So I've had a 'Gaming PC' for about a week now and I wanted to write a bit about how that's changed my habits - the advantages and disadvantages that it's brought and the sort of dilemmas I expect to face in the future.

Firstly, this is how it was before: I had a laptop which I could use to play the sort of low-tech indie games I enjoy and I would usually have that set up in the lounge where I also had my TV and various consoles. For all my gaming needs, as well as the internet and such, I could spread out on the comfy chair. Unless I had any big plans elsewhere, my whole evening was at my fingertips.

The new PC which I'm typing on now is set up in the bedroom. There just isn't a good place to put it in the lounge and so now I've suddenly got these two gaming hubs instead of just one place. It surprised me just how much difference this has made to my evening. Now, I get home and wonder - is this a slouch-in-front-of-TV-with-Geometry-Wars-2-while-browsing-the-web-on-the-laptop kinda night or is it more of a PC-only, play-windowed-games-while-on-IRC or write-music-with-MIDI-keyboard or have-a-serious-fullscreen-RPG kinda night? Sure, it's possible to switch computers halfway through an evening and I've done that sometimes but it certainly is a strange thing to have my attention suddenly divided in this way. Suddenly, if I'm on the PC and get an itch to play Super Metroid on Virtual Console, it isn't just a simple case of flicking the TV on. Compared to what I had to do before to switch from one thing to another, it feels like a freakin' military manouevre. I have to switch the PC off, change rooms, turn the laptop on, log back into everything, get settled and so on. In the grand scheme of things, of course, it's really not a big hassle but it's all about perception - it feels like a hassle in comparison to what was before. Even as I type this, that game of Super Metroid is starting to sound quite good - but am I going to bother resituating myself so that I can do it? Nah, it's too late in the evening.

Then, too, I have some decisions coming up. Fallout 3 will be coming out and I need to decide whether the 360 or the PC is the version for me. Oblivion gave me a lot of disc read errors for no good reason on the 360 and I seemed to enjoy it more on the PC, so maybe the PC is the choice for F3 - but then I remember how compelling I found the experience of playing something like Bioshock on the 360. There's something quite physical about playing in front of a TV. If I come to a bit that's particularly exciting or compelling, I find myself out of my seat, creeping closer to the set, perhaps even with my mouth open in awe in a way that isn't really possible when I'm using a mouse and keyboard and am already quite close to the monitor. Then again, that closeness to the screen has its advantages, too - playing through some of Psychonauts this week on PC has revealed little details in the scenery that have passed me by all the other times that I've played it on XBox and 360.

That brings me to another thing. I have mainly been playing my games windowed - and for things like Spore Creature Creator and SCUMMVM running Monkey Island 2 that's just fine. But when I get Fallout 3, assuming I choose the PC version I'm going to want all my screen devoted to it. That means taking my attention away from all of the other windows I'm used to fiddling about with when playing on, say, the 360. I was amazed how reliant upon this I have become. Time was when I was perfectly happy concentrating on just one thing at a time. The first time I played The Secret of Monkey Island that's all I was doing and you'd better believe that it was 2am when the game finally told me to 'turn off your computer and go to sleep!'. It'd be me and the game, for hours a night. As of now I have Notepad open, drafting this blog, a couple of Firefox windows I'm switching between, chatting to a couple of people on Messenger - and even then I'm pondering whether to have Sim City 3000 running in the background. It has been some time since I have given a game my full, undivided attention, and you know what? That's kind of sad. I'm supposed to love games. They're my thing! So how come I can't sit in front of one for more that ten minutes before feeling a desperate need to check if anyone has sent me a message or commented on my blog or created an amusing internet meme?

What I think will happen eventually is that I'll get a second monitor and use one of the screens for games but I'd like to hold off on that for a while, just as an experiment. Because maybe my problem isn't that my attention is divided between my PC-ish bedroom and my console/laptop-ish lounge. Maybe the problem is that I've forgotten how to just enjoy games without doing a million other things at once - and if I cast off all these crutches that I seem to have acquired that now seem like a necessary accompaniment to my gaming then maybe I'd have more fun with each individual game no matter what system I play it on.

So, does that mean that after all this, my conclusion is... STFUAJPG?