But thats what being a gamejunkie is all about isnt it?

The struggle of finding balance between your passion and everything else.

To me time seems to speed up quite considerably, which I think is a cruel joke.. when an hour of your time seems stripped down to ten minutes of acutal fun time.

Being responsible with time is so overrated haha

I'm finding the opposite... playing more games as I'm approaching 50 than I used to in my 30's or early 40's... though my XBOX is my 1st console, I was always a PC gamer, dependant in the late 80's & 90's for cough "shared" cough games being distributed around...so availability of games wasn't as high then...

Hi, I usually play around 1~2hrs of Left 4 Dead 2 before I hit the bed on week nights. I'm in my mid twenties and have worked overseas and now back to NZ. I can understand how sometimes we purposely not to buy or play games. Be it monetary concerns ($119 on Starcraft II or $119 worth of nice lunches vs lazy bachelor cooking at home?) or the time (work, sports and learn new things). I have always been a fan of Blizzard's prodcuts and I know I would be spending numerous amount of hours playing it if I bought it. So I'm staying away from it....for now.

I guess I'm planning my spending of time and money on games more cautiously than back during my high school and uni days.

Not sure if anyone feels the same?

Definitely. Sure, world of warcraft may be fun, but is it really worth sinking hundreds of hours into for nothing other than some instant gratification? No. I think the big wakeup call is when you go to write your CV and under 'hobbies' you come up with a big blank that in your mind says, 'computer games.' Because it's not a hobby. If you build computer games, yeah that's a hobby. Playing modern warfare and being 'REALLY' good at it is never going to convert into anything more than a time filler, and is far less personally enhancing than a book or physical activity. I'm glad I learnt this as a teenager, but sadly as games have become more popular it's become more acceptable to while away your hours getting 'achievements' (the irony there is painful :/) next to your anonymous online handle... it's sad.

Thank god there aren't really many games out there i want to play, 90% of the latest and apparently most awesome games ever are cookie cutter rehashes of unoriginal ideas. oh it has a time slow function. wow.

Damn you life. Its the age old paradox of life. When you have spare time (younger) you don't have spare money, when you get money you don't have spare time!).

I personally have found having kids has had the biggest impact on my gaming. First kid reduced gaming slightly (mostly during the day weekend gaming) and now second one has just arrived (three weeks ago!) I have yet to get in any gaming since his arrival.....normality will resume as he settles into a routine which I hope is soon! However work is a very close second in getting in the way of quality gaming. The old days of a 40 hour week are long gone and late work nights have robbed me of many hours of gaming (most noteably BFBC2 recently which I am still gutted by as I love LOVE that game!)

I have defintely found myself picking and choosing the games I buy based on the time required to play them. Fallout 3 got 30 mins of play before I accepted the sad fact that I was never going to have the time to put in 50-100 hours and sold it. I am still bravely hoping to get into Dragon Age (currently about 10 hours into Borderlands and still got Assassins Creed 1 and 2 to get through) but Halo Reach and Fable 3 are fast approaching!

As my gaming time reduces I now find myself taking "gaming days off" as holidays rather than actual days off (these days tend to involve only some gaming as I usually get distracted by tings like the sun and going for pies!).

As I age (now 34) I have found my passion for gaming is no less but I prefer not to sit for ages just gaming when there are other things I could be doing (bike riding in the sun is a biggy). I still prefer a good game to the terrible TV on offer these days (True Blood as an exception!)

It seems the older you get the more you see that you dont have a great amount of time on the planet. Games are still a great brake from the woes of the world just now and again instead of 6 hours straight like the old days.

I find myself getting more and more frustrated with games that are too short compared to the old games.

I like games that have over 100 hours. Maybe 200. Or 300 worth of gameplay. Something about it that makes it impossible to put the game down, impossible to ignore thinking about it, researching it, obsessing over it.

What I like about games is they can BE a fixation. But a manageable fixation. I CAN spend hundreds of hours playing it.. over the course of days, weeks, months, years.

I can save and come back to it. I can fit its bloated story into my bloated life. I can save money by not needing to buy another game for a while. Because I'm still smitten with this one.

And finally when the cartridge has cracked, the CDs are scratched and the case no longer closes... I can start over with a new game, a new story, a new obsession.

I used to feel the same way about books. Books were actually my gateway to videogames. I loved books that were thousands of pages long - it meant I had that much longer to spend with the story, the characters. When the book ended, so did my relationship so naturally the longer the book the more I loved it. Videogames fuelled the passion further by the interactivity; it was no longer observing a story. I was part of it.

And that is why even when I'm a withering 80 year old woman.. I will still be playing videogames.

Sorry, but I don't share the Kotaku writers vague, existential fear of a life wasted. If he's concerned that he could be filling your game related leisure time with, um, other leisure activities then I'd suggest the best way to recover time would be to cease writing for Kotaku.

At the youthful age of 37, I'm gaming a lot more than I've done for quite a while, probably since my gaming sessions on my trusty old Commodore 64 back in the 80s. That being said, it is a balance fitting it in, and generally that happens after 9:30PM once the family are all tucked away in bed.

I am finding that this time can be impacted on by TV shows to catch up on, but with Lost over, Season 4 of Dexter gone, and Generation Kill finishing next week, that is becoming a lot less intrusive.

I generally don't shy away from games with lengthy hours of gameplay, as I don't buy that many games, so getting bang for your buck is always a good thing.

Yeah I see the point I don't qualify as a game junkie this year, I have maybe played 24 hours on my xbox I have however spend many more hours on facebook applications Have recently purchased ipod touch so hope to squeeze in a bit of gaming on the go, there are some cool looking games on there from Square enix etc.