Debate of The Day: How Much of Your Time is Dedicated to Gaming?
I noticed past debates haven’t always been ‘choose a side’ types of question and that there are open ended ones too. I recently asked this question to a friend who is a big gamer too. Both of us answered 80% and we were shocked by how big that percentage is really. However, I looked into mine and my life is pretty much about games even when I am not playing video games. I write about video games, my entrepreneurial project revolves around it, and I even study it in school. I also talk about it with my family, friends, and co-workers. 80% sounds like a seriously big number but I guess it depends on the context.
My parents even banned me from playing video games before because they said it was destroying my life. However, they did change their minds once they knew that I don’t just sit around and play video games. I must admit though that I skipped one day of class to play BioShock: Infinite when it came out. I got an A in that class so I guess that doesn’t really matter. I used to set a strict number of hours for gaming, but Mass Effect and Skyrim would always tempt me to break (I usually do).
Let me ask you: How much time is dedicated to video games? At what point is it too much?
I’m 48 and I game now more than ever. I really do consider it a hobby and it keeps me at home out out of the local water-holes, so my wife doesn’t mind.
I also for the most part always wait a year or so to pick up games I want to play so I don’t spend too much money on them. Only a few titles have been day one or pre-order purchases in the last 5 years.
I play a nice broad mix of games including one MMO, FPS, RPGs and horror games. I also like strategy games but don’t play them as much as I did back in the day of Dune 2000 and the like.
2 to 3 hours a day during the week and around 6 to 8 hours on the weekend.
But not every day, I work in IT and some days when I get home from work I don’t even want to see my PC let alone turn it on.
Since college, I’ve never really been able to sit and play a game for more than a few hours at a time, even when I have an abundance of free time. The exception to that rule is Mass Effect 2.
Normally I’ll play for an hour a day 3-4 days a week, 2-3 hours on a weekend, if I have a game i’m into. Sometimes I get bored with it and don’t play anything for a few weeks as well.
A few hours a day tops, with exceptions occasionally made. So maybe 20 hours a week gaming and another 5 or so reading and writing about it online. Work and family have to take precedence. Plus I love to read, write, watch films and television, and occasionally eat so there’s a lot taking up my time.
Too much is when it starts affecting your real life. Like when you can’t hold down a job or manage at school and your family has to support you because you’ve gone full NEET. So long as you are independent and self-sustaining, I think only you can decide how much is too much for you.
Zero percent.
I game 0 hours per week, anywhere from 0-12 hours total over the weekend.
I made a simple rule for myself to follow back in college, right after I realized that I was burying myself into an mmo to help get over a bad break up (which is honestly what I needed for a little while, but need to stop once I was in a better place): no gaming on weekdays. I just saw the productivity slip away from my life as I played so many games over the years. It didn’t take very long to get used to this. I could easily spend all week not touching a single game and on the weekend go apesh$t, gaming like crazy if I wanted to. Now I have a day job and keep very physically active during the week, and stilll occasionally game on the weekends, but I feel like I’ve prepared myself for this point in my life where my responsibilities and other (slightly more productive) hobbies give me less time for gaming than I had back when I was still in school.
Honestly, I think any amount of gaming is healthy as long as you can easily and unemotionally detach yourself from gaming with no issues. Once you get sucked in, it’s easy to let games negatively affect your life, like others have mentioned here.