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@Jeroen said:
It has everything to do with disenchantment — with realising that what games dangle in front of you as a reward is little more than sociological and mythological convention, a thin selection of noughts and ones making up a digital asset of something that has a much richer appearance in your mind. Ultimately you realise there isn’t anything of value in nearly-all games. I added the ‘nearly all’ as a nod to @person’s Dungeons and Dragons game nights.

Understanding what there is of value in games is therefore key. I think it can be broken down into five categories, as follows:

• Entertainment: games are an entertainment, it passes the time and keeps the mind busy
• Stories: games tell stories, with all the usual elements of myth and character
• Game mechanics: games teach you resource management, precision, trading pieces, etc.
• Confidence: games teach you confidence and competence, allowing you to practice for life
• Social interaction: games can teach you about social interaction, theater, play

Once these areas lose their hold on you, you may find yourself losing interest rapidly. There are other entertainments, other and better ways of telling stories. Confidence you may find you have enough of. Game mechanics is a very wide area and ultimately devolves into numerical puzzles, and social interaction through games can stay fresh for a long time.

So when I say there isn’t anything of value, I mean in an ultimate sense. You know what they say about the Dhamma — that it is good in the beginning, good in the middle and good at the end. For games there is a slightly different perspective, that games are good for a beginning player, stay fun for a long time, but ultimately you reach a point of being done with them (or you get totally wrapped up in addiction).

That point in the end, when you begin to see through the illusions to the little puzzles the game is made up of, that is where you become disenchanted. The puzzles ultimately have no value to you.

@Jeroen said:
It doesn’t feel to me like I am trying to ‘deny or suppress’ either the analytical engineering side or the games design side of my past, I am merely choosing to reframe them from a spiritual perspective. I’m acknowledging that neither is potentially as healthy as they appear, the analysis is a ‘destructive dry scientific examining method’ and the game design is an ‘entertainer’.

To me this seems like a pretty negative reframing and not necessarily spiritual. There is the technique of looking at the negative aspects of unhealthy desires to reduce cravings. Like bodily fluids or corpses for physical attraction.

I think where I come from is that people have a varying array of innate dispositions, such as introversion/extroversion. Rather than an extrovert framing their disposition in a negative light to help them become more spiritually introspective they'd be better off finding spiritually and meaningful ways of being extroverted as a path. Such as connecting with dharma groups, doing outreach, that sort of thing.

I think you need to look for healthy, spiritually aligned ways to express this longing. For example there are people with psychological backgrounds who use games as a therapeutic method for healing and development of others.

The thing is, this longing for games I am interested in because it energises and motivates me. I watch a video like this Nintendo one and I think “oh wow, that’s cool, look at those awesome ideas”. It literally sparks something inside me, perhaps some dopamine echo.

Which is what my point here is about. Rather than trying to not be analytical, embrace that aspect of yourself and find a healthy, spiritually minded outlet for it. Not for the past but for the present and future.

@Jeroen said:
A cool game mechanic here, I’ve always liked the Zelda games, and Nintendo’s approach.

Although there is nothing to be learnt here pertaining to the spiritual path, I find myself intrigued and a little excited. Somehow it stirs the passions, and I would like to know why it kindles this energy in me.

Just to look a little more deeply, I find it interesting that it is a female lead character, doing puzzley things by creating echoes of items in the game. It seems to be almost entirely non-combat. Yet there is still an element of strategy, puzzle and victory. It’s brilliant game design.

If I can be a bit direct. I feel like you have this analytical side of your disposition that the spiritual world you grew up in didn't really celebrate, the emphasis is more on the yin side of things. Then your forays into that aspect of life led to negative outcomes and that has led you to try to deny or suppress that aspect of yourself. I think you need to look for healthy, spiritually aligned ways to express this longing. For example there are people with psychological backgrounds who use games as a therapeutic method for healing and development of others. I remember a story of someone who made a game to help get over their grief at losing a child and it gained a large following from other people it helped.

But I'm not sure we're really on the same path or looking for the same outcomes. So this may be just me projecting my psychology and interest onto you.