Game Overload

Finding the time to play games -- especially when you, you know, run a website and evaluate entertainment software for a living, can be a bitch at times.

That's also how I explain my job to crazy outsiders. I get that question a lot now -- mainly when we meet the parents of Ashley's friends either at soccer, birthday parties, Girl Scouts, 4H, and on and on.

"So what do you do?"

"I edit a website and evaluate entertainment software."

That somehow sounds so much more mature than, "I run a game website and write about videogames."

I tend to go with the first option because when you say the second one it normally gets construed and twisted into, "I play videogames for living."

Which in turn gets construed and twisted into, "I don't REALLY have a job."

I wish I played videogames for a living. I would like that job. I do work full time for Mad Catz, running GameShark.com. When I started a couple of years ago I was greeted with "hey the cheat code guys" basically at every turn. But that is slowly changing, and I do like the people I work with at Mad Catz. Nice guys.

But running a multi-platform website takes a lot of time. I'm writing this blog post right now because I just changed the lamp in my DLP TV so I have 30 minutes to kill, and I'm stepping out this afternoon on family business.

But my day is mostly planning upcoming articles, contacting PR about review/preview copies and interview possibilities, and editing the staff's work and posting it to the site. And watching the Daily Show/Colbert combo at lunch. I'm basically the EiC and the Copy Editor and the Reviews Editor and the Features Editor and the Everything But the Video, Art and News Guy Person.

And it's a time sink. I'm not complaining -- it's my job. And I'm normally in a t shirt and sweats when I do it. No rush hour for me. No maze-like cubicles of death, either.

But add in the whole "hey I have a wife and 9 year old daughter" variable into this equation and finding time to PLAY games...is hard. I have been up until 2:00AM the past few nights just to play Dragon Age, a game I'm not even reviewing. But I took on the task of reviewing King's Bounty, NCAA Basketball 10 which arrived today, AND Assassin's Creed 2 which should arrive any day now. Basically I just don't sleep anymore. All because I love using the Earthquake/Tempest spell combo in Dragon Age.

I know a lot of guys that love videogames, and who are married with children -- when do you find time to play? Maybe I need to hire a professional time manager. They'd probably tell me I'm wasting quality game time writing blog posts at 11:15 on a weekday.