The GAMING RUSH

It is very apparent to me that we modern humans live life it a state of haste. This I believe has to do with the fact that most of our current lifestyles don’t allow for us to stop or take time to enjoy the simple things this one time experience has to offer us. When you have to deal with Family life, work, school, gym, kids, house hold chores, shopping internet, gaming, and numerous other activities that make up a single day in the life of the modern regular Joe’s life then you can expect that we will not have time to dwell on one specific activity or at least the ones that don’t seem to be the most important. If you understand Evolution, (no I don’t mean what happens to your level 16 Fennekin) then you can think of us modern man as the evolution of earlier man. The thing is that by evolving we lose certain traits that we may have possessed before and gained others that replaced them. We want more we need more to survive than we did before, but the amount of time allotted to us has not changed, so you can see how this can be a predicament, right? IF you take an overall look at what we do in a single day, more often than not it’s more than our predecessors did, but are we really doing better than them or are we just doing more but ultimately achieving less? How do you spend the 24hrs allotted to us per day?
Let’s take a look at my passion for video games for example and make myself the subject of this question.

The modern me does not have that Luxury

When I was a teenager I got my first real home console in the form of a GameCube with a copy of Sonic adventures 2 to go with it. Now I had a choice of the GC or a PS2 at the time and I choose the Cube because I wanted to play Pokémon on it and then I found myself enjoying a few other gems like Harvest Moon: a wonderful life and Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker (two games I still have an original GC copy of to this date).

At that time I had only a few games maybe 10 or 15 games if I remember correctly and I would lose weeks of my life in these unique wonderful experiences. All to experience all that the title had to offer making sure not to skip over any content I couldn’t avoid skipping on my first play-through. In those days I actually completed my games because I wanted to and not just to get it out of the way so that I could play that next game that has been sitting on my shelf for more than a year. You see having a limited amount of options allowed me to focus on one title at a time and really enjoy the experience of being a framer and having a family or the life of a snowboarder while listening to the awesome DJ Atomica of Radio BIG.

The modern me does not have that luxury now that I have 3 home consoles (PS3, Xbox 360, Wii), 2 handheld systems (PSVita, 3DS) and a PC all with full libraries of great titles some of which I have never gotten past the main menu because I have so much other things to do that my gaming passion regularly gets the backseats treatment. These days when I do get to play a game my attention towards it is split I so many places that I may only play for 2hrs at best before moving on to doing something else. As a kid If I got stuck in a game I’d sit there pull out the manual from the case (yep we hand a Physical ones in my day) and read it cover to cover till I found a way to solve my problem. Trial and error along with multiple saves was the staple of my youth and I used it regularly. I remember playing FF7 and saving at the middle of the of the game only to reach 7 more hours in and realize that I had missed something and go back to that save point to redo what I had missed. Now if I’m playing a game and I meet a problem I just leave the title and move on to the next one, and this can become a trend in everyday life too for me as well as others.

we need to remove all the unneeded aspects of our lives and make time to focus on what matters.

In another time a man would live breath and practice his trade till he was a master before he tried something new, if he tried another. This is why we had most masters back then than we have to day. They didn’t have to spend 8hrs in a day doing a job just to get paid so they were able to spend more time learning opening themselves to progress and knowledge. We have access to more information these days than they had and yet many are ignorant and find comfort in their ignorance. The men of the past were able to defy the odds and limitations of their generation and achieve amazing feats. I believe it was because of that amount of focus that they had that many of us now lack. I find it’s important to mention that we can still live modern lives. No need to become a caveman to become focused. All that needs to happen is that we need to remove all the unneeded aspects of our life and make time to focus on what matters to you the “individual”. If that means quitting a job that stresses you out for one that you enjoy doing, then do it gladly and see your life change, see the progress, see the progress and work hard for it. IF you are a gamer then drop some of the titles that you are playing at a time and focus on one at a time making sure to complete each title before you move on to another, well the good ones at least. At the moment I find it possible for me to focus on 2 games at a time so I’ve chosen to focus on AC4: Black Flag and Persona 4.

After I complete either of those games it’s back to Pokémon Y to complete that, then its burnout paradise and Disgaea 3: Absence of Detection. With my new found focus I will complete more games at a pace that I am comfortable with and in so doing have much better fully thought out articles to write about that don’t involve my personal life……… lol.