Near the middle of last year, I found out that I was gaming the most I had ever gamed in my life. However, I seemed to be less satisfied while playing than ever. I would play video games for long periods of time and not really have any fun. A strange problem for me to be sure, since I was a HUGE lover of gaming and the gaming community.

Why I would not make a good video game tester:

I was looking at games through the wrong perspective. Different people have different playstyles. Gaming is a hobby as relevant or irrelevant as any other hobby such as watching sports or reading a book, and just like with those hobbies, there are different types of gamers.

The more I played, the more I realized I was trying to play games the wrong way. I was currently heavily playing World of Warcraft, and I realized that I was grinding so much to try and have gear that was able to compete with my friends, that I wasn't actually having ANY fun at all. This was when my World of Warcraft playing started changing, and declining, and when I once again became a true gamer.

Don't get me wrong, I love World of Warcraft still, and its a great game, but someone can't call themself a gamer if they try and play a game in a way that isn't true to their own personality. When I slowly weened myself off of WoW, I began to play other games, and played them differently. Instead of trying to max everything out as fast as possible, I would take my time if I found something that I really enjoyed. If I wanted to see the story progress, I would hurry through the game to see the story, but if I had fun with a certain minigame, I would just play the mini game everyday during my playtime.

Once again, I slowly started loving gaming again! I was playing video games to have fun instead of letting the game play me and suck all my fun away!

My collection also is a little different. Instead of merely looking at just the single-player games that look awesome, I have been buying games that are great for co-op so I can play with my brother, or my friends. The result is my new outlook on video games, they are just entertainment, but really good at what they do :-)

I recently read a soapbox article on this site about video game addiction, which is a very real thing despite what some people try and tell you. I believe that to a point, I had fallen into a certain type of gaming addiciton, and the freedom is amazing!

All of this said, as much as I like gaming, I will never be the master at any one game. My friends will all probably be able to own me at MW2 forever, and I will definitely never be the best at any Halo game, but I'm now having fun again. I also love to research games on Gamespot, something I've recently started doing again. Sometimes, its just as fun to follow the game's community as it is to actually play it.

This is why I would be a terrible game tester... It would take me forever to force myself through every aspect of a game in order to test it. On top of that, I would probably hate gaming period if I actually HAD to do it for a job.

Nevertheless, I love being a gamer :-)