[Headaches]

No, I personally did not experience it.

There can be many reasons for headaches. Propably first see a doctor, this is not a medical advice. I am no doctor.

What did change the most when you stopped playing games (your eating habbits, more sports, what else did change?).

Sometimes it is just your livestyle completely chaning and your body adapts to it (i know this from friends, who made changes in their lives and had headaches for some time, but they gone away).

It als could be stress or mental problems.

I really need more information.

[Resisting urges.]

There are several ways to stay away from gaming.

First you have to find your own identity. Are you someone who is comfortable to play in moderation (1 hour a day of media) or someone who can not ever stop a videogame once he sits down.

The second thing is, do you have any goals in your life? What do you want to achive? Can you replace that tasks with your gaming time?

The third thing is, can you socialice? Meet friend or have some hobby who does not involve electronics?

We really need to know a little more about you to help you properly.

I think you just have to experience the two sides (without computers and with videogaming) to really understand what a waste of time it is.

[I used games to combat feeling sleepy. Now what?]

 

[My Arts are Crap]

1 hour ago, Some Yahoo said:

I render in DAZ Studio.

That explains alot.

Do you know http://www.wings3d.com/ and https://www.sketchup.com

Booth programms where designed with the ease developing 3d models in mind.

I still prefer BRL-CAD / POVRAY / MATLAB (Freelab, octave, scilab, haskell) since I am interrested in the technical aspects (and needed it for my studies).
Tinkering with 3d objects Is so damn fun in those tools, since you can also make shapes by defining pure formulas.

Also different rendering implementations are avaliable (MonteCarlo, PhotonMapping) for example https://appleseedhq.net/ and https://luxcorerender.org/download/

[Something fun that's not gaming.]

Extremely dangerous if done Wrong!
Read some books first!

[The feeling that you're never doing enough]

On 3/9/2020 at 2:24 PM, ceponatia said:

I'm sure lots of us have this problem.

I know people like that. It's a really difficult physical condition.

I would rate this as perfectionism (not knowing your condition, I am not a psychologist).
It sounds like you have the fear not to fullfill your own goal.
Learning is more difficult with fear.

Propably your also doing your learning routines wrong.
Maybe you are just to exaustet, find a different book about your topic (like if your an engineering student read something about history like Leonardo da Vinci) or some Scientific Roman.
Read a book about learning to learn. https://duckduckgo.com/?t=ffab&q=how+to+learn+learning&ia=videos

Thats one of the problems people face today. They "want to make start-finish runs" at once.
Mostly becouse our school systems suck nowadays. People are rewarded if the understand stuff by memory, not by understanding the principle behind something.

[NoGaming vs ModerateGaming]

As I read about relapsing topics here very often, I wanted to write about my current state of no-gaming.
Maybe it helps someone or gives you an idea what you face and what you could change.

First off, I do not stigmatize videogames (like Cam said in one of his videos, it's not the videogames who are a problem it's yourselve).
Some people can quit a videogame after 1 Hour with ease, others can't.
Luckily I almost always was one of the first group.
I just sunk into videogames when playing with friends.
Interrestingly when I was not arround with them to play, we had more fun session when I rarely showed up, then when always gaming together.

So here are some thoughts about moderation and what might help you:

1. Set a timelimit

This is an important thing for me. Set a timelimit for entertainment. Like watching tv and playing videogames.
I set a timelimit for 1 Hour, stopping even movies before they where finished. This war hard at the start, becouse I wanted to know how they ended.
After a while it got easier, since I stopped viewing entertainment as the most significant thing in society.

2. Choose what you watch and play

A good documentary is more motivating than a Hollywood blockbuster and you learn something.
When I play a videogame (I own no Television), I only do play games who are roundbased (if online).
Also one round does not last more than 20 Minutes (3 Rounds in one hour is more satisfying than 1 Game an hour of LoL for example).
I also noticed, I sometimes even do not play 3 rounds, but quit the game after 1 round straight.
Games with MMO elements are a nogo for me nowadays. Those are like a second job.

3. Do your important stuff before you sit down to play a videogame

This has an enormous psychological effect for me. First of all I get more enjoyment out of the videogame and I feel the difference in wasting time to being protuctive.
Also it's a good thing to reward yourselve. It makes things you do not like easier to do.

4. Do not play videogames at night

This should be obvious. They keep me awake, it's easier to do an all nighter with them.
Getting up reseted the next day makes such a difference.
Also your automatically tired late at the day, if you wake up early.

5. Do not feel bad about yourselve

If you do not finish a game once a month or even a week, within your timelimit, do not punish yourselve.
You only start learn the different aspects in live. The important point is to make it better the next day.
For example, you finished all your important tasks, you do not know what else to do, you feel good,
so I say in this circumstance it's ok to be sucked into a videogame or entertainment.
You will also notice, that if you are not in balance and there are tasks to finish other than gaming,
videogames are (by a lot) not that fun.

6. Do not let yoursleve go

This is related to the last advice. Shure it's ok to sit down once in a while if you finished with everything important.
But don't loose your goals. Instead of gaming you could also do different tasks.
This is the most important advice. Before you sit down to play a videogame, do something different (without the involvement of computers at best).

What does help you to moderate gaming? Do you can moderate yourselve?

[What will life be like if you went back to gaming?]

Thats why I set myselfe timelimits. I do currently set myselfe 1 hour time a day for entertainment. (Holiday right now)

I do not feel bad with that timelimit and still do have plenty of time a day for other stuff to do.

Videogames still are some sort of "Meditation" to me.

However, it is important what to play. Games where rounds last more than 40 Minutes are a nogo for me (like MOBA), I need to be able to stop them when I want it or get finished after arround 20 Minutes.

Keep in mind, that I play videogames rarely a day when I Work.

[Main problem]

10 hours ago, Amphibian220 said:

your time can be wasted, but how can your values be stolen? Please explain.

Values as in Moneyvalue.

[Interesting Ted Talk]

Sorry guys. I can not help it

Spoiler

WHHAAHAHAHAHAAHAAAA The Worlds largest nerf gun.

 

[My Arts are Crap]

This deserves more likes I think. I was tricked by the title 🙂

Really nice work.

Anyway it does not look you are using Flimic! for your rendering. I am no artist. I even can't do some cube in Blender. I even can not draw a stick person. But I could code it 🙂

 

 

It's coded into Blender now since https://www.blender3darchitect.com/blender-3d/blender-2-79-new-features-filmic/

[Main problem]

Disclaimer: Gamers stay at home at young ages. Normal people learn to interact with someone else.
Since you did not learn how to do a normal conversations (not entertaining etc, but just being there with someone else, not making it weird) you need to put work into that skill now.
It's a damn easy basic skill which does not take weeks to develop.
And no, I do not mean to "talk to 1000 people a week" (also does work, but it's weird if done wrong, can get you faster where you want to be).
Just go out and sit somewhere. Look arround analyze people. Find a group/person who you think you would propably fit in and try to talk to them.

I think the problem is there is no general behaviour in conversations. Since conversations take place in different settings.
If you have issues, with something you want that issue to be recognized.
If someone does not care about it he either has
a. not offended you knowingly
c. ...
b. just does not fit

You would not talk bad about your boss in the office?
You would not go to a concert with your bluetooth speaker playing?
You get the point that I am taking? There are "society" rules.
If you meet someone random on the street, there is law. But no rule whatsoever what you can talk about.

13 hours ago, Amphibian220 said:

ethics and security

Do not expect something from other people what you can not deliver yourselve.
One hard lesson I needed to learn myselve.
Are you ethical all your live? Can you expect the same from someone else?

Gamers tend to be more perfect and live by code (I do you a pleasure twice, you have to do me a pleasure exactly two times).
 

On 3/2/2020 at 9:05 PM, Ikar said:

something personal that makes them vulnerable - e.g. they are afraid of bees or they have to clean every day. I always try to notice that.

This is a really important lesson in live.

There is smalltalk and there are important informations about someone else. I only remember those important things about people I care about.

12 hours ago, Ikar said:

workaholic in the first 15 minutes

Exactly. You are given rules within games what to talk and what to say.
You grew up in a monarch system of Guild leaders where the only one cool is your Guildleader.
Life can not be put into rules. Hell there are books with thousands of pages making up rules and the Police force still has work to do.
Thats becouse... well people meet at random. Doing random stuff.

12 hours ago, Amphibian220 said:

lack meaningful conversations

Whats a meaningfull conversation? Everything you talk has meaning, as long as the other participants continue giving you something back.
Just not to get an response as you expect it, does mean someone else should change for you.
Don't try to make people change for you. That will always have a bad ending.
Also, you do not know the intention of people talking to you like that.
Personally I do not care about anything, as long as I have the gut feeling I can trust people, and the DO NOT COST ME MONEY!
 

10 hours ago, Ikar said:

I think the key is to try and find people on your "level".

This is a good start. But it's always wise to try something new.
You grow bigger with mistakes.
If you do some of them and someone does not care... that could count as friendship.

My biggest issue is trust. Getting to know someone new and not knowing if he steals something from you the next hours until you get to know him more personally.
You could steal someones "time" or "values" or "lie to someone".
I still walk away from people if my gut tells me it will not work.
But this is not an issue for me, it is some sort of self defense.
As I grew older I learned to compeltely avoid those types of people.

If you have problems talking to people you do not know yourselve at the first place.
Bottom line, as long as you not get physically harmed, life is great.

I wanted to keep this short.

[Sleep Routine - how?]

This is really interresting but never helped me.

I found a book about waking cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm and even read more into scientific papers who where recently released (becouse of better measurement devices) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology .

The newews discoveries broke the plain day-wake-cycle even into more periods over a day.
They found out every human has a slighly different form of those cylces.
This graph will propably give you an understanding of what I mean:

Those periods shift and align to when you wake up (therefore it's stressfull for people to get up at different times each day, like shift workers have to do).
This means, someone who did go to school at 9am every day has a slighly shifted waveform than someone who did go to school at 6am.

Absolutely nothing helped me to sleep in properly, until I shifted my time going to bed to 20pm or even 18pm before that. Sadly I am working shifts right now, so I need to go to bed 22pm.

In addition I am using a daylight alarm clock withou sound.
I do not need any form of sound to wake up with this method!

[Morning Routines]

Thanks for all that input.

While I am a person with sleeping problems all my life (not able to sleep in and then not able to get up) I digged deeper into this problem, i tried almost everything written here.

I found a book about waking cycles https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Circadian_rhythm and even read more into scientific papers who where recently released (becouse of better measurement devices) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chronobiology .

The newews discoveries broke the plain day-wake-cycle even into more periods over a day.

Those periods shift and align to when you wake up (therefore it's stressfull for people to get up at different times each day, like shift workers have to do).

Bottom line, I go to bed at 20pm now, and wake up by myselfe at 2am without alarm clock.

I noticed that, after a while (arround 6 Months) I did not get up that easy mostly sleeping to 4am. What helped me was buying a daylight alarm clock (the one where you can disable the sound!). I also do have some toys standing on my book shelf within my bedroom. Seeing them in the morning helps me get up.

[Something fun that's not gaming.]

Before you do this at home, read the user manual of your hot air gun!
Some are not designed to run forever!

  

 

[Dealing with a TV addiction]

Shifting your habbits to something else after you did quit something is normal behaviour.

It's the most dangerous behaviour of all.
You can see this behaviour with smoking, eating or buying addictions.

The easiest way would be to sell your tv. Another solution would be to set a time limit.

It depends how much time for your personal growth you spend each day.

If you watch movies for 1 hour a day for example, I would not see it as problematic.
But only if you work on yourselve for the rest of free time you have avaliable each day.

[i am lost]

@ceponatia

Really nice read.

One of the major things I learned when I sold all my electronic stuff.

I was more popular among people when they where not able to call me all day.

Even with a complete different view of the world, people liked me better than I was when I did videogaming to much.

It was the reason becouse I had more empathy, I think. Videogames made me dull. You see blood all day or learn the mario map by heart to beat your score.
That can not be good for your soul (and no, I do NOT think Videogames make people go rampage).

Videogaming can still be a huge experience, if it's used as a one time event for example.
There is nothing more fun to get a shallow party more going than bringing a Nintendo Switch with just dance.

For me it was important to find my inner balance.

First times without gaming or electronics where so boring. I slept all day at first.
But I also found out, that's not a bad thing if you do not overdo it.
So learning the difference of an "addiction" and an activity regardles if it's gaming or sleeping or doing workouts was hard.
Once you find your time shift balance it's going on it's own.

On 2/24/2020 at 1:27 PM, ceponatia said:

a complete perfectionist

That was never my problem, I know people who had/have that problem and it's hard.
They work days on their application just to realize the job is gone already for example.
I was the "know it better" guy alot what made me lonely. Realizing it changed my life.

[back on gaming thoughts]

On 2/24/2020 at 6:20 PM, ceponatia said:

"Average" people don't even have desktop computers in their homes these days.

Nothing to add here, I wonder how society will be within 20 years.
They currently invent lenses who project images on your eye. The first prototypes already work.
https://spectrum.ieee.org/biomedical/bionics/augmented-reality-in-a-contact-lens

We do have the first generations of people growing up with a 24/7 online experience.

Shure videogame industries grew bigger, but the broader social participants want to be unique.
So I do not think videogames will be the next football for example. Even with companies trying to sell it like that.
Even with technical advancements, there will not be a virtual videogame where every internet user logs on.
People will understand the internet can be used to make a better society I think.

Anyway, the OP is at university. Just ask how many of your fellow students play videogames.
When I was at university I was a loner playing videogames, like I was at school.
And I did not realize it. Easiest thing to find and forget is to talk with people about it.
You have the advantage to talk with people who even do not play videogames, or rarely.

[What did you regret most when you quit gaming?]

Not to be sucked into what I do. Until I found out how many different tons of activities there are.

It's so easy to sit down and play a videogame.
Compared to learning an niche activity or something that's important for your own personal growth.

[What will life be like if you went back to gaming?]

There are propably the people gaming a little to get diversity in their lives.
Those who have their live in control and do not have addictive problems.

For me, if I game to long:
It's a deep sad feeling I get when I think about how I wasted my time.
Like the feeling if you feel really sorry for someone else, only you feel sorry for yourselve.

I only experienced this after quitting games a long time thou.
I think becouse I had a comparison of what I was able to accomplish.

[Something fun that's not gaming.]

 

[back on gaming thoughts]

Whait league of legends is that gametype where 10 people come together to learn offending everyone in another language or in english (it was not the same back when it came out)?
Is it lol still a thing in the videogame industry ^_^?

Honestly I never found that game entertaining and only did play it becouse it was hype.
I started becouse people begging me to play with them, never did quit and deleted my whole account a while ago.
We had sessions with league where the first who did die had to pay others a beer.
It was a blast back then, but the internet society just broken apart with all the esport stuff.
After a while you read that this game even ended friendships or caused deaths.

After I found out how few people actually play videogames (1 out of 10 and this includes every medium like console and mobile...) I realized how stupid I was to get tricket into this.

And if you find some odd statistics of videogamers world wide, compare the actual Internet user statistics to videogame statistics.
I even found statistics trying to tell me there are actually more online gamers than internet users O_o.
Hell if you look at the faked riot statistics.... all to keep you playing.

No, you do not climb the social ladder becouse you do have a good league rank.

It's a sort of "one time enjoyment" and people take gaming to seriously. Making excuses they can get rich playing it.

[i am lost]

You guys overdo youselve to much. Doing things like a machine is not plain right. Thats one of the major reasons our society has more diseases like burnouts or depressions.

You need to learn how to let yourselve go. There are tons of things to do without computers, which can help relief stress.

A basic principle in biology is, when an multicell organism does work it needs to regenerate.

There are many types of work, done with your mind or muscles. Regardless what type or work you do you always need rest.
Do not think of rest as in "Lying down and sleep". Try to find your inner selve.
That can happen with walking, visiting beatiful landskapes, or comepletely different things to do.

For me it's soldering or doing things with my hands. I love to use my power rotary tool (dremel).
I do work inthe IT sector, so having a diversion at what I am doing helps me alot to calm down and forget all the other stuff.

Don't be to hard on yourselve, you only learned to manage your energy.

That does not mean you are faster powered out than other people, it only means you do not have the routine in the things you do.

For example: Someone learning the piano has the hardes lessons at the start, but once he learns the basics it's an easy going.

Do not only think about what you do, think about how you do it. Learning things by heart does not mean you repeat all the stuff like a zombie. It means you learn how to learn things.

That also seperates the good piano player from the bad one (the ability to enjoy being a not so skillfull piano player is also a skill).

Who do you think gets a job faster, the one who can get people to laugh and is not as good as the other person who is a complete nerd and offends people?

[Something fun that's not gaming.]

and the professionals

 

[Something fun that's not gaming.]