Matt Keally's Blog

It used to be that I would sacrifice hours of sleep in high school to play computer games every night.  Many nights I would stay up past 11 playing Counter-Strike or the latest Command and Conquer.  I could stay on the computer forever and then be a zombie in class the next day, nodding off as early as 9 or 10 in the morning.  During the summers, it would be the same thing: suffer through a run in the late morning heat and then play games the rest of the day.  I don’t think my mom cared for that, doing nothing most of the day, and was probably relieved when I started working after my junior year.

Those days are over and I don’t think they are coming back.  Something happened when I started college that has really changed my interests in nearly everything.  I’m not sure what it was or exactly how it happened, but it seems to have been a slow, gradual process that probably completed its transformation by the time I finished undergrad.  I’m different now and I wish I knew why.

I want to play video games, but I just can’t get into it.  I’ve started playing stuff occasionally, such as the latest episodes of Half-Life 2 and Portal.  Those I finished because of their brevity, but longer stuff, like Call of Duty 4 and some recent RTS games I just started on, got stuck in one place and then just said: "screw it".  None of them are nearly as exciting as they would have been eight or ten years ago.  The most recent stuff that’s out there now would have been mind-blowing to me back then: the latest GTA, Fallout 3, and possibly Spore.  I would have spent most of my life playing them, but not anymore.

It appears as though I’m not the only one that this has happened to.  Some of the research says it’s to do with social networking; that everyone would rather play games with people they know rather than against unknown opponents online or a computer in single player.  I do notice a correlation between the time I spend on sites like Digg and Facebook and the decrease in time I spent playing games.  However, I still notice tons of people about my age and older that still play a fair amount: the assistants at PT talk occasionally about meeting up after work to play Halo, the physical therapist (in his 40s) even says he plays Madden on the weekends, my roomate plays plenty of PC games, and even my dad finished Crysis when I just dropped it after the zero-grav part.

In some ways, programming replaced the satisfaction I got from playing video games.  It’s better because I have complete control over the environment.  In video games, you are forced to live in the environment the developers create and play by their rules.  It’s like the first Matrix movie: why play by the rules when you can bend them or even create your own?  Why should I be restricted to use a shotgun to solve the problem of a developer-imagined monster when I can solve much more interesting problems of my own creation with tools of my own creation?  Yesterday, I spent all day thinking about a job-scheduling type scenario for wireless sensor networks.  Last night, I finally figured out a solution.  While the problem wasn’t entirely my doing, coming up with the solution was much more in-depth and satisfying than blasting the crap out of a few enemy soldiers with a C-130 in CoD 4.  And, my solution may not be the best.  My adviser or the other guys in our group may come back with some constructive criticism to help with a better answer.

Again, I would really like to get back into gaming.  Doing work can be satsifying, but it is also draining and it would be great to have some kind of release since I can’t run.  Some of the stuff that’s out there right now sounds like it could be fun, but I don’t even know if my PC can handle it.  Possibly, I’d have to upgrade the video card at the least, and of course that’s a slippery slope to just upgrade the whole desktop that’s been rusting under my desk.  It’s too loud when it’s on and generates a ton of heat, so there’s a massive incentive to figure out how to make the whole thing quieter.  Furthermore, I’ve only got one monitor that I use with my laptop, so I’d have to unplug it, the keyboard, and the headphones and put them all into the PC whenever I want to play anything.  There’s also the cost issue: right now I’ve got to save since my surgery/rehab is expensive.

Maybe I’ll try once again to get back into gaming, and maybe I won’t.  Maybe there will be another sea change that will shift my attitude and fun factor when I play, but I’m not so sure.