SerinaGold

I’ve been trying to quit gaming off and on for years now. I am 26 this year. The first time I really wanted to quit was 2020 when the world changed and I was stuck online with everyone I knew waiting for the PS5. I said I was quitting gaming when the ps5 came out, only to last until a game on switch released in 2021 that made me go back. (I never convinced myself to sell the Nintendo switch) When I quit gaming during that time I couldn’t stop watching streamers. Somehow me quitting gaming turned into watching others play. It’s absolutely insane and the goal today is no gaming news, streamers, playing, nothing video game related. Now, 3 years after getting sucked back into the switch……… and I’m still here but worse, I bought 5 or so games that were new to me, so I just blew $200 or so, digital games. For years I would say tomorrow I’m quitting, but sunk cost has hit me hard. I have to accept the loss and move on. After battling this for years now having watched a gaming stream this morning, I was at work today and before closing somehow my coworker and I were talking about life and she mentioned her son and how he used to do jiu-jitsu and boxing. And now she says his main hobby is sitting on his games, talking to his friends he has never met. And hearing that crushed me, because I know what he has been sucked into. I found it fascinating how he got into all these, what seem to me very athletic and challenging hobbies. I’ve never considered jiu-jitsu in my life, I did try karate however. Only to now have dropped it all because of how gaming ruins lives. I talked to her a little bit but of course I don’t have the power to tell her kid to knock it off please for your own good. It really broke me and I hear about him and I reflect on my dropped hobbies, ruined by the gaming addiction. I officially am going to get rid of my Nintendo switch. I already deleted the games off my smartphone and PC months ago. I have been stuck watching streamers and playing Nintendo. I need the computer so I can’t just throw it away. The gaming news, videos, streamers needs to end. TL;DR I’ve tried quitting gaming permanently since 2020. What I heard tonight was an in person wake up call to hear about a coworker whose son is stuck in the addiction just like me. (Read paragraph 2) I am selling my switch, the gaming news, videos and streamers needs to end. I will continue to work on my language learning hobby and I want to start working out even if it’s 15min of weights at home.

It turns out that planning can really make a big difference; even if we do/train something for an hour a week, it's normally almost infinitely times more than the average (rather median) person, so we can be pretty decent at it. So it's OK if you've done your share of writing, drumming or lego building for the week, as the only thing really need to look after is your well-being. So true! Thank you for sharing.

Keep it up!

Just an update, I feel very confident that I won't get triggered or caught by gaming ads, even though they are everywhere when you think about it. I also saw a mobile game ad on TV! My main focus when I see a game and feel emotions to it I think to myself that I am game free now and life's better than when I used to game compulsively.

Excellent post I am glad you are here. Stay strong, we are a community and stand together. You have an excellent life story and I hope to hear more from you on how it goes with being game free.

Glad to see you here. 🙂

I will look into these Silo series books. It's hard for me to find something I truly enjoy in reading. Wool, Shift, and Dust. Sounds like it could be a great time. Looking forward to it, thanks for the suggestion.

I have relapsed again not for playing but for what haunts me more, watching gaming content. It is still a plague for me and I am trying not only to completely stop playing but to stop watching any gaming content online. I have been struggling with speedrunner content online and I found a response online that really changed my viewpoint and even agreed with many points I see Cam and the community talk about. Speedrunning is an addiction. I will let the OP explain it in a way that really resonated with me and may help someone else out as well. I also wanted to mention that this has really resonated with me and makes me really want to dedicate myself to real life goals, I dont have to be the best but I want to learn some real life skills and hobbies that I can do to really better myself and show real life improvement. Right now I've been trying to learn that guitar I've had for 10 years and work on my spanish speaking skills. speedrunning is dedicated to spending weeks, even months, refining a single playthrough, and at any point if something isn’t smooth enough, you have to start over. It’s not something you can do in a spare-time hobby because its about beating the time, not playing the game, and you can’t do that on your occasional spare time. You sit in a dark room, probably recording yourself, and you spend hours and hours of your time focused on an overall time to beat, maybe even by just a few minutes. You shun time with friends, family, socializing, your awareness of the world’s events dwindles. You compromise your relationships because you’re hyper-focused on applying a very specific, extremely specialized skill to probably not but hopefully shave off the total time taken on a particular couple of video games. You don’t explore new games or new tech. You aren’t developing coordination and multi-tasking skills for other uses, you’re just repeating a process over and over for it’s own sake. You’re not puzzle-solving and sharpening your mind. You’re not even play-testing games to ensure quality for thousands or millions of potential players. You’re not developing anything. Your skillsets aren’t transferrable to anything. You’re not learning anything, not improving the world, not increasing your job qualifications… you’re not even improving your quality of life. If anything, you’re making it worse. If you’re creating content for entertainment—there’s a LOT of other things you can do with that, with greater outreach and more impact. Speedrunning isn't a casual hobby or sport of entertainment…it’s an addiction. . Take something like figure skating. The activity in of itself, like video gaming, is harmless. You’re performing a dance with moves that are very difficult to pull off, and more difficult to perfect with timing, grace, and strength. Even if you’re not competing, you’re exercising, you’re increasing balance, coordination, and learning about yourself physically. You can make videos on it, you can entertain people (it is dancing performance, after all). You can apply your skills to be an ice skating coach and make some decent money. There’s a community of other skaters to get involved with. You can challenge yourself with hockey-style skating or explore freestyle ice skating. But speedrunning is the videogame equivalent of figure skating for the Olympics to get a gold medal. You can’t figure skate casually and as a fun side hobby to be a gold medalist. You have to start young and practice so thoroughly it consumes your life. So many young girls get trapped into it and race themselves to “keep up”, improve, learn, shunning friends and family to beat something as the absolute best. But at least with figure skating, the routines are different, the dances you pick are different, and there’s a few real-world, and physically healthy, applications available from it. You can’t make $30 / half-hour coaching speedrunning. --- That has really resonated with me and makes me really want to dedicate myself to real life goals, I dont have to be the best but I want to learn some real life skills and hobbies that I can do to really better myself and show real life improvement. Right now I've been trying to learn that guitar I've had for 10 years and work on my spanish speaking skills.

I always have an issue with the app store on my phone when i want to update my apps, on the main screen they bombard you with game ads. It's horrible and I'm staying strong but it is highly irritating, why is gaming so prominently shown to everyone?

Great step forward! I wish you the best. Everything sounds good here except selling your computer. No matter what computer or phone you have there are always ways to play video games. I don't believe you should just never have a smartphone or computer again just because you can play games on them. What I think is better is to find out why you play these games on your computer and find a mindset where you no longer want to even attempt playing a game on your computer. If you sell your $1800 computer, and buy a cheaper one just to play games on google chrome, I don't believe you have solved your problems. I love the fact that you are getting rid of all those games, you are right, it would take an eternity. When I was selling my Xbox game system i had it sitting on ebay for a long time, many months. Of course I still sold it at a loss but if you don't have the time to wait on ebay just donate it! I wish you all the best. Cheers to a happy game free life!