The Aging Gamer: Sometimes I Can’t Even Pick Up the Controller

In this weekly column series, I will talk about my gaming habits and how they have changed over the past twenty-some-odd years. I started my gaming career on the SNES and now I am twenty-eight years old. I mainly play on the PlayStation but dabble with some PC games from time to time. This week, I take a look at a more frequent choice of playing nothing at all rather than trying to decide on a game.

I am a pretty busy guy. Between my real job, hanging out with the wife, and managing my other small business, I don’t have a ton of time to game. My usual routine is to wait until my wife goes to sleep around nine-thirty each night to then tend to my creative endeavors. That only leaves a couple hours (sometimes more if I am not feeling exhausted) to play games.

It can be a struggle sometimes to decide on what I want to play given my limited amount of time. And other occasions I focus my energy on managing my other projects, so I don’t fall behind. As I am writing this now, I was playing some Mayhem on Destiny 2 and wanted to stop before it got too late, so I could write this up. It’s all about time management and it can get crazy sometimes. But there are moments where I don’t want to play anything at all.

Sometimes, I find myself not having any obligations for the night and just don’t have the urge to play anything. I don’t even want to turn my PlayStation on. It feels weird to me because I have all these great games but no motivation to play them. I would rather slouch in my computer chair and watch Youtube videos or fiddle around in Garage Band or Game Maker.

It also perplexes me because sometimes throughout the day, all I am thinking about is logging in and doing that one quest or beating that one level. Then the time comes when I have the opportunity and decide against it. It’s kind of a ghastly feeling as if I am betraying all my games. Why can’t I just boot up the ol’ PlayStation and jump right in? The answer is simple: I have no idea.

I don’t like this feeling. I love playing games. I have loved it for the past twenty-something years. It has been a huge part of my life and continues to be an activity that I really enjoy. But it seems like sometimes I can’t find the will to pick up the controller at all, even if I have a few hours. I am attributing some of it to just growing up I guess and morphing into an adult. It’s not all that bad but it is definitely something that I have started to notice about myself. Maybe the endgame is to put down the controller for good one day. Who knows?