Are video games really my favorite past-time?

It’s a question that has been plaguing me recently. I certainly love them, and I certainly love talking about them. I’ve grown up with them and have never stopped playing them. Yet I wonder if my passion isn’t so much a love as much as a habit. I’m used to reading gaming websites. I’m used to keeping up with release dates and current events. I’m used to buying games whenever I can afford. It has reached the point where Amazon has a buy one get one free sale and I feel the need to purchase something for the sake of saving money on more games. I’m not even buying titles I was in any way eager for.

I’ve been running under the assumption that I’d love nothing more than to be in the games industry in some shape or form. That at the end of the day my ideal career path would be as a games critic or designer. Perhaps these dreams are just residue of childhood illusion that I’ve never been capable of letting go. Going to work every day to help complete simulations for my employer, it’s kind of jarring. In the business world, creation doesn’t actually feel like creation. It’s an eight hour homework session, where all you know is your task at hand and little concern with how it fits into the grand scheme of things. As long as it fits without creating any bugs.

I have no doubt in my mind that this is what video game development feels like, only sixty hours of homework a week.

That leaves the idea of critiquing games. I’ve been using this blog as “practice” for such a job, keeping up with the latest and greatest games while doing my best to tear them down. Yet this is a tough gig when you’re already working a full time job. While I love video games because they require thought, that’s also one of the things that keeps me from wanting to play them all the time as of late. I spend the entire day thinking. Sometimes it’s more enjoyable to just sit down and watch something on television, which will trigger my sensors without any effort on my part. Or perhaps I’ll only have half an hour left in the day to dedicate to gaming, barely enough time to get anything done in a digital world.

Once I’ve managed to complete a game I must then write about it, which is all the more time consuming. If I want to not only write a review, but an entertaining and insightful one, then I need to think about it. As such, this blog hasn’t been quite so fun as I keep judging myself with every keystroke. Hell, I’m looking at that previous sentence already wondering how I can brush it up to sound a tad more fancy.

It has driven me to a realization I’ve never wanted to face before. I am an adult, and while that doesn’t mean I cannot enjoy games, it does mean I must cast aside my childish ambitions and concepts as to what that life involves. If I truly wanted to make games, I’d have done that by now. If I was going to be writing about games for a living, I’d have chosen a different major in College. Most of all, however, if I’m going to be an adult I need to stop buying games with “professional” justifications and do it to have fun.

This doesn’t mean I’m going to stop updating this blog, however. I enjoy discussing games and game design. Yet if I cast aside my ambitions of being some sort of professional writer I’ll stop feeling the pressure to be eloquent and interesting and all that other stuff. In other words, I can actually blog again. I’ll still seek self-improvement where I can, but at the end of the day I just want to have fun writing about stuff.

Part of the problem of trying to be a professionally amateur blogger is that I feel pressured to play the newest stuff as it comes out. If I go back and play older games then I won’t have anything timely or informative to provide my audience. As such, my desires to go back and replay Final Fantasy Tactics or Final Fantasy VII are hindered by a self-imposed sense of responsibility. Instead of enjoying a game I love again, I’m struggling through Duke Nukem Forever with Crysis 2 awaiting in all its mediocre glory.

Playing Ocarina of Time on the 3DS has put things a bit into perspective, though. Sometimes, older games really are better than the new titles. Sure, there’s excitement in popping that new box open, but my time and money would be better spent playing games I know are good instead of ones that are decent at best. While I will not maintain the “good ol’ days” mentality, where everything was better once upon a time ago, there’s still something lost in today’s industry that is prevalent in older titles.

I love good stories in games. I love the non-linear item hunt of Metroid and Zelda. I like old school Japanese RPG’s, and every once in a while a game like Halo comes around and scratches a hard-to-reach itch. I want to buy games that appeal to what I love from now on.

I don’t know whether I’ll be blogging more or, well, as little as I have lately from now on, though. You see, while I want to blog for myself, I still seek to entertain people. With that in mind, I’ve been working on reviving GameLandEtc., to update it regularly again. I’ve also got a team together for an unannounced comic project that I’m very excited about. Lastly, I am trying to coordinate a casual podcast between a friend that’s in a band and another friend that’s multiple states away. Not an easy thing to do.

So what I’m saying is that I’m working on stretching myself a bit too thin with hobbies. At the very least I should be providing content, and when I can I’ll be writing my thoughts about games I’ve been going through.

Hopefully this means everything will be blue skies from here on out. You’ll be kept updated as things develop, be they game related or comic related.

Thank you for your patience, and your support is appreciated.