Azureth
Supreme [H]ardness
- Joined
- Feb 29, 2008
- Messages
- 5,323
Those that have families, how much game time do you get?
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I usually average one hour at night maybe two days out of the work week, and an hour or two on the weekends.
Granted, it's not much, but unlike when I was single, it does keep me from playing nonstop and finishing a whole game in a couple days.
We have our first kid due this summer. Wife and I have a pretty fluid routine of her knitting on the sofa and me gaming between 7 and 9. I'm up a 4am every morning so I'm in bed no later than 915. Once kiddo gets here I expect to get a couple hours in a week, maybe. Doesn't bug me though. I've gamed so much in the past three decades that I feel as though I got my time in. Looking forward to the new adventure that is coming our way.
I can play 2-3 hours a night after the kids go to bed. It helps to have an understanding wife also. Sometimes she will deal with the kids bedtime and tell me to go play. Score!
3 & 5 year old. About an 1.5 hours after they go to bed, and about 1 hour before they wake up on the weekends.
I honestly try to hide my compute time from my kids. During waking hours for the kids, I'm never on my computer, tablet, or smartphone unless I'm looking up recipes or paying bills, and limit myself to about 10 minutes at that.
I think it's fun to Marry a video game more than jumping from one game to another. Like I mastered Borderlands One got to all the bosses looking for secrets hidden quests.
That is the fun part of gaming. The problem with gaming is when you are bombarded by lots of different games at once. You switch from say a game that just came out but you want to finish it but don't have the time. So Marriage and video games work with the right types of games it's easier to play 12 games in your Steam collection that you favorited rather the divide your time up and trying to tackle your entire 300 game list. Even the 12 games you have together might be too much for you to tackle but might break up the system of being bored by the same mechanics from one game.
The top games on Steam are basically the same games that people try to improve on a daily basis the order never changes because people married those Counterstrike and Dota games plus they run well on low end PCs.
I'm not sure why you're hiding it? Seems the average response has something to do with not wanting their kids to see the parent gaming, to not have the kid game, or some amalgamation thereof. Why is that? Is this a modern parent thing I don't understand?
The main reason is that we found that it isolates us, and then we think that's normal. Imagine walking into a room, and you have three people, nose buried in their own devices, sitting there, and not talking, not interacting with one another..in the same room. I don't have to imagine it, because I've seen it.
Now, we do some things together on the PC, but it's extremely limited. Mostly, as I said, looking up information or recipes. We tried games suitable for 3-5 years old, but we found very quickly that they relied on it more and more for entertainment and just passing idle time when they could be doing other things physically.
So we use technology only as a tool. I'm sure when they get older, they well dive into it more, but in the mean time.. I rather play with my kids, grow a garden (spring is here!), read a book, teach them to cook than sit in a room full of family, alone.
I have a 3 month old and a 4 year old and have 560 hours over the past year into Street Fighter 5; averaging out to about 1.5 hours a night. Of course some nights I would skip and on weekends I might play a little more. Just beat Uncharted 4 and getting into Breath of the Wild so I'll be playing that in the next few weeks..or months.
Basically, the kids are in bed by 8pm, I usually then spend 8pm-9pm doing stuff around the house (laundry, lunches, ironing, etc.) 9pm is my hard-stop for that stuff. Then 9pm to 11pm is my time. Fortunately the baby is a great sleeper so I don't have to worry about going to bed too late.
Granted I don't watch much TV as most of my time goes to playing games.
Remember, the average American watches 4.3 hours a night, so a few hours of gaming instead ain't so bad