Introduction
When we enter in our adult life we gradually outgrow our hobbies. Work, family, everyday life — there is very little time left for entertainment. But we should manage our adult life in that way so that we can enjoy our free time while playing games. Here are 5 tips for you to manage both things.
1. Use a timer
The simplest advice that will help you spend your time playing correctly. Every phone has an app or function that allows you to start a countdown. Having found a free hour during the day, set a limiter for yourself and play calmly.
Set a standard of no more than seven hours a week playing the game, so that your work and responsibilities do not suffer. This will not only teach you discipline (for example, not playing on weekdays and leaving time for a marathon on the weekend), but will also be good for your wallet. Modern games last from 10 to 30 hours, so any new game can be easily stretched out over a month without the need to buy a disc every weekend.
2. Choose games that don’t require you to live in them
Only students can afford to spend days on end in a huge online game without sleep or rest. Only they can sit all day, hunt monsters, perform countless tasks, and eat fast food and cola. Those who have a job and a family cannot afford such things.
Therefore, online games should be excluded from the diet. Since many of them require a subscription fee, sell items or status items, their main goal is to ensure that the player spends as much time in them as possible. Therefore, every online gamer will always have a hundred small tasks in mind, each of which will require additional time inside the game world.
3. Play match games
Session games are a type of games where time is measured in sessions-matches. These are fantasy card games like Hearthstone or Gwent, team shooters like Overwatch, Titanfall 2 or Call of Duty, as well as group role-playing action games like Dota 2 or League of Legends. Depending on the type of game, a session can last from 10-15 minutes to an hour. Sports simulators (football, hockey and basketball) also belong to this genre.
Match games have an undeniable advantage: having bought or downloaded (some of them are distributed free of charge) one such game, you will be able to return to it again and again. Modern session games are very diverse: new maps, weapons or characters are regularly added to them, and they are built in such a way that it is impossible to play two identical matches there.
The only thing you need to be wary of is the “one more round” syndrome, when after each break you want to play one more match, which is “definitely the last one”. But for this case, you will have the timer from the first tip. As soon as the allotted time is up, finish the round and turn off the game.
4. Choose an easy level
At school, among gamer kids, the phrase “I spent the whole evening fighting the boss yesterday” always inspired respect for the player’s tenacity and fanaticism. But those who play for an hour a day cannot afford to waste time on monotonous activities like trying to kill a single opponent.
Therefore, the first thing you should do in any new game is switch the difficulty level to the minimum. Your peers are unlikely to be impressed by the fact that you completed a shooter on a difficulty level that implies death from one hit, and spent 40 hours on it. But you can easily earn a nervous breakdown or go gray prematurely on such a playthrough.
In open-world games, where the player is given complete freedom of action and a huge space for exploration, it is worth making a habit of not doing additional tasks. There is something to spend time on: collecting collections of items, small additional tasks, secret items and much more. Do not get distracted. Your task is to get from the prologue to the final credits. It is better to spend the saved time in a good session.
5. Play with your loved ones
Many modern video games are like movies from behind the shoulder. They have amazing graphics and a twisted plot. Sometimes they are even more interesting than another stupid summer blockbuster. Many of them are even more pleasant to watch than to play. Use this feature. While you are playing “One of Us” or Grand Theft Auto V, your girlfriend may well see on the screen not a game, but excellent series about zombies or criminal Los Angeles.
Games like Ratchet & Clank or Knack can easily pass for cool cartoons. Sit your child next to you. Let him watch you play. You will finally pass that level you could not reach, and he will look at the cute characters.
But don’t forget to spend time with your loved ones without a mouse or gamepad in your hands.