I did it. I went a full month without playing video games.

And I have no plans to do that again… ever.

It was hard. Harder than my year without buying games is going. Harder than my six months without drinking coffee went.

But now I'm back. First chance I had on August 1, on an airplane home from my summer holiday destination, I fired up my laptop and played VVVVVV. It was sweet. My fingers buzzed against the arrow keys and spacebar. A low-level tension that had kept clenched within me for the past month eased. And I felt… content. So content. And so grateful.

How fortunate, how outright spoiled, am I that one of the greatest causes of stress in my life is a self-imposed month without playing video games? Sometimes I am astounded by how lucky I am.

When I arrived home, I fired up my PS3, which had sat unused for all of July's 31 days, and celebrated by playing inFamous, running around the city, pulse healing everyone who needed it. I also took demos of Limbo, Catherine, and Beyond Good & Evil HD for a spin, and downloaded the now free-to-play Age of Conan for PC.

It's so awesome to be back playing games. I have no idea what I'm going to settle down to play next: Dead Nation, Ratchet & Clank: Quest for Booty, Age of Conan, or carry on with any of Castle Crashers, 3D Dot Game Heroes, Puzzle Quest 2, Super Meat Boy, Half-Life 2, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Mirror's Edge, Cave Story, Team Fortress 2, Lord of the Rings Online, or World of WarCraft (up to Level 20). Any recommendations? I'm open to suggestions.

As gamers, I hope we all realize how awesomely lucky, how outright spoiled, we all are. Happy gaming!

I've got just a couple more days before my month without playing video games ends.

I am NEVER doing anything like that again.

I am some anxious to play something: the updated VVVVVV, some Free-to-play WoW, Free-to-play Age of Conan, Lord of the Rings Online, Plants vs. Zombies, inFamous, Batman: Arkham Asylum, Team Fortress 2, The Cat and the Coup, hell, even Ribbon Hero 2. Anything! Well, almost anything. Well, actually, far from almost anything, but still lots.

As soon as Monday hits, I will start making up for lost game time.

In the meantime, here I go into the final stretch.

I am intentionally spending this month not playing video games. To see if I can. To see how it feels. To see what I do instead. To see what I learn. I know that I have at least another week to go, but I think I've already learned what I'm going to learn this month (i.e. not much).

So, what wisdom has come to me during this month of denial?

1. I really love video games. This is actually a confirmation, not a realization. I can do without them if I had to, but I don't want to. I really like video games. Like, really. They are a source of unmitigated enjoyment. I'm looking forward to August.
2. I like reading too.
3. I don't like watching TV. At all. I really can't stand it. Just the sound of TV shows drives me kinda nuts.
4. Having given up games for a month, I didn't really do anything more productive with my time. Just read more than usual. Tried watching a couple TV shows. I didn't suddenly become all creative or, like, a superhero or anything.

So, nothing particularly revelatory, but it's still a worthwhile experience for its test of my will and my relationship to video games.

Happy gaming. I'll be joining you in just over a week.

Fitocracy, a site (currently in closed beta) that gamifies exercise by giving points and quests and levels for working out, has given me an invite code to share with anyone interested in joining. Do you want to keep track of your physical activity the same way Raptr and Steam keep track of your gaming? Do you want a system to motivate you to exercise more regularly? If so, you can join Fitocracy via this link: http://ftcy.co/ikm8zg

To make my motives clear, Fitocracy is awarding Amazon gift cards those who get the highest number of people to join. I have no expectation of winning, but I did want to put that out there.

Happy gaming! Or exercising! (Or, ideally, both!)

• I'm halfway through my Year Without Buying Games. I am getting anxious to buy something new, but I've been spoiled enough with freebies that it really hasn't been hard.
• First of all, Team Fortress 2 is now free-to-play.
• My free copy of World of WarCraft has been upgraded to include The Burning Crusade expansion, and now there's the new trial model that lets you try the game indefinitely, with a 20-level cap.
• If I were interested, the Conan MMO is also now free-to-play.
• Then there's the PS3 Welcome Back package (which has just ended). Personal information breach aside, I now have four great new full-release games. inFamous alone kept me fully occupied for the last month and has netted me another platinum trophy. Nice!
• Also, thanks to the Welcome Back package giving away WipEout HD for free, there's been a resurgence of online futuristic racing (anything that promotes WipEout is great in my books). Because of this, I was able to get the "Bling Brigade" trophy (by completing an 8-player online race with all racers wearing the silver ship skins), a trophy I had all but counted out for the logistics.
• What I am learning though, is that, because of my time restraints as a full-time working dad, I would rather pay good money for the few specific games I would like to play most, than have any number of cheap or free games that I only kinda want to play. There's so much to play these days, and comparatively little time.
• Further to this, I think it's best for me to stick to buying one game at a time. Regardless of whether it's on sale or a full-price new release, I find it best if I only buy one thing at a time, when I am ready to play it. Otherwise, I buy several games at once, focus on only one or two of them, and then become interested in something new before having the chance to go back to play the rest of the games I bought. So, even if I got them cheap, it's still a waste of my money if I don't wind up playing them.
• After noticing the increasing gamification (or pointsification or whatever-you-want-to-call-it) of all areas of life, from household chores (Chore Wars) to exercising (Fitocracy) to reading (Kobo's Reading Life) to learning to use Microsoft Office 2010 (Ribbon Hero 2), I started wondering if I could introduce a Life-as-an-RPG gamification system that would help me improve myself by giving myself points and leveling up. It's still too early to tell if it will help or if I will lose interest. Rather than motivating me to do things (I'm not doing things because I want the points) it's helping me reflect on the things I do already and assess their worth (e.g. "That action took some courage, and that's something I want to develop").
• So here's what's in store for July: A whole month without PLAYING games. One month. No games.
• Fortunately, this coincides with two weeks of summer holiday at a cottage, which should provide some distraction.
• Sadly, this also coincides with Steam's summer sale and contest. Oh well, can't win them all.

I thought I'd be a good sport and watch Sony's E3 press conference live from PlayStation Home. Only, the conference didn't start streaming on time, so I switched over to GameSpot's live stream. An hour and a half into the conference, my Alienware overheated (what the?!), so I caught the last half-hour back in PlayStation Home, where I got to listen to plenty of mockery of the newly-named PlayStation Vita. My public plea: please, no more PlayStation Velveeta jokes. Not even 24 hours later, and they are already old and lame.

These are my five favourite Sony E3 2011 features/announcements so far:

1. ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection (PS3) YES!!!
2. WipEout 2048 (PSVita) Woo Hoo!
3. Sly Cooper 4 (PS3) Nice...
4. PlayStation Vita for $249/$299 All right. All right.
5. 24" Sony 3D TV for $499 Suddenly, I am open to considering a 3D TV.

Runner-up: God of War Origins Collection (PS3) Not bad...

Last year, I made a top-ten list of E3 wishes. None of them came true. So I didn't bother with a list this year. However, I went back to last year's list to see if anything came true after E3:

1. Super Street Fighter IV DLC Characters announced: Yes, SSFIV:AE
2. Virtua Fighter 5 Final Showdown for PS3: NOPE
3. Another WipEout HD Expansion: Kinda, WipEout 2048 for PSVita is close enough, and an expansion might be made for the PS3 version so it can play with the PSVita game
4. Dante's Inferno 2 announced: NOPE
5. Shadow of the Colossus HD for PS3: Yes, the ICO & Shadow of the Colossus Collection
6. Okami for PS3: NOPE
7. PS2 games library available on PSN: Kinda, with the HD Collections they've been releasing
8. PSP titles playable on PS3: Kinda, with the HD re-releases
9. Trophies for PSP: Kinda, there are none for PSP but it looks like there will be trophies on PSVita
10. PSP2: Yes, the NGP, aka the PSVita

A year later, 7 out of 10 yeses or kindas ain't bad.

Thanks a lot, Blizzard. By letting me play World of WarCraft free for 30 days, you have effectively made me an addict.

Not to World of WarCraft, but to MMORPGs.

And not to actually playing MMORPGs, but to figuring out what they're about and how many there are and to finding just the right (free-to-play) MMORPG for me.

And there are a lot of them. (And many of them are the SAME GAME! This isn't even exaggeration. I learned, only after some time trying to decide between two of them, that Chibi and Red Cliff and Heroes of Three Kingdoms are different localizations of the exact same game!)

So, I tried WoW. I thought it was okay. I didn't like the subscription model. I didn't love the cartoony world, I wasn't crazy about the hands-off feeling to the combat. But I was intrigued enough to want to learn more about free-to-play MMORPGs.

I'd heard about Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) ever since it went free-to-play, so I thought I'd try it. I'm enjoying it so far, particularly the scenic environments and the feeling that I am inhabiting Tolkien's world. This got me to understanding that part of the function of an MMORPG is giving players an alternate world and identity to be in. So, I asked myself, "Given the choice, who would I want to be, and where and when?" I decided I wanted to be a martial arts master running around beautiful Asian landscapes with cherry blossoms and waterfalls and bamboo groves and Buddha statues. So, I started looking into Asian-themed free-to-play MMORPGs.

For the love of Buddha, there are a lot of them, all with variations on 2D vs. 3D; fantastical vs. historical; stylized vs. realistic; action-centred vs. strategy-centred; brand new vs. well-established.

After researching dozens of these games (e.g. DragonOath, Dynasty Warriors Online, Jade Dynasty, Kitsu Saga, Twelve Sky 2, World of Kung Fu) with a lot of help from the awesome MMOHut.com, I chose to try 9Dragons, Heroes of Three Kingdoms, and Loong – The Power of the Dragon. 9Dragons seemed to fit my desire to be a martial arts master, as you can choose to be a Shaolin monk or a Wu Tang member, for example; however, it is the oldest of the games I selected and I couldn't immerse myself in the archaic-looking world. Loong is the newest and prettiest of the three, but a single control choice left me frustrated: While other MMORPGs let you rotate left and right with A and D, Loong uses A and D to make you walk to the left or right without rotating the game's camera. So, with Loong, you constantly have to adjust the camera with the right mouse button to stay behind the character, and this just feels burdensome. So, for the moment, I've settled on Heroes of Three Kingdoms for my Asian-themed MMORPG. The martial arts aren't as barefist cool as 9Dragons, but the game looks better overall. The environments aren't as stunning as Loong, but the controls are simpler to manage. For now, Heroes is the porridge that Goldilocks ate.

At least until Age of Wulin is released. This one is looking awesome. Exactly what I think I am looking for: Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon the MMORPG. Hopefully, it comes out soon. Hopefully, it will deliver on my likely too high expectations.

In the meantime, Blizzard, I'm spending days researching, staying up late into the night reading reviews for Age of Conan, Aion, Allods, City of Heroes, Dungeon Fighter, EverQuest, Final Fantasy XI and XIV, Free Realms, Guild Wars, Lineage, Mytheon, Mythos, Ragnarok, Rift, Runes of Magic, Runescape, scouring dozens of eerily similar official MMORPG sites, downloading multi-gigabyte game clients, trying outlier games in the genre like the 2D MapleStory and the Source Engine-powered Vindictus (neither of which works properly on my Windows 7 powered Alienware M11x) to see where the limits lie, to see if I even actually like these games. I'm still not sure that I do.

But I just can't seem to stop…

So, part of what I'm learning this year is that free games come by often enough, if you're patient and watchful and lucky… Or do I mean unlucky? Because I'm talking about free games due to my personal information being compromised… Anyway.

Just yesterday, I got Amnesia: The Dark Descent free from a limited-time OnLive promotion (normally, $19.99). I hear it's pretty freaky. This is thanks to the fact that I have RSS feeds of all my favourite game sites and blogs, and I check my feed reader all the time. As soon as I hear mention of a free game offer, I snap it right up.

Getting 30 days of World of WarCraft free from Blizzard wasn't enough to get me to subscribe, but it was enough to get me interested in MMORPGs generally. So, I've downloaded Lord of The Rings Online and Free Realms (both free) and have started giving them a whirl. I'm really liking LOTRO (and it totally blows me away that it's free to play). I'm not too stuck on Free Realms, but I haven't given it much of a chance yet. Anyone have any other favourite MMOs, preferably free-to-play?

Then there's Sony's Welcome Back Program. I find I belong to the camp that is really impressed with the amount of free stuff Sony is giving to compensate for this security disaster. I'm happy enough just to be getting inFamous, let alone Dead Nation, LittleBigPlanet PSP, ModNation Racers PSP, and then some. Part of me wishes that I didn't already own WipEout HD so I could get it for free. WipEout HD alone is worth buying a PS3 for.

So, yeah, free games. And good ones too. They're everywhere.

So, I survived April and the release of Portal 2 and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes (I followed the ARG of the former and tried the demo of the latter—both awesome). I guess I was partly distracted by the PlayStation Network being down for the second half of the month, and I've been following that story (all the different versions of it) very closely since the network went down. Shame too, because I was just getting back into playing Super Street Fighter IV online (trying to step up my game with Gouken—I've already learned tons of new, useful stuff about him). I think I'm reinvigorated by the announcement of the forthcoming Arcade Edition update for consoles. Nice! (Although, yes, I will have to wait for next year to buy it).

What else kept me busy in April? Blizzard decided to give me 30 days of World of WarCraft for free (without any expansions). That was nice! (Although it took forever to download the game and updates.) I think it's because I have pretty much every other Blizzard game registered on Battle.net. So, I played about 5 hours of WoW, got a paladin up to Level 10, and quit, I think, just before I would have started to really get into it. Probably for the best, as I would not be able to buy more game time after the 30 days are up.

What I'm really learning from this Year Without Buying Games is that, when I start buying games again, it would really help me if I just bought and played through one game at a time. No matter what kind of crazy sales Steam is having. No matter how many awesome games are coming out in the same month. It's best if I limit purchases to one at a time. Otherwise, I get a backlog of games that I might possibly never wind up playing, because the initial hype of the games wears off, and then I'm on to buying the next set of hype new games to occupy my time and attention. I have about a dozen games that I bought last year that are still sitting, waiting to be played through. And they're good games too: Super Meat Boy, Half-Life 2, Puzzle Quest 2 for example, but even four months into my year without buying games I have so much other stuff to play that they are going to continue waiting, possibly until even after I start buying games again.

On a final note, I think I'm coasting a bit too easily through this year. I know I'm only one third of the way through, but I still decided that I will throw myself a curve this summer. This July (coinciding with my summer holidays) is going to be my Month Without Playing Games. One month. No games. At all. No sweat... I hope.

Replay: In March I finished reading Replay: The History of Video Games by Tristan Donovan. It was awesome. Anyone who likes games enough to read books about them should read this book. It gives a great overview of gaming's history, and it provides nostalgia for the older crowd that has been around long enough to have experienced the early days and fills the gaps for the younger crowd that has not.

Spacewar! One of the earliest games mentioned in Replay is Spacewar! A game that was created in 1963, predating even Pong. Recently, Kotaku posted a link to a browser version of Spacewar! It's… really not bad for a game from 1963. Plays like Asteroids… or should I say that Asteroids plays like it?

Angry Birds: Even though I'm not buying any games this year, I have no problem with free games (as long as they are legitimately free). I got Angry Birds (PC) for free this month by downloading Intel AppUp from Best Buy. The awesome thing is that Angry Birds was actually on my wishlist. So, I got a game I wanted for free! I'm kinda glad it was free though, because the game's appeal is wearing off pretty fast…

StarCraft II: Wings of Liberty: I kept busy in March by playing StarCraft II's single-player campaign. It was a blast. Awesome production values. Fabulous details. I loved the first three quarters of the story. But there is so-o-o-o-o-o-o much you can do in the game, both in single-player and multiplayer, that I just can't commit the time necessary to cover it all. I'm gonna let SC2 rest for now, and move on.

Year Without Buying Games: I did a bit better this month than last as far as game-buying cravings go. StarCraft II helped me along as did a secret project I have taken up and may reveal if I stick with it long enough. Still haven't bought any games or anything game-related, although the new mouse and increased monthly Internet usage I paid for this month are in that gray area. They weren't bought for gaming purposes, but they do help my gaming purposes. So, there you go. And I also almost caved for, of all things, Okami PS3 avatars. Avatars?!

Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD and Portal 2: This month is going to be tough. Two of the top 3 games on my wishlist are coming out: Portal 2 and Might & Magic: Clash of Heroes HD. Ugh. If anyone gets them, let me know how awesome they are.

Whackload of demos: I recently downloaded a whackload of demos. All at once, I downloaded and tried The Ball, Amnesia: The Dark Descent, Zeno Clash, Psychonauts, Risk Factions, Uplink, Stacking, Costume Quest, Enslaved: Odyssey to the West, You Don't Know Jack!, Ghostbusters: Sanctum of Slime, Moon Diver, and Bionic Commando Rearmed. While each game had its appeal, I don't think I'll be adding any to my wishlist. Maybe I didn't give any of them enough of a chance…

So, I'm not sure what April has in store for my Year Without Buying Games, but I'm sure I'll soon find out. Happy Golden Rule Day everyone. Remember to do unto gamers as you would have gamers do unto you.