Every gamer has their problems. Some are exceptionally loud, others don’t like to share their controllers. These quirks aren’t necessarily bad, but sometimes they just get in the way. I’ve had friends who could only play while eating. When I was littler I was really horrible about giving my controller up to someone if we were taking turns on a game. Yes, I was one of those: “No you gave your turn to me…again” people. Also, my friend and I used to lean to the side we were turning whenever we played Mario Kart on the SNES. I think we thought that if we leaned in real life, we’d turn corners better in the game.

My problems have changed over the years, but I’m here to admit my latest issue. Gaming puts me to sleep. And I don’t mean this in the negative sense that the games are boring or whatever. No, gaming is like the warm milk and blanket to my inner child. It’s perplexing.

Thankfully the sleep only tends to hit if I’m watching someone else play a game. This happened a lot last year when my friend was over using our TV because it was the biggest one in our circle of friends. I never mind watching someone else play, Hell, I enjoy it. Not as much as playing for myself to be sure, but laying back and not having to do any work once in a while is awesome.

So basically any time I sit down to watch someone play, I end up asleep in about fifteen minutes. It doesn’t matter what game, either. I once fell asleep to Resident Evil. What baffles me about it is that I’m an incredibly light sleeper. I can’t fall asleep to a TV or radio, and I sleep with ear plugs in to prevent hearing ambient noises. I guess hearing zombies get their heads blown off is soothing?

No matter what position I’m sitting or laying in, or how I feel when I settle down to watch, I will fall asleep. I can lay down and watch a movie or a show no problem. Games just conk me out. When my friend was playing Final Fantasy XII last year, I would fall asleep mid boss fight, wake up to him in a town, then almost immediately fall asleep again. The time of day also didn’t matter. It could be mid-afternoon or late night, I’d be gone. My friends started to make fun of me for it.

As a sort of experiment, when I went home for break I asked my brother to play Madden NFL 08 in the living room while I watched. I had gotten a full night of sleep and my folks were doing loud yard work outside, lawnmower and everything. The door to the yard was open, so we could hear everything through the screen door. I’m serious when I say I’m a light sleeper. I’ll wake up to a delivery truck pulling into our driveway, even with my windows and door closed. The purpose of my test was to see if somehow the game would put me to sleep despite the loud noise outside, and the fact that it’s generally a loud game (full of whistling and buzzers)that my brother plays with full excitement. He yells, swears, throws controllers, you get the idea.

Around the ten minute mark, I began to dose off. Eventually I hit that point of sleepiness where you think to yourself, “I’ll just close my eyes” and three seconds later you’re asleep. I woke up to my brother telling me dinner was ready. So I think it’s pretty well confirmed that any video game in any situation is going to put me to sleep if I’m watching someone else play it. I’m absolutely mystified as to how this can happen, especially since TV never puts me to sleep. When I’m actually interested in watching someone play a game, I just zonk.

My name is Gloria, and I have a problem. But at least I know that if I ever get insomnia, there’s a sure fire cure for me out there. Maybe I should start a support group.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 10:55 am and is filed under Humor, Personal. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.