What Did We Play? - APP LIST LIVE!!

I'm not in the slightest surprised.  I just don't play many home console games these days, and my PS3 has suffered from this as much as my Wii U.  There are three main reasons for this, I think.


The first is that I just don't have many opportunities to do home console gaming any more.  I've got a job with reasonably long hours.  Outside that, at weekends and in the evenings, I have to cram in (at the moment) the basics to live (shopping housework sleep etc.), a fairly active social and love life, writing time, composition classes, a bit of cooking, a bit of reading, downtime spent on the Internet, and I'm sure other things I've forgotten.  I used to be in a choir as well.  Sorry if this sounds a bit arrogant: my life is just quite full of stuff, fun and less fun, at the moment.  There just isn't time for long play sessions.  

And that's before considering that I now live elsewhere during the week, in a flat without a TV.

All this means that my gaming time is crammed into small sessions, on commutes and in the evenings.  I like to be able to dip in and dip out of games.  As such, I'm a perfect handheld gamer, and a lousy home console one.  I probably spend more time talking and reading about home console games than playing them.

For these reasons, I'm quite happy for myself that Nintendo's new system is a hybrid.  Easier to bring to my weekday home, to play on the commute.  Whether I think that's the right move for Nintendo is another matter, but I hope they can make this work.


The second is that I'm quite picky about what I play, which sort of follows on from the above.  If I've not got much time, I have to make my choices carefully.  That means games often get dingied after one play session if they don't grab me quickly.  When you consider that I'm not one for 'realistic' games, or certain genres (shootybang and strategy spring to mind), that limits my playing possibilities.

Games that I like will get the playtime. XCX is proof of that, and YWW is to a lesser extent.  But a lot of others just won't.  

It's even more noticeable when I have another game on the go on another console, like Picross 3D 2 right now.  Even when I'm in the position to play home console games, which I'm often not, I'll more likely pick up Picross 3D 2 or equivalent unless there's something that's really grabbed my attention.  XCX did that, nothing has since really.


Finally, there's productivity guilt.  If I'm gaming for longer than about an hour, I'll often get restless and jumpy.  I feel like I ought to be doing something more productive, even if that's interacting with real people over the web.  So I have shorter play sessions, which gives games less time to grab me and means I have a naturally lower playtime.