If you are a generation X or younger, you grew up with video games being a prominent part of your childhood and probably part of you adulthood. I can remember playing my college roommates for hours at John Madden and wasting a lot of valuable hours of my life in front of the TV. I can say that I have always enjoyed playing video games and I don't have a lot to show for it except a few bragging rights with friends. As I became older and my life became fairly busy, I suddenly lost interest in wasting hours playing these games. I started to enjoy the outdoors more along with becoming active in my free time. In college, it seemed that all I had was free time besides studying and partying :). As you get older your free time starts to dwindle, so you have to enjoy every second of it. With that I started to get away from gaming based off the amount of money and time wasted on this sort of entertainment.
I decided this past Christmas that I wanted to get a gaming system, not so much to play every spare second, but to get the game RockBand. Everyone and their mother seem to have low cost hobbies for getting through the recession, this is just one way we have decided to save money and still have a good time. This weekend we went to the beach with a bunch of family and friends, instead of going out to the bars and spending money we stayed in and played Rockband. If you like music and/or karaoke it meets both these needs when it come to being entertained. We all stayed around the house and watched each other play while others socialized, but it might as well have been at a bar. We have been doing this more and more weekends, where we will invite friends over for dinner, and instead of going out and spending money at a bar, we break out Rockband and play till the end of the night.
RockBand sells from around $175(minus the gaming system), but I believe the return on investment is well worth it. We could easily spend $50-75 going out on a night on the town, so it only takes about 3-5 nights of staying in to pay for itself. It is hours of countless fun, but more interesting than sitting a bar wasting hours as well. For some reason you don't seem to drink as much either, you get caught up in playing the songs that you don't think about drinking all that much.
I would suggest anyone that has a gaming system that has been thinking about grabbing RB to save up and purchase it and invite some friends over to play. If you don't have a gaming system you can always do what my man J. Money over at Budgets Are Sexy and invite friends over to play Monopoly. What else are you doing to save money during this recession? Leave me a comment.
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As far as gaming systems go, I think the Wii has the biggest capacity to enliven the game night with friends and couples. Rock Band and Guitar Hero are great, but not as appealing it seems to most of the female crowd. So unless it's a guys night, Raving Rabids is more likely to be the game of choice.
ReplyDeleteTotally disagree, my GF and a bunch of her friends lock Rockband. Everytime we have people over it gets brought out.
ReplyDeleteAtlas, I couldn't agree more on Rockband, it is redonkulously fun.
@David Csonka - I forgot to mention that it is on a Wii, so if the crowd isn't feeling the RB we go with Bag-O or Wii Tennis
ReplyDelete@MJ - Ya it was a selling point to my GF that if we get rockband she could sing/play, shes not much for the drums but loves the guitar
I went old school and got a pool table last year. They're fairly cheap if you can buy one second hand from Craigslist.
ReplyDeleteNothing beats a few games of 9 ball and football games on Saturday afternoons... except going to the game of course.
@Atlas we played RB all night on my birthday in March and it was a big hit with everyone. One friend we found out should probably be the next american idol, he's awesome. I don't think they let you drink Corona's between sets on the show though.
ReplyDeletei'm totally a fan of getting together and playing whatever. if you're with your friends, you usually have a helluva good time no matter what you're doing ;)
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