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Thats certainly one aspect of what makes games attractive, @marcitko. And of course because I feel these negative things doesn’t necessarily mean that others will feel the same thing. If you only play puzzle games on your iPhone you likely won’t feel the same.

But for me I think some of it is related to my period of intense World of Warcraft playing. I know that engaged my passion, my enthusiasm, and it left traces deep inside. When I dream, I sometimes still dream of playing that game. So spiritually it also had certain consequences.

So when I feel tempted to re-engage with those activities, I end up asking myself, is it beneficial? Does it help me on my chosen path, which is the spiritual journey?

While it becomes clear at an early point in spiritual growth that shooting other animated things in the face with guns doesn't bring anyone closer to the goal, reaching the understanding behind why Buddha pointed to even Chess as a distraction doesn't always come right away.

Lately I've been viewing sila and precepts less like rules and more like dance moves. If you want to dance well, you have to hit the moves at the right rhythm and with the right effort and stuff. It's not done because the dance is forced on you, it's done because the dance is beautiful and enjoyable and entices you to dance it well; a dance of laying down the burden. There are still moments in the song when I like to dance my own moves rather than the choreographed ones. Games are of those moments.

I used to spend lots of time on Counterstrike and WoW and many others. Similar to you @jeroen, I played WoW on launch and playing it every free moment quickly became my goal in life. It filled very quickly many pockets of emptiness which took much more time and effort to fill before it came along. A marketplace of interactions and challenges and colors and surprises and rewards all right on screen for as long as I wanted, it felt. What I was missing from here or there in my daily life it made up for and was incredibly easy to access.

But naturally as anyone who's done anything for a while knows what happens, it grew stale. The add-ons and expansions were just rinse-and-repeat, the community changed, the mystery became known, mastered, there was nothing new and it stopped working. But I soldiered on. I pressed on because maybe that would change and return to those happier days. I desired those old days back badly and clung to the memory. I struggled frustratingly, selfishly, day after day on that game. The joy from those treasured memories were all I liked about it any more. And it became almost like a job that I didn't even really want to go to...which I'd play after my job...which I didn't really want to go to...as a reward to myself for doing that job. Yeah I don't know how that worked for so long either. Addiction to the memory of what it used to be, ignoring what really was being experienced.

Oddly enough I don't see how my behavior with gaming is fundamentally different from infatuation with other hobbies like sports or cooking or tech or music or chess; maybe even the spiritual journey. It's our human-being life-cycle. We're born, we learn to like and dislike things, we try to do the things we like more than the things we dislike until we die. Without other direction, that just sounds pretty natural and standard-world human-being behavior.

In fact I'd argue there's value in having experienced deep infatuation or addiction to something prior to beginning the spiritual journey. Typically those with an addiction have had insight into the nature of total absorption into their activity. Even if that activity was unhealthy, the methods of associating to it required tools of mindfulness and concentration. There were times playing WoW when there were no distractions where I was essentially "zoned-in" to the screen. The game was all that existed in that moment and every detail was sensitive to. It could have been a chef in a kitchen, a footballer on the field, an engineer in the shop.. but that might be a discussion for another topic. This one's about letting go of games, not for the sake of games. Though interestingly enough using that memory of being absorbed into a computer screen, into the activity, examining it for the useful parts like the methods of associating, and applying some of those methods to the spiritual journey are having some interesting results.

I think I’ve reached a turning point in my relationship with games. In the past I’ve mentioned that I had a strongly ambivalent stance towards games. I worked on games as a designer and a software developer for many years, but ever since finding myself on a spiritual path ten years ago, I have been getting signs that these two don’t go well together. It’s been difficult for me to let go of it because it was a huge part of my life and my passion, and coming across things online has kept enticing me back.

Recently I made a summary on paper of the things telling me games weren’t a beneficial direction. Firstly, violence, rewards and addictiveness. Second, that you’re not getting closer to truth and enlightenment, but that you get more stuck in illusions and other people’s dreams. Third, that the Buddha also said games were a waste of time and energy (admittedly he was talking about early variants of chess). Fourth, I can feel in my mental states that most games play on desire, lust for battle, challenge and passion, and that this feeds the fires within and doesn’t lead to inner peace.

So something seems to have changed, making this summary has allowed me to drop a few things. My father advised me to adopt another activity, to channel my energies in a different direction, and I think that is wise advice. Do something else instead. Thanks dad.

A new sleep regime often takes a while to settle down, but it sounds like you are doing good things. I hope it works out well in the end.

Nice efforts @marcitko, you're sounding very self-aware. Knowing what you're doing in large and small certainly provides some valuable moments where a decision is found when previously there may have been an unaware impulse to follow by default. The spiritual bank account grows.