All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy…
All work and no play make… aww screw it!

In response to: Psychochild’s recent post about playing games as a designer.

You’ve got work to be able to play, and if you work or want to work in game design, you HAVE to play or at least keep a working knowledge of various game play elements to be able to keep your own ideas fresh. That said, it’s a definite balance, but an important one to maintain. I kind of like Moorgard’s idea of convincing somebody else you trust to play through games FOR you that you don’t have time to play then report back.

I know that I myself struggle with the lack of time-per-day constantly, for both work AND play! I love EverQuest II, but can’t play very often, or for very long when I get to play.. thus, my handy portable Nintendo DS Lite (or PSP if that’s your thing) has become my best friend due to the fact that I can play it for the 15-20 minutes or so that I have on the train every day and still feel some satisfaction out of it. That’s a big reason why the market for reduced play-time / fast pay-off games has taken off and continues to grow. Cell phone games are a good example of this as well, for killing time.

This is an endless struggle that isn’t going away for sure.