Gaming Without Playing

A long, long time ago in a blog post far, far away I once started writing a diary for my gaming insomnia. This diary would then be broken into three sections and turned into three successful blogs, the first two sections (Single Player & Multiplayer) in which an undeserving Guitar Hero controller was unfairly destroyed and too many illegal drinks consumed, the third part’s logic however quickly broke down because I stopped gaming and diary-ing.

This left me with the dilemma of how to link the previous two blogs with this third installment which is almost totally different, and after many weeks of pondering I came up with the ideal answer: change the title of the blog, and mention that the following was written very late at night/very early in the morning, depending on your perception of time. There we go, that ought to cover it.

The biggest problem I have with late night gaming is that even my brain’s functions, with many years of extensive training to run on the most minimal amount of sleep, eventually begins to deteriorate by this hour in the morning. Eventually, and arguably inevitably, I not longer possess the mental capability to play a game at any kind of competent level. This leads me to playing games which I know I don’t really have to play, but instead can just waste hours moving my fingers to make colours and shapes move on a screen. No, I’m not talking Farmville (I will never be talking about Farmville, ever!) – I’m talking games which I can turn into my own playground completely separate from the game’s perceived notion of entertainment and fun. For example: Kingdom for Keflings on XBLA:

This is the final chapter of what I resort to on those cold, lonely nights of sleep deprivation. I sprawl whatever happens to be in my mind across whatever virtual plain will have it. I dare not imagine what will occur when I finally dive head-first into Minecraft on a late night stay-up-a-thon. It’s actually these mindless, pointless yet ambitious tasks that I do sometimes that get me to sleep eventually. It makes me fearful of the day I leave higher education and find myself passing out every ten minutes as I’m stacking shelves at my local Blockbuster out of sheer habit.

If there were a message I would want to get across here it’s this: next time you awake to the blaring sound of your alarm clock next to your bed and you’re left with a deep seated feeling of dread and fatigue about the day you have ahead – be a little grateful. Not a lot, I’m not asking for £2 a month, but just a little bit before you drag your sorry ass into the shower. Why? Because while you take that first sip of burning hot coffee in the morning wondering how you’re going to plough through another day, I’ll be surrounded by a pile of empty cans, on Command & Conquer: Red Alert arranging turret guns in comical fashions, wondering how I’m going to find the energy to get myself through another day.