Quarter-Life : How Gaming Habits Have Evolved in My 20's

As I speed through my 25th year of life on this planet, I've started reflecting on a lot of things. Most recently, my gaming habits and how they've changed over the years. From the pixelated platformers that helped occupy my free time as a child, to my parentally regimented gaming hours in my adolescent stage, to my high school obsession and dedicating entire weekends to JRPGs, it all seems so long ago. These days, I'm lucky if I can get in an hour or two a day without interruption, and that's not to mention other, self-imposed deadlines like this one. Instead of long, plot-filled, story-driven titles like Final Fantasy, Persona or The Elder Scrolls, I often find myself content to play through a few matches of Titanfall or Street Fighter, or bang out a couple quick levels of an indie title like Bastion or Octodad. I started wondering if it was my taste that had changed over the years, or if something else about me had.

Needless to say, I wouldn't be writing this blog if I didn't love video games almost as much as I love writing almost as much as I love having an opinion about things. Video games are a pillar of my life that I've clung to since round about age 4. In my childhood years, they filled the gaps between school, homework, dinner, and bed. On my weekends, I would often have friends over, or visit them at their houses, so that we could play something 2-player like Sonic the Hedgehog or Mortal Kombat.

As I got older, I became less of a star-student and started spending more time with my games. In middle school my parents started to restrict my access, and impose time limits on how much I was allowed to play per day. This in no way discouraged me, and quite possibly had the adverse effect that they were hoping for. Instead of finding other ways to occupy my time (by doing homework or reading), I instead looked for ways to cheat the system and try to squeeze in more game time.

By high school, I was a lost cause. Combined with my obsession to fill as many free minutes as I could gaming, my parents had finally set up DSL in our house which served to give me unrestricted access to the internet. I could now research how to beat games, which ones were worth playing, and talk to other gamers. However, I wasn't yet able to experience the thrill of online multiplayer, as most of my computers were hand-me-downs that were already roughly four years old by the time I got to touch them. They weren't exactly up to the task of running anything more complex than StarCraft: Brood War or Diablo 2.

What I've found puzzling is this: what happened between age 18 to age 25 that's caused me to drop from eight hours a day to one or two? Well, there's several answers.

1. Social Life – At some point after my brief college schooling, I began to build a rather small social circle. I found myself wanting to hang out with my friends in all my spare time, instead of locking myself away in my room with my games. It's true my friends were gamers, but multiplayer has such a different feel to it than an involved single-player experience. Multiplayer is specifically designed to be an interesting and often adrenaline-fueled distraction for roughly 10-20 minutes at a time. Single-player campaigns can take tens (or in the case of JRPGs, hundreds) of hours to complete.

2. Work – While school owned my ass from 8am to 3pm, it left me a good chunk of afternoon to do whatever I wanted with. These days, working takes a whole 8 hours out of my life, from 10am to 6pm, plus travel time. In winter, this often means that the sun has set long before I leave the building and by the time I get home, all I want to do is relax. For some, gaming is quite relaxing, but since my favorite titles tend to be action-filled thrill rides, more nerves and adrenaline is often not exactly what I'm looking for.

3. Relationship – I'm currently living with a wonderful woman who brings out some of my best qualities and helps lift me up when some of my less admirable ones rear their ugly heads. I'm very much in love and enjoy spending time with her. Yet again, this is another element of my life in which gaming is common ground, however we have very different tastes. Where I enjoy the quick pace and visual aesthetic of action games, she tends to prefer more open-ended sandboxy titles.

This all really brings me around to my conclusion which is: Time. At 25, I just don't have the expendable hours in my day to sit down and play anything that isn't already broken into 30-60 minute intervals. The other aspect is that I enjoy gaming so much that I desire to cram as much excitement as possible into as short a period of time.

That being said, I do have some favorites that see a lot of play, due to the fact that they satisfy this need extremely well.

Titanfall – I've been rocking this game since the launch that I didn't plan for. Matches are fast-paced, movement is fast-paced, and, well, GIANT ROBOTS. In about an hour, I can knock out a good solid 3-4 games of Hardpoint or Capture the Flag and feel invigorated and like I've accomplished something.

Street Fighter – I had a very brief glimpse into the fighting game community in my early years after high school. I love the competitive head-to-head combat and the quick reflexes and deep strategy required. Unfortunately, I'm pretty much shit at all those things, so I've mostly relegated myself to watching live streams of major tournaments. That doesn't mean I don't like to hop online and dick around every once in a while. Games often take less than 5 minutes to complete, plus practicing execution in training mode, and a little bit of arcade/story mode and I can feel like I've done something to better myself in video games.

Diablo 3, Borderlands 2, Torchlight 2 – Okay, these games are kind of the black sheep on my list of “low investment, low-mid reward”. All of them have tens of hours of campaign gameplay required to reach completion. However, one thing kind of unifies this type of game and that's “lootfest”. Grinding out a single dungeon in these games can easily lead to one or two upgrades to my equipment and that's just enough to leave me satisfied. Of course, their addictive gameplay will always leave me wanting more, but that's why I keep playing.

By no means will I ever stop gaming.  I love this entertainment medium too much to abandon it all together, despite my absurd amount of other hobbies.  What it does mean, is that I may be demoted to the level of "filthy casual" as I try and squeeze in what I can when I can, and it may occasionally be lighter and fluffier than Castlevania: Symphony of the Night, or Dark Souls.  Wherever my gaming and/or game journalism career ends up, you can be sure that I'll still be here sharing my thoughts on Zero Tolerance years from now.

Who knows?  Maybe I'll end up doing a follow up in 20 years?  We could call it Half-Life.