Today marked the first day of ideal gaming weather: cold, windy and rainy. For me personally there’s no better weather imaginable to focus on a game for a few hours. It’s so nice to be in a different world when you can hear the wind roaring around your house and the rain pouring on your window.
Unfortunately for me I spent the day mostly stuck at work, so gaming wasn’t an option… Well maybe some Candy Crush Saga during the moments that I wasn’t really doing anything but that doesn’t really count as gaming, does it?

Somehow I also feel less guilty when it’s pouring out and I retreat to my room to lose myself in a game for a couple of hours. It gives a legitimate excuse to not really do something useful, since the weather is awful anyway, and people don’t question why you spend the day alone in your room instead of outside or doing things around the house. You don’t WANT to go outside when it’s pouring out and rightly so.

I know a lot of gamers have the opinion that the type of weather doesn’t really matter when it comes to their gaming habits, but I’m not one of them. When it’s cold and rainy out I have absolutely no issues with being inside gaming. Same goes when it’s snowing. However when it’s spring or summer and the weather is nice and warm I like to be outside and soak in the sunrays. That’s also one of the reasons I can really enjoy having a Nintendo 3DS. It gives me the option of gaming wherever I want and when I have the day off and the weather is lovely I can choose to pick up my 3DS and sit in our backyard enjoying the sun while simultaneously trying to catch all Pokémon.
Another thing is that during nice weather I’m much more restless than when the weather is awful. I feel like I have to do something when the sun is shining and the weather is pleasantly warm. Sitting down infront of a computer or TV to play games doesn’t really go together that well with being restless so often I choose to do other things than gaming. When the weather is awful and cold I feel much more relaxed and am able to just sit down infront of anything and take hours doing that particular thing. I guess I have the opposite of a winter depression, I have a summer mania!

Perhaps this also explains the ease that I have with levelling on FFXIV and the ridiculous amount of time I have put in the game so far. I think that if the weather would have been nice or if FFXIV had come out at the start of the summer I wouldn’t have played it as much as I am doing now. I’m currently level 45 on Sarella and will post an update about her here when she dings 50 and how I perceived the journey towards endgame so far.

Untill then I’ll leave you with another rainy picture… To set the mood for gaming!