Not Tonight Josephine

I’ve had the most odd experience and it’s taken a while for me to be able to come to terms with it. Yesterday (Sunday, as this post was written) I had the luxury of a few hours spare while Sarah, my other half, watched the tennis on the telly. I came up to my office and sat down at my desk. I looked up at the Xbox 360 and the PS3, I looked at the Logitech G13 controller I use in WoW, I picked up the iPad and put it back down again, and then you know what I did?

I watched a movie! I simply didn’t want to play a game. This has never happened to me before and I was a little surprised at myself! In retrospect I should have clamped the steering wheel to the desk and tried to get to grips with DiRT 3 as the movie I watched – Skyline – was ultimately a sorrowful pile of poop, but hey, you live and learn!

I’ve thought about my sudden and unforeseen disinterest (it’s now passed, you’ll be pleased to learn) and could only put it down to one thing; I’ve overloaded on games!

Over the last few weeks, I’ve been literally — well actually, metaphorically — neck deep in games. I’ve been researching, validating checking, loading and unloading. I’ve purchased, played and pondered, all for a piece of work which will see the light of day later in the year (I believe) and the bottom line is that I started to resent it. Throughout the process I was also committed to completing inFAMOUS 2 with the kind of focus only someone with a mild obsessive disorder can demonstrate and at the end of it all I was, frankly, all used up and wanted to do something else.

I was asked recently on VYou “What’s your fantasy escapist job?” and the response I gave there is about how I felt about the games at that point. My ‘fun and relaxing pastime’ had become a chore and I was feeling a little resentful of that. It’s a strange feeling when you look at something which usually brings you pleasure and you feel something which is, if not diametrically opposed, at least at odds to that usual sensation. I’ve sometimes become jaded with a particular game but usually that’s because some element of the game itself is irritating to me, or there’s a flaw in the story, or the execution, or the controls. Sometimes I even feel that I’m done with a particular genre because I’ve done a little too much — especially over the holiday period. But never with the whole activity, never with ANY activity. It was weird.

I’ve taken some ‘time off’ this week. This typically translates into me doing a bit less work and catching up on the other stuff I’ve been putting off or haven’t had time to do otherwise. During that time I’ve dived into MX vs ATV: Alive and I’m enjoying it immensely — there are a few quirks but I think I’ll bring those in the form of a review perhaps – I’ve also re-engaged, however briefly, with WoW after my self-imposed exile. I’m off to a wedding at the end of the week so with a couple of days of travel, the event and the associated socialising I’ll be away from gaming too. And this is a good thing I feel. I know that when I get back, I’ll be ready to get stuck into the action again and will have fully recovered from my unexpected attack of gaming ‘meh’.

I never thought it’d happen, but perhaps it IS possible to have too much of a good thing!