Have you ever taken time off from work to play a game?
 

Just as the title says: Have you ever taken time off from work to play a game?

I don't mean playing a game while at work (those of you who are lucky enough), i mean actually called in sick or scheduled PTO/vacation time just to play a video game.

i dont think i ever called in sick specifically, but i know when i worked as waiter, more than once volunteered to be cut, or traded away my longer shift so i could go home earlier to play something...i think diablo 2 was the worst culprit, as my wife was working 2nd shift at the time, so i had all afternoon and evening to myself.

The reason I am asking...

I was thinking about the next Solecismic game and because I am working 6 or 7 days a week (currently on day 17) I thought that I would have to take a day or two off just to play it when it came out.

I think with NCAA '04 I called in sick a day or two.

Everquest "eased" my transition out of high school.

I can't think of anything after that work related. I have purposley avoided the likes of WOW.

i also have taken numerous days off where i have done nothing but sit around the house with Lathum, drink, and play games, but it was never for a specific game...it was always because that was better than going to work

EDIT TO ADD: my wife always loved when we did that for 3 days at a stretch

I engineered the demise of my division at Microsoft just so I'd have time off on unemployment just to play Halo 2 and Half-Life 2.

OK, not really, but the timing worked out in that respect...

:)

LOL.... I did play alot during my brief periods of unemployment...

I took 2 days off when FBCB was released, and I took days off here and there to play Baldur's Gate in the months after it was released.

Hells ya. I even took a long lunch to play today.

Never Winter Nights release day...First and possible last time I ever call in sick to get a game on day of release.

The best part was seeing guys in suits and ties, like me. Plus your sterotypical D&D guys in line to get the game at 7:00 am before the store opened. Once they opened the store we all walked real fast to find the game and we all politely took a copy then hurried to the check out counter. Good times.

A couple of times, but haven't done it in quite awhile.

No, but I did skip a days worth of college classes to play Metal Gear Solid

I think I skipped a day or two of work during my Omerta days, which might be worse than skipping work for a video game. Text-sim mafia, nothing like it. Especially since 2.2. ;)

wonder what you will do when NWN 2 comes out???:) :o :eek: :D

A day of college classes?

Good lord, I'm pretty sure I skipped a handful of days worth of college classes to play nerf basketball. *shurg*

i agree...i can count at least a week of misses for super mario on SNES

ive taken vacation days for the IHOF bowl (FOF multiplayer), and once or twice for soccer games that i really wanted to see that would be on mid-day, never explicity to play a video game though.

God yeah... i think i skipped a whole semester to play FOF actually.

Kinda weird....only 70% or so voting "yes". I would have thought that it would be somewhere around 85%.

Never missed a college class for a video game (in fact, for non-semi-business purposes I think I missed maybe 10 classes in freshman year, and 2 or 3 tops since), and certainly never missed work for one.

I've never missed a single work for anything, as a matter of fact. Then again I've only worked 9-5 jobs for about 12-15 months of my life, but even when working part-time, etc., if I was on the schedule I was at work.

Wow, I was thinking more like 25%...

I missed college classes because I was tired from playing NHL 95 and Tecmo Bowl for 12+ straight hours over night with the guys, does that count?

Yeah, that's been my situation. I missed a college class because I stayed up until dawn playing Civ 2 and was too tired to go to class.

Taken an occasional day off from work because I pulled consecutive late nights on a game.

I remember staying up until 9AM playing Civ3 during finals week. On that particular day I had an exam at 10AM. Did fairly well if I recall, but collpased afterwards.

I actually missed a final once due to this. Still ended up w/ a decent grade in the class IIRC.

Well i work for myself and from home so i don't count as can take my time when i want it.

I did it a lot when i was at university. Every year i took some days after a new CM (old FM) was released. My record was when starcraft was released, i had a network setup with my room mate and we played for a whole week, not doing anything else than playing, eating, going to the WC or sleeping on really weird patterns, like playing for 12 straight hours, stopping to eat something fast, play for 12 hours more, sleep 6 hours, play again etc etc. It was pretty mad, we ended not knowing if it was day or night or how many times did we eat etc. Ahh memories.

I took 3 days of leave to wait in line for a 360 and play it.

Yes of course :D

(heck I changed jobs 10 years back so I could work on my favourite game ... enough said ;) )

I remember I was bored at work one night and was reading about FOF on this forum and left work 6 hours early, just to go home and try different line-ups etc. Man, 12 hour graveyard shifts...don't miss that at all.

I called in sick for the release of one of the NCAA Football games (2003 or 2004). The thing is that I hadn't planned to do so. I think I willed myself into feeling sick so I could stay home. When NCAA 2006 came out last year, the release day was exactly one week before my last day at work, as I was about to leave New Orleans. My wife knows how much I anticipate the NCAA games, and she suggested that maybe I should just leave my job a week early. As much as I wanted to, I decided against it. The extra week of pay was too important. I gave it plenty of consideration, though. :)

Can I marry your wife?

Never called in sick, despite joking about it. However, I've planned vacation days around the release of some games. In part, this is because it is hard to coordinate my wife's and my vacations (due to each of our jobs - although she is not working currently) and neither of us are a big fan of traveling alone for vacations.

I've never called in sick before to play a game, but I have come in late, very, very late because either I stayed up late playing or woke up in the morning and started playing before work and didn't want to stop. I'd come in sometime around or after lunch.

It was pretty easy. I just called my secretary told her I was "tied" up and just checked the blackberry and voicemail for any developments. No harm, no foul.

I had planned to take off a week for halo 2, but my asshole of a boss made me work 6 days that week (argh). I have for other games before and I plan on taking about a week off in November when Rainbow Six Vegas and Gears of War are released.

Oh yeah. Antmeister and I took the day off to play Everquest. We stayed up super late and both called in "sick". That was crazy man, I'd never done anything like that... those stupid orcs kept killing us and we were determined to make it out of there alive.

I worked close to home so I'd come home for lunch and play for a little bit. Gosh, that thing really was like crack.

Must be so nice to have a wife/husband who both like to play games. The last computer game that my wife played was Tetris like 10 years ago. At least after two years married she is not surprised at me wearing headphones and shouting orders to my squadmates playing WWII Online :)

I took the day off on the release of Star Wars Galaxies. It sucked, because I did not actually get to play until 8pm+. And the game sucked besides.

Now that I am a government employee, however, I just play games at work.

I never had an interest in computer games and he introduced me to FBPro. He said, just try it and you might like it. So I said what the heck and did. Thanks to that game, I learned to love football and understood trades (to a certain extent), defense/offensive plays, all kinds of stuff. I have fond memories of kicking Antmeister's butt in several games :D Ahh... the memories.

Oh yeah, I was looking through some old notebooks and found a list of players from one of my drafts and showed it to Antmeister... we both chuckled ;)


lol :D

I've taken time off to play baseball, basketball or softball, but never specifically to play a video game. I've gotten a shift covered before, and ended up playing video games, but that's never been the chief motivation.

Seriously. I missed quite a few days of college classes because the weather was too nice.

UC Santa Barbara had some really nice "scenery" to keep me occupied on those days.

Just to chime in on the "missing class" discussion, I missed class a few times because I was more interested in walking 10 minutes to Burger King for onion rings. Let me explain that again:

I missed class to eat Burger King's onion rings.

Back in the FPS days, you bet.

I'm pretty sure I missed some classes in college to do it, not work, tho.

SI