When the first child arrives, everything suddenly turns upside down. As a gamer, you have to be creative in order to spend time on your hobby despite the new addition. Our author Jürgen managed to do this with Doom Eternal and others somehow.
This is how Jürgen spent the last months: I, Jürgen, was on parental leave for the last 7 months to support my now one-year-old son optimally as he grows up. But after hours of changing diapers, tending to the baby, and attending various crawling groups, the desire for some relaxation grows immensely.
How nice that the baby sleeps more often (and finally in his crib, not just on my arm!) so theoretically I could play a round.
“You only play when you’re watching the baby!”
That’s why nothing came of relaxed gaming: Well, it was unfortunate that my wife was also craving relaxation. And she was right, as she bravely took every night shift while I could sleep in the guest room. Therefore, she rightly insisted on taking advantage of our son’s valuable sleep phases to rest herself.
And since she urgently needed to catch up on sleep, I had the supervision over the little one’s sleep. He seems to be aiming for a career as a physicist. He tended to test gravity right after waking up. Using himself as a test subject and the crib as the starting point! Spoiler Alert: He never fell out; we could always prevent it.
What’s the deal with the baby monitor? Fortunately, I got a handy baby monitor for baby watch. With it, I can see and hear the little one anywhere in the house as long as I keep the small screen in view. This allowed me to convince my wife that I could play while keeping the baby safe.
It actually worked quite well. At least with games that don’t require extreme attention, like The Elder Scrolls Online, still a perfect game for parents.
Shooters and babies create extra challenges
The dilemma with the baby monitor and Doom: Things got tricky when I wanted to play shooters via Stadia. Even with Borderlands 3, it was difficult to focus on the baby monitor and the game. But at least there were often quiet passages in Borderlands where not much shooting occurred. But it got worse.
Because eventually, a game came out that I absolutely wanted to play, and taking care of the baby made it even trickier than it already was: Doom Eternal! I love Doom and its fast-paced, aggressive gameplay. Along with the intense effects and great soundtrack, it’s definitely among my favorites.
So Doom becomes even harder: However, precisely the strengths of Doom Eternal pose a real obstacle with my baby monitor model. It’s genuinely stressful to enjoy the hyper-fast gameplay of Doom while keeping an eye on the baby screen.
And the headphones are only half on my ear because otherwise, you miss it when the baby wakes up and loudly calls for his parents. The high difficulty of Doom hardly adds to this challenge.
Paradoxically, I soon saw these limitations as an extra challenge. Because the adrenaline level rises even more when you have to pay attention to two completely different things: a peacefully sleeping baby on one side and a bloodthirsty Hell Knight charging at me on the other!
That’s why I now appreciate my leisure time even more: Additionally, the whole situation with the baby monitor taught me one thing: Free time is precious and should be fully enjoyed when the opportunity arises. Therefore, successfully completing a level in Doom is now even more satisfying for me than if I had just played it on any random evening before my time as a father.
That’s why I’m currently enjoying my extra-hard gaming sessions with the baby monitor. The sense of achievement is just wonderful.
