No matter what walk of life you are in, unless you are a teenager, it is challenging to find time to devote to gaming. When I was working full-time I found it challenging to carve out some time to play game. Normally, if I didn’t have homework I would devote my weekends to gaming, unless of course we made plans to go out. After the birth of my child I found I had more free time when I had an infant. I could manage to knock out intermittent gaming between the frequent naps an infant takes. I managed to complete Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2 and Dragon Age: Origins in…a shameful four months. As my child has gotten older I am challenged to find time to game outside of family games.
Since I decided to go back to school earn another bachelor’s degree, I have found my free time is almost gone. With family obligations, play dates and schooling unless I schedule a time to game I might as well kiss my consoles goodbye.
Recently, I was at a play date with another mom who games and she asked me how I manage to find time to game. My little one is still not old enough for school and he demands a lot of my attention. As a mother, I am more than happy to give my time to him and I am by no means complaining about the demand of my time. However, if I want to play the newest AAA titles or any game for that matter I have to carve time out.
Typically, this means I will have to get up at a god-awful early hour in order to put an hour or two into gaming. I have attempted to tackle the reverse of staying up late into the night but generally, it turns into a horrible situation with the little one waking up early or I’m falling asleep while playing the game. Then I’m left struggling during the day contemplating if it is possible to send me the strongest coffee in the world in 15 minutes. I decided to go to bed shortly after my little one does and get up at the crack of dawn to get breakfast cooked and get a little gaming in.
Although, it is a small thing and makes me have to be a bit strong with committing to an earlier bedtime it is worth it for that bit of time I can find every few days to game.
Do you keep a gaming schedule?
I am not a parent but I can imagine that makes it even harder to find time to game! It is definitely challenging as an adult anyway.
I had more time when I was single, as I would go to work, then come home and either go out with friends or, more than half the time, just hang out at home. I could game all I wanted then!
Now that I live with someone, I find that I want to spend time with him and am around him all the time, which is very fun but makes it hard for me to carve out my own space (in a little tiny apartment) to play games by myself.
In any case, it’s amazing how you can live your whole day, see everyone you need to see, run all your errands, and then suddenly you are out of hours and it’s time for bed. And I’m like you in that if I try to stay up late to game, I will often get sleepy and can’t make it!
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Exactly! You have to decide what is the best way to spend your time. I’ve had to put time locks on myself to go to bed a decent hour that way I can get up and get at least on hour of gaming in before my day begins.
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This has become a growing problem for me. With work obligations and life in general, it gets harder and harder to find the time to sink into games. Long RPGs now get pushed aside in favor of games like Hearthstone or shorter single player stuff.
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Oh yes. A lot of my friends are moving to MMOs because longer RPGs are harder to devote time to. I read a great article recently about gamers choosing MMOs over longer games. Although, I can see the draw I don’t play them because of my child. It is very hard to commit to a dungeon crawl or a arena is due to the unpredictable nature of my little one. I continue to play RPGS but often times I’m spending a good portion of the game reading through the journal entries to remember what I was doing. Haha!
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I’ve turned my life into an RPG with the Habit RPG app. I put in things I need to get done, like washing the dishes or doing the laundry and when I complete them, the app awards gold and XP. Haha. I’m also using it to try and maintain a diet and exercise regime. So while I may not have much time to play video games, turning my life into one (sort of) helps fill that need as I (I mean my character) level up and buy new gear.
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Oh neat! I’ve never heard of that app but that sounds pretty awesome! I will have to check that out! Thank you so much!
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