That's the biggest thing I came to grips with, which really has nothing to do with video games. You need to balance work with the rest of your life. Family is important. Faith (to me) is important. Friends, fitness, and food are all important (and all start with "F").
Video games worked as a tool to help me disconnect from a brain that was lying to me, telling me that I should be working. That I should be billing. That I should be devoting even more time into my work. When in fact, the opposite was true. Less of me, more of everything else, and everything began to work out.
And relating to your tangent, let me know if you have questions about Statamic just shout {at} jackmcdade.com. That sounds like a perfect use case for it :)
I've been getting so many recommendations for games I had to update the post. Thanks for the great feedback, I'm glad my post resonated with so many of you!
I do actually -- I have 2 boys, 4 and 18 months old. They go to bed around 8pm and my wife at 11pm or so. I'm self-employed and work from home, so I stay up for a few hours and game (or work some more depending on the week), and then sleep in until 7:30 or 8. It works out pretty well, not gonna lie.
I really think video games are a sweet spot in the stress-relief category. Reading (I'm an avid reader) didn't cut it, watching movies or tv, running, weight lifting... none of them relax me like gaming. Well, maybe drinking, but that's a different story :)
Dude are you kidding me, people are still playing UT99?? That was MY GAME back in the day! I was ranked in the top 25 and my buddy was #2 waaaaay back. I even got pretty hardcore into mapping and got a stage or two into regular rotation on a few servers.
Now I'm going to have to get my old gaming machine back out. Damn you sir. Damn you.
It probably doesn't have many players anymore, but my favorite mod was Thievery UT. I've played some rounds that were, no hyperbole, the most fun I've ever had playing games.
One of the guys involved was actually working on Splinter Cell and I'm pretty sure much of what we were experimenting with has, in some ways, influenced that game. And two of the guys ended up doing games full-time for Valve after working on Alien Swarm, and now Left 4 Dead. If only they'd do a new version of Thievery! Back to their roots...
Yeah man! Sign up for our tournaments and leagues! It's still going strong and actually seems to be growing since the advent of newnet, a modern netcode that smooths out gameplay a ton and lets people from all over the world play together.
