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Gaming vs Adult Life


danielpholt
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I've been seeing this girl for around 7 months now, and things are going wonderfully. We recently spent the entire week together at my place, and it went without a hitch; great times were head. However (yeah), I noticed my gaming time has drastically shrunk in the 7 months we have been together. For the most part I consider this a 'New Relationship' thing; something that will inevitably fix itself in the coming months as we settle in to our roles in said relationship. 

 

Despite enjoying the fuck out of the time we spend together, and despite the fact that she's a keen gamer herself, I find myself missing the days where I could spend 7-8 hours of my day off playing games. The Witcher 3 being a prime example. Games been out over a month and I've only once managed to dedicate more than 4 hours to it.

 

So I guess the question I'm asking is, How do you guys manage your time between your hobbies and your socially responsible, working lives? 

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Yup. As a real adult, I have between one and two hours a day to play on a good day, that's it. Things like MMOs, Destiny, and MOBAs are forever beyond my reach. But that's okay, because I don't like them anyway. My life is multiplayer, so I enjoy playing single player games when I relax.

Edited by Mr. GOH!
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I still have the luxury of having the ability of just playing dead* for a day or two for a really good game. For all other games, I just put a hour or two here and there when I find the mood and time. Being in the mood to play something is a biggie now since I just have so much on my mind. Like Goh, I tend towards single player games now since they're like books. I can work through them at my own pace.

 

* Or just become shut-in since I need time to think

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Having friends who live hours away and aren't keen on internet based communication means plenty of time for video games for me.  :P

 

I haven't even considered a relationship in several years since I have a hard enough time handling my own shit, let alone anyone else's.

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By cutting into sleep. :(

 

You should also try to find games to play together.

 

We've played a little bit of Portal 2 Co-Op, and talked about playing some COD Zombies, however she's not as...(this is gonna sound awful) skilled as me, and thus it becomes a tiny bit frustrating for more fast paced games. Wouldn't mind going through Game of Thrones with her, but I'm not sure she's that interested. 

 

As for sleep, I work nights. I'd rather not fuck my sleep up any more than it already is. 

 

 

Yeah, gaming time has taken a serious hit. Even on weekends, having talked about it ahead of time, I have trouble dedicating a full day to playing a game.

 

I'm back at the parent's house at the moment. Hopefully when I've got my own place I'll be more willing to pull the occasional late night. I'm very aware that my PC is loud and my keyboard isn't mechanical; I'd wake them up. I don't need that on my concious along with the feelings that come along with moving back into the parents place. 

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I think, as you get older and take on more responsibility, it's something you adjust to gradually.

 

I've always felt guilty if I play games for a whole day anyway, and there was an 18-24 month period after Mass Effect 3 where I just kind of couldn't be bothered with nearly all games. I focused on my writing instead, and felt better about it. I'd still dip into the odd "casual" thing, but I couldn't see myself picking up a massively involved RPG anymore (not that Mass Effect was ever that, and Witcher 3 is pitched and paced perfectly).

 

Nowadays it's more a routine of getting in from work, getting sorted then playing a game for however long until I get tired (not an ideal setup either). My day off a week is when I get all my other shit sorted rather than gaming for any long periods. Really need to sort out getting to sleep earlier too. <_<

 

Definitely not as avid a gamer as I was 3 years ago, and I'm just letting a lot of things pass me by, but that suits me fine.

 

Having said all that, I have been putting in major time with Destiny and Witcher 3 and Arkham Knight recently.

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I should explain the loud PC thing.

 

My CPU fan is currently extremely loud, it's the stock AMD one, and I've not got around to changing it out yet. So there's that. Throw in the fact that we've got laminate flooring throughout the house, which makes my bastard of a desk chair rumble whenever it's pushed along it, the already mentioned keyboard and the position of my bedroom (shares a wall with the parents), it's not really a viable time for me to game on my PC.

 

I've got PS4, but Sony forgot how to make games and nothing Nintendo has put out in the last year has interested me in the slightest.

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Yay! I'm going to humble brag about having a relationship too.

 

I'm about 18mths into a relationship. We don't live together yet, so I can play evenings, but that only really gives me a couple of hours after I've made dinner, eaten, socialised with housemates a bit, gone climbing, done chores, other grown ass man stuff. Weekends are totally out as that's the only time I have to spend with my partner. Hopefully once we move in together I'll be able to play a bit more at weekends plus an hour or two at night.

 

One thing that does help loads is suspend/resume on PS4. Means I can immediately drop something without worrying about getting caught in the middle of a cutscene or something. Slightly annoyingly, while RemotePlay *should* allow me to game while she watches crap telly, this is apparently not allowed. We have to "watch it together". However, I'm not allowed to actually comment on said crap telly, which I thought was crap telly's sole saving grace... :/

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I am so happy my wife does not usually watch crappy television and is totally cool with me playing games on my laptop when she's watching shows or movies I don't really care about. Even when it's a show or movie I am mildly interested in, she doesn't care if I'm on my laptop simultaneously. I mean, she likes to have her iPad out when she watches TV, too. If it's a movie we both want to watch at home, we focus on it, most of the time.

 

We generally do other things for "together" time, which generally means we spend one weekend day per week outside of the house doing fun things together, usually including a movie or play and dinner together. We also take turns cooking for each other and our dinners at home are either one-screen (we both watch the same thing) or no-screen.

 

It's nice being married to a woman who has a graduate degree in film and who has zero patience for "reality" TV and the dregs of scripted television shows and who also is a tech-savvy Internet professional. :)

 

TN: your bird's demands are unreasonable and any good lawyer should be able to demonstrate that torturing you with bad TV does not count as quality time spent together. Or, int he alternative, that if the time spent watching TV on the couch is so central to your relationship, that the relationship is not strong and in danger, anyway.

Edited by Mr. GOH!
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Yeah, I didn't mean I'm never allowed to play a game on another screen while she's watching TV, just that she doesn't feel that time counts as time spent together, so even if we've been next to each other on the couch she'll still feel like we haven't spent time together if we weren't doing the same thing.

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TN: your bird's demands are unreasonable and any good lawyer should be able to demonstrate that torturing you with bad TV does not count as quality time spent together. Or, int he alternative, that if the time spent watching TV on the couch is so central to your relationship, that the relationship is not strong and in danger, anyway.

 

Sadly, she's also a bit of a lawyer. The knowledge that I would a) lose the argument and/or b) end up single prevents me from adopting such an entertaining, yet suicidal course.

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  • 2 weeks later...

I thought this was a good place to put this: it's a video talking about the amount of pop media produced in modern western society and how, at least in certain circles, there's this expectation that you be familiar with huge portions of it:

 

 

I'd like to know what people on here think about this.  There are definitely things (games specifically, but also movies, TV shows, etc) that I feel kind of guilty about not having played/watched/whatever yet, but the prospect of putting in the time is just so daunting.  I mean, we have a whole thread about backlogs, for God's sake.

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It's kinda overwhelming. I always feel like I'm behind, especially because I'm a particularly slow gamer. But I don't really care if I'm behind on what's popular. I just don't talk about it, or I listen to someone else talk about it. It's never been something that stresses me or that I feel guilty over. The only time I feel that way is when I've spent a good deal of money on a game and don't invest any time in it. Or what I feel is enough time in it anyway.

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So I guess being an adult is part of why it's taken a while to get around to this, when it was started I was moving house, which heavily cut into my time. I guess another thing is just the little bits of adult hood, so work is a large chunk, and not having a mum to make you food cuts like 20 minutes out of your gaming, then there's the clothes washing n ironing etc. hehe. Oh fortnightly boardgaming sessions 4pm-3am can have quite an impact too on quality video gaming time.

 

Similar to HotHeart it's also a case of sometimes feeling "guilty" if I spend a lot of time gaming rather than being "productive". Usually for me if I have a whip around the house tidying bits n bobs here n there it usually puts me in the right mindset of having done my productive stuff, now I can like sit n veg out with a game for a few hours.

 

Oh and similar to Tenshi on being a somewhat slow gamer anyway, tied in with having a bunch of RPGs it can build a bit of backlog, sometimes hard to be playing games at launch with others (Witcher 3 n Batman being the first time in a while I've been able to not be months out on playing a game).

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  • 4 weeks later...

I've been seeing this girl for around 7 months now, and things are going wonderfully. We recently spent the entire week together at my place, and it went without a hitch; great times were head. However (yeah), I noticed my gaming time has drastically shrunk in the 7 months we have been together. For the most part I consider this a 'New Relationship' thing; something that will inevitably fix itself in the coming months as we settle in to our roles in said relationship. 

 

Despite enjoying the fuck out of the time we spend together, and despite the fact that she's a keen gamer herself, I find myself missing the days where I could spend 7-8 hours of my day off playing games. The Witcher 3 being a prime example. Games been out over a month and I've only once managed to dedicate more than 4 hours to it.

 

So I guess the question I'm asking is, How do you guys manage your time between your hobbies and your socially responsible, working lives? 

 

I've actually got a (slightly depressing) alternate response to this.

 

My girlfriend just nailed a job with a prestigious news and documentary company... In a city a couple of hundred miles away.

 

So as of this week, and possibly for the next few months, my play time is on the up and up.

 

I recently read a couple of thoughts on other sites – life throws things at you then takes thing away and then things change again in some way you don't expect – basically you won't just keep losing time into adulthood. You might gain time again temporarily, then lose it, then gain it again, etc. My partner and I are solid and I'll probably be heading down there in due course – but I've sunk more gaming time in the last three days than I probably have in the last 2 months. 

 

I thought this was a good place to put this: it's a video talking about the amount of pop media produced in modern western society and how, at least in certain circles, there's this expectation that you be familiar with huge portions of it:

 

 

I'd like to know what people on here think about this.  There are definitely things (games specifically, but also movies, TV shows, etc) that I feel kind of guilty about not having played/watched/whatever yet, but the prospect of putting in the time is just so daunting.  I mean, we have a whole thread about backlogs, for God's sake.

 

Is this about backlogs or about cultural perception? If it's about cultural perception, I literally could not give less of a shit. There are plenty of things people take for granted that everyone has seen, and when you say, 'no, I haven't watched/heard/played that', people usually go, 'oh cool, well it's this'. Basically, if you're just honest about it, people never mind. 

 

Living in Glasgow, every time I meet a new person, they bring up football. In this city, people are literally murdered over whether you support Celtic or Rangers. Yet every time someone brings it up, I literally say, 'Nah I don't follow that shit,' and they're always fine with it. Cultural trends and popular culture are just facets, just aspects of culture that don't really matter to the heart of that culture. Straight up say whether you've seen something or not, and they won't mind.

 

(Drunk typing this, if anyone can tell.)

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