I think people in the real world often overvalue the significance of the games they're playing. If you make a mistake on live television a lot of production people will probably get upset and claim it's the end of the world, but most people really don't care and it doesn't actually matter that much. Sure you should be professional and try your best to avoid mistakes, but there's usually no significant real-world consequences.
Anyway, a while back I uninstalled League of Legends because it was sucking up all of my time and it wasn't even fun.
Have you considered playing with friends or your SO? I think turning video games into a more social activity can help clamp down on the addictive aspects without sacrificing connections. Heck, I've met tons of people thanks to playing competitive multiplayer video games.
I understand the struggle of gaming especially when most of your life isn't going so great. The appeal of escapism is hard to bear, that's why on most of my computers I can't install any video games because I found when I said yes to Dota, I was saying no to greater priorities in life.
The thing I stopped being hard on myself however is considering that the time spent playing video games was entirely wasted. My 1,600+ hours playing Dota weirdly enough translated into video editing skills that now help with my job. The anger that I had playing the game caused me to deeply look into managing said emotion. The reflection that I had a problem meant that I could improve myself overall. Sometimes a metaphor, such as games, makes us realize the deep seated issues we had all along...
Great post.
I think for me, I would like to turn my many hours spent into a will and a way to help others deal with addiction to videogames, as well as porn and other digital addictions that are not yet taken quite as seriously as physical addictions.
I think that would be the ultimate way of making something good out of all this
If you sit around on the couch hyper focused on not playing the game, you will surely crack.
Eagerly anticipating this game has brought me back to my childhood days when playing the game I wanted seems like the ultimate fun, but of course now I have responsibilities. Now playing is a reward for myself if I handle everything else and again, only with friends. Even though I've been tempted dozens of times in the last month to fire it up for a solo session, that rule has stood me in good stead.
To be honest, I played it for a few hours and I found it to be way too complicated. I gave up after a few hours.
It’s _definitely_ not good enough to “fall off the wagon” for, seriously.
I would really rather not know.
I'm not addicted anymore, and I couldn't tell you what changed. I have a guess though; I think it was mobile games? But maybe not the way you might think. I got really hard in to some of the early mobile gacha games for a little while. Summoner's War was one of them, it's about 10 years old now. I spent some money on them; I have a tech job, and splashing a little cash on pulling the slot machine lever for powerful new monsters felt good for a little while. But those things were barely games, they were basically the absolute shortest, least ornate form of the hedonistic treadmill that you could offer and still call it a game, they were essentially just designed to form habits and get you addicted to a routine with predictable rewards, and then slowly dial back the rewards as you progress but also slowly dial up the number of advertisements for the in-game cash shop.
Regular pc/console games would at least try to hide the ways in which many games are grinds, they'd try to make an actual experience and give you value for your money and make you feel satisfied about your purchase. There's a lot of psychological tricks involved there, please don't get me wrong, pc or console gaming isn't free of that kind of predation at all (especially these days). But with mobile gaming, that's almost all there is. It's like the difference between going to a nice restaurant and having a couple glasses of wine with dinner vs going to a 24 hour liquor store at 3am and buying a case. At the liquor store, there's no music playing, there's no ambiance, nobody cares if you're having a nice time, you're not there for the atmosphere, you're there because there's something in your brain that will hurt you if you're not.
I think that ultimately, spending money on four seconds of mild excitement over a few special monster summon scrolls that ended up being garbage, and then going straight back into the endless pointless grind, was what actually did it for me. I think there was a moment where I saw completely the whole machinery of the game, laid completely bare. I felt like I could finally see that it wasn't really a game it was like a garbage disposal that I could throw money into. It drove home what a sad little addiction I really had. The total merciless clarity that I was functionally just a type of depressed rat slamming a little lever hoping to get a good treat that would help me clear the next level of a dungeon so that I could grind a marginally better set of drop rates that would improve my clear speed on that dungeon slightly pretty much instantly burned out my dopamine receptors for that kind of gameplay.
The funny thing is, I actually can enjoy video games normally now? I buy games that look fun, I play them a normal amount, and then I put them down when I'm done, whether or not I've beaten them. I feel really weird about the way I experienced that specific type of clarity / addiction burnout, it's a very difficult feeling to describe, but I was just like "oh I hate doing this, I don't want to be this kind of animal anymore". I know for a fact that this is not something that everyone gets to do, and that in a way I'm really fortunate that I came out the other side of it a basically normal casual gamer instead of someone who would do the video game equivalent of sucking the tar out of a cigarette butt to get a nicotine fix, that's not usually how that story goes.
The keyholder's role is simple. When I ask them to choose a password and type it in without telling me, they do that. When I ask them to share the password with me, they do so. The keyholder role is not about outsourcing discretion or approval around addiction. Instead, the keyholder changes the mechanism by which I access my addiction, in a way that disempowers my "animal brain" in its inner struggles with my "wise man brain". I've had several keyholders at different times; my wife, since I got married, and before that it was a mix of coworkers, roommates, and friends.
Locking devices: On iPhone, I set my own parental controls to 1) limit social media/games to 10 minutes per day, and 2) block the web. Then I had my keyholder change my passcode. On my computers I modified /etc/hosts (and /etc/resolvers/* for wildcard domain matching) then yanked sudo from my daily driver login. Keyholder has the password to the admin account. Updating apps is the main pain point on both platforms.
If you set this up, let me know how it works for you. And, if there is a piece of software that automates the above (in a way that does not give me a simple "let me do the thing" button) please share!
Some people can't enjoy a game responsibly, and for a few people teetotal may be the only way. But honestly this post sounds like someone substituting one addiction with another (publishing their daily journal) that's not actually any better for them, just less fun.
There's an incredible amount of entertainment media out there now. Way too much to experience any significant fraction of it. You've got to pick and choose. And if you know this particular kind of game will eat your life and leave you feeling a lot sadder than the amount of fun it gives you, then good job for realizing this and staying away.
Addiction rewires your brain, which is an experience I forget when I am not addicted to something.
It's easier to not indulge at all, than try to have a little and attempt to control it from there.
I used to be able to focus on a game or anything else for as long as I wanted.
People seem to have an inability to judge this game relatively impartially. They either claim that it's an unholy abomination that should have been aborted by the compiler or it's the greatest invention of mankind since the printing press. In reality (and as someone who played the original bg1, and bg2), it's a solid dnd based RPG experience with an incredible amount of content that is somewhat diminished by the number of bugs that continue to plague it even after its official release.
For what it's worth, I'm playing BG3. It's a good game, but it's not transcendent.
And while I don't suffer from gaming addiction, I do tend to dive into the games I play with all of my free time that, when I've finished a game (if I don't walk away before the end,) I look around at the rest of the hobbies I enjoy and lament the time I haven't been spending with them. Regret from my choice of escapism?
Delivering features became quests, finding and fixing bad code was the equivalent of breaking barrels for the loot, and there are always lieutenants and bosses around generating defects...
And it impacts many careers. I've seen what excess of games can do with people in college and in work. It's devastating.
Maybe we should appreciate what was made by humans while it's still being produced.
Gaming On Mac should be illegal, using mac should be illegal as well.
Abstinence in common things, or even required things like food is a challenge. Saying you’ll never play is just setting up for failure so when you crack, you play more.
What works for me is to set some non-zero target. That way when I fail, I fail by a percentage instead of an infinite percentage. Pledging zero and playing for an hour is much worse seeming than pledging an hour and playing two. Only a 100% overage.
There isn't a one size fits all, and I don't think advocating for OP to give in when they've got a long history of unhealthy behavior is wise -- at least, it's unwise unless you know a lot more about OP.
I only know what OP wrote. And my money is that they will play.
The point of my comment was to help OP develop a long term strategy to help with their issue.
It’s no more one size fits all then “I’m never going to play this game.” It’s just one idea that may or may not work.
That being said, I’ll bet you $50 that OP plays BG3 within six months.
If it's already there ready to play, it's incredibly difficult to limit yourself to a certain time period (if you're addicted). Endless instant gratification, zero friction, the game never gives you an opportunity to pull yourself out of it.
But it does work for others. Millions of people who play despite addictions or urges to play.
I’m familiar with addiction and the stories we tell ourselves and others. Just because I say “moderation doesn’t work for me” doesn’t mean it never works.
Just like when I say “I’ll never play again, this time I mean it” that doesn’t mean that works either.
People are different and there’s different things that work or don’t work. Addiction is weird and it distorts our perception of reality. Never trust anything an addict says, just trust their actions.
I’ve been to a lot of addiction meetings and it’s never very useful to trust “I’m not going to drink for 100 days. I promise.” It’s much better to focus talk on “I haven’t had a drink in 100 days.”
