Oh man! I finally get my grubby little hands on a next-gen gaming console and NOW I can’t even find the time to play it! It’s kind of eating me up inside. I do have certain family-related responsibilities so it’s an eternal battle between good and evil, yin and yang, Vader and Luke! On the lighter side, the kids are getting great use out of it because of our Netflix subscription. They have an endless library of kiddie shows to consume. The wife and I can watch old movies and whatever else is available in my “instant queue”. On the darker side… I’m just not playing as much games as I’d like.

As of date, we have a couple decent games in our collection (my son and I):

• Grand Theft Auto IV
• Lego Batman
• Lego Star Wars: The Complete Collection
• Pure

My main motivation to get a next-gen system was to experience GTA IV. The irony of my purchase is I feel very outdated whenever I post a microblog or status update about it. So; all the fun I’m having with GTA, I have to keep it to myself. The Xbox came with Lego Batman and Pure. We presented those games as a present to my son, Alex, for his birthday (over the weekend). So; now we’re playing those games.

I’ve also tasted the sweet nector of “Game Demos” with such titles as:

• Mass Effect 2
• Batman: Arkham Asylum
• Just Cause 2
• Split Second
• Forza Motorsport 3
• Iron Man 2

I first tried Iron Man 2 with the thought that maybe this could be a good mini-game for Alex to play with. Wow; what a god awful game! I quickly removed it from my system. It actually felt nice cleansing my system of such a badly created game. My brother ranted on and on about how awesome Arkham Asylum and Just Cause 2 is. I can certainly agree. Arkham Asylum is a lot more fun that I thought it would be and the darkness of that world is very engaging.

Funny; while writing this post I realized that I actually have played a lot of games, but in my head… I want MORE!

Rub it in Why Dontcha’

To make my late purchase even worse, about two weeks after I finally bought an Xbox 360… the NEW Xbox 360 was announced at E3! It has 250 GB of hard drive space compared to my 120 GB AND it has built-in wifi. I paid $100 for that stupid wiki adapter I have plugged into my console! Damn I feel more and more outdated!  So; we’re going to see if we can give back the outdated Xbox to BestBuy and get the new console. It’s releasing this week.

Engaget has a good article explaining what’s new with this slim version of the console.

I wanted to make it known to the world, that I have officially given in to the “World of Responsibility” and no longer into the World of Warcraft.   Yes, sad to say – my three young kids (ages 3, 2, and newborn), wife, full-time job, and Internet consulting business has caught up with me – backing me into a corner and yelling into my face saying, “WE TAKE PRECEDENCE OVER VIDEO GAMES AND YOU WILL NO LONGER RUN YOURSELF INTO THE GROUND TO PLAY!”  This is the milestone in my life when I have completely converted from a hardcore video game player to a casual gamer (aka Old Man).

The only games I play now are Xbox (original) games with my son, on the weekends, and stupid Facebook applications.  I still have WoW installed, but it’s realmlist has been changed to a private server.  So whenever I do have some free time (like never) I can jump on with no commitment to a guild or to my wallet and kill about an hour or so.  IM me if you want to know which private server I’m on.

The only technological thing left in my life is Linux… oh sweet Linux.  I’ve been running Fedora for almost a full year now and it’s been a glorious-open-source-tech ride.  There are games there, like Urban Terror (it’s an FPS), and a lot of other casual games like: Chess, BlackJack, Mines, Tali, etc.

What’s Your Story?

I know I’m not the only guy to go through this transition in his life.  Share your story with me, post a comment and let me know how hard it’s been for you to finally, or forcefully, to be removed from the realm of gaming!  And now the only game you play, is The Game of Life.

I borrowed my brother’s Xbox to entertain both me and Alex (3-year-old son) last night.  I let him play “Cars” and I patiently waited for him to go to bed so I can play “Forza” – by falling alseep on the floor – genius!  After vigorously playing my campaign mode, acquiring three new cars, levelling to 10, and decaling the mess out of two cars I realized that I should not be going to bed some time after 3:30am.  I have too many things to do, in the morning, and video games is NOT one of them.  I must have played a straight 4-5 hour session and didn’t realize it.  Sure my fingers hurt, but it wasn’t an indication that I’ve been playing too long… just that I needed to not put so much pressure on the buttons.

Well; a couple thoughts went through my head and one of them was I may be getting too old for video games (currently 29 years old).  My life is laced with responsibilities and it’s hard for me to switch up routines.  For example, my wife said, “Yah, it looks like you have time to play video games in the morning, on the weekends.”  What!?  On the weekends – that sounds like I’m in school or something.  But she may be right.  I work a full-time job (that’s very stressful), I run an Internet consulting company and I have two small kids.  That’s enough to take up ALL my time.

Stress Level

Plus I realized that I was still a little stressed after playing because of the amount of concentration I need to run the courses.  For my stress-level I need get-along games like World of Warcraft to play and not intense-driven games.  I’ll find a balance…isn’t that what stress-level is all about, finding the balance!?

So; that brings me to my other thought and it’s me getting into the gaming industry.  The plan was to start making my attempts once my wife went back to work.  It’s too risky to switch careers now, but I thought if my life just isn’t going in that direction anymore.  Hmm, me without video games – what a concept!?  I’ll just wait it out and see what unfolds.