Topic: Life vs Work vs Gaming vs Internet

@kyleforrester87 in Irish pubs on a good night we're still serving at 5 am 😉 No late gaming for me

@Hego haha yeah, actually once the later licensing laws came in it got a bit harder however most pubs around where I lived at the time would finish up by 12pm and then clubs would be done by 3.

This thread is ringing true for me right now, lol. As far as gaming goes I feel so overwhelmed and that I don't have enough time to get to every game I want to play. Right now I have Mario Odyssey, CoD: WWII, MLB: The Show 17 and a SNES Classic that has a bunch of games that I want to play again. On top of that I still want to get Assassin's Creed Origins and Shadow of War, and have Sims 4 on the way. It's sad too cause when I get some free time to game I usually waste it trying to figure out what to play and then getting overwhelmed that I usually just watch something Netflix instead.

Does this happen to anyone else?

I posted this somewhere else on this site a while ago, but I have come up with an approach that seems to be working for me now. I have decided to limit myself and play 3 games at a time — a long epic, a medium sized game, and a short game. This gives me different suitable options to play depending on my available time — so if I have just a few moments, I can play some of the short game. If I have a couple hours, I’ll sink my teeth into the longer one. I use howlongtobeat.com to give me an estimate of how long the game is and so what category it should be in. Playing my backlog this way seems to keep me relatively focused but free to enjoy different games depending on my mood or time constraints at the time. Now I don’t feel as overwhelmed looking at my backlog of 15 games. I look at it like I only have 3 or 4 games in a given category before I am caught up. I completed my short game and my medium length game this past weekend and it is so exciting to start a couple new games.

It just seemed to me that if you bog down on just one game you run the risk of getting bored or burned out, or if you try to play a whole bunch of games at once you just get overwhelmed and don’t enjoy it because it seems like a chore.

Granted this method so far has not created free time out of thin air. Life still doesn’t pull its punches and there never seems to be enough time for everything.

@Tasuki I get this a lot. I have Wolfenstein 2 on the go, Mario Odyssey, and I still have the last few Metroid on Samus Returns and now I want to jump in on HZD but when it comes to picking, I freeze up and feel apathy towards them all.

I do it with movies - I have hundreds of films, not to mention Netflix and Amazon etc. but I can't decide and then just watch something easy and rubbish.

I'm trying to get around this by planning ahead and saying, OK tonight I am watching or playing X or Y but then it makes it feel like a chore.

@Tasuki I too have a lot of new games which can be a bit overwhelming - knowing I want to play all but not sure which one to start first. A lot of it comes down to waiting for my 'Project Scorpio' and keeping new games for that. As such, when it arrived, I have 5 'new' games to play plus a lot of older 'enhanced' games I want to revisit and some games I beat on PS4, now enticing me to buy for Xbox - not that I need any more games. I also have PS4 games I want to play too.

It can get overwhelming and too much choice leading to the inevitable 'sod it, i'll just watch TV instead'. I do suffer from 'health related issues' and sometimes I find its my body telling me I shouldn't play - may make those issues worse in the long run although my head is saying 'Play'. I think its also saying that to try and find 'something' else to focus on instead of 'pain' and body limitations. When things are 'good' I don't tend to struggle with finding the 'right' game for the moment. I am not bothered about picking the 'wrong' game to start with and finding that its not quite fulfilling my gaming itch but its not like it takes 20-30mins to change games like it did in the 80's with home computer games on 'tapes'.
Its not just games either with me. I record everything - well apart from 'sports' which are much better live. I often look at my 'list' of shows etc and can't decide so end up watching some 'rubbish' on TV. It often works out for me to be better to do this as I have tried to watch 'something' important but often can't 'focus' on it enough to know what's happening - again maybe my body knowing more than my head. Often picking the 'easy' option - like watching something with little thought/focus required was what I needed to switch off. Trying to play in that situation doesn't help me physically or my ability to focus on the story, the game-play etc and I end up having a worse experience for it. Watching something 'mundane' on TV often helps much more than trying to watch something I need to focus on more and that relaxation and 'background noise' the TV is pushing out is what I really needed - more so than catching up on my recordings or playing a game.
I can't say I have 'interruptions' like work or family (not anymore) to hinder my gaming but having lots of free-time (comparatively) doesn't always mean that 'gaming' is within my options or the best option for me at any given moment. I tend to look at those circumstances, ie not knowing which game to play etc and opting to watch TV as indicative of telling me what is better for me at that moment. Maybe the fact you opt to sit down and watch Netflix as your body telling you, you need to de-stress, to sit down and unwind in that way rather than play a game.

@KratosMD I'm just out of college and was lucky enough to land a job immediately but I remember feeling the exact same for the last two years in college, just being fed up with studying and part-time work and just wanting to work a proper job full time. Keep the head up though, the end will come and then you'll have new problems to worry about but also money for games, consoles etc and time to play them

@KratosMD I sometimes have nightmares about being at school studying, having to revise and write essays. God I'm so glad I'm out of all that. I have a degree actually but I didn't do very well and my job is totally unrelated. I just hated doing all the meaningless work. I know it isn't really meaningless since you get a grade at the end of it but I couldn't get my head round spending all that time working on a project just to have a tutor grade it then chuck it in the bin.

I'm not exactly a high flyer but I work hard, make a difference day to day and enjoy what I do. I'm lucky really. The only real problem is I don't really have the chance to take time off for holidays and so on.

@KratosMD I know the feeling. I've sat in front of my backlog plenty of times, spending more time deciding which game I should actually play than playing the game itself. The result is that my backlog is still quite big.

@KratosMD You gotta love what you do and I always try and go the extra mile. If it stops being fun you might as well quit. There is a lot of variety in my job fortunately and although I wouldn't say i specialise in one particular area I always liaise with specialists and get the chance to ask questions so it keeps it interesting.

I do sometimes wish I'd applied myself a bit more at school though! Sounds like you're a super hard worker, you'll do fine once you're at work.

@Octane As I stated a few posts above I find that I am doing that all to often myself and instead just end up watching Netflix or Youtube.