I’ve been dating video games for 20 years. But in early-mid 2019 we broke up. I was um-ing and ahr-ing about the decision for a little while by that stage. Our relationship was progressing well. I’d played all the Dark Souls games and completed them multiple times. But sometimes you get that inkling that a relationship is just holding you back… you know. By this stage I had tossed the ‘break-up speech’ around in my cranium for many months at least. I’d consulted ex-gamers on their own experience and also current gamers on their opinions.
As with many things, what got me over the line was that I just decided to give it a go. With many of these things I tend not to have a grey zone. In this case I didn’t test the waters by saying, “I’ll give up video games for 30 days and see what happens…”, I just gave them up and immediately tried to fill the void with other things I’d prepared before hand – such as music practice.
In the weeks following I learnt gypsy jazz and felt I’d really won out on this trade off. In the months following I became much more productive in a consistent and steady way; better reading habits, more assignment work happening, general admin tasks were getting ticked off sooner rather than later.
Video games for me were something of a relaxant. But increasingly I found myself not experiencing that relaxation I would expect to. More often I was left a little hotwired on adrenaline which is such a predictable bait-and-switch but still we love to ignore it especially because video games are such trigger-happy fun.
A worry I had was not been able to find something to ‘relax’ with in lieu of the pixels. But it was ill warranted concern. Turns out I didn’t need to relax with anything else. I was actually fine. I simply enjoyed more those activities I was already doing such as bike riding, walking with friends, watching the occasional SBS on demand show for free with no financial burden whatsoever.
So do I still play video games? Yes. I’m a filthy hypocrite that’s been lying the whole time. I actually play video games with my wife but they are two player local co-op games – which has been way more fun than any single player game to date. Why? Because what we do isn’t so much about what we do (at least not as much as we think it is). It’s about who we do it with. I’ve loved video games more for playing them with my wife and with my friends (in person, not online). And this has carried over into my life in general. Whether by causation or correlation, I do find myself spending more time in person with my friends without any mediating screen.
Currently at the time of writing, there is the global pandemic of COVID19 occurring. And for obvious reasons video games sales, consumption and livestreaming is going up. We simply can’t see people as much and have ample opportunity to play them and incentive to do so. But I don’t think what I’ve experienced is effected so much by this. In fact perhaps I’ve coped well with the lockdowns because I don’t play video games…
So, should you give up video games???
Yeah, probably.
Bigvai and Shiphrah 