31–40 of 165 posts
If you really need to stop, use cheats. That will break the dopamine cycle and you’ll be free. Maybe it also works to limit play time to healthy levels. For example, I was once playing quite a bit of WoW, and after I trying it out on an unofficial server where I could teleport anywhere made the game lose all its appeal.
Eventually the social scene kind of fell over for me, covid loosened up, and I realized my time spent had not decreased. Putting some thought into what made the game enjoyable for me personally and I realized it was the process of improving that made it rewarding. Then I took a look at well what have I really been improving lately? Again social scene is done so I'm not improving team play, what about solo play? Not really there either. I had reached a peak that wasn't surmountable with the state of the game (matchmaking and network reliability at my skill level was not conducive to the experiences that would allow me to improve) and so realizing that all of the thrill and promise of improvement kind of fell off and I mostly stopped playing for a few months.
Lately I've been trying to rekindle some social scene and have defined some new development goals that aren't as grindy as my previous solo play. More casual play.
Maybe some introspection on what you are getting out of it I guess. I hadn't thought that hard about about how improvement was the main feature for me, of course I noticed myself getting better but once I identified that as the ultimate source of enjoyment and a lacking feature I organically lost interest.
I did something very similar, steadily played more and more, got more competitive and ended up dedicating way too much time and money to it.
Similarly the only way I managed to quit the first time was by quitting everything. Discord, uninstalling the game.
At the point I quit I actually had to make a decision - go along to the local chess club for the first time to try and make some real friends in the town where I'd moved to, or play a competitive game with my game team. I picked the chess club and I'm glad I did.
I even went back to the game after about 6 months, through one friend I made. I got very competitive again and won the lower tier of the biggest competition they created in the game (our team got something like 900 euros of in-game prizes).
However again it got too much and again the only way out was cold-turkey.
Personally for me there is no 'healthy' amount - and your personality sounds similar. Plus with these competitive games they make it so that there is no healthy amount, if you want to compete you have to spend lots of money or invest unhealthy amounts of time.
I've stopped completely now, I occasionally chat to my old team - they're still playing. It was a useful escape during a pretty depressing time.
In the end I value the friends I made, which I don't think I would have made any other way, but I'm glad I've stopped.
You can strive to improve, but you need to measure yourself relative to yourself alone. The best players of any game (whether it be the latest MOBA, a traditional game like chess, or even a physical sport like golf) put far more time into it than would be healthy for a non-professional. Even the average player that you play against likely puts more time into it than you should, because addicted people will play a disproportionate number of games.
If you can accept that you're not going to be the best, and just compare this game to your last one, that's the first step. The next (but not final) step is just good old-fashioned time management. You can get better advice on that from elsewhere, but it's important to have a system.
>According to Steam I played over 2.000 hours during 2020 and 2021. Less than three hours a day for passive recreation is hardly out of line with modern western lifestyles. The average American spends more than that watching television. https://www.usnews.com/news/best-states/articles/2021-07-22/... I obviously wouldn't want to deter anybody from productive work in favor of entertainment, but physical and mental rest…
My single player games too I just ran out of stuff to do. You can only replay skyrim so many times, and nothing released since seems even half as good as skyrim. I couldn't even get into fallout 4 because I was ruined from the expectations set in new vegas. Elden ring seems like its there but I suck at souls games and I'm not looking to become a masochist.
My advice if you really want to long term get out of video games is to just let your collection grow stale. You will grow tired of the games you have and find some other things to do that eat up your time. With nothing new coming in hopefully you find yourself unfettered from video games at least eventually.
In the end I find that its really not video games but some deeper self discipline issue, since I can get into that 'flow state' you describe in a video game or on discussion forums even endlessly looking at stuff on ebay. I can easily fixate on just about anything.
Same issue as you, ladder really made me want to play. I was top 11 in NA and in terms of my rank I was top 0.01%. People in the game would always invite me and constantly want to play with me. It's super rewarding being super good at something.
The issue is, with these competitive games, is that they take everything away from you and make your life unbalanced. I don't have an answer from you, apart from quitting entirely seemed like the wrong approach to me. At the end of the day, you're playing the game for a reason, it brings you joy in some way, and this week of not playing taught me that I love everything else in life and I also want to continue to play competitively, it just needs to be balanced (so weekends only.)
If weekends only lead to me also playing throughout the week, then I'm going to cut it off entirely, but for now, I think a balanced approach is best.
Thinking about why I play really helped me and not playing during the week reminded me of why I love the game and hate the game at the same time. I hate the game because everything in my life is better right now, work, relationship, body, stress levels, etc. You would be surprised how much energy your mind exerts being the best at a game.
The reason I love the game reminds me that life is so boring sometimes, I was just watching random YouTube videos and such as they're nothing compared to being the top 0.01% of a game. The ups, the downs, the competitiveness, the feeling of finally getting to the top of the game is unreal. The fact that the game just takes you out of reality, no thinking about work stresses, relationship stresses, it's just all magically gone. Your mind is just on a 1 way track to winning in the game. Amazing. Life is so short, sometimes it's great to get away.
I don't have an answer for you really, we're in the same spot. I hope we find a balance between playing our games and living our lives. Harmony. It's the only way, or you're sacrificing something :)
If you really need to stop, use cheats. That will break the dopamine cycle and you’ll be free. Maybe it also works to limit play time to healthy levels. For example, I was once playing quite a bit of WoW, and after I trying it out on an unofficial server where I could teleport anywhere made the game lose all its appeal.