To all older gamers, how do you find that balance between gaming and everyday life?

39, married for 17 years now, many kids.

Once you realize and accept that your gaming habits as they exist now are not generally conducive to being a great father and husband, then you've already accomplished the hardest part.

There is no need to give up gaming IMO, but I found that I needed to change my gaming habits, and also some of the games I played, or how I played them.

I found that I could not support a raiding schedule in WoW while "being there" whenever needed by my family. I still play WoW sometimes, but only a month or two each expansion, mostly to play through the questing and do a little raid-finder raiding.

Likewise, MOBA games don't really work that well either. Pretty much anything that requires you to be unavailable for anything longer than 15 minutes or so at a time is something you might want to consider hanging up.

The thing is, even if you are waiting until the kids are in bed, then doing those things, you are still unavailable to your spouse.

That said; I still do a lot of gaming. My wife goes to sleep around 10 and I spend time with her after the kids are asleep, then I stay up later. I require little sleep, so this might not work so well for others.

I look for games that have solo-competitive at-your-own-pace kinda feels. Diablo 3 is good for this, as even team games only take 5-10 minutes normally. Path of Exile is another good game that has lively community feel with no hard requirements for set amounts of "time right now".

A lot of solo games have lively communities here on reddit, so you can still feel that you are connecting with people and sharing experiences. Mass Effect and Dragon age are examples of such communities here on reddit.

I think that it is alright to still enjoy games. I know I still do, but I do so in a way that it is just something I enjoy when I am not otherwise needed (or wanted) by the wife or kids. I miss the community feel of raiding or competitive team play sometimes, but I can recognize that as mostly nostalgia. At this point I am just happy that game environments exist (in growing number) which support the constraints I have.

It's not a bad thing; It's a good thing.

/r/truegaming Thread