I feel like taking a vomit to think through my thoughts about games that I play. This time I’m talking about literal video games. I’ve written many posts about what I used to play growing up, so let’s not talk about that. I’m thinking about the more recent browser and mobile games I’ve been playing. I have Tap Titans on my phone right now, which I’m going to delete soon. I was playing Adventure Capitalist for a while before that.

Both games are similar to Cookie Clicker– you start by pressing or clicking something over and over again, which gives you points. You use those points to purchase things that generate more points. Now you’ve got a steady stream of points coming in, where you used to have to work for them. It’s nice to see the number of points moving,, even without you doing anything. Next you start purchasing point multipliers and point modifiers and things like that. And then there’s a reset function, where you lose everything and start over, but this time each click is worth more points than before, and each point-generator produces more points too.

It’s interesting to think about how a game can keep you engaged– you might not even really be having FUN, but it’s just this thing that you’re clicking and pressing, and you’re getting a predictable response. I think that’s what I think when I redownload an old game that I used to play– Streets of Rage, SimCity, Metal Slug (I’m doing it again, this is amusingly meta). Because it’s

Before that I was playing RGB Express for a while, which is a puzzle game where you gotta move colored trucks to pick up colored packages and deliver them to colored houses, without going over the same paths, without coliding. As it gets harder, you have bridges and buttons that raise and lower them, and then the bridges and buttons get colored too, and it’s like juggling many complicated things. I got past the easy and medium stages– I think I was about 3/4 through hard before I got tired and quit.

I was playing Sudoku for a while too, and it’s the same thing, really. I blaze through easy and medium, and get stuck halfway through hard. Same for minesweeper. I’m not sure if I’ve ever actually completed a session of Hard Minesweeper.

What was I getting at here? Oh, I was just trying to rexamine my interests, and think about what I do, and why I do what I do. I was tempted to say “what I care about”, but “care” is such a loaded word. All of this is coming off the back of me starting to re-read Duhigg’s Power of Habit. It’s interesting how I’m reading it again, and to pay attention to how I feel and what I think as I read it again.

–

Ugh, I’m being sluggish about this. I was sort of toying with the idea of doing many different vomits tonight, but now I’m halfway through one and I just got to publish this and go to bed. I wanted to think about how I seem to have started playing a few video games again after a long time of not being interested in them. It’s not like I’m spending a lot of time on it, I’m probably still spending more time on social media.

Whoa, my mood shifted way, way out there. Because I’m angry with myself for not having written this earlier and not having gotten in bed earlier. Well, I gotta let that shit go. I don’t need every vomit to be perfect. Sometimes I have off days. I’m listening to a bunch of stuff that I wanted to listen to, reading a bunch of things that I wanted to be reading. I also wanted to be well-rested tonight, and I’m not going to be, now.

I guess I gotta sleep this one off and revisit it again. Let’s just rush this through till the end. I play games because they give me a sense of comfort. Because there’s feedback that comes easily. There’s a response and it makes me feel powerful in some context. But I know that it’s just an illusion, I’ve known it for a very long time.

I was writing this in the hope that I might surface some thought about… the first principles of what I’m getting out of the games, and how to… oh god, I’m not making sense. I know that I already know all the truths. This vomit was dead from the start because I didn’t go fast, I didn’t go hard, I was just trying to write it in the background. It’s not possible to write a good vomit in the background. It’s has to be urgent and intense and it has to keep going. Well, lesson learned? I know that technically it’s not 100% learned because I’m going to make this mistake again at some point in my life.

Well… then I’m just trailing then, and I’m going to keep this going for another 200 words. And I’m under a sort of deadline pressure to come up with something at least moderately insightful before I go to bed, fun. Here it is– I wanted to write about the games because I wanted to try and rationalize and figure out and explain to myself the dissonance I feel between recognizing that it’s fucking stupid to be tapping over and over again on a glass screen to make fictional numbers go up, and the fact that I was doing it anyway. This whole vomit was me trying to come up with some explanation or reason. But there’s no need for me to have an explanation or reason beyond “brains are complex and silly and dumb”. I crave stimulation, and when I don’t feel like I have the energy or stamina or power to engage with things at a higher level, then maybe I find myself drawn towards engaging with things at a mundane, silly, stupid level. And that is what it is, no judgement.

Goodnight man. Let’s do better tomorrow.