Yesterday I played a game. To be more accurate I finished playing Crackdown, which was a rather enjoyable experience. Now, most of you probably know I don’t actually ‘properly’ play games very much. If someone asks me to play a game I’ll happily sit down and play it with them for an hour or two, but I don’t play by myself all that often.
Something really has to grab me as being a worthwhile investment of my time for me to actually play it, let alone dedicate myself to the game. I’ll admit there are a few games I’ve played because I felt I should play them, but in general for a game to get played it has to be head and shoulders above, not just other games but pretty much all other media.
The thing is when I play a game, I really play it. Games that are high up my favourite list get a lot of time put into them in one big lump. When I say I played Crackdown I mean I sat down with a sandwich at 3pm and the next time I looked up it was 10pm, the final boss was dead, my sandwich was long gone and my eyes hurt. That’s the second or third time that’s happened with Crackdown, Halo 3 and Assassin’s Creed also having a similar effect.
The problem is I don’t really like playing games that way. Compressing it all down into one block not only means that I only really play games once in a blue moon, but also means that I almost dread gaming. Ending a marathon of gaming is very unpleasant, like coming off a long haul flight or a cross country train journey.
You feel tired, slighly achey and fairly disorientated by the world at large. In general you just feel nasty. I have no-one to blame but myself, but my gaming sessions are a bad thing in general.
So are you better at structuring your gaming sessions than me? Do you try and set aside a little time each week to play? Are you better at limiting yourself than I am?
DrNate86
I have a lot of free time at the moment (being a bum having just finished uni) and find that I still don’t play that much. If a game really grips me (Heavy Rain being the last) then I will sit and play that to near completion, with Heavy Rain taking up most of the day it took to complete. FFXIII was another bad one, I played that non stop all day every day as the story had gripped me (which is a lot of days as I hit about 80 hours). That said, usually I will just dip in and out, online gaming probably takes up most of my time (MW2, MNR, now Bioshock 2) as they are faster games that suck up my time. Otherwise I can get a bit restless if I find I have been playing games all day. Usually I will play about 2-3 hours every other day or so if I have a lot of free time.
If I have something else I am meant to be doing it is a different story though, then I play A LOT.
eye8have9you3
I can get into some pretty long multiplayer stints at uni, once we played over 25 hours of MW2 split screen in a weekend, but usually we’ll do 2-3 hours of fifa most evenings.
sanmartinez
put in around the 3-4 hours on weekdays, and as long as possible in the weekends
Forrest_01
This is pretty much my schedule too – Apart from wednesdays, as that’s date night!
mrfodder
2-3 on an evening, but weekend gaming gets hard with a family.
Severn2j
I used to put in quite a lot of time, but since getting married the marathons have had to stop, so now its mostly just an hour or two here and there, mostly when my wife is on the phone to friends and/or family.. She can talk for England. :)
GodDarnKat
Its really down the the individual games and how addicted you get to them… This obviously varies, some titles are designed to be quite short – pick up and put down style games, which is how I play many of the smaller PSN games – Flower, Shooter, Joe Danger. But when a big game grabs you, it can become quite obsessive… long afternoons and entire evenings can disappear. I was lost for days, weeks… months with GTA4, Drakes 1&2, Lara, Burnout Paradise, LBP (yes I was silly enough to try to make a map too)… more recently Borderlands and RDR…
CaptainMurdo
I game a lot at night, around midnight, but it’s almost always online with Colin and some other friends. It’s normal for us to still be awake around 3am. If I play any single player stuff, it’s usually in the afternoon but even that is rare.
beeje13
probaly for about an hour(if i can) in the morning have a few hours doing other stuff (like visiting the TSA towers!) then generally start again at 8pm.
Burgess_101
i hardly ever play on my ps3 or xbox if im going to play a game its footy manager on the pc thats the only game i can play in long bursts i just find with the lull in the games that are coming out im so bored i just cant be bothered to switch on my ps3
Origami Killer
well somedays i can be on all day from 10 to 5… sad i know and then somedays ill play about 2 hrs and then sometimes nothing at all. im bored what shall i do??.. ps3. same answer everytime. btw im a teenanger and not in school atm.
DannyFantango
Lucky for you,
when I was a teenager I had loads of spare time but not many games.
Now I’m older and have all the consoles and no problem buying a game when I feel like it but I just don’t have the time.
Hasn’t stopped me buying them though.