Why I Don’t Game Anymore/As Much
Things I am uppity about:
Drama , and people who pretend to know allllll about coffee and pretend to be coffee lovers and aficionados but wouldn’t know a Brazilian blend from a Sumatran. Please take your non-issues and frappes (respectively) elsewhere.
Well, now that’s out of my system…
I was somewhat bored the other day, and started thinking about how I wanted to occupy my time (a perfectly normal and rational approach to this issue), and then, instead of taking those things I thought about and do them, I started thinking about what I didn’t think of; namely, video games.
Five years ago, this would’ve been a very common and oft-used method of boredom-relieving for me. In the past four years, however, it’s use has waned incredibly, and I’m starting to try and figure out why that is. It certainly wasn’t a conscious decision on any part; I never thought “I shouldn’t play these as much” or anything similar. I liked video games for a lot of reasons (and still do, I guess, if I think about it a bit), such as:
1) Temporary Escape – Sometimes, life sucks. It sucks a lot. So much so that you want to get away from it for a bit before you can deal with it any more. Video games provided this for me, as they do for a lot of people still. They allow you to leave the “real world” for a spell and experience the much less “sucky” life of whatever character in the game you’re playing (or, if the video game world still “suck”, your character can usually do something pretty drastic about it). After you’re done, you can go back to trying to live out life, refreshed and anew.
2) Mentally Stimulating – “Experts” in various fields will argue that video games provide much more stimulation in brain activity than television does, and it makes sense to a degree; video games require immediate interaction from the person playing them, constantly needing input from the player to move things along. Arguably, lazing around on a couch playing video games for four hours is better brain-wise than four hours watching the television. The games I liked most provided challenges to me that would force me to think about how best to go about thing, most of the time in the form of puzzles. These were my favorite parts of games.
3) Immersive Stories - This ties into point #1, and also serves as a tie-in to why I love good fiction books so much; I love a good story, especially a good story told really well. Even better is a good story told really well that I get to be a major part of. Well-written and scripted video games provide much entertainment for the imagination. Without this, a game won’t entertain me longer than maybe one play-through, the same way a huge, big-budget action movie will entertain me the first time watching it, but has no lasting value.
There are other reasons, but these are three of the biggest. What came along in my life that caused video games to take a back seat in “activities meant to relieve boredom”?
I can think of a few.
The first is basically the only reason that every other one boils down to, and is a good “well, duh” moment, but lack of time has contributed significantly to the decline in video games.
I’ve had the same amount of time to do stuff nowadays as I did all that time ago; what changed? Mainly, what I like to do with my time; I play a few instruments, I go out a lot, my writing has increased immensely over the past five years, I like to sleep, etc. It’s mostly finding that when I get “bored”, I’m more inclined to just do nothing at all, and I find that’s what ends up feeling the best. The idea of “doing nothing” as an actual activity would’ve sounded crazy back in High School. But it’s really one of those things I cherish when I get it.
Another contributing factor is the lack of technology to get the latest games. There’s a Gamecube here at my Dad’s house, but they don’t make games for it anymore, and I’m pretty sure I’ve got most of the good ones for it (even if I don’t, there’s always the bargain baskets at the stores; GC games are pretty old now and therefore pretty cheap). All the good games that I hear about that sound really interesting are for the latest/greatest (read: Most Expensive) platforms, which cost lotsa $$$$. I don’t have a whole lot of money to spend on that kind of stuff, so I’m missing out on all of it (kinda). The PC’s here are always monopolized by the WOW players, and so even when I find amazing games for $5 for the PC platform that I might be able to actually play at my house, the computers are usually taken, so it’s all for nothing anyway.
I guess getting a Mac seriously put a damper on my ability to play games. Chalk one up for PC’s.
All in all, it’s not really a bad thing that I don’t game as much. I miss it, yeah, but it’s been replaced by other stuff that provides just as much (if not more) fulfillment. If I ever find more time later in life, I might just pick up one of the latest consoles and a few games and have some fun again.
