There’s a time for everything. When I’m grungy, I shower. When I get the shakes, I drink. When my stomach grumbles, I eat. And when I damn well feel like it, I game — most of the time. It’s this last one that I have some trouble with. For me, gaming can lead to looming guilt, set in motion by a few different scenarios.
Guilt-inducing and/or annoying situations include:
1) When a girlfriend walks in on me and I have a microphone attached to my ear, the better to argue with other players during an online game. Sometimes I’d feel more comfortable with her catching me doing something else by myself.
2) Seeing the sun shine through my window on a Spring day three hours into a new game’s campaign. This is the toughest one for many of us. The fact is, we probably shouldn’t be gaming in this circumstance. Try freestyle walking! Actually, don’t.
3) Trying to describe my love of gaming to non-gamers that imagine my life as a real version of the hit motion picture Grandma’s Boy.
4) When relatives picture me playing the Atari 2600 or some other antique gaming system every time I say I’m reviewing a game. “Oh, that’s great, Tony. You know, I remember when your father played that game Pong on the table thingy with the knobs,” my Aunt Maryrose says in her best Edith Bunker voice. “Are you reviewing that one?”
5) Putting more importance on the release date of an upcoming game than getting groceries for my apartment.
Pong: rotting brains and ruining eyes since ’72.
These are just a few off the top of my head that bother me; I’m sure you have your own. But the majority of my guilt stems from what was engraved in me and many others as kids:
“Video games will rot your brain,” a million mothers proclaimed to their children all at once.
Gaming is one of the most enjoyable activities I engage in as an adult. It’s an escape, a creative vent, a loop hole in my stressful life. But molding gaming around an actual adult life has been a learning experience through trial and error. The times are much different for adult gamers than when we were kids, when we had little or no responsibilities. Summers off with nothing to do? Turn the air up and play Nintendo guiltless for the entire afternoon why don’t you? I did. Hell, Mom would even cook me and my buddy grilled cheeses while we put down the controllers for a 20-minute hiatus.
It’s much different now. Looking for jobs, planning out my budget for the month, paying bills, these are but a few of the normal responsibilities the adult me faces daily. So how much time gaming time can an adult feel comfortable with? It’s up to the individual, but for me, I don’t think I’ll ever figure this one out. The dirty looks from Dad as my aunt told the young me that my eyes would go blind will be a constant fixture in my brain until arthritis prevents me from holding a controller. Or I go blind, whichever comes first.
I’m aware that playing games in the middle of a sunny Spring day probably isn’t the best way to spend my time on a day off. Sometimes I do it and sometimes I don’t.
“Push it to later that night, perhaps,” I tell myself. “Go for a bike ride and get some exercise.”
So I do. I do these things.
I smell the damn grass being cut. I feel the stupid air on my face in the middle of my mountain bike ride. I give a friggin’ “what’s up” to the orange, leathery steak lifting weights next to me at the gym. And I go to the dumb supermarket to buy my food.
Why? Because feeling guilty sucks.
The Guiltiest Gamer 