The Question of Lessening Gaming Time as One Ages

Flying Time...
I Feel Like I Use to Have More of This...

I’ve noticed something recently, and I wanted to ask if y’all are having a similar effect. When I was younger and starting to seriously get into games — around when I was 12-13 in the mid 80s — I could spend hours, nay, DAYS at a game. I tell ya there was this one time I guzzled a six pack of Jolt Cola and stayed up for five or six days STRAIGHT playing Starflight. Aahh, those were the days.

Fast forward to today. I’m working on several reviews — two for this site, one for PlaySF Magazine — at the moment, and even when I have HOURS to myself…I can only make myself play for two or three hours before stopping. Even if I have all day…I still stop myself. I’ll likely return to the game after an hour or so, but still, what the heck happened?

I’m thinking it’s one of two things. One, my ADHD is getting ADHD’er! ACK! Or…maybe my mind knows better now and is forcing me to take breaks, which might be for my betterment overall.

So what about you guys? Are you finding that this happens to you as you get older, or can you still put monumental amounts of available time into a game in one sitting? I look forward to your thoughts. :) Thanks for reading!

Author: Brian Rubin

6 thoughts on “The Question of Lessening Gaming Time as One Ages

  1. I swear, you wrote this piece with me in mind. Remember I said back in April that I’m starting Starflight, and then I disappeared until now? Yup, life and work got in my way. To answer your question, I find that my free time of 1 hour before sleeping, I don’t feel up enough to concentrate on a game, so I watch TV or anime instead. Also, other adult-y life-y responsibility things eat up a lot of time. If you are wealthy, then you get hit with managing stocks or investment properties etc. If you are not wealthy, you have to manage credit cards or loans or 2nd job. If you have kids, then you have kids. So on so forth.

    I miss my 20’s. Hopefully I’m fit enough when I retire, then I won’t have to worry about work anymore.

    1. Haha, yup, part of me misses the extra time when I was younger, but honestly I wouldn’t trade it for all the money in the world. :)

  2. Starflight I Loved that game spent hours on it others that had me hooked on my commodore64 was sid meier’s pirates and football director … Have had breaks where I wouldn’t play anything for months or years had a time when we had a 4 player football manager game so there was 4 of us doing the same thing … Then there was the gran turismo games hooked again … Then I got my ps2 linked to the net and online pro evo soccer was allways fun as I loved playing human opposition … More recently a game called mag on ps3 hooked me up again but what’s worse is with voice chat I made a lot of good friends that I speak to more than alot of my real friends (sad but true) now playing battlefield3 …. I will say this tho I got kicked out by my girlfriend and lost my job and had to rent a room have no pals near me so those online friends real people some I have met helped keep me from lonleyness just through conversation … Wow I went on there :0) all that from seeing the word starflight lol

    1. Welcome to the blog, Dave! I’m sorry about the loss of your job and girlfriend and such, but I’m glad you’re still being social somehow. :)

  3. I’m the same way. Though I still binge game, go for 2 or 3 weeks without touching a game, then find one I want to play, and sit down for 8 hours straight. Always feel guilty though, like i should be doing something more productive.

    1. What else productive would you be doing? ;) Making time for what we love is very important, it’s productive to our sanity. :)

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