In Life After the Video Game Crash David Wong makes a strong point:
A 10 year-old can come home from school in the afternoon and devote the rest of the day to the task of memorizing the exact sequence of finger twitches that will get him past the dark forces of the Empire. A college kid can do the same, often while high. Most employed and married adults cannot. If I’m right about this, the gaming industry is about to face its first real exodus of existing customers, a hard-core group they’ve relied upon for decades to snap up every new box on the shelf. We’re leaving, because while we have grown up, gaming, in many ways, has not.
Time is the most expensive investment required for gaming and the older one gets the more scarce it becomes. Saturday was to be a perfect day for gaming as it was rainy and Management had retired to bed to nap her morning sickness away. In anticipation I pulled out Paper Mario, Jade Empire, KoTOR II, and Fable thinking after my chores I could nibble a little on each. Wrong. My shortlist of tasks grew as I uncovered more things that needed to get done in anticipation of the baby and before long my morning melted into afternoon which in turn dissolved into evening. Another weekend passed without me playing any games.
Time why I am hesitant to purchase another console. When am I going to play it? Hell, I haven’t picked up my GBA in months and that is portable. I look at the DS and think that I would love to get my hands on Animal Crossing or Trauma Center but remember the dust gathering on the half-finished Mario & Luigi: Superstar Saga cartridge sitting on the end table. That makes me sad.
So where the hell does all my time go? Well, the biggest time waster is employment. If I didn’t need to pay the mortgage or put food on the table I would gain about 50+ hours a week. The dog as he eats up around two hours a day in walking and playing as do the various chores around the house. By the time I get to sit down and think about picking up the controller I’m too tired to fish out a game and remember where I left off and this doesn’t even account for all the other interests competing for my time like reading and keeping up with this site and Candied Pop. With a baby on the way I’ll be lucky to respond to email so who am I kidding thinking that I’ll have the time and energy to jump on board with any of the new consoles.
I sound like such a curmudgeon.
You are indeed fortunate to have made this realization before the arrival of your little one. I remember when ours was born. I’d recently acquired a new XBox and a stack of games. I think I used the thing a dozen times, mostly in the context of having buddies over after the baby went to bed. I’m not saying that your gaming has to end when you have a baby, but it’s definitely got to change. I used to spend endless hours stomping monsters in whatever game came my way. Nowadays I’m unbeleivably picky. A game has to prove that it delivers non-tedious enjoyment on my schedule or its in the trash within minutes.
The good news is (IMHO), that there’s room for a whole new paradigm of gaming goodness that’s optimized for an adult schedule. I play a variety of online turn-based games that I can pick up when I’ve got a minute. My brother’s family has set up a “NeverWinter Nights” room with PCs for the whole family.
Boy, I’m really rambling. I must be trying to procrastinate on some real work. Cheers!
Right on, snack-sized gaming that has a sense of taking place in a larger scope and with a level of persistency found in MMORPGs. One of the things that hooked me to Animal Crossing was how it seemed optimized for 15 minutes a day. We picked it up in my last year of grad school where I was laden with a 50 hour work week and some 40 hours of course work. To unwind I would pick it up late in the evening and pick weeds, collect fossils, and fish. It even got to the point where I would schedule my paper writing so I wouldn’t miss K.K. at te train station. Sounds sad but it was very theraputic.
Now if only someone can come up with a snack-sized RPG style monster killing game…