How to combine adulthood and video games: 5 simple tips

1. Use a timer

The simplest advice to help you spend your time playing correctly. Every phone has an app or feature that lets you start a countdown. After carving out a free hour during the day, set yourself a limiter and play calmly.

Set the standard to play no more than seven hours a week so that your business and responsibilities do not suffer. This will not only teach you discipline (for example, not playing on weekdays and leaving time for a marathon on the weekend), but it will also be beneficial for your wallet. Modern games last from 10 to 30 hours, so any novelty can be easily stretched out for a month without having to buy a disc every weekend.

2. Choose games that don't require you to live in them

Only students can afford to spend days in a huge online game without sleep or rest. Only they can sit all day, hunt monsters, complete countless tasks, eating fast food and cola. Those who have a job and a family cannot afford such things.

Therefore, online games should be excluded from the diet. Since many of them require a subscription fee, sell items or status items, their main goal is to ensure that the player spends as much time as possible in them. Therefore, every online gamer will always have in mind a hundred small tasks, each of which will require additional time inside the game world.

3. Play match games

Session games are a type of games in which time is measured by match sessions. These are card fantasy games like Hearthstone or Gwent, team shooters like Overwatch, Titanfall 2 or Call of Duty, as well as group RPG action movies like Dota 2 or League of Legends. Depending on the type of game, a session can last from 10-15 minutes to an hour. Sports simulators (football, hockey and basketball) also belong to this genre.

Match games have a definite plus: by purchasing or downloading (some of them are distributed free of charge) one such game, you can come back to it again and again. Modern sessions are very diverse: new maps, weapons or characters are regularly added to them, and they are built in such a way that it is impossible to play two identical matches there.

The only thing to be wary of is the “one more round” syndrome, when after each break you want to play another match, which is “definitely the last”. But in this case, you will have a timer from the first tip. As soon as the allotted time is over, play the round and turn off the game.

4. Choose an easy level

At school, among kids-gamers, the phrase “I fought the boss all evening yesterday” has always evoked respect for the player's tenacity and fanaticism. But those who play for an hour a day cannot afford to waste time on monotonous activities like trying to kill a single opponent.

Therefore, in any new game, the first thing to do is to switch the difficulty level to the minimum. Your peers are unlikely to be impressed by the fact that you completed the shooter on the difficulty level, which implies death in one hit, and spent 40 hours on it. But on such a passage, you can easily earn a nervous breakdown or turn gray ahead of time.

In open-world games, where the player is given complete freedom of action and a huge space for exploration, it is worth getting into the habit of not completing additional tasks. There is something to spend time on: collecting collections from items, small side quests, secret items and much more. Do not be distructed. Your task is to get from the prologue to the ending credits. It is better to spend the saved time in a good session.

5. Play with loved ones

Many modern video games look like movies over the shoulder. They have stunning graphics and a twisted plot. Sometimes they are even more interesting than another silly summer blockbuster. Many of them are even more enjoyable to look at than to play. Use this trait. While you are going through "One of Us" or Grand Theft Auto V, your girlfriend may well see on the screen not a game, but great series about zombies or criminal Los Angeles.

Games like Ratchet & Clank or Knack can pass for cool cartoons. Sit the child next to you. Let him see how you play. You will finally pass the level that you could not get to, and he will look at cute characters.

But do not forget to spend time with loved ones and without a mouse or gamepad in hand.