Gaming in the UK is interesting. Like a lot of things, we're nearly always last to be graced with the latest and greatest games and hardware. The majority of twenty-somethings still view gaming as a nerdy pastime, dabbling only in the latest incarnation of Grand Theft Auto and laughing through a beer-filled maw with their friends as they pick up a hooker for the twelfth time in an evening.
I'm one of a minority in the UK. I lap up all the gaming information I possibly can, checking a long list of gaming sites every day just for some scrap of news that will make my working day go by just that little bit faster. I post on forums, read blogs, watch interviews, stare at screenshots and hope that maybe this time, just this once a game will turn out to be everything I want.
...Then I get home, watch the latest episode of whatever was on TV in the US last night (downloaded on my eight megabit capped to 50GB/month DSL connection) and stop thinking about games. I have a year-old PC, a Gamecube, an original X-Box, a data projector, a DS and a GBA SP. I've been reading about games on and off all day. But I can't be bothered to pick up one of the dozens of recent games that I haven't finished yet. I have gaming A.D.D.
You see, a large portion of my life is about gaming. My work has nothing to do with games - I'm a business software developer. A code monkey. However, I've been gaming since I was five years old. I've built up a gaming community on the Isle of Wight (my lifetime home) from scratch. We now have 300 odd local members. I think they all have gaming A.D.D. too, judging by the quality of posts in our forums and the poor turnout at our tri-yearly LANs. I've sunk a small fortune into gaming over the years.
But am I really a gamer?
I have trouble finishing games these days. I'm always all over the latest releases, feverishly dropping everything to rip open the shrink-wrap and start playing. Some games may hold my interest for a number of evenings, and on those days I'll get home from work and I'll actually be the gamer that I make myself out to be.
Those are good days.
But they never last long. The last game that held my attention for longer than a week was World of Warcraft. I decided that I'd had enough on the very day that I turned down an evening meal with good friends to go do a guild run, which actually never happened. It was then I realised that maybe gaming A.D.D. is a good thing. I like to plunge into something new and exciting but I know that when the excitement dies, I can just stop. I don't need to finish those games anymore. I sunk fifty hours into Oblivion, and I only have the final part of main quest to finish the game. I doubt I'll ever do it.
And I don't care, because I have gaming A.D.D.
And I love it.
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