How do you make a healthy balance between gaming and life?

Sometimes I get a bit obsessive about video games.

When a game I really looked forward to comes out, it can be extremely hard for me to pull away from it. When Shadowlands came out I was leveling two characters simultaneously. As a result, I spent a lot of time in Azeroth. Probably more than was healthy. Similarly, when Assassin’s Creed Valhalla came out, I probably spent a solid week playing that game as close to every waking moment as I could and still meet my obligations, a problem I also had with its predecessor, AC Odyssey. Don’t even ask me how much time I lost to Kingdoms of Amalur or the old Baldur’s Gate games.

Heck, pretty much every WoW expansion or Diablo game has had the same thing happen to me. I get really focused on the game and I have to kind of force myself to do things like eat, sleep, and work, and while I’ve learned to get myself to back off more easily now than I was able to in the past, it’s still always a struggle. So I ask you guys — what about you?

Do you play obsessively? Maybe you manage it with strictly rationed gaming time, or only playing with friends — harder for single person games but you could certainly do it with MMO’s like WoW or games like Diablo 3 with a robust multiplayer.  Or maybe you’re just not the kind of person who hyperfocuses like that — you can pick up and play or leave it be and it doesn’t really have much of an effect on you one way or the other, and you’re certainly not staying up until six in the morning over and over again trying to get all of your alts to max level because that would be unhealthy for you, and you’re smarter than me.

That. You’re smarter than that. And probably than me, really.

Anyway, share your secrets. How do you find that game/life balance?