Making sure you have a good life/gaming balance

Recently I was reading a news article about a man in Japan who believes that his divorce was cause dby Dragon Quest . I want to talk about a few things in connection to this so lets start with the basic story. There is a Japanese TV show called Ie, Tsuite Itte Ii Desuka? (“Is It Okay If We Follow You Home?”). In this show random people are stopped on the street and asked if it would be ok to take a peak into there home.

Well on one episode they stopped a 43 year-old systems engineer called Kaccho who talked about his love of Dragon Quest and went on to discuss the effect it had on him and his family. He agreed to let the show film inside his apartment. Kaccho’s apartment was filled with Dragon Quest merchandise, pretty much everything Dragon Quest wise that you could think of toys, key holders, figures etcetera but it didnt stop there he had photos of himself with the Dragon Quest series creator Yuji Horii and other various developers.

Kaccho talked about how he got divorced four years earlier. Kaccho believes that his constant Dragon Quest X playing is what caused his marriage to fall apart. He tried to get custody of his daughter, but lost.In some ways I feel sorry for him but then he did admit himself that “I used to look after my kid until I started gaming too much,. I love video games dont get me wrong they are a truly awesome invention and I think a great way to spend your free time but it shouldnt be to the detrement of the people in your life who really matter. I have a daughter myself and I got divorced, I won full custordy of my daughter though and every second of every day she makes my life all the better just by being there. It can admitidly be hard to be a good parent and also not loose site of yourself, its hard to balance giving them all the time they need but still finding a moment for youself to allow yourself to relax but I feel that particularly when your children are young you need to make sure that the majority of if not all of the sacrarfices are yours and not theres, you should game less and spend time with the. Heck share your love of gaming with them it can be something you bond over, me and my daughter have enjoyed every new Pokemon RPG togther, we have played many diffrent types of co-op game but I have also made sure we have spent time playing chess and monopoly and going outside on walks and trips, playing sports and even just talking.

Now was Kaccho addicted to Dragons Quest X, I am not sure, I dont think you can really call him an addict if he is managing to hold down a full time job, did it destroy his relationship, well youd have to ask his X wife to know the true answer to that, it could have been how much time he was spending on the game, the fact she felt it was more important to him than she was or there daughter was or it could have just been a reason she felt was good enough to give to mask her true reasons.

So what can we learn from this? To have a look at ourselves and at how we prioritise things in our life, my games are important to me and they may be important to you but they are ultimatly replacable loved ones are not.