AFK (Sort of): Tax Returns, Paying Bills and Too Many Games

All the rules and lore of an immersive game, only less fun.

I was very productive on Friday. Aside with getting through one of the biggest projects I’ve ever been entrusted to create, I managed to file my taxes. And–joy, rapture and bliss–I’m actually getting a refund that’s better than last year’s paltry sum. (Let’s put it this way: last year’s refund bought me gas for my car and a dinner/movie date with my boyfriend. I was a high roller, lemmetellya.)

Anyways, being a recently liberated from the shackles of textbook purchases, mandatory peer reviews and papers on random novels (read: having received my degree in English-Creative Writing in May of last year), and as a person who truly enjoys gaming, I now have to debate the merits of either paying toward my loans or loading up on some games. We’re in the middle of a real gaming blitz right now. With Star Trek Online just released (I beta tested it, and it’s fun as all get-out.), Ubisoft announcing that they’ll be releasing games more often, Mass Effect 2 and Bioshock 2 taking over my XBox 360 (Yes, I am muddling through them because I love the stories that much.), Final Fantasy XIII waiting in the wings and a Dragon Age sequel in the works for the fourth quarter and God-only-knows how many more games coming, I wonder if it isn’t intelligent to put my refund into saving so I can tap it whenever a new game hits. I mean, hell, read my disclaimer: the only time I get free stuff is on my birthday or Christmas.

In October, there was a cry from gamers all over the country (maybe the world), asking for game companies to stop releasing everything just in time for Christmas. I guess they heard us, but they didn’t understand the message. Releasing everything just in time for spring break isn’t quite what we meant, guys.

(On a side note, I fail to see how the industry expects to make money when they’re not releasing a steady stream of games. Don’t they know there’s only so much money to go around at any given time?)

It’s a great time to be a gamer, but all these releases are extremely time and money-consuming and almost impossible to manage.

Hence my dilemma: responsible in a practical way, or getting more games?

When gaming and games writing is your passion and bills are your nemesis, it’s hard to tell which one you want to pay off.