One whole weekend! :) You don't want to know how many weekends of mine that netflix or videogames have claimed. I think I turned out alright though. For me, it's mainly about whether I feel motivated. If I do, it's easy to avoid that other stuff. If not, then there's an endless stretch of time with nothing to do and no money to pursue hobbies. That stuff is a natural filler for the void of endless boredom.
About the kids: I wanted to ask you, how did the kids handle it when you left? I guess you didn't get too into it, so maybe they didn't feel very strongly one way or the other about whether you played. But I think I'm going to try to cultivate a relationship with my kids over videogames, whether it's playing Minecraft with them or whatever MMO they want to play. It seems like hiking through the woods together, but virtual woods. But I'd imagine it's going to go like: They might get too into it at the expense of schoolwork, so I'll have to put my foot down and say no more, which will make them quite upset. And sure, that's the job of a parent. I'm their parent, not just their friend. But I can't help remember how misplaced my father's rules were, so I don't want to become like that. Yet I remember how much of a pushover my friend's dad was, which my friend took full advantage of; again, don't want to be like that. So I wonder how to strike a proper balance. It'd be great to hear from you and anyone else with children what your rules are regarding videogames.
Is there an instruction manual that comes with each child? No? Hmmm....
I've played minecraft with my kids a lot, and it can be fun, but virtual play time is not all adult nostalgic fuzzy bunnies, I was highly annoyed to discover that minecraft playtime with the kids is just like meatspace play time with the kids which means it includes all the annoyances, so there's tons of typical "what are you doing put that down right now", "be nice to animals or we stop playing", "if you walk along the edge you're going to fall and get hurt", "lava will burn you I told you to leave that alone", "I don't care how much of a temper tantrum you have you can't take that diamond I just mined and do nothing with it because its too valuable", "stop teasing your sister in game or we all quit", "no we aren't there yet", "dads redstone thing is complicated stop dumping water buckets on it", etc.
I've spent my whole life from kid up to adult being lectured incessantly from liberal arts grads that normal humans never treat online humans like they would meatspace because ... some fuzzy psych major BS whatever, which is just apologist rhetoric for its OK to flame people online because its "natural", and/or stereotypical "nerds suck we spend our time watching football so we're cool" BS. However, despite decades of pontificating, I assure you my kids act online just like they act offline, both the mostly good and occasionally not so good parts.
Its tiring. Just like taking kids to a (real) park involves burning mental energy keeping them alive (I'm talking real parks with real wilderness, not swing set neighborhood parks), taking kids to your base in minecraft involves me not focusing on the game and spending maybe 25% of mental energy, maybe more, trying to keep them out of trouble. And just like in the real world, one or two adults can easily keep one kid out of trouble but you get two or more kids and only one adult and next thing you know one is shooting arrows at her brother or the other is dumping lava buckets on his sister because she won't give him back his sword and she's threatening to tattle to mom and oh its all Fed up sometimes. Well, kids will be kids.
It was/is fun, just go in with the awareness that if they spend X% of real world time being naughty, in virtual world its going to be the same X% of time being naughty. Its not gonna be all idyllic.
As far as rules and stuff its not rocket science you make a to do list and work it top to bottom and unless you're an idiot, minecraft is the last thing on the list not the first, the first is usually homework.
That kind of lecturing may make sense in the real world, but one of the differences/advantages of virtual worlds is that the normal constraints don't apply -- you can do whatever the machine/software allows, without risk (certainly not fatal risk, as in the real world).
Games present an opportunity to examine systems in depth without the traditional fears/consequences of the real world.
The usual explanations center around anonymity and lack of perceived accountability, neither of which would apply to children who are being directly supervised by a parent, for obvious reasons.
That said, playing with the kids was great fun as long as it didn't interfere with other things. I ended up changing my network configuration between 9PM and 6AM to avoid people getting up in the middle of the night and getting in a few hours of raiding time. What seemed to work for me was helping them keep it in perspective with respect to their other tasks. They still get together online for age of empires runs.
I think these sort of games are also excellent examples for the sunk cost fallacy [1]. They make you invest a lot of time at the beginning by slightly increasing the work and rewards, and if you want to stop you think that it would be a shame that the invested playing time would be wasted, not taking into account that there might be overall losses (such as fewer social interactions, less exercising etc.). People have an irrational aversion against giving up their investment of money/engery/time (the sunk cost), even if it might be better to give up on it entirely. Often there is an anxiety involved that the inconsistent action needs to be explained to others.
[1] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
That aside and in all seriousness, good on you. I went through a very similar experience with WoW when I realized I had well over 100 days of my time invested in pixel characters. That is 2400 hours, or around a quarter of the 10,000 hours required to become an expert in something worthwhile. And that was just 1 character in WoW, I played other games like DAOC with similar time investments. It is and was just crazy and well over the point where I could justify it as entertainment/me time.
But looking back at why I played so much, is touched on in the article. It simulates being very productive (which in a meta sense you are), and for me that represents "goodness" in my self image. It was only after I called out the lie I was telling myself about "getting stuff done" did I really lose the compulsion to go play for hours.
I still enjoyed the social aspects, and the strategies for gaming the economy or finding a new way to solo a boss fight, but I no longer equated it with being productive. So for the same reason I don't sit in a movie theater for 8 hours straight, I stopped playing for those long stretches. And when I did have something I could get done, I chose not to play WoW.