What prevents you from getting down for a few hours of hardcore gaming?

[KL70]

What (seriously and/or humorously) currently prevents you the most from getting down for a few hours of hardcore game play?

[INoKnowNames]

What (seriously and/or humorously) currently prevents you the most from getting down for a few hours of hardcore game play?

Hm... I'd say Work, followed by School, obligations to friends and family, Working Out, Church... and then Eating and Sleeping and things like that.

[factotum]

The usual unimportant things like work, sleep, and eating...

[Cespenar]

Eating is a non-issue. Work is the primary offender, in my case. Followed by sleep.

[Ogremindes]

What (seriously and/or humorously) currently prevents you the most from getting down for a few hours of hardcore game play?

Right now, indecision. Too many games I want to play, so I just end up watching YouTube for hours instead.

[Logic]

Work, sleep, family, and hygiene. In that order.

[blueblade]

Just about d*mn near everything:

- Work
- Spending time with my partner
- catching up on 'me-only' TV when my partner isn't around
- exercise
- having a social life so I don't feel like i'm spending too long playing games
- XBox getting a RROD that it won't come back from
- The annoying little flash/phone game (there's always one) that I somehow wind up playing for 2 hours when i have the decks cleared for some 'real' gaming

[milleris]

Inbetween work, traveling home, dinner and then speaking with my girlfriend every night I don't get the chance. I get saturdays and sundays where I can game but I have a few hours of obligations each day and after that I feel like I should be doing something else more important. Oh the woes of trying to be a responsible adult!

[KL70]

I hear what people are saying (work, life, etc), but it'd be cool if one can answer from the point of view, of anything humorously and/or creatively witty pertaining to any greatly admired, or even great disliked video game/s you've played and/or regularly play.

[INoKnowNames]

I hear what people are saying (work, life, etc), but it'd be cool if one can answer from the point of view, of anything humorously and/or creatively witty pertaining to any greatly admired, or even great disliked video game/s you've played and/or regularly play.

I'm honestly not sure of this thread's purpose anymore. Are we supposed to be entertaining about things that get in the way of our play time or something?

[Edenbeast]

I got fired in football manager, now I'm looking for a new club, but actually I enjoy my free time atm.

[Traab]

Burnout. Ever since I played a 36 hour session of everquest a decade or so ago, I havent had it in me to really play hardcore. A few hours at a time at best, and nowadays I can only handle an hour or two tops before I need to take a break. Its like the first time you REALLY overdo it on tequila. After that, even the smell of it makes you sick, and binging just isnt an option anymore. Closest I ever managed was vanilla WoW raiding back when I was a part of a raid guild. Even then 4 hour raids were tough to get through after it stopped being new content.

[Craft (Cheese)]

Right now, indecision. Too many games I want to play, so I just end up watching YouTube for hours instead.

Story of my life. I can't stop getting new games to play even though I've never touched half the ones I already have. Only ones I end up finishing are the really short indie titles.

[tensai_oni]

Currently? Responding in this thread.

[factotum]

Right now, indecision. Too many games I want to play, so I just end up watching YouTube for hours instead.

Make a list of all the games you own but haven't played, then randomize the list and start playing from the top!

[Krazzman]

Work, sleep, food n stuff, Spending time with my partner, game-evenings once a week, exercising, other games.

Last friday was the last time i really had a long game session. from 15:00 till 19:00... that's as much of skyrim I can get atm. WoW is a bit more but that i can at least play together with my GF.

[Veridis Quo]

For me it's the usual suspects; school, work, catching up on sleep lost to the previous two, I've also been working through my back catalog of movies.

But when I do find time to play games for long stretches its usually with someone else in the room with me. I manage small hour long sessions on single player games but lately I've only pulled long hours when playing SSBB or Guilty Gear.

[Kjata]

Well, I get lazy and end up watching tv shows on the internet. I work part time, and I play do more gaming on days I work because I feel like I have more to do.

[fizzmaister]

Two jobs
Grad school
Working on a video game hack (which I haven't made progress on since January)
Wooing a girl
Volunteering
Writing a novel (which I haven't made progress on since May)
Sleeping

[Maxios]

These forums.

[DigoDragon]

I have a 4-year old daughter who demands that she get to play the games I play. It's fun watching her attempt to play "Galactic Civilization 2", but this does mean I get no chance to play Skyrim unless I want the equivilent of Navi over my shoulder asking me why the cat-person is fighting a dragon and hey what's that lizard thing called and hey! Hey! Listen! Hey! :smallsmile:

[Shovah]

Right now, indecision. Too many games I want to play, so I just end up watching YouTube for hours instead.

This man speaks the truth.

[danzibr]

My son, who is 18 months old. I love him dearly and wouldn't trade him for anything, but since becoming a parent my gaming time is way down.

[Triaxx]

Hey, they say parents should control what their children are watching. ;)

They said nothing about it being TV.

[Karoht]

I play World of Warcraft. Up until the between-expansions-doldrums kicked in and the guild leader broke it up, I was in one of the top guilds on my server.

I want to say right now, that I don't play "Hardcore" in the stereotyped manner that WoW players have developed a reputation for. I usually only raid for 2-3 hours a night, 3 nights a week. Typically less unless we are progressing on a piece of content. But, I do have things like an above-average achievement score, I've literally completed every quest in the game twice on my main character (that takes some explaining) and have the achievements to prove it. This expansion I managed to kill every boss on the highest difficulty.

I stream my raids now. I've actually got sponsorship now which is actually pretty cool. Those sponsorship gigs are not without their strings, and there are some things the companies involved want me to do do, certain minimum expectations and all that.

What prevents me from playing more than what I do?
Answers spoilered for length.

1-Sponsors

The good news is that they want me to play a variety of games. The bad news is, they want me to stream all of them, and there really aren't enough hours in the day. I'm good at being an interactive host when I stream some games, but others I get too involved in and become less interactive, which I don't personally like. It's a standard I have, it's what my viewers have commented that makes me more interesting to watch. I don't want to lose that, not even if it meant I could quit my job and play games for a living every single day.


2-The Time Commitment VS Skill Arguement.

I'm not going to suggest that if you want to be better at something, spend more time doing it. Yes, practice makes perfect, but only to a point. If that time is not spent well, you really gain little from it. Personally, I prefer to work smarter, not harder. If I'm practicing something, usually I'm testing out new ways and new approaches, not just doing the same thing I always do. To use World of Warcraft raiding as an example, I wouldn't enter 5 man content once I no longer needed to, unless I was testing something out. New talent spec, new glyph, new UI and layout, new enchant/gem/reforging pattern, etc. And I would test these things out, not with my fellow guildies who could run the content in their sleep, but with average people who behaved, well, averagely.
Personally, I would rather be more skilled at something rather than spend more time on it to achieve the same objective. Some people find meaning in spending more time on objective, I am not one of those people. I like to find a solution quickly, solve the problem efficiently, and move on.


3-Experience VS Involvement

While I enjoy being able to say that I'm good at something, the road I would have to take "to be the best" is very different from what I am doing right now.
For example, I have contacts in a guild known as Blood Legion. I could probably join their ranks and push for some World First Achievements. But could I do that with the way I currently play? No.
I run with one main character. Yes, there is dual-specialization in the game so I can fill more than one role with that single character, but that doesn't interest me. I'm a healer. It's what I'm good at, it's what I like, it's what I'm famous for. Would I have to be good at my other possible role? Yes. And more. To join a World First guild, I would need not one really great character but likely 5-10 of them. 5 to actually be pushing major content (and I would have to be good at both specs on each one), and the other 5 would probably be farming and profession characters to support the 5 pushing content.
Let me give you a smaller example.
Back when I was the Healing Lead Officer for Insomniac, it wasn't good enough that I knew my class inside and out. I had to know all the other healing classes inside and out as well. I had to have that knowledge so that I could clearly and effectively evaluate other healers, find out what was going wrong, and fix them as best I could. I liked applying my knowledge to help other players, but this particular application didn't really suit me.


4-Casuals Suck, Hardcores are Skilled, and Other Tripe

You know what really pushes my buttons? Someone saying that because I don't spend lots of time doing something, I must be no good at it.
You know what else really pushes my buttons? People who infer that because I'm good at something and enjoy it, that I must spend gobs of time on it or have no life. I have a life. I have lots of things going on. I have a full time job. I have successful annual events that I run or participate in running.
So when someone makes fun of me for being well progressed in World of Warcraft? Yeah, that isn't something I enjoy.
Fact is, I've pushed some of the hardest content World of Warcraft has to offer. I've carried whole raid groups who's healers had no business being there. I've had my share of recognition for what I do and what I do well. But let me tell you one very big secret.
I've run into players who spend significantly more time than me, who had better gear than me, who called themselves hardcore. And most of them who mouthed off like that? They were embarassingly bad at healing. I knew more about their class and how to play it than they did. Than anyone in their whole guild did.
The words hardcore and casual have less meaning to me each and every day. So my advice, don't take them too seriously. They are poorly defined words in the context of gaming, and have very little in the way of practical application.

[RagingKrikkit]

What keeps me from gaming dawn-to-dusk?

The sadistic bastard known as life.

[Libertad]

Fear of commitment.

[super dark33]

The gameing computer is in my and my brother's room, so i cant play for hours into the night.
I never like to skip meals so it also counts.
My brothers like to play on the computer too so its impossible to do somthing longer then 3 hours or they start getting angry.