Time passes...

Wow. I really started up this blog with the best of intentions. Little did I know that I’d drop off the gaming map almost entirely. I figured for sure I’d just be too lazy to write, instead of not having any material.

The irony is, playing games led me to something that has replaced games. Over Memorial Day weekend, I went to a convention with some TF2 peeps (for which I made my L4D medkit) and met a couple guys who do a webcomic. I’m a huge webcomic fan; at one point in the past I wanted to create one myself, in the golden days of Keenspace. (i never got far enough to actually look into hosting.) One of the guys used that Sunday to make a strip right at the con. I couldn’t help it; I watched the whole 10-hour-plus process. Ever since the con, he’s been drawing five nights a week on Ustream, where I have been a loyal groupie audience member. I’ve even been inspired to try my own hand at webcomickry, though that’s still a ways off.

Guess what has to give in order to delve into that world? That’s right…my nightly TF2 excursions have dropped to one night a week, and my DS has been forsaken for my sketchbook. I basically swapped out one addiction for another, except this one fulfills my need to create and may get me paid one day.

That’s not to say I’ve given up gaming entirely. I went to another con this past weekend (which had most of the same peeps as Play On Con) and played a lot of Rock Band and Arkham Horror, and a little TF2. I’m also planning on some engy cosplay at PAX, if I can track down a decent pair of overalls. But I get the hardcore cravings still…I miss being able to game for sustained periods of time. I miss Catacombs and Big Blue Disk and Infocom. I miss Nethack and Wizardry and Final Fantasy. I miss Doom 2 and Q3A and Hexen. And those are just the single players. I also miss Mega TF and Urban Terror and COD and, yes, even TF2. Games open up the realm of imagination and creativity, exposing the player to new mechanisms and thought processes. But they take up so much goddamn time, and I’ve wasted far too much already…

I don’t really want to go back to gaming as much as I did. Maybe one day I’ll manage to balance my time well enough not to sacrifice one vice utterly for another.