[
Editor's note: We're not just a (rad) news site -- we also publish opinions/editorials from our community & employees like this one, though be aware it may not jive the opinions of Destructoid as a whole, or how our moms raised us. Want to post your own article in response? Publish it now on our community blogs.]
As I write this, I'm running on roughly four hours of sleep. Not because I was partying last night, and certainly not because I was gaming.
I was awakened at 4AM by my three-year-old daughter who was having difficulty breathing and could only describe it as "my mouth hurts" followed by gagging and wheezing. She's OK. It was a croupe, common in kids her age and exacerbated by the wildfire smoke that's been filling Santa Cruz for the past week. A few minutes in the cool night air cleared it up. Several days before, my five-year-old son had the same problem around 5 am.
These early awakenings aren't an uncommon occurrence though they're of course usually less scary. Just a kid wanting his/her cereal, or wanting to go potty, or complaining that his/her sheets are sandy. You name it. And in case you're wondering, no, you can't "order" a kid to go back to sleep, and try as they may, they cannot snuggle themselves back to sleep in your bed. At least mine can't, and that's alright. Warm fuzzy morning for the kids; kinda groggy morning for the adults. We can handle it; we have the coffee.
Where was I going with this? Sleep deprivation, yes. Often a sign that your time has become a precious commodity, and that you've been spending more of it than you can afford. This in itself is sometimes a sign of regret, of staying awake in some vain hope of regaining the time you took for granted as a 20-something. Trust me, it doesn't work.
I'm 36, a married father of two, and owner of entirely too many shrink wrapped videogames. They've remained unopened because, whether I admit it to myself or not, I barely have the time to actually play them. I've come to discover that, as I grow older, my game purchases (and book purchases for that matter) signify something more than my intent to play them.
When I'm buying a game, I seem to be buying the idea that I'll somehow have the time to play it. Games are the idealization of free time for me, a symbol that somehow, between the hours of 8 and 11 PM, I will escape the tyranny of the clock (and the onset of sleep). Or sometimes I'll think of it as an investment in future free time, when X game will no longer be available but I'll eventually have the bandwidth to enjoy it.
I've made my peace with this realization and have tempered my purchases somewhat, but I wish I could have seen it coming much earlier because I have left quite a few old games unopened in my earlier gaming years assuming I'd have the time to complete them after playing whatever hot game of the month had shoved it out of the spotlight. And these have accumulated, not into some sort of prized trophy collection as it would to some, but as an embarrassing sign that I made a fundamental mistake as a gamer: I took my damn hobby for granted.
So these pristine pieces of plastic sit there on the shelf, leering at me, and I've often walked up to a copy of say, Persona: Revelations, and thought about cracking it open and basking in the luxury of a JRPG time-sink. Then I look at the clock, put it back, and fire up some XBLA.
Recently, I've decided, both for the sake of my credibility as a gamer, and for the sake of my wallet, that I need to stop doing this.
So I've started a new habit of opening some of these shrink wrapped time capsules with my kids (maybe not the Shin Megami Tensei stuff, but you get the idea), and to them, at this age, the event is almost like opening a Christmas present.
As for me, sitting there with my kids, reading lines of slowly scrolling dialog aloud and listening to my son giving me advice on what spell to cast, I start to feel some of that coveted time coming back to me in an unexpectedly different form, a better form, and one that I certainly won't take for granted, ever.
Contest:
7:00 PM on 08.28.2009
| 
Another friend often brings his young son to our weekly
Warhawk games when we play unranked (they play splitscreen) and again, it's just nice that he can enjoy gaming and creating future memories for both him and his son.
Those games may be shrink wrapped... but you'll gradually get to them, and sharing a game is so much more bonding in so many ways than reading her a book or watching a movie. You're talking to each other, making decisions, and participating in the story together. Enjoy this time with your daughter!
I also want to show my kids what is so awesome about gaming and to educate them enough that I can just let them browse my library at their leisure (when they get older) so they can feel free to play something like Panzer Dragoon Saga without feeling like they're doing something out of Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
This right here is exactly why I never get to buy games. I have a one year old and my time no longer belongs to me. I look forward to the day when he's old enough that we could play something together, but until that beautiful day I'm stuck wondering what happens after the first hour of that RPG I started a month ago.
D'AWWWWWWW...! Just...hope your kids don't grow up to be collectors, or if they do, that they won't hold such profound memories against you.
My problem is that on top of pretending I'll actually have free time in the future, I'm a pretty picky collector who wants everything in as close to mint shape as possible, and with absolutely NO "Greatest Hits"-esque versions to stick out like an ugly soar thumb on one of my game shelves. That means I feel the need to purchase these games around the time they come out, despite the fact that I may not play for months...or years....or *gulp* perhaps not beat them ever?
At this point, I'm 25 and have close to 400 games across 12 consoles...and there's no end in sight. Good thing I enjoy looking at the pretty (expensive) boxes, eh?
I promise I will crack open SMT: DDS very soon, but not until I finish my replay of FFIV and complete Chrono Trigger with my son (we're on a bit of a DS RPG kick lately).
And kudos to whoever put that coffee photo in there. That's pretty much what I look like by roughly 10AM at work.