One-Liner: Just Unplug It

BY Michael Ubaldi  //  November 22, 2009

When, why, and for how long do you take breaks from gaming?

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tarcraft led me to discover a sense of restraint when playing video games. In 1998, I was a junior in college. I had my curriculum under control, an internet connection to the computer in my dorm room, and a growing fascination with challenging remote strangers to matches on classic maps like Orbital Relay and Bloodbath. On a reasonably open afternoon, after bringing assignments to some measure of completion, I would enter Battle.net and, two or three hours later, emerge from the world of planetarily obliterative actions-per-minute.

But I often did so with a twinge of having lost the time passed. This was new: since third grade, when my father bought a Tandy 1000, I had invested long stretches in the family PC and never gave it a second thought. Maybe this was guilt for shirking studio time and classwork? Or a finer sense of how to seize the day? Whatever the cause, I felt satiety; and for hours couldn't have been bribed to return to the game.

It continues today. No matter what the beloved game — World of Warcraft, Call of Duty or Halo — I'll have my fill eventually, and if too much, may not return for more before a few days have passed. There are practical reasons to put down the controller, too; just last week a correspondent on Twitter quipped that preparing for Christmas became more efficient when the Xbox 360 was shut off.

The point is the same. It's a delectable hobby best taken in judicious portions. We all must have our limits.

When, why, and for how long do you take breaks from gaming?

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