Is It Possible to be Addicted to Games and Yet Not Play Them_

Reader Josh H., a college sophomore, says he’s been gaming and making videos for years, so he sent us this one. It’s alright—I’m not sure it says anything we didn’t know already, as the Pile of Shame is a commonly understood concept for most any serious video gamer.(new Image()).src = 'https://capi.connatix.com/tr/si?token=995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c&cid=872d12ce-453b-4870-845f-955919887e1b'; cnx.cmd.push(function() { cnx({ playerId: "995c4c7d-194f-4077-b0a0-7ad466eb737c" }).render("79703296e5134c75a2db6e1b64762017"); e19 }); What struck a nerve with me, though, was this comment, sent along with the video link in an email. “When I look at one game I think about another and so forth and so on. Then I end up playing Facebook for 5 hours accomplishing nothing.” Playing Facebook for 5 hours, I assume means frittering away your time looking at what everyone else is up to, not necessarily playing Facebook games. That’s the loop I find myself getting into, especially after I’ve completed a review and can get back into any game I wish to play. The problem is the review has shut off all momentum. I haven’t played NCAA Football 13, usually my most favorite series, in a month. So I sit at my computer, checking the New York Times, Yahoo! Sports, Reddit, my company’s other sites—and then back again. And eventually I muster up the determination to reacquaintance myself with where I last left off. Worse yet, I find that I’m completely intimidated to start something new, like Mark betdog of sbfplay the Ninja, because I know I’ll have to leave it again for something else very soon—in this case, NBA 2K13 Like Josh, I have an impressive wall of games. It is one of the perks of this business, and I am fortunate to have the job I do and to receive all of these games without paying for any of them. I’m real proud of how big and varied that collection is, and sometimes imagine that if I was trapped on desert island with that console and a generator and a TV, I’d really not ever worry about being rescued. But at some point, I do think I’m a hoarder. I do like playing games, but some games, I like having them more. I don’t have a Steam library that full but I do have plenty of titles I’ve never finished or never even touched. How about yourselves? Do you find yourselves drawn to having games more than playing them? Is it certain types of games? Do you have some games on your shelf the way some people have great books on their shelves—there’s an obligation to be familiar with them as the major works of the genre, even if you’re not interested in really completing them? Or am I just navel-gazing, and playing Kotaku for five hours, when I—when we should all be playing games? YouTube video uploaded by Josh H.