Gaming Habits - When Is It Too Early?

Gaming Habits – When Is It Too Early?

Submitted by Richard Windsor on November 3, 2006 – 9:34 am11 Comments

As I awoke this morning a thought popped into my head. In the last 5 years I don’t think I have ever touched a video game earlier then late afternoon. This was quite odd to me considering how much I love video games and how often I do play them. I have had several opportunities to play games during the morning hours but for some reason I never do. Even when I was working in a cubicle and would get the day off, I would never start playing till the time felt right. Maybe as I get older games are like alcoholic drinks, they should only be enjoyed at night with a few good friends.

Digging deeper into my gamer habits I noticed that over the last year I have played games almost exclusively at night. I used to always sneak in some gaming in the late afternoon, time willing of course. So I ask this question to our older readers. Have you noticed a significant change in your gaming habits? Do you tend to play games at a certain time during they day? I would like to know if I am the only one who follows this pattern or if this just the way things are for older gamers. Let us know in our comments section how you go about your gaming day.

James

Anyone with children will tell you that you pretty much have to postpone any gaming until the children are asleep.

Night time gaming is more popular because there isn’t much else to do outside the house. After 5pm, you can go out to eat, go shopping, or game. Gamers choose to game.
Jansen

For me it is never to early to play, but I am only 19 and have very few responsibilities at the moment so who knows how I will fair in my late 20′s.
Richard

Yeah I can see how the kids would alter habits but I wonder if the would be the same even if you did not have any?
Chillyhollow

Definitely as you grow older, you will find your gaming shifts to nights and weekends. Whether you have kids or not, you will still have responsibilies that mean from the time you get up in the morning until after supper you will be too busy to relax and game. Unless you have a commute where you can sit and play on a hand held console.

It’s just a fact until you retire. After retirement, you can play any time but the habit of tending to responsibilities until after supper will be pretty fixed by then. Beloved is retired and doesn’t usually game until after mid-afternoon at the earliest.
Casey

I work nights sometimes and on those days I can start my day off with an hour or two of playing. Once every six months or so I have a videogame binge that starts with pajamas & cereal on a saturday morning and ends in the evening with a case of beer–there is no better way to relax after some really stressful days/weeks/months.
http://notawesome.wordpress.com NotAwesome

It depends on how obsessed I am with a game. For the story-based ones, or RPGs with strong narratives, I can get drawn into the point where the first thing I do is turn on the console. This only happens on weekends though. Weekdays I’m at work.

My productivity is also highest in the mornings, so this is when I tend to get all of my work done anyway. Playing games is a nice way to unwind after work.
iLLwiLL

I gets my game on mostly on weekend nights, specially after throwing back a couple very cold ones and beer balls start piling up. Sometimes I may game on week nights if I get hooked trying to reach an objective in a racing game, but I usually shake it off in a couple of nites and settle back to gaming on weekend nites. The beauty of gaming Friday and Saturday nites is that you’re already home after you wake up on the couch from the previous nite of drinking and gaming as the feeling that you don’t have to go to work descends on you while you inspect the fluid level on that beer bottle by your side to make sure you didn’t leave it half full when your lights went out.
http://nick.onetwenty.org Nick

The only time I’ve played a game at 5am was when I was up all night playing N64 after getting one on overnight hire from the video store. We had to get out money’s worth!
http://www.gamespot.com/users/GonzoGuy/ Gonzo

I’m around 30, no kids, married (to a woman who likes games almost as much as I), with a regular 9-5 job, and I think any time is good for gaming. While I don’t play any games over breakfast, every once in a while there comes a game that I’ll wake up thinking about (most likely because I’d been playing it so much I had a dream about it) but those are very few and far between. And even then, I’ll have breakfast first then maybe a little wake n’ bake if it’s that kind of game(Rez). This most recently happened with Dawn of War Dark Crusade. When I finally got a day off, I observed the aforementioned ritual and proceeded to enjoy Dark Crusade’s violence and gore from around 10 to well into the afternoon.
theRat

Only in vacations I have played in the early morning, but not so much lately.
I personally tend to game into the deep night, sessions going as far to 4 am, when exhaustion and your white wolf running into water because you fell asleep finally crush you
Chris

I don’t play much at night. I usually play in the afternoons or sometimes in the morning while eating breakfast on the weekends. But usually during the evening I’m either working, doing homework, or out with my friends.