What are your gaming habits?

[S.Peelman]

Single player pretty much always. I’m a slow gamer, it takes forever for me to finish something. I play only one game per session and usually not for that long. I buy more things than I play. I have always and still do keep everything I ever bought, I’m almost a hoarder, and kept things my mother and aunt bought before me so by now I have a sizable collection of a large variety of games going back as far as the ‘70s. I always buy the Nintendo system of the era, which I will remain doing until Nintendo stops making Zelda games, and usually another if something has something that interests me. The PC has also been a big system for games for me, particularly for city building/simulation games.

My gaming time is inconsistent. This week I played Luigi’s Mansion 3 for three evenings straight, finally I’m almost done, but the last time I played it was May according to the save file. I may have played MediEvil on PS4 once after that, but it’s safe to say I hadn’t played a game in 4 to 5 months. This happens often; every once in a while I feel like playing a game for a week or two straight and than don’t for months because I don’t feel like playing. It does rely om what particular game is new at any given point in time. I also visit a friend at irregular intervals who only plays strategy games on PC. And also not very often anymore. When I’m there, we’ll play a city builder in multiplayer for a full day. Recently all we’ve been playing is Anno 1800.

During my childhood though gaming with family was much more common, Mario Kart was a big staple, and some other games for short periods of time like SoulCalibur on Dreamcast or Warcraft III on PC as well. That time has since been long gone, and beside that one friend that plays strategy games every so often, none of my friends and family ever play any video games anymore. My cousin, who used to be an avid gamer I’ve played through multiple Zelda games, Knights of the Old Republic, Mario Kart and Mario Party with, never plays anything ever again and his last system was a PSP. Only my mother ever touches a game, but sadly now all they are is pay-to-win-or-wait-a-day smartphone games, and funnily Fallout if there’s a new one.

This maybe feels like a sad story, but I’m okay with it. Single-player experiences are better anyway. Especially better than online, which is unfun, even back then I never liked online play (if it was an option, obviously that came later) because other people always ruin the game. But long story short, my habits are short bursts of a single game at irregular intervals.