Addicted

I am fairly certain I am a video game addict. I play something, even if it is only a card game or a puzzle game or a word game, every day.

I have played 2,777 games of Scramble, which is a word game, since 2008. Each game lasts three minutes. So I've spent 8,331 minutes, or 138.85 hours, or 5.78 days (24 hour days at that), playing a word search game.

I have played 845 games of Spider Solitaire since August 2009. I am a fast player and probably can get through a game in five to seven minutes. So that's approximately 5,915 minutes of this card game. That's 98.58 hours, or just over 4 days (24 hour days).

That doesn't count something like a role-playing game (RPG) such as Oblivion. These games are immersive and I can spend many hours lost in these fantasy worlds. I once lost an entire weekend playing Morrowind, another RPG by the same company.

Before I am judged, though, I wonder how much time people spend in front of the TV? I don't watch television that much, a fact made painfully obvious to me in my Sociology class the other night. During discussion, classmates tossed out the names of programs they watched as if they were tossing about pieces of popped corn. I was lost because I had no idea what they were talking about.

I don't watch American Idol, or Dancing with the Stars, or something called the Duggers (not sure what that is), or any of the other shows they discussed.

However, I daresay many of them don't know a thing about role playing games, or puzzle games such as Bejeweled 2, or the many games available at shockwave.com, or whatever.

I have been playing video games since the late 1970s. My parents bought my brother one of the first Ataris. I remember playing Pong with great concentration and fascination. I spent many quarters at the arcade when that was the only place one could find good video game and pinball excitement. I was a Centipede whiz, but never really a fan of Ms. Pacman. (Oh my, what a mistake, to find Centipede available online at the Atari site just now!)

I cannot begin to name all of the video games I have played. Donkey Kong. Might & Magic many times over (there were 9 games in the series, plus Heroes of Might & Magic, 1-5). Rise of the Triad. Commander Keen. Duke Nukem. Wolfenstein. I played them all.

Over the years I have spent a great deal of money and time in this hobby. It is terribly unproductive, unless it has kept my brains functioning and improved eye-hand coordination. I suppose puzzles and card games are better than shoot-em games, but only marginally so.

My other hobby is reading. I read 60 or so books a year. I could up that number considerably if I read instead of playing video games, I expect.

Still, a girl has to have some fun.

However, this addiction, however minor, troubles me occasionally. I know there are better ways to spend my time.