Gamer Regret
Clive Thompson has a great article over at Wired today about gamer regret. No, he isn't talking about the time you bought a copy of Barbie Horse Adventure and then realized it wasn't for you after all. He is talking about regret associated with wasting all your damn time playing games.
Frequently, it's precipitated by those ghastly "time played" counters. The "played" command in World of Warcraft is the worst. I've known gamers who nearly went into shock after discovering they'd spent an entire month in-game each year. (According to Nick Yee's research, amazingly, this is the average -- 20 hours a week of play.)My gamer regret usually takes the form of drawing up a humiliating list of other, potential activities I've forgone. I could have ... volunteered at a local hospital! Learned a language! Cleaned up my rats' nest of an office! Gotten a head start on a new writing project! Hell, I could have just, you know, played the guitar or something. Wouldn't that have been a less howling waste of my precious time on Earth?
I definitely have this feeling sometimes, but not usually when I am playing a game I actually enjoy. I freely admit I have spent over 300 hours playing Final Fantasy Tactics Advance, but when I spend an hour going through menus in Blue Dragon I definitely start to feel the pangs of regret. Have you ever experienced gamer regret, oh geekateer?
What say you?!