Sleeping, screwing around, back log, procrastinating, and vegetating.

Gaming has always been time consuming. Sitting down to play is not like sitting down with a remote for hours of drama and suspense. Its different there is this feeling of commitment, to put in a few hours otherwise it seems like nothing is or can be accomplished. Getting just the right balance is also hard. Too few seems unenjoyable too many and its tiring.
Putting off games until there's time, makes a gaming hobby all the more pointless. A backlog of games accumulates in the back of the mind and in squandered piles.
Other times playing too often, make it dull. Playing the same game day to day is completely monotonous and leads to burning out. Just giving up on a game and leaving it to never be played for a while or even forever.

100% waste 100% of the time (not mine)

Finding your niche.

Hitbox, frames, lag...

If you know what these words mean you're a hardcore gamer if not you're a casual gamer. These terms specifically pertain to fighting games and are particularly important at the competition level.
Joining a fighting games club, its expected that these is a bit of technical jargon and a higher level in terms of technique. But 15 hours of straight to understand the underpinnings of each character is something else. At some point a hobby becomes work.
Most people would call themselves a casual gamer picking up a controller for an hour of paly but now that distinction is changing. With the advent of the Wii, family games are quickly chainging and enlarging the demographic of gamers.
Some say its good because it is expanding the media form to a larger audience. Others say it is ruining the market in videogames as it shifts from the few focused games for the hardcore to the dozens of budget games catering to the larger market of casual gamers.

Ninjabread Man,
just an example of a craptasic budget game on the Wii

!@#$%^&*ing games

Games suck, really they do sometimes - okay almost all the time. It is always something new that makes a gaming hobby all the more worthless. The frustration, the ridicule, the absolute bullshit that gamers just cannot give up.
THE COSTS are astronomical. By itself the entry fee for the video game media form itself is $129 for the cheapest system, being the Nintendo DS, available. Then each game thereafter can cost anything between $20-$80.
Video games have always been looked as something juvenile and to be grown out of. A waste of time is what others say, twiddling their thumbs and saying "no good" in disapproval. And they're right in every sense. The innumerable hours wasted grinding away levels in some Midgar, stealing ethers from wolves (which just makes absolute sense, because everyone knows wolves carry bottles), pressing the same buttons, issuing the same commands as vegetation sets in and the rad beams off the screen.
The story sucks almost half the time. Its always some badly translated half-baked plot to attain power to make a notorious villain into a god-like nemesis. Stories of love that make absolutely no sense to the rationally minded, convoluted plots overfilled with characters, its just crap!



But, that's everything gamers love.
Vegetation is like a drug and gamers just cannot get away from it. The power high and the complete sense of separation can't be found anywhere but with games. Mowing down rows of goblins with walls of fire, endless slash n' hack combos, cinematic actions scenes that rival blockbusters, it the fantastical escapism only games offer.
The bullshit stories that can't be found in movies or tv. The cost of a big budget movie ranges from $80-100 million and games a quarter of the cost, averaging from $20-25 million. Developers and producers are willing to take more risks based on economics alone, risks that create narratives unique to games.