Gaming as a life-long hobby - Thoughts from the 25+ crowd

[mjmjr25]

I find my daily activities center more around gaming. Not necessarily the act of playing, but the reading about, the hunting down, the buying of, the trading for. It seems like I am devoting more time and energy on a hobby than my families needs. Now, I'm not neglectful, depriving necessities, but feel very guilty over why I can't devote the same time/energy to my family as I do gaming.

This is something my wife could easily say about me, and something i've half-thought myself.

It's important to note, the things you are describing are all different. Reading is a hobby, posting is a hobby, scavening for deals is a hobby, collecting is a hobby, and gaming is a hobby.

I take if further, I do wood-working centered around my gaming, and my kids and I do art projects with gaming settings, etc.

If some in your family are not fans of gaming, then to those people, everything you do is gaming. I would do my best to articulate that gaming is a centerpiece, but it is in fact multiple hobbies that can be applied to any centerpiece. If you'd rather read a gaming mag than a romance novel, you should. It's still reading. If you'd rather shop for video games than clothing, it is still the hobby of shopping, but to an outsider or someone who doesn't like gaming, it is just more time on the gaming hobby - that isn't wholly fair.

All that said, I am an addictive person and no matter what hobby i've gotten into, i've always dove in to excess (per others). I've been into beanie babies really heavy - research, books, display cases and collecting. Same thing with German Smokers and Nutrcrackers, same thing with wood-working, sewing and crocheting, same thing with gambling and alcohol. I think if you are able to pull yourself away for a few weeks and evaluate where you are really at and what really brings you enjoyment, you'll find a more comfortable median.

Whenever my wife tells me tone back on the gaming, I always tell her i'm happy to go back to the kegerator and 1994 Ty graded beanies.

[o.pwuaioc]

Guys, I think we need an intervention for Mick's serious gambling alcohol crocheting addiction.

[sevin0seven]

I'm 5'5''... I can reach those games fine. It's just some of those boxed accessories I need a boost for.

sevin0seven, give that boy a boost.

...looks like Luke is already helping him.

[noiseredux]

hahahaha, outdid yourself again Mark!

[mjmjr25]

The Art of Noiseductions pic on the left wall is superb, Mark! Love it!

[J_Wil]

I'm roughly in the same boat as a few of you guys. I'm 32 years old and active duty Navy (5 years in). With the hours I put in at work, playing more than a couple of hours a week is a rare occasion. I don't often get much actual game time in but when I do it's generally on a weekend my girlfriend is away visiting family. I spend A LOT of my personal time reading about game-related subjects, trolling thrift stores on Saturday mornings, and searching various auction sites for good deals on a daily basis. Sometimes it's a bit embarrassing that my game collection takes up half my living room (even being as compacted as it is). I ask, "why do I need all this crap?" I went through a period about a year ago where I seriously considered giving it all up because I simply didn't have time to play anything (as I've spent the better part of the last 3 years deployed). I couldn't bring myself to sell anything though. A big part of the reason is that I didn't have much of a relationship with my father growing up. the best memories I have of him are getting up early on Saturday & Sunday morning (on weekends that I spent with him) and playing NES & Genesis games pretty much all morning. I think I hold onto the hobby mainly because of that. I just can't imagine living without gaming in my life in some capacity.

I hadn't really done any collecting aside from what I intended to play immediately between 2007-2011. I started after I got my first job in high school and pretty much bought anything I wanted but never got as a child that could finally afford on my meager paycheck. I stopped and sold a good chunk of it off, including all my JAMMA PCBs (which I'm still a bit saddened by) after losing my job in 2007. At that point I enlisted in the Navy and gaming was pretty much on the back burner. I hadn't even considered collecting because I had a lot of debt to pay off. I got my life together and later I got back into it after my last deployment concluded in August of last year and I can't remember a time when I had so much fun or experienced the thrill that I get treasure hunting through thrift stores.

To most of the people I interact with, I am as weird as it gets. They don't understand it so that makes me a bit of an outcast in my circle but I refuse to feel shame for being active in a hobby that I enjoy because it's not hurting anyone and I'm not putting myself in debt because of it, although I need to tone down on how much I spend every month. I think I do have an addiction to the collecting side of things because I buy stuff I know I'll never play just to pad the number of games I own. I do feel some shame in that I devote more time/energy/money to the hobby than I do on my girlfriend and she certainly lets me know about it. I'm trying to balance that aspect. There are times I wish I hadn't picked up the collecting hobby again because I feel like it becomes an obsession and I could certainly be doing more productive things with my life outside of work. Still, it's probably the one thing that I have consistently loved throughout my life and continues to hold my interest, even after 24 years since I 1st picked up an NES controller. I love so much about gaming culture. I still play everything from NES to the present. I have never really been able to get into the simplicity of games from the Atari era but I still love to collect for the system just because I like the artwork on the carts.

EDIT: I should probably mention that my girlfriend has ZERO interest in gaming. She doesn't give me any crap about my habit except when it interferes with her "me time" i.e. taking her out, giving her back rubs, or cuddling on the couch. Still, she thinks I'm nuts and maybe a bit immature for having so much. I own roughly 30 consoles and over 1100 physical copy games and I'm at the point where a dedicated room is necessary to house my videogames. I have no idea when or if I'll say "enough is enough".

[emwearz]

Curious if anyone has had something similar happen to them. My girlfriends ( of 5 years, makeup artist with no interest in gaming ) mother often introduces me to younger people at family events by saying I collect "vintage games". She is really lovely, an academic with great people skills.

I understand she is trying to create some form of common ground between two people to start a conversation, not that I am ashamed that I collect games, I love gaming and I am proud of it. But I don't like it being used as if it is my defining attribute. It would be like me introducing her as " This is Barb she has 20+ shelves of books."

[wip3outguy7]

Curious if anyone has had something similar happen to them. My girlfriends ( of 5 years, makeup artist with no interest in gaming ) mother often introduces me to younger people at family events by saying I collect "vintage games". She is really lovely, an academic with great people skills.

I understand she is trying to create some form of common ground between two people to start a conversation, not that I am ashamed that I collect games, I love gaming and I am proud of it. But I don't like it being used as if it is my defining attribute. It would be like me introducing her as " This is Barb she has 20+ shelves of books."

My sister-in-law does this with me all the time. Any time my niece has a new boyfriend who happens to be into games, my sis-in-law will take me by the arm and proudly introduce me to them as the "game collector". Never mind that I'm in my 30s and this person is usually in their late teens. Add to that that most of what I have collected was new and popular when this guy was in diapers.

[chupon]

Price seen that room before. If I recall it's some kid in Boston with too much money. And I'm totally jealous.

*Edit - WTF this reply was for a different thread. Not sure how it got here. Disregard.

[Key-Glyph]

I guess the question is: what "spaces" in a home are generally deemed "appropriate" for storing/accessing large collections (regardless of how prominent/discreet they are in those spaces)? It seems that rooms that are used for other purposes (sleeping/entertaining) are out of the question, but what about dens/garages/etc.?

This whole discussion fascinates me because I've learned, from moving from apartment to apartment, that the accepted purposes of rooms (as well as the square footage allocated to each type by the architects) tends to clash with how I'd be happiest setting up my spaces.

I wanted to explain by using the example of my previous one bedroom apartment, but in writing it sounded awful! That's where the stigma comes in. It was definitely homey, clean, and organized, but it was not suitable for entertaining (e.g. there was no couch, since I prefer to sit on the floor) and it often didn't conform to room expectations (e.g. the "dining room" was completely devoid of dining furniture and housed desks and computers instead). It's made me think about how, growing up in my parents' house, rooms were clearly designated by one central activity -- eating, sleeping, watching television/reading -- and how those rooms had their space filled mostly with furniture specific to those activities. Matching furniture, even.

I was perfectly happy with that back then, but I also had creative freedom with my bedroom, which was more of an "everything room that happened to have a bed in it" than anything else. I suppose that was a microcosm of how I would live as an adult, because now that I'm in charge of carving out my own setups, a very ordinary thing like a dining room table can suddenly seem like a huge waste of space in a main area with other potentials. I struggle with wanting to have the "nice" areas visitors expect, but also wanting to construct my areas in practical ways to how I live.

For those of you who have shared your gaming setups, I'd be interested to hear more details. Are your setups generally in rooms separate from the main areas? Are they confined to areas like basements? Do you spend a lot of your time in those other rooms? Does that isolate you from the rest of your housemates? If your houses/apartments more "open" in layout, how does that affect things? And so on. Dsh answered a lot of these already.