
-Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy
-Puzzle Quest 1 & 2
-Mount & Blade
I'm also into racing sims. In years past I competed in racing leagues that would run every week; practicing for those events took up a lot of time. Now I race with a group that runs every month or so. This year we're going to be doing endurance races, following a schedule that mirrors real world events...but we're only doing seven events total for all of 2011. So that leaves plenty of time to prepare.
For those events, I basically just tell my wife that she and our son need to find someone else to bug for a few hours on those dates. ;-)
Beyond all that, I have an iPad from work with a few games on it. We have a Wii, and my son and I play games there. He's also into a couple of games on the PC that we play together.
Really what it all comes down to is that if it's really that important to you, then you'll make time to do it.
My son's coming up on 13 months. Enjoy it while it lasts because it's only a (short) matter of time before they start reaching for the controller and smashing the buttons. And then it's only a short while before they're mobile. And then the party's really over.
I've already broken my piggy-toe trying to game while watching him. One day he realized that the crappy gate we have blocking the steps to the upstairs was easily moved. I turned my attention away for a couple minutes and when I looked back for him he was halfway up the stairs. Kicked the couch running after him. It still hurts.
:^:
But I read Rock, Paper, Shotgun at work so that sort of counts.