Oh crap...birds chirping?! How long have I been playing?!

[SimuLord]

Since I'm officially addicted to games I can say that every good game has this effect on me.

Other side of the medal is the fact that I'm (as my grandmother likes to say) an owl. I just feel so much better at night! I like staying up late since in the evening my brain seems to work much better than regularly at day... I know it might sound strange but I'm sure some of you understands what I mean .

I know exactly what you mean. If I don't force myself to sleep at night, my natural sleep cycle has a tendency to revert to a 4 AM-noon schedule. Sadly I don't have the luxury of indulging that...got work and school!

 

[Valiant The Gamer]

I once stayed up to do flash games and browse forums... -.-

 

[Yureina]

This has happened with just about every game that i've gotten myself sucked into but also usually lacked an in-game clock to tell myself "hey, you've been playing way too long."

That's Fallout 3, the Paradox strategy games (Europa 2, HOI2), the Total War games, and of course, the god of all "play till 5AM games", Civilization.

 

[Ozcar]

Persona 3, that bastard. You think it's still 2-ish in the morning, but all of the sudden you hear your parents making breakfast in the kitchen. Thank god it was summer. But that's only the one worst time. Others (3-4am) include but do not stop at..

Spoiler

Team Fortress 2
Borderlands
Dreamfall:TLJ
Mount & Blade
Left 4 Dead 2
Knytt Stories
Psychonauts
Prince of Persia (all of them)
Beyond Good & Evil
Silent Hill-series (mostly on purpose)
Speed Racer (beats LSD at those hours)
Soul Calibur 3
Trapt
We <3 Katamari
...

And do not even get me started on LAN parties. Oh God, Assembly will be here again in three months..

 

[Skobvs]

L4D1 and S.T.A.L.K.E.R. Shadow of Chernobyl... I played those for hours only to realise what time it really was. Though I didn't have exams coming up like op.

 

[Stuntcrab]

Team Fortress 2 I played until.. 6AM (good thing it was summer) I finally finished playing and realized I was completely tired

 

[Chamale]

I love you...
If not for you I would probably never discover the crack cocaine that Zafehouse is Oo...

MadeinHell has been bitten by Zafehouse and sustained minor wounds. The wound burns.

MadeinHell has turned into a Zafehouse player! His numbers are added to the growing horde.

 

[Jenova65]

STALKER

Eternal Darkness and Skies Of Arcadia

These. All of these.

I'll sit down to play STALKER, do one quest, and.. well... one thing leads to another.
Next thing I know, I'm tromping through the Zone, staving off death at the hands of super mutants and other whatnot. There's a save key, sure, but I take it as a challenge from the Zone - Challenge accepted.

Eternal Darkness is a different story. I'll see an incredible sanity effect, like, for example, when your memory card corrupts, or the machine bricks. I'm hooked from there.

I played Eternal Darkness a stupid amount of times :-O And til stupid o'clock too often!

 

[Jenova65]

My curses are Tales of Vesperia and Saints Row 2.
Me and a friend teamed up on Vesperia when I first got it. We started playing few hours after it was delivered in my mail so from about 3PM to well... 3PM...

Saints Row 2 got that effect too, but I usually manage to tear myself away from the screen around 4am, but that's hard.

My newest curse is Monster Hunter. Played it last night, I had played it before I went to eat and after dinner I watched a few movies and I got back to the game at 2am. I was just going to save then go to sleep since it was late, but I ended up playing for almost 2 hours. Not much compared to either Vesperia or Saints Row 2, but I was right next to the save when I started.

It was about 5 years ago, tbh and the culprits were Eternal Darkness and Skies Of Arcadia (I played those games far too much)
I do play for too many hours on ME and ME2 but have a one year old baby so no playing through the night for me
That said I stayed up til 5.30 on Thurs/Fri watching the general election and got up at 7.30 before realising I am too old to get by on 2 hours sleep ;-)

Skies of Arcadia is a dangerous game... I wish I could play that again .

Why can't you play it again? :-O I am thinking of hooking up the Wii (or the Gamecube) and reliving it Just won't be playing through the night for reasons previously stated.

 

[[Insert Name Here]]

Playing Tekken 4 fron 8pm till 3am trying to beat the final boss as the most piss-weak character in the game. It was a night of pure anger and laughs.

 

[knhirt]

Blizzard has done this to me twice. First with World of Warcraft (I sometimes played all night and well into morning), and now it seems Starcraft 2 is going to do the same. Just last night I played 'till 4 AM.

 

[Pinstar]

There has only been one serices that can trick me into pulling the all-nighter and that is the Civ series. One more turn syndrome can cause clock blindness and push your gaming time until sun-up.

Those days are tough as you are forced to choose between "Go about my day as if I actually slept" or "Call in sick to all my obligations and try to sleep"

I learned very quickly to always do the former, as trying the latter would result in a failed attempt at sleeping due to my brain thinking about the next 10-20 turns in civ. Vicious cycle.

 

[Kouen]

Smash Bros. Melee.... spent 48 hours playing it only stopping for the loo or eating / drinking...

was a good weekend but i was a zombie for the rest of the week!

 

[ZephrC]

Since I gave up and purchased a 360 and a Wii to finally join the current console generation a couple years back, there have been three games that have had me accidentally play until the sun came up. Mass Effect, Mass Effect 2, and Civilization 4.

I know Civilization 4 is old now, but I went back to it again after finishing up with Mass Effect 2 and still did this. That is a seriously addictive game if you can get into it.

I've been almost as bad about playing too much Rock Band, but it doesn't seem to lend itself to accidental marathon sessions nearly as much.

 

[zombiesinc]

This happens on a daily basis, I get right into whatever it is I'm doing, sometimes it's a video game, or sometimes (and currently is) posting on Escapist.

*Looks at the window*
**Does a double take**
"Say wha... ?"

 

[joshuaayt]

A long while ago, a bright eyed, rosy cheeked little boy ran into his room excitedly, clutching his brand new copy of Pikmin 2 to his chest. He removed Pikmin 1 from the gamecube, and replaced it with its sequel. This was at twelve in the afternoon.
When he later emerged, his eyes were dull and red, his cheeks gaunt and pale. The time? Twelve in the afternoon, the next day.
Don't do Pikmin, kids!

 

[VanityGirl]

My boyfriend and I were playing Monster Hunter Tri and we were ranking up and having a ball...
We looked at the clock and HOLY CRAP, it was early in the morning.

 

[Strategia]

Several times, but I can only recall a handful. One that stands out was EVE Online, but that was intentional - a corpmate (Rifter) and myself (Iteron) were sitting in orbit around Jel VIII, keeping an eye on the belts, and canflipping the same two people over and over and over again, until one of them left, and the other came back in a Scorpion (I think, Caldari battleship) and got Concorded. We made over 13mil between us that night, which was a lot for me at the time. It was fun, voice chatting about random stuff, both of us sounding more and more tired as time progressed.

The Europa Universalis and Hearts of Iron games (I don't own Crusader Kings or Victoria, sadly) also do this to me every so often. Mostly because there's nothing like a checkpoint or objective or other clear marker where you can say "when I get there, I'll stop playing". I'm always building armies and conquering smaller countries to prepare for yet another war with France, or building up my navy to take a beachhead in North Africa from where I can attack the south of France, or building more panzers so I can blitzkrieg Belgium and from there attack France, or landing entire panzer and panzergrenadier divisions near Bombay and Calcutta to force the surrender of Fr-Britain. In fact, I'm going to do that right now.

 

[MiracleOfSound]

S
Bonus questions: What games consistently have this effect on you? And do you ever pass on playing a game because you know you'll be up all night if you start any later than, say, 5 PM the previous afternoon?

I always like your threads... and the title made me laugh!

OT:

Bad Company 2

The matches are really long, like 50 minutes to an hour, but they fly by so quick... and when you're used to 3 mintue Call of Duty matches like I am it doesn't register that you've only done 6 or 7 games and the shops outside are starting to open...