To all working adults here,

How do you find the balance between work, games and other commitments ie. sports, relationships, family etc?

I guess I'm considered "young" in this working society - 2+ years experience, stable career, in a relationship, good mix of friends and most of all absolutely love gaming. I must've been deprived of gaming during my childhood and now when I can afford to buy my own rig and stuff, I could only manage the occasional 2-3 hours per night, which is nowhere near the hardcore gaming standards of 8-10 hours a day lol.

Let's discuss if you gamers feel the same way (deprived) and how you juggle between career, commitments and some serious gaming

i think "Serious" gaming is out of our vocab..

once you starting working and all its more towards casual gaming.. just to release stress or have fun...

but for other countries where they have strict work/life balance where you after 5 go home and do your own thing then its different..

but here in kl its only work work work eat.. sleep go out shopping mall walk walk..

very very hard.
from semi pro quake 1,2,3, player to noob donkey in etqw when started working.

The time to spend on games is way way less than before where there were nights that you can go CC with buddies and weekends you can spend over IRC playing with overseas players.

When work starts, it takes away all those times, and leaves you with weekends where you don't want to see a computer hence not sit and play games anymore.

Not only working...even I as a full time undergraduate find it hard to find time to play. Casually playing will be fine.. like 1-2 hours a day, and more a bit on weekends.. going pro / hardcore.. thats totally out

actually for me it depends on what game.. some game can take u 1-2hours per day.. some game can take 5-6hours per day.. i used to spend my weekends playing bad company 24/7. not sleeping. lol. but now had to slow it down.

and it also depend on what job u have. i'm an it technician,work from 9am-6pm,5days a week. after 6pm totally time for my own, dont have to think about work. others might have to think about their work even after their working hour.

ehh? 2-3 weekdays night gaming is fine. 8-10 gaming hours is too much for working adult barring sick leave and such You just can't have those zombie hours anymore.

You mess up at work, that's it noone gonna pay your bills

I play mostly on weekends.

I'll have to either work late or work-out in gym on week days.

You can still go semi-pro on certain games with the condition that you play only & ONLY that game (example StarCraft 2) when you have the free time.

I used to hit StarCraft when I was still schooling since that was the only game I could afford & time was abundant. When I started working, it was the other way around. I have moolah to spend on other genre of games that I've missed out all these years such as all those RPGs but due to insufficient time, I've to give up on StarCraft 2 playing time.

24 hours is no longer enough these days.

To sum it all up:
Schooling days: train myself silly in StarCraft. It was all about being pro & gosu. I don't know what are NWN, Baldur's Gate, Diablo (& all the other interesting games) all about.

Working days: play all those games with great lores, stories & full of LULz. The word pros & gosu mean no shi- to me anymore. Woah BioShock! LOL'ing at Heavy singing Bieber's Baby in TF2. Singing Still Alive along with GLaDOS in Portal's credit pages~

And oh~ having a life partner that appreciates games are very important too. I've seen friends who gave up gaming due to their partners' nagging about how games are a waste of time & money. Yeah, as if all those manicure & beauty spa sessions will save the world one day.

This post has been edited by talexeh: Jan 4 2011, 07:23 AM

I am single, my workplace's not too far from my home and I sleep late. So I get about 3-4 hours of game time every weekday. Weekends are even better.

I just grab any gaming time i could get and live with the motto "Life is short, play more"

For me... Ireduced from full time gaming to part time gaming.... Last time used to play 6-8 hr. Now week day 1-2 hr and weekend mostly about 5-6 hr. Wanted to quit but the game so tempting....

every night, come back from work (reach home about 6 pm or 7 pm), played for 2 or 3 hours.

Problem is I waste more time on choosing a game to play.

I've completely moved away from semi-serious gaming to casual gaming now.

wait until u merid...
then u will cry coz time for gaming will be cut half...
worst case u dont have time at all for games...
lololol....

No time to even touch my computer at home nowadays. What more waiting 30 minutes to connect to steam.

Working full time and cramming 5 years of musical theory in 4 months for an exam this march.

i use my laptop to play games,so....it's mobile, and as long as i've 10 minutes,i'll boot up


besides that i also just stick to one or two crucial games(games i take seriously) the rest are just there to eat HDD space(occasional gaming,and even then not taken really seriously)

most important thing is u how u separate the time to spend on your gf/wife and your gaming. Work is a must, without work = no money = no gf/wife + $$ to buy games

Hmm, I don't game as much as I used to when I was still a student but then again all my personal projects take up my time.

My "career" sucks. It eats up so much of my time that I had to abandon games that require significant amounts of commitment to produce satisfactory results, like any city building game and Minecraft. It adds insult to injury knowing my dead-end job has nothing to do with the fundamental reason I love these games: The ability to create and design. As a matter of fact, I'm planning to quit my job and pursue an arts-related career. Finally.

In the meantime, I only have Team Fortress 2 as company, and boy, do I play hard. Casual Muka Buku games have never been my cup of tea.

This post has been edited by Parrot: Jan 4 2011, 10:05 AM

What's your job?