I grew up an avid gamer. But now, among my 50-hour work week, helping my kids with their math homework, grocery shopping, and house chores, I’m no longer able to find enough free time to really dive into a game. I mostly play casual games that I can drop in and out of but forget about the 40hr+ games requiring commitment. Despite not having the free time to game like I used to, I do enjoy watching my kids play while I’m doing other things around the house and then listen to them telling me about their accomplishments afterwards. I would like to hear from community members with similar circumstance about how you manage your time.
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Steam Deck and Nintendo Switch. Instant pause/resume is invaluable.
My son is 11 months, and if I didn’t have my steam deck I would probably not be gaming at all right now :) That instant off/resume is absolutely amazing.
It’s mindblowing how smooth (and fast!) suspend/resume is on the Steam Deck.
I picked up a Switch thinking it would always be attracted to my TV. Maybe it was for a bit, but when my child came along the only way I used it was handheld and for spurts at a time.
That’s how I knew the Steam Deck was an instant buy for me - the pause/resume is key.
I wrote a piece of software that does this for any Windows game as well after my first kid was born. Obviously doesn’t work for multiplayer, but it allowed me to play games when he was still waking up 5 times each night.
Cheat engine has a speed multiplier that can be set to 0, which worked in several (offline) games for me.
My thing is a global key bind on the pause button. So I hit one button (or Fn+P on my laptop) and I don’t have to think about anything else. And it works for every game, regardless of cheat engine support.
Nice! I haven’t run across any offline games that won’t let me use CheatEngine’s speed multiplier, including flash games, but I would be interested to know if you’ve run across any!
Just one kid or stair step kinda kids? You are lucky, and nice job on the scripting!
One back then, two now, but the second one was much, much easier in every way.
Embrace mobile gaming. Especially the classic Nintendo handhelds. I can rock my baby to sleep and play Pokémon Ruby on my GBA at the same time. Embrace RPGs and other games where reaction times don’t matter. If I’m sat in a chair with a sleeping child I can even play a game where reaction speed matters, like Tetris.
Get a flash cart so you don’t have to switch games or carry a library of carts with you. Keep it in your car for play if you’re out a lot. Oh, and get a decent modern screen mod so you can see the screen outside.
at night when everyone is sleeping.
The kids will really remember the times they sat down and played games with you. So you end up trying to make the best out of roblox and minecraft to find a nice balance of everyone being happy.
My girls are still only 1 and 3, but so far I’m sneaking in an hour or two in the evening, after everyone else has gone to bed. I’ve started introducing the older one to Pokemon Go and Let’s Go Pikachu, and she loves it so far despite not knowing much english. Hopefully I can get them into gaming so we can have that in comon 😄
I have never been into Pokémon before my kids started to play Pokémon GO a couple of years ago. It was really nice to have a pastime that we all enjoyed.
They still play occasionally but I became hooked on Pogo. So you might find new gamed when playing games together with the kids, be sure to give it a try if your kids are playing it.
My dad’s a working gamer parent and he definitely struggles with it. He has a lot of time on weekends, but on weekdays he’ll usually only game for about an hour or however long 2 or 3 levels in the game he’s playing is. There’s times where he’s spent well over a month completing a game that me (a college student with way too much free time) completed in a week.
I know that feeling… I play a little bit at night when only us adults are up. It helps that my wife also games at times.
Other than that… I work from home so I might sneak in some gaming during lunch breaks and so on.
Overall? Not a whole lot.
If I get up to 2 hours a day I’m pretty happy. :P
5 year old and an 18 month old. I used to work nights so I’d basically have three hours a night from when they went down, to when I had to leave for work. Unfortunately working nights wasn’t tenable anymore, and as such I now work days…and get significantly less time to game.
If I’m lucky, both kids are in bed at 7:15. And if there’s no bedtime theatrics…I can usually carve out 2 hours to play, three if I’m feeling risky (have to be awake at 4:30).
I think I found for me that it was more the adult game content than anything else that kept me from playing a lot. My kids are 9 now, but when they were 3 or 4 Imy solution was to buy a psvita off ebay and use the remote play a lot. I think they have the same thing for phones and you can buy some pretty cool controller attachments. Although it’s not perfect, it allowed me to play some more intense PS games from anywhere in the house, without having to worry about the little ones seeing them.
- Sneak the time when you can
- Play games with them
- Wait until they are 12 (-ish) and they decide you are uncool
Otherwise, you’re doing what I ended up doing. There was a long span that, I just… never played games because I was too busy. I regret that a bit because it’s a thing that makes me happy and even if I’m “Dad”, I’m still a person that deserves some time for “me”.
This more or less. My wife games too. We went through periods where we probably gamed too much and had to correct that behavior (house was becoming a mess and kids ignored school too much)
For us it put a decent amount of pressure on our marriage for a while until we admitted that gaming needed to take a backseat to life in general. Its hard. I grew up with gaming and both my wife and I were 8+ hours a day of MMO before kids. But life demanded we become adults for a while and be responsible.
My kids are finally on the older side where their demands on my time is lower. I still don’t game much before dinner and most house chores are done. I try to game with them a bit after dinner and then I get about 1.5 to 2 hours to play a few League of Legends games (yes, I know i hate myself) if I don’t want to ruin my sleep.
