That could be you! Maybe, one day, it could also be me, once my kids age out of lovely, educational – but ultimately quite boring – iPad games. I am intensely jealous of my friend Carolina, who passed several happy months exploring The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild with her delightful six-year-old. My teen stepson and I intersected briefly on Minecraft and Destiny when he was a bit younger, but for the rest of the time our gaming taste has been poles apart. You’re never going to catch me willingly spending time in Roblox.
There are games you can play actually with your kids as well, if they’re old enough and interested enough to pick up a controller, but this relies on them actually being interested in good video games. I was equal parts ashamed and delighted when we passed a bus with a PlayStation advert on it and my two-year-old cried “Look Mama, it’s Aloy! Aloy fights the METAL DINOSAURS! I wish I was Aloy.” I’m reviewing Tunic at the moment, an interesting and very cute Zelda-a-like game starring an adorable fox, and managed a good 40 minutes of wandering around bashing creatures with a sword before my kid got bored watching.īe careful, though: I tried the same with Horizon Forbidden West a few weeks back, and it became quickly clear that it was a bit intense to be playing in front of wee ones, even though the violence was only aimed at robot wildlife. I’m obviously not saying you should bust Doom Eternal out in front of a seven-year-old and start eviscerating demons – but there are a lot of games that are suited to either playing with (especially older) kids, or while they watch. It might take you a few months to get through Red Dead Redemption 2, Horizon Forbidden West or Elden Ring, and it might feel like the conversation has moved on, but if you’re enjoying yourself, who cares? The hot takes might be lukewarm by the time you get round to reading them, but is that such a big deal?Īnother solution for parents is to play games in front of your children.
Bouncing around between a few different games that you feel like you’ll never finish is a recipe for dissatisfaction.
If you are going to pick a timesink, then you have to just stick with it. It’s especially useful if you can play those games with a partner, friend or housemate, thereby usefully stacking gaming time and social time – here’s a list I put together of 10 shorter games that are especially good in company. Most of my gaming diet now is things that take 5-10 hours and have something interesting to say. It’s perfectly possible to prioritise games that don’t ask for too much of your time, too. But that half hour before work, or that hour when the kids are in bed? Take it. You are no longer a student, and you can no longer spend an entire weekend wrapped in a duvet playing Mass Effect 2.
But like most working mothers, I have by necessity become extremely efficient with my time, so I’m here to tell you that it IS possible – you just have to take what you can get.
Dark souls too much of a time sink professional#
It’s tough to sink into something for 50 or even 30 hours when you have bosses (of the professional kind), partners and/or children to keep happy, as well as a resurgent post-pandemic social life. For those of us in that annoying period of life where people need stuff from you ALL THE TIME, it gets harder. Games can be a time-consuming hobby, which is one of the reasons why it’s traditionally been dominated by teens and young adults with few responsibilities. I know I’m not alone in this most weeks I get emails from people who read this newsletter asking how anyone has time to play massive games and also have a job and a life. These games are IMPORTANT to me! And yet it feels impossible to carve out enough time to do Elden Ring justice. I once flew to California to play Dark Souls for 24 straight hours on a live stream. I have a long, emotionally-significant history with Elden Ring’s developer – I was the first person in the world to review Dark Souls, for heaven’s sake – but I still haven’t found time to play FromSoftware’s latest title.
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