Not enought time to game

[RPGnet Columns]

Post originally by EdwardP at 2005-12-14 14:20:18
Converted from Phorums BB System

I agree with this column 100%. Not to brag, but I am in the middle of the following:
Married w/a 2 year old toddler.
Full time 40+ hour/week job.
Part time job painting miniatures - 10-12 hours a week.
Building a second house in my "spare time" on the weekends.

Despite all that, I still try to squeek in at least 1 game a week. However, more oftne than not, I find that people just can't make it as they are too busy. Go figure.

[RPGnet Columns]

Post originally by runester at 2005-12-14 16:36:00
Converted from Phorums BB System

Thanks for the confirmation, EdwardP!

TV seems to be the biggest waster of time, ever! My brother (who no longer games) works 50+ hours a week as a design engineer, 25 - 25 hours a week running his own gym [he'll probably be a millionaire before 40], works out every day, and spends weekends with his girlfriend and buddy's. By the way, he watches less then 2 hours of TV in _week_.

On the other hand, I've ran test games with some adults who loved it and all declared they'd love to get together and play at least a couple of times a month. This never happened, of course. What do they do each evening? Watch TV. When we do go over to visit, they spend most of our visit, watching TV. Apparently they can't tear their eyes away, even while *guests are sitting in their living room*.

In a great book, "Flow: The Psychology of Optimal Experience" by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, the author describes an experiment. During a normal week of life, participants were polled at random times and asked to rate their own happiness on a scale. The results: people were LESS happy while watching TV then while engaged in a challenging activity, often their work or a hobby. It turns out, that TV is far too passive to be really enjoyable.

I also see a sick sort of irony in a TV generation, sitting passively by themselves in front of the glowing box for hours, teasing gamers as social misfits. You know, the social misfits that sit around a table together and socialize and interact for hours at a time while exercising both their creativity and problem solving skills. Yeah, those ones.

;^)

http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0060920432/qid=1134606504/sr=8-1/ref=pd_bbs_1/103-6826116-3657462?n=507846&s=books&v=glance