Having been an unemployed scrub for the past couple of months, I've been spending a fair bit of time playing games of course. One thing I realised is that I have a certain habit that sucks the joy out of games for me, and that's perfectionism. And it comes out in a couple of ways.
Firstly, dailies. Some games have these bunch of things where you can do them once a day. And I would obsessively make sure I complete ALL my dailies. I did this for the dota battle pass and it wasn't too bad because it made me play heroes I don't normally play, so personally I was okay with that. The problem is when despite my relative free time, there are days that I don't actually have time to play, and I would feel bad about missing my daily. Or even when I'm tired or maybe want to do something else, I feel like I should complete my daily or I would be missing out on that sweet 100 battle points. 100 battle points by the way, is worth 5 cents. Yea. That's a problem.
I always disliked playing mobile games and its often either because it was too simple or because it wastes your time with all the real time aspects. Like those simulation games where you can click on a hut every 15 minutes to claim your coins, that's like a way worse version of dailies because I feel compelled to click every 15 minutes to maximise my gains.
Well I'm playing this mobile game now that isn't that bad. But during this one month September event I've been trying to clear all my dailies and more, alot of times I don't even want to do them because it's not fun but I just do it because I don't want to miss out on anything. I just have this attitude where I want to maximise everything that has been 'offered' to me. I think when you play a game because of FOMO and not because it's fun, it kinda misses the point. I guess I might quit this one once I start work because it's not worth it. When you already have limited time each day, to need to worry about getting other things done is really quite restrictive.
Come to think of it, I did it for hearthstone too. When I got bored of the game, I kept going back for a couple of months to complete dailies just so I had enough gold to spend on the next expansion that came.
On the bright side, this dumb psychological thing I have helps in QT because it's a daily heh.
Secondly, very closely related to the first, is grinding. It's why I quit MMORPGs all those years ago (I think my last one was maplestory). There was no real sense of purpose, you just chase the next level up, the best gear. Well those things are also important so that you can explore more content, but the excitement of the new content lasts maybe a short while and its back to the grind till you can get to the next big thing. Maplestory was such a chore because playing it involved nothing but going to a hunting ground and spamming a skill all day long.
On that mobile game I'm playing. It started of as quite an interesting turned based tactical/strategy game, but having cleared all of the story content, the remaining game content can be really grindy. It's just about trying to get the best gear, best characters everything to fight super hard missions that are completely irrelevant to the main plot. Now for the main parts of the game I find that instead of spending time thinking about how to outwit my opponent as it should be for a tactical/strategy game, I'm basically just trying to get OP characters that will just beat everyone.
I find that I wish I could go back to the its initial charm, where I had to think about moving my characters and position them in a certain way to fight to win each battle. I would like to play a game where I could do that, and as the game progresses there's no such things as character levels or better gear or whatever, the game can introduce new elements, maybe new abilities that are tied to progression rather than grind, and characters that I would tactically have to choose who to field in battle based on enemies, terrain etc. Actually come to think of it I think there is one...
Thirdly, the concern that I am not playing optimally. I havn't mentioned Stardew Valley yet despite it being the picture that was at the front of this post, but I think trying to be efficient single handedly killed my enjoyment of Stardew Valley. I abruptly quit stardew valley after playing it nonstop for a while. In the lead up to quitting, everything I was doing was pretty much a chore, and the killing blow came when I hit all my objectives and had nothing else to do. Well there was, but the remaining objectives either weren't appealing, or would take too long to get there.
This sounds like the grind killed the game for me, but the thing is this only happened because I was obsessed with trying to maximise the efficiency of everything and accelerate my way to claiming the rewards. I obsessively stalked all the birthdays, likes and dislikes of every villager, I optimised my farm layout for maximum production and produced mostly only the crop with the highest ROI. Basically this led to me making big bucks and being rich in the game, but swimming in that cash is shallow and meaningless because I didn't actually take the time to enjoy the game.
Yes that sounds exactly like what people say about life. Enjoy the moment, don't live just for retirement and so on. I adopt that philosophy in life but I don't seem to do it for my games. And the funny thing is, the very idea of Stardew Valley is that its supposed to be an escape from capitalism and the daily grind. There is no real rush to complete everything you can take 2 years you can take 20 years. The point of Stardew Valley was for you to just do whatever you want. Don't just grow the most efficient crop, grow grapes because you like grapes or whatever.
I can't 'undo' my Stardew Valley experience because I already know all the spoilers, I already know all the optimal solutions, and I can't just find the joy of living life and exploring the valley all over again.
There are other ways aside from efficiency that can make me feel like I'm not playing optimally. One is the concern that I'm missing out on content. It makes me read guides to make sure I don't miss this secret weapon or something hidden somewhere, and reading guides make the experience less interesting that discovering things on your own. Another is the concern that my strategies are bad. I faced this with civ 5 and this war of mine. Civ 5 I restarted multiple runs to makes sure I had the optimal starting play, and sometimes I restarted after 2 hours in after deciding I didn't play optimally. As for this war of mine, it's a complicated game. So I havn't even successfully made myself get past day 3.
It's interesting because while I know I do have abit of these tendencies in life as well, it's not nearly as amplified as it is in games. Maybe it's the ease of finding the 'right answer' online which you can't do in life. Maybe it's because the achievements are so clearly labelled, instead of vague and shifting like in life. The dailies scream out to you. And all these amplify the tendencies I already have to pretty astounding levels and make me enjoy games less.
Well that's not a bad thing I guess. Maybe that means I'll be playing less games which is helpful as I start work soon (I hope). Tempted to try the game I linked above but nah, don't wanna start on anything new. Since I got my new computer (and more importantly my new keyboard which can register 7 buttons simultaneously), I put o2mania back on my com and play it once in awhile. 3 to 5 minutes a game, nothing to grind, no dailies, no optimal plays. Just music and hand-eye coordination.
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Unrelated to the above discussion, I've been thinking about why I don't buy games. Into the Breach costs 15 bucks. That's like cheaper than one bowl of ramen, but I can get many hours of gameplay from it. I never liked buying games because for one I'm quite a miser when it comes to money for most things in life (food is not one), but also because I never liked the thought of spending money on games especially. But actually, why not right?
The alternative is to play free games, which are often either shitty or they have some other structure to incentivise you to spend money. That structure is often micro transactions that make your game easier, and the alternative if you don't want micro transactions is to grind and do dailies until you get the same content people pay for. In that regard, even if I'm not paying, I'm using my time as a currency, made worse by the fact that I don't enjoy it so it feels like a chore.
Recognising that I'm using my time to pay for my games should make me rethink this philosophy. Seriously, it's better to spend some money on a game that I would actually enjoy and doesn't have all this stuff tied to it, compared to spending my time on a sub par game, grinding the game at such poor 'wages'. Ironically, there is no efficiency there as the optimal strategy is actually to go do part time work and spend all that money earned on unlocking the content. The ROI is higher.
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