connor

This is going to be short, just something I want to write about before I go to sleep to organize my thoughts before I get a fresh assault from cravings tomorrow. I read this article on Ars Technica today basically saying that as gamers get older they trend towards puzzle and strategy genres rather than the adventure, action, racing, etc games that they were fans of as kids. It made me wonder whether I could find some happiness with puzzle games(games I generally avoided growing up) that I've lost, since I've come to realize I no longer enjoy most of the games I played as a kid and only ever want to play addictive social games. I've just really been craving giving them a try all day but I know nothing productive can come of it, especially since the buzzword I see used most often to describe a good puzzle game is 'addictive'. I just need to stay away from game news I think, I knew going into the article that reading it was probably a bad idea ? I have a feeling that if I gave in, I probably wouldn't spend long with the puzzle games, it would just be a gateway back to the more addictive social games.

What I did instead was find an online password generator, generated one that was too long and complex to remember, and made a new account on protonmail.com using that password. Then I set that as my steam email and logged out. The good thing about protonmail is that you get logged out every time you close the tab you're using for it, so there's not going to be any saved session I can get back into it with.

Just an FYI if you come back to this, Steam is now able to detect disposable email address and won't let you use them, so the guerilla mail method, though clever, doesn't work ? looking around for alternatives

Hi, I'm Connor and I'm just starting this process. I've been game-free for a few days now. I've been gaming from a very young age and didn't see it as a problem until Overwatch came around. After I started playing that I was hooked on the social aspect and played nonstop, putting all other chores and things I wanted to get done aside and feeling self-loathing for it daily. I've tried sooo many times to quit gaming cold turkey, to the point of selling off consoles, throwing away anything gaming related, I've even deleted my Battlenet account(jumping through so many hoops and support chats to do so) only to rebuy the game and start a new account. I always either go straight back to Overwatch or kid myself into thinking I'm doing something healthier by trying to force myself to play other non-social games and inevitably getting bored and going back to Overwatch. Then I'll binge for a few days and feel ok with it but inevitably responsibilities stack up, the self-loathing piles on and I try to quit again and just repeat the cycle over and over. I don't think I can enjoy regular games anymore without eventually convincing myself that I can play Overwatch in some healthy way and trying it again, so it's time to quit all of it. I'm hoping this program breaks the cycle for me. I'm at the point in the Respawn book where there's a guide on how to delete my Steam account, which is a substantial amount of games that loss aversion is telling me are worth something if I keep them around, they are at least all deleted off my computer. I'm going to take that big step tomorrow. Happy New Year btw ? and thank you Cam for putting all this effort into a problem that most people don't take as a serious issue. Would love to meet new friends here, if anyone wants to talk psychology, music or politics, feel free to message me.