Feel like relapse is imminent - Support from Single Player Gamers?

Hi,

I never undesrtood online gaming. A game that never ends never made any sense to me. With all due respect to fellow stopgamers, I always regarded online gamers somewhat stupid, sorry.

I always liked/loved single player games because: 1) You can end it :) 2) They tell a certain story 3) Many people put an effort into making a game and inventing a stroy 4) Many games are "legandary" as Baldur's Gate, Fallout and the like and have dedicated communities.

The problem with me was that I always chose the hardest setting of difficulty. I thought that the dardest setting let me immerse and involve in the game to the greatest extent. The second problem with me was that I was a completionist. I always had to kill every opponent, complete every quest, find all information, get ever item and the like. Those two factors prevented me from enjoying the games I played and I felt tired of them :)

Concerning the two factors above, the progress in a game was really slow. I realized that I needed a second life to play. If I really wanted to play games the way I wanted, I would have to resign from having a family, hobbies, education, social contacts, and many other. Later I thought that I could play "only when I have all my tasks completed". The truth is: 1) You never have all your tasks completed - there is always something productive to do 2) If you really think that you have already completed everything and have some time for gaming, you have to resign from your personal development. When you have all your tasks done, it is time for you to develop new skills - learn programming, learn how to use a popular computer program like MS Excel or Adobe Photoshop, learn Japanese of Spanish and so on.

What I struggle with now is the thought of "playing 1-2 hours" a week in time between tasks. The problem with us, stopgamers, is that we hardly can play 1-2 hours a week because it quickly escalates into 10-20 or more hours a week.

What amazes me is the fact that we so easily get involved into artificial worlds that were made up by a number of people. I always laughed at people that read fantasy books but I eventually ended into fantasy computer worlds myself, what a shame of me. The reason that many people put some effeort and their work and imagination into creating fale worlds, make those worlds very attractive and heart-squeezing. Many memories from games we played bring good feelings of nostalgia. However, we have to un-learn this. Our REAL, ONE AND THE OLNY world we live in is our home and we should be working on improving it, making our lifes and those aroud us better. Our world is many times more complex but we hove to heal our brains to be able to see it beauty.

I wish luck to you and to our fellow stopgamers.

/r/StopGaming Thread