From the Real Battlefield to MWO and back again.. [Chit-Chat]

Hi, I'm playing MWO for almost 2yrs. That's a lot of time. And i want to chit-chat with you about the fact, that the older you grow the more you experience the real battlefield in real life and hence finding less time for playing, and so if this makes any sense. And whether we need to play in this scenario to feel unbound from the chains of habit.

i know that a lot of us playing MWO are in the 30-40 and probably in the middle of their career. And being a busy bee it's often difficult to find (any?) time for playing a time-demanding Grind-Game like MWO..

I myself work as a Projectworker & Consultant in the IT Business, and so live a lot in hotels. Only when i can transport my gaming rig (what happens rarely), i can play after work. But then most times i find myself so tired, that i only play some few rounds, before i start doing some simpler things like watching an old classic movie or reading news. Damn, i was more sustained in playing games, some yrs ago.

But is Playing still important in life, even if you are not a kid anymore and actually don*t have the time, bound by daily obligations? Is playing on the virtual battlefield somehow to compensate the daily experience on the real battlefield in life? I can tell you, for me playing is sometimes a good change to the daily obligations and sometimes a good stimulation for the brain to work better, faster and smarter in a Team. Teamplay, Communication and Mastering the given Equipments - it is what you need also in real life!

Do you feel the same? What is your story? How do you handle this?

Did you know? There is a german documentary movie about the real battlefield of today and why you need to play it to get maximum performance out of us (human ressources):

 

True that... True all of that...

 

I'm 40. At least I am since last week.
Playing is very important for me. Sometimes too important. Why? Because in here, I find ppl that are like me, that think like me and are interested in the same things.
For me, gaming is a way to recharge my batteries (at least most of the time it is), since I escape my dull life and emerge myself into an alternate reality where I can be whatever I want.
My ex-wife-to-be never understood why I played. I always explained to her that it's not the game itself that kept me going on. (well sort of it is.. must... grind... this concept works for every game) It was the people I played with and against.... I used to compare it to a soccer club or some other kind of team oriented sport. Where ppl met to drink some beers together while havin' fun and honing their skills. And sometimes even have a good competition to further compensate one's broken ego.

Gaming is one way to define myself. I am what I play. (Sounds sadder than it is, if you assume you have no private life at all... )
It is my way to break free of the cahins of everyday routine. It is my drug. It is my curse.

But I love it.

 

All work and no play make me a dull (and cranky) man.

You need to play in order to balance out your life. Play lets you relax, even when it's serious play. Play lets you let off steam. Forget all the other stuff that MWO can be or do, play, above all else, is about fun.

I started playing Battletech nearly 30 years ago. I hope to still be playing it in one form or another 30 years from now.

 

Not sure I see much connection to real life and that’s the attraction for me. I have a lifetime in law enforcement and PC games (or roleplaying before that) have always been my release from the stress and tight control I have to exercise in that life. The bliss of being able to vent is something to be treasured at times.

Unlike people in the military this life doesn't really equip me for a FPS game as we don’t routinely carry firearms in the UK of course!

I deliberately set aside time to play each evening but some days like the last week when I’m covering several people I’m far too exhausted to play or just fit in a couple of games to keep my hand in. That’s aggravated by if I’m dropping solo as I have no mechs to master (goals) as grinding just for c-bills is booooooring (aka I played Wasteland 2 the last few nights as I just had an hour to 90 minutes and wanted to distress as I’d been working 5am-9pm incl. commuting).

 

Funny, in my case video games are the "simpliest thing". The thing that doesn't require much focus to keep going, made to 1/ keep your mind focused on them, 2/ keep you awake even when dead tired and 3/ flood your brain, not leaving room for parasitic thoughts - in opposition for example with a book. When gaming is taking a large part of my leisure time it's never a good sign, it means I can't concentrate on the rest.

 

Agree with @epikt

Ex military when I was but a wee lad of 17, then transitioning in to a full time Firefighter, then Captain in the Fire Department, then injured, then transitioned out in to the private sector and now working for a 10,000 employee large national medical company as an IT Project Manager. I can tell you that it is nice to turn my brain OFF for a change and not have to manage people, vendors or timelines. I play this game to escape my life, not define it. Yes, I've made some great friends out of this game (and others previous to it) but those friendships translate beyond a single game.

At one point in my life (between the army and the fire department) I had a good deal of down time at various jobs; my brain wasn't really taxed or challenged and so I had plenty of time for serious hardcore gaming time. I ran organizations, I was the TryHard who showed up to every practice and got good enough at what I did to have my name recognized on leaderboards etc. Then I had got married, had a kid, got separated, mortgaged, debts etc. Life became about fighting off the world and not just the enemy players. Slowly that transitioned in to more added responsibility and required more of my time and energy.

I'll be 40 in less than a month. This past year has been focused on a great many things; transitioning in to my new job successfully, beginning to plan properly for my retirement (I do want to retire with some level of comfort), dealing with a lot of family and relationship stuff, with more of that to come. Looking for a new place to move to; when I am ready to do so and hooking up with random women whenever possible.

Ultimately I've gone from allowing my gaming time to define my life to fitting my gaming time in when I am not doing other things.

 

It's nice to know I'm not the only 39+ in here.

 

Gaming has always been part of my free-time spending. My father bought a ZX spectrum early 80's and as of then we have always had some kind of personal computer (never consoles) at home. As a youngster however, my parents took great care not to have tube-staring kids. PC and TV time were strictly regulated and it was ensured that their sons grew up seeing the sun.

That changed a little during highschool and uni. Greater freedom and a (lucky me) low need to open books in order to attain good grades made me play more on the PC. Games such as Civilisation, UFO, Wing Commader, C&C, well you know, the classics,... made it so that my parents caved in and bought an extra PC for their 3 sons (still some regulation to the limited reagent)

Then I left home and enjoyed full freedom. Online gaming became realistic with DSL, I had a decent job and television had nothing decent on. So yeah Zot partied and played. But it was still acceptable. Until EVE online appeared. Full freedom, a bad relationship and a new time intensive game gave me insight in gaming addiction. I led fleets, ruled a corp, brokered treaties, went on deep cover ops behind enemy lines,... oh yes, there was a job too,... oh well I can make new fit in EFT whilst there,...

Currently I'm nearing the 35 boundary real fast, have survived gaming addiction and am happily living with my missus. Gaming is still an important part of my life as I cannot be bothered to sit behind the TV looking at utter **** (Game of Thrones being one of the exceptions). But it is not my first spare time activity. I do however truly enjoy spending time with like-minded friends blowing big robots to pieces, flying through space, devising cunning strategies all the whilst entertaining complete nonsense or deep idiological discussions.

I once read a collumn in a gaming magazine that truly corresponds to my idea of modern day gaming. It goes along the lines that where gaming once used to be a niche entertainement for the socially awkward with no reward but one's own highscore, it now has become an open sandbox of interpersonal adventure. Where I once had to watch Mc Guyver, Airwolf or the A-team to see spectacular action and tight friendly bonds on a daily basis, I can now have all that at my fingertips, under my own control.

Why spend time watching a scenario written down by some writer when I can write a new one every moment I choose to?

I make my own telly!

 

You misunderstood. I wanted to express that in the past I could play all day and not getting tired. But now because of demanding work every day i don't have the concentration for even the simplest things after work..

 

My problem with trying to play games for long periods isn't getting tired, it's getting distracted by something more fun. Sure, I could play a game for hours on end, but I could also make an implementation of Keccak for an FPGA. Or write a compiler for the binary lambda calculus in <insert language I'm learning>. Or read the latest preprints on the IACR list. Or... There's so much other fun and interesting stuff to do. Games with grind just don't hold my interest well. Most of why I like MWO is due to the people who play it (most mechspeccers, some IRL friends, etc), and certainly not due to the amount of time it takes to grind for xp/cbills/etc.

 

My worst fears are being confirmed.....I am one of the few youn......errr, less expierienced people who play this game (maybe that is why the game chat is generally so nice and mature). No, I am sure there are more.

But in all seriousness I would totally agree in that video games and especially this one are an awesome way for me to relax and de-stress in between my effort to balance nearly full time work with flight school on the side. For me I like to rest by doing things that are not really hard per say, but keep my mind active. And at this point the MWO community is awesome to play with in that most people are respectful and trying to play as a team.

 

I feel so old.... kids......

Hey at least I get to start thinking about retirement soon.... perhaps that is actually "try not to think about the tantalising prospect of retirement soon".

 

As I am trying to tell some kids: Older people play too, and some of that are dman good, just cause we have been breathing it since we were kids, back when games were more hardcore, if you know what I mean.

Yes, I try to get a few games in everyday, but I do show up in weird times.

Life calls, then there are tons of things to do, and tons of other forms of entertainment you might want to get into.

 

Pushing 46, having a sick wife, an unrelenting job that takes up the majority of my time lately, a house, 2+ hours of driving a day.... stress relief is an important thing to me because.... well life is stress. Gaming has always been a stress relief & escape for me. It accomplishes that goal well, but just that goal. At my age, with little more than a couple hours a day to spend on myself, gaming has become a back seat in a very long bus of have too's, it has been taken up by exercise, and other things that I get more than just stress relief from, and that only when some thing or one hasn't stolen that time away from me.

 

I'm in my late 30s and have two babies at home. So my day is basically, wake up, work all day, come home at about 5:30 pm, and take care of the kids until they are both asleep,which is about 9:00pm to 10:00pm. After that I catch up on my office work and do any housework or that needs to be done. When those are complete I have the choice of either heading to bed, or sacrificing sleep to Watch TV or play MWO until about 1:00am. Wake up at 6:30 am and begin again. Right now I am caught up on my work, so I have a bit more time for relaxing, but once the projects start up again, it becomes a grind trying to balance work with down-time.

 

40 hours a week in IT and another 20 as a Taekwondo instructor. My workday including lunch and the commute is over 14 hours 4 days and 12 on Friday. I usually get in an hour or 2 a night and a good session Friday and one weekend day.

 

I have a weirder situation...I'm 32, but I work the graveyard shift. A lot of my job is monitoring computers, and many nights there is not much "real" work, though I do have to deal with a few passersby, and the occasional "emergency". As some people know, this means that I tend to have my laptop with me here, and I actually play from work during slow nights, since I otherwise have nothing to do but stare blankly at a set of monitors. I also work 4 10-hour shifts, so I generally get 3 days a week to myself. I spend far too little of this exercising, but I get some in...but since I work overnight, I also stay up on my days off. This generally means that I have a lot of time during the evenings where I suffer from the Graveyard Curse: everyone I know and like is asleep, so my outlet is gaming. I'd say I actually game as much, if not more, than when I was younger, just because there's not much else for me to do at night unless a random friend is also staying up into the wee hours.

Aside from gaming, I spend a dozen or so hours a week researching investment type stuff (gotta have a nice, big retirement fund for when I get older), but there's not exactly many options for place to visit at 4am!

I'm assisted in this by the fact that neither my fiancee nor myself has any interest in having kids...it's a sort of weird habit in my family, I have an uncle that's always been the same way. As a result, I tend to not have lost anywhere near as much of my free time as I expected I would by this point in my life. Guess I lucked out somehow I grew older, but not up...

 

Always wonder how teaching martial arts would pay, now that I am good enough. But it is lovely to get paid doing what you love.
A full time martial arts trainer seems nice, really.

 

All these 'behind-the-mech' stories makes me not want to target mechspecers on first sight now. I still will, of course, but I'll feel bad about it. Possibly. Later in life.