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submitted 1 year ago by IoSapsai@lemm.ee to c/gaming@beehaw.org

To preface, this post isn't a bash on gaming. I've been gaming since I was 3 years old on the NES. It was (and still is) a part of my life. That said, while I turned out ok in the end, I would play games every free moment I had. I've spent thousands of hours in World of Warcraft during the TBC-WotLK era. My pattern would be school-home-eat while playing wow-sleep thinking of wow-repeat. My whole social circle formed around WoW and LoL/dota2 later. I would often listen to music while playing. Of course, we grew up and we became distant over time. I more or less ended up with barely any friends.

I don't play games much nowadays because it's simply better for my own mental health. I still play but with a lot more moderation - occasionally booting my PS2 or playing a run or two of Binding of Isaac. Most of my free time goes towards creative hobbies.

15 years later, whenever I hear music from that time, I get jittery and think about the fun I had in wow. I've fallen into that trap. Private servers galore, I used to play in them back then too, they've gotten even better since then. I start playing, ditch all my other hobbies, go out only for work, and in the end not have fun at all, and spiral into depression. The itch barely gets scratched. This cycle has been repeating over and over. I don't want it to happen again and I just got the jitters again.

I don't want to stop listening to music I like just because monkey brain associates it with WoW.

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[-] Hundun@beehaw.org 40 points 1 year ago

Are you sure you are addicted? I'm sorry, but to me it seems like you only have a problem with games that are deliberately designed to be addictive (WoW is basically a giant Skinner box, no wonder). In that case you would be just as susceptible to lots of things: like infinite-scrolling feeds on social networks, or recommendation algorithms on TikTok and YT.

Maybe if you find a way to filter out games that exploit your psyche for engagement, there will be a way to enjoy your very clearly beloved hobby in a healthy way?

Also, have you talked to a professional?

[-] bionicjoey@lemmy.ca 10 points 1 year ago

Yeah it sounds to me like OP could get on fine if they restricted themselves to games where you pay once and get the whole game. No subscriptions, no microtransactions, no DLC. Also it might have been a mistake for OP to ask a gaming community about this

this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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