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Comment by sylens | Hacker News Reader

There are different reasons why I’ll go through periods of prolonged gaming. The first is that I’m looking for something to unwind with - gaming can be a quiet, solo activity that lets me just tackle objectives or challenges in a fairly linear fashion. If your job involves a lot of talking in meetings all day or context switching, this can be therapeutic.

But I’ve also recognized that I will often turn to gaming when I’m not being challenged enough or fulfilled enough elsewhere. Recently I went through a year at work where I was pretty much coasting, and therefore being able to knock out several games or keep pace with friends in multiplayer titles replaced that sense of fulfillment I would normally have gotten from work that mentally stimulated me.

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This was certainly the case for me over the last year and a half. Up until the start of this year when I switched to a new, challenging job, I dove deep into a competitive shooter hole. I played ranked modes when available and focused a lot of mental effort into self-critiquing my play to improve. Making progress was the driving factor to keep playing, and I did see a lot of progress!

In the last six months I switched jobs into one that's more demanding of my time and mental efforts, and my gaming volume dropped significantly. I haven't booted any of the multiple-hours-per-day games I got into for the last couple of months.

I think this is really insightful into my own behaviour around gaming. I used to be an avid gamer, but over the last year or two I've been too busy at work, working on my own side projects/startup. I've always thought I didn't have time for gaming, but I think more accurately it's that I've been getting fulfillment elsewhere.

I really relate to this. I gamed excessively through high school and parts of college (think thousands of hours a year), largely as I just couldn't think of anything better to do. More than anything it was just embarassing as it made me into the worlds least interesting man which probably compounded the issue, almost all my free time went into a bunch of games most people don't even know about. I feel a lot better about myself now I can point to side projects or similar when somebody asks what I've been up to.

I also think the pandemic has changed some of my behaviors as well. I used to enjoy playing on PC at my desk a lot, but now that I work at the same desk for ~8 hours a day, spending more time there at night is incredibly unappealing. I've been getting some enjoyment out of playing a console on the couch, but even then my volume is way down.

> But I’ve also recognized that I will often turn to gaming when I’m not being challenged enough or fulfilled enough elsewhere.

I feel your pain.

Games are incredible good creating challenges and rewarding effort. Both things are quite lacking in the corporate world.

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