A growing addiction.

I’ve noticed lately how counter- productive my gaming has become. With the end of term fast approaching, and having racked up an impressive amount of money that I now owe the loans agency, you’d think I’d be beavering away desperately trying to finish up the string of assignments that I’ve partially neglected over the last few months. Not so!!

No, every time I think to crack on with a different assignment my finger accidentally slips and pushes the power button on the PS3, I then find myself decapitating zombies or creeping around spaceships breaking people’s necks, far from the grim reality of the ever impending end of term. In case you were wondering that was Resident Evil 5 and Chronicles of Riddick I was referring to, respectively.
It’s testament to my girlfriend’s infinite patience that she doesn’t punch me in the face sometimes. Often she can have full conversations with me and I’m almost totally oblivious, the worst culprit for distracting me at the moment is Suikoden on the DSi. Now about 55hrs into it I’m thoroughly immersed although it does tend to eat away at my observational skills to the point where I probably appear rude which is not the case. Well, not intentionally away.

Psychologists would probably tell me that I use games as a form of escapism but I’m okay with that as I most definitely do. For me there’s nothing better after a heavy day at college or a crap day at work to come home and stick on a video game. The only disadvantage to playing games so much is that it almost becomes sub conscious, as if I’m only going through the motions and only half there. I could probably play most driving and FPS games without even really concentrating, at least in single player mode. Multi player tends to be harder as you’re playing against actual people who have their own thought processes and can be unpredictable.
I’m going to use every ounce of my willpower to ignore my consoles and crack on with my college work – my chief motivation is that when I’m a well paid journalist (hahaha) I can have a games room where I retire at the end of the day with a cigar, a glass of port and a multi player session of Killzone 2. Except without the port or the cigar.
Here begins my pledge of commitment!! For the next month assignments and revision will be my thrill, screw Metal Gear Solid!! It’s Public Affairs all the way for me.