… or at least we do when we’re not writing about them. Or talking about them with friends. Or reading information about upcoming games from various news sites. Or chatting with friends met in-game on various friendly forums.
Take, for example, right now. I’m sitting at home writing an article for you, the Ready Up reader, to read. This is occurring in the time that I have between me getting home from work, and the time that the ball and chain my loving fiancé returns from work. This is me time, pure and simple. And being a games nut, my me time is usually filled with… you guessed it, playing games. Yet here I am writing a post.
It’s a curious side-effect of being a fan of just about anything, that you end up spending a lot of time talking about or thinking about your hobby when you could actually be doing it. There’s certainly a lot of my time taken up by thinking about one of my other, unmentionable in public, hobbies.
Ready Up: We Talk About Games, Too.
You can see how much people like to discuss their interests; the Internet is heaving with fan sites for all manner of hobbies, sports and activities, from online gaming to basket weaving. Of course, with gaming, unlike a lot of hobbies, you can do it almost anywhere. You can game on an iPod, a PSP, a DS, or any phone with Java on it, and you can be playing for almost every single minute that you spend at home. Imagine an amateur basket weaver commuting home on the bus, surrounded by bits of straw and weaving instructions – they’d be getting some seriously odd looks. People would probably make a naff joke about them being a basket case. After all, I’m a person, and I just did.
Everyone should have a hobby, or so they say.
This makes it all the more curious that we gamers like to talk so very much about games, particularly on the Internet, when, let’s face it, at any time we have a computer in front of us we could be playing one. Here I am writing when I could be playing. (I am, at least, listening to the Pixeljunk Eden soundtrack as I do to appease my frayed gaming nerves)
It’s a classic situation that I’m sure a fair number of journalists find themselves in; they land their dream job writing for a magazine that writes about their favourite hobby or pastime and then end up with less time to enjoy that hobby. Like a man who gets a job writing for Hookers Monthly and then inadvertently finds himself spending more time writing about hooks than actually going out and baiting one. (Hey, what did you think Hookers Monthly was about?)
It is, however, a condition that I’m sure the writers of The Meat Trades Journal (a very real publication) probably don’t suffer from.
To use an example from closer to home, if you look to the right of the page in one of the pics you’ll see a big guy in a brown shirt with a brown background. That’s Dan. He’s the Editor-in-Chief of Ready Up and one of my very good friends. He was personally responsible, like some sort of internet deity, for causing the Big Bang which created Ready Up out of nothingness… in the beginning. I’m glad he did, but the fact is that nowadays he spends so much of his time organising and dealing with this site that the two of us can rarely find time when we’re both available to play an online game.
To quote Alanis Morissette - isn’t it ironic?
An Alanis Morissette quote – isn’t that post-ironic?
All of it, though, the chat, the posts, the forums – it’s all part of the joy of being a fan. Witness two football fans chatting about the weekend’s games on a Tuesday night in the pub – they wave their hands and their eyes light up as they discuss their teams strategies and victories. (Unless they are Newcastle fans, obviously.) There’s no football on – they aren’t watching it or playing it, but sometimes just thinking and talking about your favourite thing is more than just close to the real thing, it’s like you are actually there.
Anyone who witnessed me drunkenly eulogising GTA IV in front of one of our poor (cornered) forum members at the Ready Up meet will know what I mean. Arms waving and smile as wide as a drunken hippo, the passion shines through, and this is why we have this hobby.
We love it.
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May 23rd, 2009 at 12:35 pm
I’ve had the very same realisation and I only play games on Sundays for I don’t know how long… can you imagine what a backlog of games I have? OH MY GAWD!!
I thought Hookers Monthly was a rugby fanzine. I fail don’t I? *sad face*
That drunken ramble was the stuff of greatness! *laughs*
May 23rd, 2009 at 12:38 pm
LOL, I see the little dig in that blog ;D
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:47 pm
Ha ha, that GTA IV ‘discussion’ at the meet was very entertaining. Good times.
May 23rd, 2009 at 3:51 pm
Oh, and, yep, you make a damn good point…….many a time I’ve been feverishly posting and reading about games on the internet, and it has occurred to me that I could actually be playing games in that time instead.
Also, back in the dark days of Championship Manager, there was many a time when I’d be ‘watching’ a football match, but playing Championship Manager at the same time. In those times, my brain must have been constantly faced with the choice between reality and fantasy. That’s not really that relevant……but you’ve reminded me that I used to do it all the time, and it was really quite an odd thing to do.
May 23rd, 2009 at 6:34 pm
Oh man I remember that corner… I was the only poor, missinformed person who wasn’t a fan of GTA IV at the time. I have since been cleaned of my devilish opinions. :)
And I totally agree with you, but luckily I found a loop-hole, my hobbies are writing and gaming. So I can justify both depending on the time of day. ;)
May 24th, 2009 at 8:38 am
On any normal wrk day, I come home, do the usual checking of favourite sites before dinner. Then settle down to read blogs and comments from Ready Up before gaming.
This bank holiday weekend has been different and not just the fact that I’ve been off work and have more time to play games, but because I have spent the last few days in Scotland, staying with the lovely Lorna and Mark (her partner – good people).
So there’s 3 gamers in one house at the moment and we haven’t played any games, apart from mark getting about 20 mnutes on Burnout. We plan to change that today thou. Although, we have talked games and I have been reading Ready Up too so Tony’s comments are spot on, even when not gaming, it’s still part of our daily lives
Does that make us nerds/geeks or are we all just awesome – and ready to handle the apocalypse or any type or horde when it happens?
May 25th, 2009 at 10:17 am
I wouldn’t call myself a “gamer”, although Lorna keeps on telling me that I am :) After the ridiculous amount of hours that I work every day, then once dinner is out of the way, I literally have around two hours to play games before I’m honestly unable to stay awake any longer. For that reason, I like to immerse myself in games that I find worthwhile and which have a high degree of longevity such as Oblivion, Fallout 3, Two Worlds etc.
To most “gamers”, this is heresy! The expectation is that I should be letting clients down by working less hours so I can fit more gaming time in, or that I shouldn’t be “obsessing” over the same type of games or even the exact same games (think I’m nearing the end of my third run through of Oblivion, and I spent weeks unfogging every section of the Two Worlds map). It is their belief that I should be playing as many different titles as possible to increase my gamerscore and to build up my achievements.
The irony about gaming is that it never seems to leave us, no matter how much we (as in me) may protest about being labelled a gamer. On a recent birthday soirée, Lorna, Rook and myself turned up 30 minutes too early and immediately made a beeline for the only games machine in the establishment. We didn’t play it. We huddled around it, as though the myriad of characters within would protect us from those rowdy non-gamer pub types :)
It’s bank holiday, and we’re still debating as to whether or not we’re working or gaming. Life is tough.
May 25th, 2009 at 3:54 pm
There’s so many different types of gamers though. Most people are probably in the same “catergory” as you, Mark, in that they play games for a bit after work. I know that’s what I’ve become from someone who played games all the time. In fact, even with that, I’ve come to realise I play more genres of games than I used to. It began with RPGs when I was in my teens – classic geek, maybe? And then came shooters, racers, puzzle games and probably more. Not sports or beat-em-ups though.
I wouldn’t say that’s “heresy”, just realistic! I’d never play a game just for achievements; it seems like not playing for any sense of enjoyment. And where’s the fun in that?
It’s a Bank Holiday, I have lots of free time… but I don’t have my games at home so it’s OK! :P
January 28th, 2010 at 4:19 pm
Fine blog. I got a lot of great data. I’ve been following this technology for awhile. It’s interesting how it keeps varying, yet some of the core components stay the same. Have you seen much change since Google made their most recent acquisition in the field?