And now, we dance
Gotta admit, only two days in and I’m like, “what the fuck was I thinking?!?!”
I mean look, no one can deny that binge-gaming from wake ‘til slumber days on end is unhealthy. As my new friend and fellow gamer Jack Carpenter (who is also in this pilot I’m shooting) said, “But Thomas, doing anything all day everyday is unhealhty.” Even saving the world. Ok, granted, he didn’t say anything about saving the world. And, to be honest, saving the world all day every day wouldn’t be a bad thing. But let’s say there are very few things that are actually good for you to do without respite.
He was actually the first person to say, “are you sure you want to do this? Here’s why you should think about it…” and he made some pretty good sense. Cents. Street Cents on CBC. Anyway, it’s like this:
Video games give me joy. Not straight up happiness, but high-level, engaged joy. I’m not your average gamer. I don’t just go out and get the next Madden or Call of Duty and just play it with my bros and then move onto the next blockbuster. I actively seek out indie games, I’m interested in the culture of video games, the making of, the new technologies, the story, the art, and more importantly I appreciate games on a higher artistic level than “the average gamer”. It’s hard for me to grasp, but some people play Half Life 2 or Bioshock and they think that it was “good” or “fun”, or they “liked the shooting”. And that’s all they have to say about it. Here’s Soulja Boy’s take on perhaps one of the greatest games of all time, Braid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xSXofLK5hFQ
What. A fucking. Idiot.
See, it’s not like that for me. For me, I connect with video games on the same level I connect with a great movie or TV show. Occasionally, even moreso. Not to sound like, as Jordan said in a comment, an elitist, but I’m just saying that along with the video game connoisseurs that read this most adeptly put together blog, we’re fucking better than everyone else. Now, to reiterate what I said in the previous post but in a completely different light; I’m about to give up something that I’ve done my entire life, something that’s helped define who I am, that’s given me so much, to fill it with fucking Airsoft?
Now, the goal behind this isn’t to play Airsoft, I’m just making a point. I’d rather play ArmA 2 to be honest.
See?!?!
But that’s the thing. The thing is this. Here is the thing. Here it is. It’s this: For me, it’s hard to just play two hours of video games.
Bam. There it is.
If I’ve got a day filled with stuff to do, if I’ve only got two hours to play video games, then it’s not a big deal, because I can literally only fit two hours of video games in my day. The problem is when I don’t have limits. For most people, just by having a day job, they have limits. I’m in this weird actor profession, where one day you can hardly think you’re so busy, then the next you’re watching flies fuck. I have literally watched flies fuck.
Yeah. It’s at the same time both horrifying and beautiful. But mostly horrifying.
And, not to mention, my beautiful and caring girlfriend, Andrée, is completely psyched about tearing through Lego Harry Potter when it comes out next month. To think I’m going to miss out on Mass Effect 2, Alan Wake, LA Noire, and the whole shit fire that OnLive is going to be…well dang. That just bums me out.
The real victory would be to somehow limit my time playing video games. To somehow resist, or set up rules, to prevent the “vortex suck” that one can fall into when they encounter a particularly engrossing game. But that is so hard to do on your own. To self moderate is one of the toughest things to do, especially when it’s with something you’re addicted to.
Let me ask the four people who read this: how do you self moderate? How do you prevent yourselves from playing too much?
Because if I could do that, I wouldn’t have to quit cold turkey. I suppose what would be ideal is to allot yourself like 30 hours of gaming a month. That’s it. You can use those hours any way you want. If you don’t game for a couple days at all, that’s fine, you can spend a big chunk in one day. Or, you can spread them out evenly. But when the 30 hours expires, you’re done. You cannot play any more games. Period.
Wait. Am I retarded? Does a feature like this already exist on Xbox? If it did, I could just cut out everything other than Xbox, set the hour allotment, and then be saved!
Checking…checking….YES!
http://www.xbox.com/en-US/support/familysettings/isyourfamilyset/familytimerfactsheet.htm
Ok. So maybe I might not quit cold turkey. I still gotta debate it.
