Out of leisure time, I turn to para-gaming

November 14th, 2007

Alas, despite my passion for them, games continue to be a leisure-time-only activity for me. When my job keeps me tied to a desk for every hour of sunlight, the holidays approach, I contract food poisoning, and we decide to refinish a room in the week and a half before guests arrive, I find I have little time to play anything.

Coordinating leisure time with other people, a prerequisite for most games, can become downright impossible. I suppose that’s one reason why MMORPGs proudly advertise the ease of soloing. More importantly, it’s one reason why I, who ultimately prefer the creative fervor of collaborative storytelling with rules (that is, tabletop roleplaying games) spend so much more time playing computer games.

When I find myself so crunched for time that I can barely squeeze out a blog post a week, I nonetheless manage to fit in a bit of game-related activities. Here are my top four:

• Reading gaming blogs (much easier than writing posts) and other game-related media
• Poring over my ever-growing list of games I’d like to try
• IMing with friends about their game time (vicarious leisure > no leisure at all)
• Writing up quick descriptions of campaign settings I’d like to run

So what do gamers do when we don’t have time for real gaming? What para-gaming activities to do you enjoy?

Tobold once observed (and recently reiterated) that the true economic unit of MMORPGs is time. It seems it’s almost inherent to computer games (solo games, too) today that their worth is somewhat measured in how long they take to play. This doesn’t seem to be a characteristic of offline games (although replayability is a big issue).

Why is that?

Entry Filed under: Family, Problems