Escape to comfort gaming & limiting performative tasks
Fall is often thought of as a season of and coziness and comfort. Getting back to things – work, school, hobby activities.. How about games? Transition from summer has gotten me back to comfort gaming. Instead of tryharding everything I’m choosing more laid back approach and allowing myself to play and create while limiting my performative tasks to minimum. We’ll see how it goes. But so far the approach has had a one significant change.
Replacing news & consuming AI-hype content with gaming
As many others I’ve faced fatigue with AI-conversation. It cannot be avoided if you scroll too long on news, Youtube or LinkedIn. My idea was to stop myself from getting into that rabbit hole by switching my focus to games and delete my search history whenever I started to notice all the content that was recommended to me had a keyword “AI” slapped on it. So I started playing Candy Crush, Pokemon GO and World of Warcraft. Also started limiting performative tasks that feel tiring and require learning new things or doing research to regular weekdays and whether they’re finished or not I’ll stop at 4 pm.
The biggest thing I noted in a few weeks was that distracting myself distanced me from the stress caused by dwelling on bad news and future of the tech market. I didn’t feel stressed by alarming news headlines and didn’t think as much how AI-hype impacts on the field I’ve been working on. So it kinda worked. But not completely. And I see the point of giving oneself a permission to worry or vent a moment and leave the matter for the day after a time window has expired.
Candy Crush Saga, Pokemon Go and TBC Anniversary
I think I’ll be uninstalling Candy Crush Saga after this experiment. Honestly, it gets addictive with rewards from playing daily and doing time challenges. Playing Candy Crush got out of hand quite quickly for me. I checked my screen time and my neck is really stiff – I’ve been on my phone too much. And I think any small disturbance in time challenges annoys me so that’s not good for my overall mood.
When it comes to Pokemon I find it easier to put it down and quite fun to just check if there’s any Pokemon around if waiting for something. It doesn’t feel as pressuring as Candy Crush. So I’ll probably be playing Pokemon for a while again before getting bored with it. Casually.
In World of Warcraft I got into the The Burning Crusade anniversary -version. I has been fun. I have been more active on typing chats that on Discord. WoW is a good change of pace for the evening after I’ve got some things already done for the day and had a walk. The intentionality in it just works for me – I can play and chat in a different internet space that makes me forget doomscrolling and other ways I’ll be wasting my time without playing it. WoW has been my top comfort MMO and I’ve binged it for years. Even though I would get annoyed with another player being a dickhead from time to time, mostly I find playing WoW quite relaxing.
Piece of my mind about games
Different type of games have different types of use cases and can affect even the same person differently. If you’re able to stop playing Candy Crush with an ease then good for you. I can’t even keep Instagram installed on my phone without slowly getting back to doomscrolling. And yes, I have uninstalled Instagram from my phone. And it’s been a great decision that has made me almost forget the app exists most of the days. Out of sight, out of mind.
What I missed about playing WoW was the ease of socialising when having low energy since players are already sharing a goal. For example a goal of clearing a dungeon. Or winning a battleground. I do not have to stress about introducing myself if I don’t want to. I can just get to the quests if I feel like it. Great balance between antisocial and willing-to-be-social mindset.
