A friend of mine told me to play one to two hours max of PS3 and/or PC games today and then write 5 positive things about the time I spent and 5 negative things about the time I spent.
So here’s the Positive 5:
1. Slowly expanding my knowledge of video games (design, gameplay, etc).
2. Getting more of whatever I needed in the particular game I played.
3. Sense of accomplishment for getting through in-game assigned goals.
4. Didn’t happen today, but I usually get to interact with other people I usually play with.
5. Unique to this hour of playtime I had, I did not get frustrated because no in-game elements greatly impeded what I had set out to do in-game.
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and the Negative 5:
1. Spent an hour or two of the day doing that instead of doing something else.
2. Adds to spending money on games because once I get through a certain amount of time playing a game I usually play the next game.
3. Sometimes I feel completely bored with playing and just don’t want to do it anymore, which I’ve been cutting down a lot of game time and working on getting through other things.
4. Its a never-ending cycle with the game I play, there’s always something more to do.
5. It starts to feel like a chore if I start to do things I don’t want to do in the game.
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I spent most of my day working on my web site and watching episodes of 24. I started watching the show over the past couple days and I’m almost through Season 1.
I honestly feel that the positives of playing games for a shorter amount of time than say 3 or 4 hours outweigh the negatives for that period of time. But after 3 hours, the whole day becomes wasted and the next is almost ready to start.
I am also currently pursuing a job opportunity with Blizzard and having a wide-variety of gaming knowledge as well as knowledge of their games will benefit me if they want to interview or hire me for a game tester position at their company. I think it would be a pretty amazing opportunity to work at Blizzard, not to mention it would be an associative use for my major from college.