Anyone ever take a huge break from gaming?

[The Last Horseman]

A month or two every couple of years. Not as much that I don't want to, as much as I sometimes get kinda burned out, or have too much to do. I've gotten to where gaming is my escape from any trouble, so I try to game whenever I can, just to get away. I know I'll probably fall out on my gaming in college, and I doubt I'll find a girl anytime soon that will let me play ... but I doubt I'll ever completely quit. I might stop collecting, but never stop playing.

[Inazuma]

...for 'playing games too much'? Really? THAT's IT, YOU'RE ENJOYING YOURSELF TOO MUCH. YOU'RE GROUNDED.

I could maybe understand if they felt it was affecting your grades at school or something, but if 'playing games too much' is all it was then that's just ridiculous

I got a NES with Super Mario Brothers/Duck Hunt for my 6th birthday and video games instantly became my life. All I wanted to do was play them and I did just that, as much as I could. I went to school, did my homework, got good grades, ate properly, bathed daily, went to sleep on my bedtime, etc., but all of my free time went to video games. I had no other interests until much later in life when I got into anime.

Both of my parents never liked or understood video games. They never showed any interest in playing them or learning about them, despite it being the only thing their son did. Instead they hated video games and would always tell me how bad they were, etc.
You could imagine how bad that would make me feel. It was a constant problem for us.

I was a very well behaved kid but they would use anything they could as an excuse to ground me, which of course meant no video games. All it did was make me more determined to play video games. Even though I wasn't allowed to play video games, I would try to figure out a way to play them some other way, such as going to a friend's house, an arcade, or playing portable Game Boy games outside.

If there was no way for me to play games, I would just sit on the floor in my room, facing my TV (that was turned OFF) and pretend that I was playing video games. It pretty much made their punishment worthless and I was happy about that. I was either gonna play video games and be happy or pretend to play video games and be unhappy around my parents so they knew it.

[Hazerd]

from 2005-2009 was pretty much all World of Warcraft for me, no consoles.

Picked up a PS3 Slim in early 2010 then a Wii at the end of 2010, still want to get a 360 but waiting for the right moment and deal.

[DAAAAA!!]

i lost all interest in games at like age 15.... around 16 1/2 i dicovered retro games ;D

[EllertMichael]

(To help put this in a time frame I'm currently 26 years old.)
I sat out most of the 6th generation. I did have a PS2 but it died pretty quickly. My NES stuff disappeared over the years and I foolishly sold off my N64 stuff for peanuts. I pretty much only had a finicky Genesis and my Game Gear and they didn't get a lot of attention for a few years. After high school my uncle gave me his Saturn that I used to play growing up and that kind of revitalized my interest in gaming. Not long after I got a call from a friend I haven't seen in a while who asked if I wanted his old video games because he was moving. Back in elementary school we used to go to his house and game EVERY SINGLE DAY after school. So these were games and consoles that I grew up playing on. The box contained a Top loading NES, a Genesis/CD combo and a ton of games. This insta-collection got me into collecting games and for a few years I had what I refer to as my "quarter-life crisis" where I was buying up all the games I wish I had growing up and at the same time discovering a lot of great games I never knew about. Having a good friend who is also very passionate about gaming and collecting absolutely helped fuel the fire and got me into Japanese imports and shoot-em-ups, specifically for the Saturn. Modding my Saturn to play backups is what brought me to the Racketboy site.

The regret I have about the time period in which I took a break from gaming is that game stores were still carrying retro games and phasing them out for cheap. If I had all the consoles I have today during that time I'm sure I could have taken advantage of some really great deals.

[hashiriya1]

On and off (mostly off) from 1998 to about mid 2008.

[RyaNtheSlayA]

When I was quite a bit younger (10, so 2003ish) I had some gaming compulsion issues and my parents weren't particularly happy about that so I didn't play games for a good year.

[AdamGomez1987]

I love gaming but unfortunately I haven't been gaming as hard since these past few semesters of college, otherwise I'd be going through my old school PlayStation games and conquer one after the other.

[Flake]

Haven't touched a game for more than a couple minutes for weeks. I've started playing Warhammer 40K and it's kinda dominating my attention.

[Xeogred]

Haven't touched a game for more than a couple minutes for weeks. I've started playing Warhammer 40K and it's kinda dominating my attention.

And your wallet too I bet.