"Alright. It's been an hour or so. I think I'm done."
It's a common refrain, now; the steam whistle to end our shift on the island. It's a paraphrase, on her part, for "this was fun, but I have other things to do. It's time for me to do them." At first when we began the game, it was routinely followed up with the permission to keep playing if I wanted, and that I didn't need to wait for her if I was enjoying it. But that wasn't the point, I would reply, and, eventually, she stopped suggesting it. Now, it's a precedent. If Tomb Raider would be played by a wife and her husband, it would be done so in roughly one hour chunks.
Her side of things is perfectly logical: she reads every night before bed. Often times, it's either preceded or followed by something streamed from Netflix on a tablet. While we don't have children, getting home from work, working out, and cooking/ eating dinner leaves little time for a singular activity when there are daily routines that people prefer to keep. Gaming like this is still relatively untested for her, and judging by our television-watching habits, there are still other things that she would rather be doing over adventuring in the jungle with an early 20th century machine gun. Last night, it was three episodes of Archer that took precedent over immediately starting TR after having something to eat.
My side of things is unreasonably skewed: this is straight up insane. Of course I'm enjoying myself, because this is my thing. If you're having a good time, why not just keep playing? There are tombs to raid here. If I were doing this whole thing solo, I would have finished the game twice over by now. After coming home from work, working out, and cooking/ eating dinner, too, my preferred pastime involves a controller in my hand. Aren't we sharing this?
Of course, none of that was said aloud, because that would be a dick thing to do. I have a feeling that she's well aware of my thoughts, though, but this gave me something of a pause a couple of weeks ago after our first few times firing it up. Playing it this way is causing some reflection on how I ingest games and how I feel about them. This blog, I suppose, is part of that, but the understood agreement that we're enjoying this game on her timetable has been nothing but a positive. A frustrating positive sometimes, sure, but I'm beginning to take away a far richer experience for it.
About seven or eight years ago, after I first landed a full-time job at the place I'm at now, I decided to go through Final Fantasy X for something like the third time. On off days from the gym, I would get home promptly at 5:30, cook something easy to eat in front of the TV, and play it until it was roughly 12:30 or later. That was 7-8 hours of playing, a binge by most accounts. As I grew older and gained a few more responsibilities it diminished, but I'll still play roughly 3-4 hours of games on any given night unless I've got plans. To me, this amount of time isn't unreasonable because gaming is probably my chief hobby. Forcing myself to curb that, at least for this one specific game, by roughly a third is difficult. But stepping back and looking at the numbers is giving me some perspective. There have been evenings where I've hopped into bed and read more, or watched more movies, or even done some drawing -something I haven't done consistently in years. The limitations placed upon one activity have reignited interest in others. That can only be a good thing.
As far as TR itself is concerned, it's not for the setting and tone alone do I keep making Lost references. By playing the game for only an hour or two a week, I've found that I'm taking it in like episodes of a great series. I'm always wondering who or what is behind the Bermuda Triangle-like trappings of the island as well as the motives of its inhabitants. When we finish a session playing it, I want to go back to it as soon as I can, but not because that's my routine, but because in measured amounts I remain fascinated by all of it. Outside of TR, I'm finally playing Borderlands 2. It's a good game; far better than its predecessor, too (which I liked a lot). But I'm going through it in heaping spoonfuls and not manageable bites, and I'm just not psyched to get home and turn it on, no matter how much I like it when I finally do. I used to think that it was because Borderlands 2, or any other game was just, well, any other game. Playing games every night to completion and moving on to the next one was my routine.
I guess I need some common refrains, too.
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