WiiDD

Attention Deficit Disorder is a serious developmental problem that affects a very sizable portion of the population, particularly children.

ADD is also an easily used way of saying that a person's attention span sucks. While I sometimes feel bad using ADD in this sense, it's quite true sometimes: I have trouble focusing on one thing at a time when I should, and bounce all over the place.

Ever since I started playing video games around 1993, I have developed what I call Gamers ADD: the inability to pick a game and stay focused on it for any substantial length of time. Now certain games can be enjoyed in as little as a few minutes, so I define "substantial length of time" to mean the time it takes to get something accomplished in a game, to move forward. Playing a title for thirty minutes and beating a few levels of a platformer is progress. Playing for two minutes then quitting is not progress. This happens to me from time to time.

In the days of the SNES and N64 I would sit with a stack of game cartridges next to me and play a couple minutes of a game, lose interest, pop in another cartridge - rinse and repeat. The GameCube was a bit different. While I had the console from Day One in 2001, I didn't have many games for it until 2004 or so, when a lot of games were in the $30 price range. While I enjoyed most of the games I own for the GameCube, none are particularly awesome, which made my GameCube Gamers ADD all the more crappy.

In the era of the Wii I'm finding that Gamers ADD is accelerated quite a bit. With dozens of games on my Wii Menu homescreen, I can literally switch between games in a matter of seconds. Compounding this problem is the save-states that pre-N64 games use: I can drop a game and pick up right where I left off, which makes switching games seem less "wrong" - or in other words, a way of justifying my Gamers ADD.

Recently I sat down at my Wii and in ten minutes' time I blew through 15 different games; a mix of Virtual Console games and Wii titles. I have games I need to finish: Twilight Princess, Lego Star Wars, Endless Ocean, Zack& Wiki - and about four or five Virtual Console games as well. That's already months of gaming lined up right there, and yet I cannot stay focused on one game long enough to get anything done.

Maybe it's a sign that my current tastes in gaming are changing, or maybe it's a sign that my current taste in entertainment is changing...

B3 out.