Gaming through the ages..

[edczxcvbnm]

My gaming habits have changed because I don't have a parent telling me to shut the system off and go to bed. Most games are not that long or involving that I feel the need to stay up late playing them any more. It those unfortunate games like Fallout that keep me playing a bit too late at night on a weekday. Most of the time I look at the time and go "Its getting pretty late. I will just finish this level and call it a night".

I have been gaming since I can remember. My parents old Atari and Commodore 64...and I don't even really remember the Atari other than it existed XP

[Loony BoB]

I can afford more games, therefore I play more games. However, I have less time to play them, and they don't make as many local multiplayer games as they used to, so I'm more often than not either playing on my own, or playing with others through network connections. I miss the days when it was four people all sitting crowded around a single console!

[edczxcvbnm]

I can afford more games, therefore I play more games. However, I have less time to play them, and they don't make as many local multiplayer games as they used to, so I'm more often than not either playing on my own, or playing with others through network connections. I miss the days when it was four people all sitting crowded around a single console!

I miss those days as well. I also think that is part of the reason RockBand is so popular. Get together with friends and rock out. It isn't the same when you do it online.

[Pete for President]

SNES was my first console and I've been playing ever since. Although the last couple of years my taste has hanged quite a lot. I buy less games compared to the PS2 era, and most games I look forward to are the ones providing a deep, enriching single player experience.

[Jessweeee♪]

dedicate my weekend to my friends because we have cars now and can go to each other's houses whenever we want

You play games at their houses right? I mean what else would you do? WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?

We play League of Legends!

[KentaRawr!]

Now that I'm in college I try to be responsible and manage my time. I need to start walking at 7:26 AM to get to the bus on time to get me to campus. But, I have a secret. I tell people I go to bed at 9:00 PM every night to give myself a couple of hours in the morning to get ready. That's a lie; it takes me about 10 minutes to get ready, and I could wake up at 7:16 and be perfectly fine. No, I wake up at 5:00 AM to give myself two hours to play video games every morning, with the false justification of not having enough time to do something productive in that 2 hour span.

Speaking of which, it's 8:50, so I'd better hit the hay!

Edit: To answer the thread's topic, yes, my gaming habits have changed. My gaming time per week has gone from roughly 168 hours to 14.

[Jiro]

Your secret is safe with us.

[Wolf Kanno]

I started gaming on my unlce's Atari 2600 and my dad's PC (probably a Commadore 64) playing stuff like Frogger and Empire. About the time I became really aware of gaming, the NES and Master System were around so I finally begged and pleaded until I got an NES one wonderful Christmas. Between that and playing the hell out of my dad's PC games, I was hooked for life. For a brief rundown of my gaming life, check out this thread. I use to be a huge arcade nerd, but when the arcade scene began to die in the late 90s, I haven't had much time to devote to it anymore outside of DDR, so that's definetly the biggest change for me since trying to find a good arcade is difficult nowadays.

I find that I'm often in the odd predicament where I've lost a lot of time to play games, but it hasn't stopped me from picking them up. I still buy games regularly and I've probably bought more games in the last five years than I had in the first 24 years of my life. So time management is a big problem for me, especially since I get very nostalgic and like to replay my old games regularly. I use to play through the whole FF franchise a before a new entry was released just to give myself some better perspective on where the series had been in the past, but that tradition died around the time FFX was released due to it taking too long to play through all the games since they released most of them by then, and due to other great games vying for my time.

I feel the other difference in my gaming life is that I have most likely grown very jaded over the years, I can't even tell you why or when it started. I think it probably happened around the time of the PS2 but other than that I can't say why it started. It's rare nowadays for a game to consume my existence like the old days. I think Arkhum Asylum was the last new game I played where I never put it down from the moment I started playing, but most other games can't hold my interest like that anymore, which is why I rarely finish games anymore which is sad, cause a few years back, I prided myself on finishing most of my games. Lately, this has all improved though, I've been more passionate about gaming lately than I have been the last year or so, probably because some exceptional games finally came out (or will be coming out) for the Wii, PS3, PSP, and DS; that have me back in my groove. Now, it's just about finding time and not being intimidated by the rather large amount of unfinished games I've left lying around. Still, my goal is to finish at least 20 of these games before the year is over, and to try to hold back on picking up anymore games until I start appreciating my collection again.

[GhandiOwnsYou]

I too started in the Heyday of NES, and kept on going. The big difference now is money and lifestyle. I can finally afford to buy my own systems and game, which is big because growing up I was that kid that was one generation behind because my parents wanted games on the cheap. It also means I get better games, because my parents would also buy the CRAPPIEST games ever. Now I find i go through spurts. I'll play games hard for 6 months or so, hours at a time. Then all of a sudden, I'll just stop, and I won't feel like picking up a controller again for a few months. Also, I've deployed twice in the last 4 years, and there's virtually NOTHING to do on an airfield in Afghanistan but work and play games. I bought a new game just about every day off I got (1 every 14 days), and would usually beat that and whatever my roommate bought (he did the same thing) before my next day off.

Total summary, I played games fairly frequently through my childhood, in Middle/High School I got into RPG's and was a rampant gamer, for a few years after I graduated I didn't play a whole lot, and now I'm a 4-6 month on-off cycle, when I'm not deployed anyway.

[Carl the Llama]

Batman on the ZX81 (thats a ZX Spectrum for you kiddies) was my first gaming experience, and from then on I became obsessed with gaming, nowadays though, 90% of my game time is taken up by MMO's the rest... I generally play little console games unless something special come out (like a new FF for instance) but most of the time I spend playing a variety of MMO's.

[Bubba]

Batman on the ZX81 (thats a ZX Spectrum for you kiddies) was my first gaming experience, and from then on I became obsessed with gaming, nowadays though, 90% of my game time is taken up by MMO's the rest... I generally play little console games unless something special come out (like a new FF for instance) but most of the time I spend playing a variety of MMO's.

Good times, Kaiser! ZX81 was our first console in the house when I was a kid. Fond memories of playing Chuckie Egg, Dizzy, Horace Goes Skiing and Airwolf.

Although, the frustration of waiting ten minutes for a game to load only to have it crash as soon as it was up... I still wake up in sweats.

We've got it so easy these days.