Secret Shame - Gaming ADD

I don't think I'm alone with this problem, but it is still a secret shame. You see, I seem to be almost totally unable to play a game to completion. I want to beat the stupid game, I enjoy playing it, but within a couple of hours the siren song of another game is too much for me to resist.

It starts like this: I find a new game that looks pretty cool, so I buy it. I take it home and pop it in the console. I'll play through the tutorial and maybe an additional level or two and that's it. I'll plan to play it the next day, but I don't. So it goes on the shelf next to the other games that have suffered the same fate. On the off chance I actually do finish a game, it is only because I came back to it after a year. The perfect example of this is Oblivion. This is one of the very few games I played the hell out of right when I got it, then put it on the shelf after a couple of weeks. Then a year later, I pull it down and finish off all the missions.


Why do I do this? When I was a kid, I didn't have this problem. I think there are a few reasons. First, when I was younger, the games weren't a long. Final Fantasy 1 and the Legend of Zelda were the longest games I can remember. Now it takes 40+ hours to beat many games.

There are also a lot more games coming out now than there were when I was a kid. Back then you only had two systems at any given time instead of three and there were just fewer games coming out. In addition, I didn't have access to places like Best Buy and GameStop, so my selection was much more limited.

Another part of the problem is I have more money to buy games now than I used to. There was a time when Christmas and my birthday were the only reliable times to get games for me. That, and whenever I could whine and beg enough to get one. But now that I've got a job and plenty of money, I can buy all the games I want. Combine that with much less time now than I used to have (I really miss summer break) and I think the cause becomes more apparent.

What I think is happening is since I have more games but less time to play them in, a game has to really grab me pretty quickly before it gets bumped off to the side. Now, I don't want to grind levels in an RPG, I just want to see the story, dammit, and get on to the next game.

The obvious solution is to just buy fewer games, but I'm not sure that I'm capable of that. I do try to get the games when they're on sale, but as I've said I'm a consumer whore and I want to have the newest, hottest game right when it comes out.

So, until I get more time, I guess I'll have to be happy with only playing until Medusa on God of War and accept the fact that if I play Pokemon, I'll never actually catch them all. But I'll be damned if it isn't a bitter pill to swallow.