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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
Like I said I think this has much to do with the way you, and perhaps lots of other people, relate to games. Games have taught me much about teamwork, camaraderie, good sportsmanship (the ability to not be so hurt at a loss or smug about a win, which happens all the time in life). In my experience games are fun and light, they teach valuable life skills about interacting with others in fair and just ways.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
The killing is just the most obvious example, but there are likely other learned behaviours which are just as bad. Assuming that things that do not try to kill you can be talked to, for instance. Or assuming that the game continues beyond death, that you just carry on if you lose. Or even assuming that game pieces can be manipulated and are under your control.
But in reality the whole of the ‘virtual life’, the life we live through our devices and computers, is highly artificial. The world of Facebook has a different skin, it doesn’t engage you in a glossy 3D world and it is far more social than even WoW, but it has similar soul-sucking attributes.
A real life in the jungle would teach very different things — hunting, fishing, shelter building, survival, caution when facing wild animals, living in a tribe. That is what mankind evolved for over the millennia. Our natural lifestyle, in a natural world.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@person said:
Like I said I think this has much to do with the way you, and perhaps lots of other people, relate to games. Games have taught me much about teamwork, camaraderie, good sportsmanship (the ability to not be so hurt at a loss or smug about a win, which happens all the time in life). In my experience games are fun and light, they teach valuable life skills about interacting with others in fair and just ways.
Perhaps it is the way I relate. But I try to derive from my experience a general list of consequences which I feel most people would encounter. I’ve spent ten years immersed in spiritual study, searching for truth, deconditioning the mind, and if after that I look back at my time in games, I find it far less innocent than I had thought.
But then, I now find tv and movies to also be a lot less innocent than I supposed. All these ‘entertainments’ impress things on the consciousness which are largely dark and unhelpful. There are just a few gems, like the Pixar films or Studio Ghibli’s animations, which provide freedom, an uplifted spirit.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
@person said:
Like I said I think this has much to do with the way you, and perhaps lots of other people, relate to games. Games have taught me much about teamwork, camaraderie, good sportsmanship (the ability to not be so hurt at a loss or smug about a win, which happens all the time in life). In my experience games are fun and light, they teach valuable life skills about interacting with others in fair and just ways.
Perhaps it is the way I relate. But I try to derive from my experience a general list of consequences which I feel most people would encounter. I’ve spent ten years immersed in spiritual study, searching for truth, deconditioning the mind, and if after that I look back at my time in games, I find it far less innocent than I had thought.
But then, I now find tv and movies to also be a lot less innocent than I supposed. All these ‘entertainments’ impress things on the consciousness which are largely dark and unhelpful. There are just a few gems, like the Pixar films or Studio Ghibli’s animations, which provide freedom, an uplifted spirit.
I remember from this thread that you spent time when younger playing D&D and you spent several years playing WoW. You've said your time playing WoW was largely solitary and mentioned publishing a D&D adventure. Have you had much experience playing games with others? Did you have a regular D&D group? Have you ever played sports? I wonder if your experience vs mine has to do with games being isolating and individualistic vs collaborative and bonding? I can recognize elements of what you're talking about, but the overall character is a fair bit darker. Which has been my general experience too when I have approached games in more solitary manner.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 10
I’ve played a lot of board games with family and colleagues, had a regular D&D group in my late teens, often shared the games I played with others, and had some good friends and a guild on WoW with whom I played with some regularity. Never played sports consistently though. I don’t think my social experience has been that lacking. For me the social aspect of playing games together is probably the best part.
And don’t get me wrong, I think playing computer games in a group can be a lot of fun. I remember when I had a Wii console there were various times I played Wii Sports golf, tennis and bowling at parties and it was a blast. I’m not denying that games can be very compelling, for a lot of reasons, which is why they are so addictive. They level the playing field between young and old, and can provide a fantasy element to do with donning a mask and playing a personage which can be very freeing.
But all of that doesn’t affect what games are — the serious mind taking over the role of play, through rules, goals and points scored, bringing competition and winning, applying effort to execution and optimisation. Yet if I think of all the great experiences of my life the very peak was nothing to do with games but sitting in Osho’s ashram in the morning in India when I was 7 years old, listening to the Kundalini meditation music.
I’ve played many, many games in my life, from young up to when I was 40 years old. Quite a lot of that time was playing solo, and I can say with some truth that gaming got in my bones. But after a shock in my life it occurred to me there were better things I could do with my time, namely search for truth. It’s taken me a long time to shed those gaming habits, and I’m not done yet.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited May 10
@Jeroen said:
I’ve played a lot of board games with family and colleagues, had a regular D&D group in my late teens, often shared the games I played with others, and had some good friends and a guild on WoW with whom I played with some regularity. Never played sports consistently though. I don’t think my social experience has been that lacking. For me the social aspect of playing games together is probably the best part.
And don’t get me wrong, I think playing computer games in a group can be a lot of fun. I remember when I had a Wii console there were various times I played Wii Sports golf, tennis and bowling at parties and it was a blast. I’m not denying that games can be very compelling, for a lot of reasons, which is why they are so addictive. They level the playing field between young and old, and can provide a fantasy element to do with donning a mask and playing a personage which can be very freeing.
Alright, your view seems to reflect my experience more when I've engaged in a solitary manner and wondered if that's where you're coming from. For example, there's complex board game called Gloomhaven that can be played solo. I tried that as something to do for a couple months after giving up engrossing video games, but it did have an impact similar to what you're describing and I stopped because it made my mental state worse.
But all of that doesn’t affect what games are — the serious mind taking over the role of play, through rules, goals and points scored, bringing competition and winning, applying effort to execution and optimisation. Yet if I think of all the great experiences of my life the very peak was nothing to do with games but sitting in Osho’s ashram in the morning in India when I was 7 years old, listening to the Kundalini meditation music.
Rules and structure give things purpose. I'm not sure what play would look like without them. Like creativity, imposing constraint and structure channel efforts in a more fruitful way than something totally open.
Creativity is full of paradoxes — not the least of which is the fact that having absolute creative freedom is often highly uncreative. It’s a phenomenon called “paralysis of choice.” The more options we have, the harder it is to choose anything. So we do nothing. When everything is an option, somehow we find ourselves optionless. Which is why almost every artistic medium develops its own limitations over time. https://www.musicbed.com/articles/filmmaking/writing/exploring-the-power-of-creative-constraints/
The things you talk about in a negative light strike me as having positive elements until taken to extremes. Like I said I tend to take my games lightly so competition creates a wish to do my best rather than get aggressive or cheat, etc.
I’ve played many, many games in my life, from young up to when I was 40 years old. Quite a lot of that time was playing solo, and I can say with some truth that gaming got in my bones. But after a shock in my life it occurred to me there were better things I could do with my time, namely search for truth. It’s taken me a long time to shed those gaming habits, and I’m not done yet.
Maybe this is some of the difference in our outlook? Like meditating on the negative aspects of the body to reduce attachment. Looking at the negative aspects of games helps you let go of your lingering attachment to them?
@Jeroen said:
That comes pretty close to my current take on computer games. All games are just play with added rules and goals for winning and losing. It is surplus to the spiritual path, but it is also the serious aspect of mind, there is little of laughter or joy to be found in it. The best you can do is play optimally, it is an efficiency problem which makes the mind happy.
However, the mind’s happiness is a small satisfaction, it is the ego’s pleasure at winning. It is not true, lasting happiness, although some might take it for that. Board games, sports, all that is giving mind and body something to do. Perhaps social aspects give them something positive.
I suspect this may have much to do with the way you personally relate to games. The framing you're putting on them have little resemblance to the way I've related to them. With the exception of individualized computer games like World of Warcraft which have been soul sucking for me.
Maybe its a bit like the martial arts thread? Certainly there are lots of ways to practice martial arts that have a negative spiritual effect. Does that mean that's what martial arts are, full stop?
Ah yes, the same thing is "poison to some, medicine to some..." And the same thing manifests differently as poison or medicine in various phases of life... Maybe we just tend to overdo a thing, or get attached, which is when it moves into the poison territory?
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@person said:
Maybe this is some of the difference in our outlook? Like meditating on the negative aspects of the body to reduce attachment. Looking at the negative aspects of games helps you let go of your lingering attachment to them?
Definitely. There is very little to be found out there about the impact of games playing on spirituality, and so I’m using this thread to blaze a trail. It’s very much my personal (shared?) meditation on the negative things I’ve encountered when playing computer games.
But I think the connection to being engaged with the mind’s goals, identified with the mind and the ego, is opening up some new avenues. Winning is very much an egoic sentiment, and it’s a key driving factor in games. I’ll have to consider this further.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
For me winning in games is all about mastery: a deep understanding of the moves and how they contribute to building a victory, and then execution in play. It contributed a lot to my ego strength, and even now in a board game my analysis is almost always good enough to allow me to win even against expert players.
This came from long years programming and designing computer games, I did these things professionally and so I had to be really good at them. This probably explains a little why I have such a difficult time letting it go.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
When you talk about them strengthening the ego its a bit vague in my mind, can you be more specific? Like give some examples?
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
The mind is concerned with survival, it assesses threats and that is why it wants to have a clear idea of the strength of mind and body. It’s one reason why the mind likes playing games and likes winning, because that means it can increase its confidence in successfully dealing with threats.
That degree of high confidence is what’s commonly called “ego strength” because it determines how likely you are to push ahead with your own ideas in the face of opposition. It’s a sign of people who have either rarely experienced failure or have always dealt successfully with threats.
In computer games, there are often a lot of direct threats to life, other characters with weapons or vicious creatures with sharp claws and teeth. But death is not usually a huge penalty, unlike in the real world where penalties can be more significant. So it’s a learning experience, but you don’t learn the price of failure.
So games can artificially build one’s confidence in some areas, was my thought.
Does that make sense to you?
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited May 11
@Jeroen said:
The mind is concerned with survival, it assesses threats and that is why it wants to have a clear idea of the strength of mind and body. It’s one reason why the mind likes playing games and likes winning, because that means it can increase its confidence in successfully dealing with threats. I need to be able to say no to things that would harm "me" and yes to things that would help.
That degree of high confidence is what’s commonly called “ego strength” because it determines how likely you are to push ahead with your own ideas in the face of opposition. It’s a sign of people who have either rarely experienced failure or have always dealt successfully with threats.
In computer games, there are often a lot of direct threats to life, other characters with weapons or vicious creatures with sharp claws and teeth. But death is not usually a huge penalty, unlike in the real world where penalties can be more significant. So it’s a learning experience, but you don’t learn the price of failure.
So games can artificially build one’s confidence in some areas, was my thought.
Does that make sense to you?
Yes, but it kind of seems like a necessary thing to living in the world. I have one regular client who would qualify as having an excessive amount of ego strength (she has plenty of good qualities too). If I surrendered all of mine, she would push me around and use me up, ego strength doesn't have a categorically bad connotation to me. I need to be able to say no to things that would harm "me" and yes to things that would help.
I think that leads me to some insight I've had about my own relation to games this latest go around has brought. I've abandoned the sort of monastic ideal of renunciation and retreat for a more engaged life. Inevitably its a samsaric life that will fall, but I do my best to find a healthy balance by accentuating and encouraging positive aspects and diminishing the negative. So with games rather than abandon them on the whole I do my best to engage with the healthier aspects and avoid the negative ones.
Another insight is that there is a game I've largely avoided most of my life that I still have little interest in. That's the social status game, even though I could afford it, I drive my messy work truck everywhere rather than owning a second vehicle because I'd rather have the security and added free time that that money could buy than looking good for other people.
i just got getting into gaming again. got my playstation five. will get tekken 8 or 9. i work hard. when im off work i like to unwind. gaming is my zen practice. exercize brain,hand cordination. and learn some defence technique is great. will buy some adventure games too.
the key to my zen, play, play. be aware what you doing. my approach balance with work and rest. my reminder, shift attention has help not to be addicted to game playing. the saying moderation even modoration helps.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
You’re right @person, I’m not suggesting we abandon confidence and strength. Ego has the connotation of being patterns we hold on to as well, to do with status and wanting to win at all costs. But it can give some needed strength.
The thing is, I think you can keep playing computer games forever, until you come to the realisation that it’s all fake. There are such a lot of shortcuts in the design of games that they can’t be compared to learning from reality. They are the dreams of the designer, fluffy and insubstantial when set beside the real thing.
Also our everyday lives are so far divorced from what happens in games… here there are no guns, missions, magic, monsters, angels. And what there is, if you were to encounter them, is so massively different that it is beyond compare.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
edited May 11
Agree on games aren't reality, they are simplistic models. The real world is much more complex with real stakes. At the same time meditation isn't the real world yet it helps train and prepare our mind to engage with the real world in healthier ways. The majority of games do offer a mode of training that conditions our minds to act in antisocial ways. I don't think that function is inherent to games though, I think it has more to do the design and individual player engagement with them. Games can be used to develop positive qualities too, at least in my experience.
One can play board games with the intent to dominate and humiliate the other players or they can be played as a modality (there's a better word I can't think of) to connect and bond, to laugh and smile with friends, family or complete strangers.
I've played games of D&D where the purpose is to min/max rules and character strategies to kill anything that moves and get loot. And I've played D&D games where the purpose is to explore character and story, to make jokes and explore the spontaneity of improv. Most of the time being some mix along that spectrum.
I know people who have bookshelves full of board games and host weekly game nights for friends. To say that what they're doing is negative and they'd be better off hosting spiritual book club nights or something along those lines doesn't feel like wholesome advice.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 11
@person said:
I know people who have bookshelves full of board games and host weekly game nights for friends. To say that what they're doing is negative and they'd be better off hosting spiritual book club nights or something along those lines doesn't feel like wholesome advice.
Hahah, no indeed. My cousin is a bit like that, he is a software developer and has a gaming rig at home and is currently playing Baldurs Gate 3. He also has a fair few board games which he plays with his wife and four children (and a fifth on the way, bless him). I haven’t tried to convince him that computer games are unhealthy, although he did admit to being a little addicted.
I think it is better to tell people, it’s a dream, it’s fake, it’s a false coin and counterfeit reality though they make it look real. The thing is, Western society doesn’t allow you many routes to be really earnest in your pursuit of truth, and most people give up on it. But if you really care about experiencing this world, this life as it really is, then you start to drop the illusions, let go of the dreams.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj used to say, earnestness is what ensures progress on the spiritual path. Not everyone has that, an earnest desire to find the truth. And if you have it you will find interest in these things dropping away after you realise that they are not important, that what is important is truth, love and freedom. A lot of society’s entertainments and supposedly important things are actually totally fake.
But then, as the Buddha says… this world should be seen as a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a phantom or a dream. Perhaps nothing here is truly important.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 18
@Jeroen said:
The one thing that still bothers me is that those times playing World of Warcraft and Dungeons and Dragons were some of the most alive I have ever felt.
This is something that continues to bother me. The best moments in games for me were comparable in levels of feeling and chemistry to reaching a mountaintop in the Carneddhau in Snowdonia, or my graduation, or sex. Peak experiences in life.
But perhaps it shouldn’t bother me. Climbing mountains is part of life, those peaks were part of life. So at the same time computer games are also part of life, a different kind of peak.
I can totally understand why you would say @person that life without games would be more miserable than it needs to be. Not everyone needs to game the system and play optimally, just playing for the sake of play is also an aspect of computer games, and even more of Dungeons and Dragons.
@Jeroen said:
In a way winning that tabletop game of Ticket to Ride against my cousin and his family brought back a bit of a similar feeling, a satisfaction.
Thinking back on this, it was a glow of winning that stayed with me for a good half day. As if I had to prove my superiority, my unbeatable understanding of game mechanics. I wonder at my emotional reaction to this, because it was an emotion, a feeling.
This need to be the best, that’s something that came from school, I think, especially in my late teens, aged 14 to 18 when academic performance was so closely measured with tests. That was when I started playing longer computer games and rpgs regularly too. So you see, these things are linked.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@Jeroen said:
In a way winning that tabletop game of Ticket to Ride against my cousin and his family brought back a bit of a similar feeling, a satisfaction.
Thinking back on this, it was a glow of winning that stayed with me for a good half day. As if I had to prove my superiority, my unbeatable understanding of game mechanics. I wonder at my emotional reaction to this, because it was an emotion, a feeling.
This need to be the best, that’s something that came from school, I think, especially in my late teens, aged 14 to 18 when academic performance was so closely measured with tests. That was when I started playing longer computer games and rpgs regularly too. So you see, these things are linked.
Thinking further on this, the need to be the best also came with being an only child. It meant there was this distance from every other child, even friends, and even in something like games of marbles there was the idea of if you win you get to keep the other’s marbles. Winning is rewarded, being the best is rewarded. And if you lose you lose your stake.
It is again a form of reward conditioning, this time one instilled by children’s games at a young age. It is a cultural thing, where pride combines with winning and being rewarded for being the best to create strong ego’s out of “winners”. It’s something my parents never wanted to instil in me, they were social, collaborative artist-scientist types.
But that sense of wanting to be the best, which I would normally have grown out of, found a home in gaming. It’s the whole thing of wanting to proclaim a swift and decisive victory, which leads to power gaming in Dungeons and Dragons, and to the kind of war games I later designed and programmed as an adult. It was all of a piece.
I think this idea of being programmed to want to win also links to childhood trauma, of discovering there are people who will take your marbles, that not everything is warm like a mother’s love. Games are a way of managing that danger element of the world at large.
Acceptance too is linked to competence, and winning is a way to show your competence, and thus to being accepted, to being feted as a hero. There are many adult benefits to winning in sports or games. In a cerebral game like Ticket to Ride, it shows understanding and mastery of the rules and wisdom in placing resources.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
It’s surprising how realising where conditioning comes from also frees you from it, and then you are no longer drawn by that. I think I am approaching the end of this examination of gaming.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@how said:
I know of no attachments more widely addictive to todays worlds inhabitants than the electronic visual stimulation that we are all plugged into. Gaming is just part of it.
No excuses from me. I don’t game anymore, but I still spend 10-12 hours a day on screens, while I have total freedom to do what I like. I spend it on WhatsApp, forums, reading spiritual books, a few YouTube videos and an occasional podcast.
Writing takes up a lot of time on forums, it often takes me 45 minutes to express my thoughts the way I want for a post, do that a few times a day and watch the hours drain away. To let go of that pattern, writing less and being less visible, would be a significant change.
I may start making a daily walk in the woods, that would be healthy and use up some of that time. That seems like a good start.
While limiting my daily screen time to something closer to the time spent in formal meditation, I've recently dropped YouTube as well for how it seems to encourage a state of avarice in me for its short bursts of stimulation. Not exactly a description of equanimity.
Although it's probably an age-related issue, I am finding that the appropriate concentration aspect of the 8FP to be my biggest practice challenge as time marches on.
Seems like another lesson in how to "be here now".
@how well done on dropping another ignorance fostering habit. I still use YouTube on the TV. However, it is increasingly ad centric sponsorship and pushed/targeted Google garbage. Will I have to jailbreak my TV to escape its updated software?
It has a browser. I am sure it even has a games station with retro games.
JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
This morning, I found myself trying to explain my position on games to a group of older people online who knew next to nothing about games. To my surprise, almost the first thing I found myself talking about was how games fulfil dreams — that for almost every dream there was a game out there — and that they can be a great way to experience stories and myth.
I found myself drawing on my memories of the high points of my gaming life, to explain the reasons people play and the kind of things games teach… the universal game themes of strategy, sequence, tactics, reward and challenge, resource useage. The building blocks of a game experience. And how the real high points have nothing to do with actual gaming but with progressing the story.
One thing a gaming life leaves you with is the memory of having been part of some great stories, of having seen myths play out with your character centre stage. Yes, it’s entertainment, but is it really that different from a book, a theatre play or a movie? It seems to me that this is part of the shared mythological experience of our time, the campfire stories of a technological age.
All this is leaving aside the endless killing of enemies which most games encourage to fill up their game loops, which is deplorable in my opinion. But it is endemic from open-world games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider to story-driven adventures such as Mass Effect, they all use this paradigm.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
A short piece on chakra’s and body energy…
There are seven focal points of psychic energy in the body. These points are called chakras. Each center is associated with a different vibrational expression of the energy—from the first chakra which works with the grossest form of this energy to the seventh chakra which works with the energy in its finest form. Just as a personality profile can describe an individual’s dominant personality characteristics, so a person can be described in terms of the chakras in which his energy is received and dissipated.
There are certain labels which can be affixed to these chakras to define the dominant concern of an individual whose primary energy expression is fixed at that particular level. Thus the first chakra is associated with survival, a jungle or animal mentality. The second chakra is associated with reproduction and sexual gratification. The third chakra concerns power and mastery. These three chakras are the focal points for most of the energy presently used by man in his worldly endeavors. These three chakras are primarily concerned with the use of energy for the maintenance and enhancement of the ego.
It is only when we arrive at the fourth chakra, the heart chakra, that we enter into a realm which starts to transcend the ego. This fourth chakra is primarily concerned with compassion. The fifth is concerned with the seeking of God. The sixth (located between the eyebrows) is concerned with wisdom (the third eye); and the seventh, with full enlightenment or union.
It seems like excessive computer gaming is most likely a first chakra activity (survival), with some third chakra (power, mastery) thrown in.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
The other positive thing that I found myself talking about with the oldies was how games provided a kind of “peak experience” on tap. Usually a peak experience is something like graduation, a particularly spectacular holiday, or the birth of a child… in a gamers life he may defeat Dragons or Demon Kings at the end of long dungeons and much effort, he may explore cities floating in the sky, he may deal with forgotten Gods. These might be the key experiences in a gamer’s life.
These kind of game experiences are somewhere between a story and a real experience, in terms of how the gamer experiences reality. They are more real than a story, because they are interactive, and less real than real life, with its immediacy and possibility of death. Yet because of the fantastical nature of the best moments, they make a big impression.
Certainly I’ve found that from most games I can recall only a few moments of play, most of it is fleeting and that’s just as well, because most of the battles are a frenzy of button mashing. But when you do find a peak experience, you often want to return to that peak as soon as possible, and that is why you game.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
Maybe an interesting view for you? From the video: An average American 18-year-old will spend 93% of his life’s free time behind screens. A significant amount of this is social media, such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter/X. Social media carries a message by its very structure, and it is mostly about short contacts and scrolling. Social media’s profits are determined by how effective they are in keeping you scrolling through their stuff. And the value proposition in terms of how much you get out of it compared to the time you spend is really poor.
Worth watching, I thought. Of course, next to social media the other main drivers of screen time are television and games. So it’s not entirely inappropriate to the thread.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 23
My mother, usually a close confidante, said this about winning…
“Being focussed on winning is like having blinkers on. By the time they come off, you may have won, but everyone else will have gone home. It’s missing the point.”
And I think she was right, it is indeed missing the point of play. The idea of just playing, as opposed to being caught up in the mind’s concepts and rules and goals, is much more part of the innocent self, the childlike self. Jesus said “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Perhaps you know Iain M Banks’ novel The Player of Games. In it the main character is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, where Morat is a title meaning ‘player of games’, someone who has made themselves an expert in all forms of game playing. I was a bit like that, but I have found that by giving up the importance of winning, you return to a more innocent play.
Meditation can sometimes be described as a withdrawal of support for our identity's dreamscape.
To those whose visual sense gate is the primary avenue of that dream's indulgence, trying to free yourself from such an addiction can almost be impossible.
It is a collectively held Koan for modern times.
Like any addict, testing out an abstinence of screen time will illicit endless credible reasons why just a return for a little taste, is still OK.
The legs of this thread can be some of the proof of this.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@how said:
The legs of this thread can be some of the proof of this.
For me, this thread has been about sorting out the merely-neutral aspects of gaming from the actively harmful. It has been a struggle to search through all my gaming habits, to try and achieve some clear understanding. But it is a shared space, and others have had their say too.
The thing is, I think computer game designers are moving towards a conjunction of aspects that are both attractive and toxic: violence, power, winning, challenge-reward, dopamine rush, spectacle. All of that makes it highly addictive. It is a complex mixture, and you don’t see it in the same measure in every game.
It is like opening a clenched fist, each attempt gets us further towards a free and open hand.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@how said:
The legs of this thread can be some of the proof of this.
In a way, games cause an intensification of desire, because you explore in them all the things you want from a fantasy dreamscape. Everything that you may not have expressed in this lifetime but that you did secretly desire you may have found in games.
That is why I think detachment, sobriety, is harder to find for those who have played many games.
Well, I was wrong. When casually reading this thread over the past few months I thought: "at least I don't have that problem". Ay carumba, I just realized I do. Not the first time this has happened. So, I join the letting-go-of-games circle.
The thought that I am free of the negative aspects of games was not totally deluded - I was really not playing much during this time so forgot or felt there was no danger going forward. But my "thing" is that I periodically get "hooked" for a few days or even weeks and then go overboard, negatively impacting my sleep, duties, relationships, state of mind etc. With all the dopamine-dumping from the gaming I later feel like shit. What a clear example of chasing pleasure leading to suffering. Ugh. (is it obvious that I just had a relapse?)
Some preliminary thoughts:
I think my fascination with games happens because I can have the upside without the downside. If I win, I feel great, if I lose, who cares. And I feel like I'm doing something worthwhile/intelligent/applying myself (I nearly only play various strategy games).
Should I apply myself to my actual life with the same passion as I do towards games I'd be a happy camper.
Games are an avoidance of my actual life. Life is difficult, it's easy to succumb to wanting to hide from it in games.
To quote our friend @genkaku the addictive mindset is "if one's good, two's better". This is the trap I fall into with games.
I think going forward I'll try to just not play games - and focus on my actual life - instead of analysing it too much.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 27
@marcitko said:
To quote our friend @genkaku the addictive mindset is "if one's good, two's better".
We are not the first, nor will we be the last to have a brush with addiction. Whether it’s games or alcohol it can hook you and convince you that ‘more is better’. I loved @genkaku’s down to earth wisdom on this.
I think going forward I'll try to just not play games - and focus on my actual life - instead of analysing it too much.
A sound plan. Until it really penetrates that games are just an expression of mind, an inaccurate abstraction of something that is pretending to be real but is not, and then you can really let go. If you can let go of the idea of winning then you’ve made a big step.
My experiments with mindful playing have also largely stopped. I still have not played recently either a computer game or D&D, all of it was just stuff coming back up from when I used to play. Once in a while I return in my thoughts to it, just to unfold it a little further.
Gaming is not necessarily negative for everyone.@person seems to have found a happy way forward with it, and my cousin uses it to unwind for a few hours a week. And the social aspect of pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons is a major redeeming feature. But for me, the things I am most drawn to are the things that are least healthy — MMORPGs and compulsive strategy games such as Civilisation or Panzer General for example.
Thank you @Jeroen, I found the post both insightful and helpful.
"unwind for a few hours a week." --> This idea is what gets me into trouble. I'm certain others can do it. It just seems I have an addictive streak. Luckily, I manage to beat it down relatively fast, at least with games.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
I’ve been wondering about poker, and have put together a few thoughts together.
The Negative
feeds greed and gambling habits, there is usually money involved
feeds competition and strife, all the other players are enemies
very mind-based, you reduce your view to an odds calculation based on the cards you hold
You can’t really “play” with others, your relationship with others is formalised by the game
It strongly rewards a victory
The Positive
rewards close observation and paying attention, a sharp awareness
rewards good strategy and knowledge of odds, you can learn about it
is abstract, uses the set of standard cards, not a combat mechanic
can be played intuitively
So it’s actually quite balanced. It has a few nasty sides such as “addicts”, “promotes gambling” but compared to a game like God of War it isn’t that awful.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 28
@person said:
One can play board games with the intent to dominate and humiliate the other players or they can be played as a modality (there's a better word I can't think of) to connect and bond, to laugh and smile with friends, family or complete strangers.
Certainly. Board games have a long history in my family, we used to play Chess or Stratego or Halma or Monopoly or set up the shuffleboard, which was a physical game of sliding round wooden pucks along a wooden board with the intention of forcing as many pucks as possible into the scoring areas, a little similar to Bowls. Old games from the 1970’s.
The thing is, about half the family would play to win, and the other half would play to have fun. So sometimes competition would get a little heated, and sometimes someone would try to cheat by fiddling with the game board while people were distracted. It was funny at times. But my grandfather was one of those who played for fun and he was usually the oldest adult, so a lot went by his say-so.
I've played games of D&D where the purpose is to min/max rules and character strategies to kill anything that moves and get loot. And I've played D&D games where the purpose is to explore character and story, to make jokes and explore the spontaneity of improv. Most of the time being some mix along that spectrum.
I’ve toyed with the idea of introducing D&D to my cousins family, but I think they are still a bit too young for it, the kids are 10-6-4-2 years old, and although my cousin and his wife have a good command of the English language, the younger children do not. Maybe in a few years’ time, and if I do I may buy a starters box set for them, with all the printouts and materials for a first adventure. D&D can be daunting if you’re just reading the Players Handbook.
Personally my best memories of playing D&D were from when I was 13-25 years old, and could easily find friends at school or uni to play with. Later came the computer game development and playing period when I made my hobby my work, and got carried along by that. And nowadays because I don’t live in an English-speaking country anymore, the problem is finding people to play with — even if I wanted to.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
@Jeroen said:
If I listen deeply to my heart, it tells me I have done enough imaginary killing in my life. There is no need to do more, the only thing I have to do is watch, wait and learn the lesson. Time and mindfulness bring maturity.
@Jeroen said:
Writing the above triggered a feeling of relief in me, I think I have produced enough insight into games and their processes to clarify where I stand. I don’t think there is a lot more to come…
I wrote this in the first couple of pages of this topic, but more of the stickiness of games keeps revealing itself. It’s been a process, to dip back into games with playing board games with my cousin and his family, reading the D&D Players Handbook, and watching Baldurs Gate 3 videos. Perhaps I’ve tried to do too much, looking deeply into it.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 29
I was wondering if the importance we attach to winning is not due to a primitive instinct about winning fights over food, perhaps among young siblings? Getting to eat if you win would be a powerful evolutionary motivator and might embed this kind of instinct in the genes.
I’m an only child, but I remember the stories my mother (who had four siblings) tells about how her mother would share out food at the dinner table, even going so far as counting the exact number of cherries each sibling would get. There was some competition, definitely.
Of course sharing is a better way forward than fighting over food, because it strengthens the bonds in the group and increases cooperation, increasing survival of the group more than just survival of the strongest would if you were to fight. There have been some fascinating studies in this field.
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personDon't believe everything you thinkThe liminal spaceVeteran
There are many collaborative board games where the players work together against the game. Team sports have a similar aspect. Though there is winning and losing there is also cooperation.
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JeroenLuminous beings are we, not this crude matterNetherlandsVeteran
edited May 30
Yes there are definitely good aspects to games as well. I will try to make a list…
They teach you perseverance, precision, resource management, min-maxing strategies
They are good for building confidence, by presenting simplified problems
They can teach you to make friends and improve social skills (certain games)
As long as it doesn’t get out of hand. My cousin is a classic case, when he was a teenager he played a lot of Counterstrike and Eve Online, so quite a few hours, then he met his wife and got a job as a software developer and had kids, and he started playing solo games like No Man’s Sky and recently Baldurs Gate 3, because he has to fit it into his schedule. He now plays just a few hours a week, and he seems happy with that.
He is an example of someone who used to play a lot of hours, then found other interests, ramped down his gaming, and keeping it all in manageable hours. He admits to being “a little bit addicted” in that he can’t stop gaming altogether, and complains that the battles in BG3 are so time-consuming. But he does have his priorities straight, and that’s admirable.
For me, my last brush with a big game was Mass Effect 3 on the Xbox, after I quit my job, and I spent quite a lot of hours on that. And yes, I did get very angry about the ending, as did a lot of people.
Comments
Like I said I think this has much to do with the way you, and perhaps lots of other people, relate to games. Games have taught me much about teamwork, camaraderie, good sportsmanship (the ability to not be so hurt at a loss or smug about a win, which happens all the time in life). In my experience games are fun and light, they teach valuable life skills about interacting with others in fair and just ways.
The killing is just the most obvious example, but there are likely other learned behaviours which are just as bad. Assuming that things that do not try to kill you can be talked to, for instance. Or assuming that the game continues beyond death, that you just carry on if you lose. Or even assuming that game pieces can be manipulated and are under your control.
But in reality the whole of the ‘virtual life’, the life we live through our devices and computers, is highly artificial. The world of Facebook has a different skin, it doesn’t engage you in a glossy 3D world and it is far more social than even WoW, but it has similar soul-sucking attributes.
A real life in the jungle would teach very different things — hunting, fishing, shelter building, survival, caution when facing wild animals, living in a tribe. That is what mankind evolved for over the millennia. Our natural lifestyle, in a natural world.
Perhaps it is the way I relate. But I try to derive from my experience a general list of consequences which I feel most people would encounter. I’ve spent ten years immersed in spiritual study, searching for truth, deconditioning the mind, and if after that I look back at my time in games, I find it far less innocent than I had thought.
But then, I now find tv and movies to also be a lot less innocent than I supposed. All these ‘entertainments’ impress things on the consciousness which are largely dark and unhelpful. There are just a few gems, like the Pixar films or Studio Ghibli’s animations, which provide freedom, an uplifted spirit.
I remember from this thread that you spent time when younger playing D&D and you spent several years playing WoW. You've said your time playing WoW was largely solitary and mentioned publishing a D&D adventure. Have you had much experience playing games with others? Did you have a regular D&D group? Have you ever played sports? I wonder if your experience vs mine has to do with games being isolating and individualistic vs collaborative and bonding? I can recognize elements of what you're talking about, but the overall character is a fair bit darker. Which has been my general experience too when I have approached games in more solitary manner.
I’ve played a lot of board games with family and colleagues, had a regular D&D group in my late teens, often shared the games I played with others, and had some good friends and a guild on WoW with whom I played with some regularity. Never played sports consistently though. I don’t think my social experience has been that lacking. For me the social aspect of playing games together is probably the best part.
And don’t get me wrong, I think playing computer games in a group can be a lot of fun. I remember when I had a Wii console there were various times I played Wii Sports golf, tennis and bowling at parties and it was a blast. I’m not denying that games can be very compelling, for a lot of reasons, which is why they are so addictive. They level the playing field between young and old, and can provide a fantasy element to do with donning a mask and playing a personage which can be very freeing.
But all of that doesn’t affect what games are — the serious mind taking over the role of play, through rules, goals and points scored, bringing competition and winning, applying effort to execution and optimisation. Yet if I think of all the great experiences of my life the very peak was nothing to do with games but sitting in Osho’s ashram in the morning in India when I was 7 years old, listening to the Kundalini meditation music.
I’ve played many, many games in my life, from young up to when I was 40 years old. Quite a lot of that time was playing solo, and I can say with some truth that gaming got in my bones. But after a shock in my life it occurred to me there were better things I could do with my time, namely search for truth. It’s taken me a long time to shed those gaming habits, and I’m not done yet.
Alright, your view seems to reflect my experience more when I've engaged in a solitary manner and wondered if that's where you're coming from. For example, there's complex board game called Gloomhaven that can be played solo. I tried that as something to do for a couple months after giving up engrossing video games, but it did have an impact similar to what you're describing and I stopped because it made my mental state worse.
Rules and structure give things purpose. I'm not sure what play would look like without them. Like creativity, imposing constraint and structure channel efforts in a more fruitful way than something totally open.
The things you talk about in a negative light strike me as having positive elements until taken to extremes. Like I said I tend to take my games lightly so competition creates a wish to do my best rather than get aggressive or cheat, etc.
Maybe this is some of the difference in our outlook? Like meditating on the negative aspects of the body to reduce attachment. Looking at the negative aspects of games helps you let go of your lingering attachment to them?
Ah yes, the same thing is "poison to some, medicine to some..." And the same thing manifests differently as poison or medicine in various phases of life... Maybe we just tend to overdo a thing, or get attached, which is when it moves into the poison territory?
Definitely. There is very little to be found out there about the impact of games playing on spirituality, and so I’m using this thread to blaze a trail. It’s very much my personal (shared?) meditation on the negative things I’ve encountered when playing computer games.
But I think the connection to being engaged with the mind’s goals, identified with the mind and the ego, is opening up some new avenues. Winning is very much an egoic sentiment, and it’s a key driving factor in games. I’ll have to consider this further.
For me winning in games is all about mastery: a deep understanding of the moves and how they contribute to building a victory, and then execution in play. It contributed a lot to my ego strength, and even now in a board game my analysis is almost always good enough to allow me to win even against expert players.
This came from long years programming and designing computer games, I did these things professionally and so I had to be really good at them. This probably explains a little why I have such a difficult time letting it go.
When you talk about them strengthening the ego its a bit vague in my mind, can you be more specific? Like give some examples?
The mind is concerned with survival, it assesses threats and that is why it wants to have a clear idea of the strength of mind and body. It’s one reason why the mind likes playing games and likes winning, because that means it can increase its confidence in successfully dealing with threats.
That degree of high confidence is what’s commonly called “ego strength” because it determines how likely you are to push ahead with your own ideas in the face of opposition. It’s a sign of people who have either rarely experienced failure or have always dealt successfully with threats.
In computer games, there are often a lot of direct threats to life, other characters with weapons or vicious creatures with sharp claws and teeth. But death is not usually a huge penalty, unlike in the real world where penalties can be more significant. So it’s a learning experience, but you don’t learn the price of failure.
So games can artificially build one’s confidence in some areas, was my thought.
Does that make sense to you?
Yes, but it kind of seems like a necessary thing to living in the world. I have one regular client who would qualify as having an excessive amount of ego strength (she has plenty of good qualities too). If I surrendered all of mine, she would push me around and use me up, ego strength doesn't have a categorically bad connotation to me. I need to be able to say no to things that would harm "me" and yes to things that would help.
I think that leads me to some insight I've had about my own relation to games this latest go around has brought. I've abandoned the sort of monastic ideal of renunciation and retreat for a more engaged life. Inevitably its a samsaric life that will fall, but I do my best to find a healthy balance by accentuating and encouraging positive aspects and diminishing the negative. So with games rather than abandon them on the whole I do my best to engage with the healthier aspects and avoid the negative ones.
Another insight is that there is a game I've largely avoided most of my life that I still have little interest in. That's the social status game, even though I could afford it, I drive my messy work truck everywhere rather than owning a second vehicle because I'd rather have the security and added free time that that money could buy than looking good for other people.
i just got getting into gaming again. got my playstation five. will get tekken 8 or 9. i work hard. when im off work i like to unwind. gaming is my zen practice. exercize brain,hand cordination. and learn some defence technique is great. will buy some adventure games too.
the key to my zen, play, play. be aware what you doing. my approach balance with work and rest. my reminder, shift attention has help not to be addicted to game playing. the saying moderation even modoration helps.
You’re right @person, I’m not suggesting we abandon confidence and strength. Ego has the connotation of being patterns we hold on to as well, to do with status and wanting to win at all costs. But it can give some needed strength.
The thing is, I think you can keep playing computer games forever, until you come to the realisation that it’s all fake. There are such a lot of shortcuts in the design of games that they can’t be compared to learning from reality. They are the dreams of the designer, fluffy and insubstantial when set beside the real thing.
Also our everyday lives are so far divorced from what happens in games… here there are no guns, missions, magic, monsters, angels. And what there is, if you were to encounter them, is so massively different that it is beyond compare.
Agree on games aren't reality, they are simplistic models. The real world is much more complex with real stakes. At the same time meditation isn't the real world yet it helps train and prepare our mind to engage with the real world in healthier ways. The majority of games do offer a mode of training that conditions our minds to act in antisocial ways. I don't think that function is inherent to games though, I think it has more to do the design and individual player engagement with them. Games can be used to develop positive qualities too, at least in my experience.
One can play board games with the intent to dominate and humiliate the other players or they can be played as a modality (there's a better word I can't think of) to connect and bond, to laugh and smile with friends, family or complete strangers.
I've played games of D&D where the purpose is to min/max rules and character strategies to kill anything that moves and get loot. And I've played D&D games where the purpose is to explore character and story, to make jokes and explore the spontaneity of improv. Most of the time being some mix along that spectrum.
I know people who have bookshelves full of board games and host weekly game nights for friends. To say that what they're doing is negative and they'd be better off hosting spiritual book club nights or something along those lines doesn't feel like wholesome advice.
Hahah, no indeed. My cousin is a bit like that, he is a software developer and has a gaming rig at home and is currently playing Baldurs Gate 3. He also has a fair few board games which he plays with his wife and four children (and a fifth on the way, bless him). I haven’t tried to convince him that computer games are unhealthy, although he did admit to being a little addicted.
I think it is better to tell people, it’s a dream, it’s fake, it’s a false coin and counterfeit reality though they make it look real. The thing is, Western society doesn’t allow you many routes to be really earnest in your pursuit of truth, and most people give up on it. But if you really care about experiencing this world, this life as it really is, then you start to drop the illusions, let go of the dreams.
Sri Nisargadatta Maharaj used to say, earnestness is what ensures progress on the spiritual path. Not everyone has that, an earnest desire to find the truth. And if you have it you will find interest in these things dropping away after you realise that they are not important, that what is important is truth, love and freedom. A lot of society’s entertainments and supposedly important things are actually totally fake.
But then, as the Buddha says… this world should be seen as a flash of lightning in a summer cloud, a phantom or a dream. Perhaps nothing here is truly important.
This is something that continues to bother me. The best moments in games for me were comparable in levels of feeling and chemistry to reaching a mountaintop in the Carneddhau in Snowdonia, or my graduation, or sex. Peak experiences in life.
But perhaps it shouldn’t bother me. Climbing mountains is part of life, those peaks were part of life. So at the same time computer games are also part of life, a different kind of peak.
I can totally understand why you would say @person that life without games would be more miserable than it needs to be. Not everyone needs to game the system and play optimally, just playing for the sake of play is also an aspect of computer games, and even more of Dungeons and Dragons.
Thinking back on this, it was a glow of winning that stayed with me for a good half day. As if I had to prove my superiority, my unbeatable understanding of game mechanics. I wonder at my emotional reaction to this, because it was an emotion, a feeling.
This need to be the best, that’s something that came from school, I think, especially in my late teens, aged 14 to 18 when academic performance was so closely measured with tests. That was when I started playing longer computer games and rpgs regularly too. So you see, these things are linked.
Thinking further on this, the need to be the best also came with being an only child. It meant there was this distance from every other child, even friends, and even in something like games of marbles there was the idea of if you win you get to keep the other’s marbles. Winning is rewarded, being the best is rewarded. And if you lose you lose your stake.
It is again a form of reward conditioning, this time one instilled by children’s games at a young age. It is a cultural thing, where pride combines with winning and being rewarded for being the best to create strong ego’s out of “winners”. It’s something my parents never wanted to instil in me, they were social, collaborative artist-scientist types.
But that sense of wanting to be the best, which I would normally have grown out of, found a home in gaming. It’s the whole thing of wanting to proclaim a swift and decisive victory, which leads to power gaming in Dungeons and Dragons, and to the kind of war games I later designed and programmed as an adult. It was all of a piece.
I think this idea of being programmed to want to win also links to childhood trauma, of discovering there are people who will take your marbles, that not everything is warm like a mother’s love. Games are a way of managing that danger element of the world at large.
Acceptance too is linked to competence, and winning is a way to show your competence, and thus to being accepted, to being feted as a hero. There are many adult benefits to winning in sports or games. In a cerebral game like Ticket to Ride, it shows understanding and mastery of the rules and wisdom in placing resources.
It’s surprising how realising where conditioning comes from also frees you from it, and then you are no longer drawn by that. I think I am approaching the end of this examination of gaming.
No excuses from me. I don’t game anymore, but I still spend 10-12 hours a day on screens, while I have total freedom to do what I like. I spend it on WhatsApp, forums, reading spiritual books, a few YouTube videos and an occasional podcast.
Writing takes up a lot of time on forums, it often takes me 45 minutes to express my thoughts the way I want for a post, do that a few times a day and watch the hours drain away. To let go of that pattern, writing less and being less visible, would be a significant change.
I may start making a daily walk in the woods, that would be healthy and use up some of that time. That seems like a good start.
While limiting my daily screen time to something closer to the time spent in formal meditation, I've recently dropped YouTube as well for how it seems to encourage a state of avarice in me for its short bursts of stimulation. Not exactly a description of equanimity.
Although it's probably an age-related issue, I am finding that the appropriate concentration aspect of the 8FP to be my biggest practice challenge as time marches on.
Seems like another lesson in how to "be here now".
@how well done on dropping another ignorance fostering habit. I still use YouTube on the TV. However, it is increasingly ad centric sponsorship and pushed/targeted Google garbage. Will I have to jailbreak my TV to escape its updated software?
It has a browser. I am sure it even has a games station with retro games.
Live like a monk/nun. Party like a Tantrist.
Game Over. Restart?
https://tricycle.org/beginners/
This morning, I found myself trying to explain my position on games to a group of older people online who knew next to nothing about games. To my surprise, almost the first thing I found myself talking about was how games fulfil dreams — that for almost every dream there was a game out there — and that they can be a great way to experience stories and myth.
I found myself drawing on my memories of the high points of my gaming life, to explain the reasons people play and the kind of things games teach… the universal game themes of strategy, sequence, tactics, reward and challenge, resource useage. The building blocks of a game experience. And how the real high points have nothing to do with actual gaming but with progressing the story.
One thing a gaming life leaves you with is the memory of having been part of some great stories, of having seen myths play out with your character centre stage. Yes, it’s entertainment, but is it really that different from a book, a theatre play or a movie? It seems to me that this is part of the shared mythological experience of our time, the campfire stories of a technological age.
All this is leaving aside the endless killing of enemies which most games encourage to fill up their game loops, which is deplorable in my opinion. But it is endemic from open-world games such as Shadow of the Tomb Raider to story-driven adventures such as Mass Effect, they all use this paradigm.
A short piece on chakra’s and body energy…
It seems like excessive computer gaming is most likely a first chakra activity (survival), with some third chakra (power, mastery) thrown in.
The other positive thing that I found myself talking about with the oldies was how games provided a kind of “peak experience” on tap. Usually a peak experience is something like graduation, a particularly spectacular holiday, or the birth of a child… in a gamers life he may defeat Dragons or Demon Kings at the end of long dungeons and much effort, he may explore cities floating in the sky, he may deal with forgotten Gods. These might be the key experiences in a gamer’s life.
These kind of game experiences are somewhere between a story and a real experience, in terms of how the gamer experiences reality. They are more real than a story, because they are interactive, and less real than real life, with its immediacy and possibility of death. Yet because of the fantastical nature of the best moments, they make a big impression.
Certainly I’ve found that from most games I can recall only a few moments of play, most of it is fleeting and that’s just as well, because most of the battles are a frenzy of button mashing. But when you do find a peak experience, you often want to return to that peak as soon as possible, and that is why you game.
Maybe an interesting view for you? From the video: An average American 18-year-old will spend 93% of his life’s free time behind screens. A significant amount of this is social media, such as Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook and Twitter/X. Social media carries a message by its very structure, and it is mostly about short contacts and scrolling. Social media’s profits are determined by how effective they are in keeping you scrolling through their stuff. And the value proposition in terms of how much you get out of it compared to the time you spend is really poor.
Worth watching, I thought. Of course, next to social media the other main drivers of screen time are television and games. So it’s not entirely inappropriate to the thread.
My mother, usually a close confidante, said this about winning…
“Being focussed on winning is like having blinkers on. By the time they come off, you may have won, but everyone else will have gone home. It’s missing the point.”
And I think she was right, it is indeed missing the point of play. The idea of just playing, as opposed to being caught up in the mind’s concepts and rules and goals, is much more part of the innocent self, the childlike self. Jesus said “I tell you the truth, unless you change and become like little children, you will never enter the kingdom of heaven.”
Perhaps you know Iain M Banks’ novel The Player of Games. In it the main character is Jernau Morat Gurgeh, where Morat is a title meaning ‘player of games’, someone who has made themselves an expert in all forms of game playing. I was a bit like that, but I have found that by giving up the importance of winning, you return to a more innocent play.
It is a relief, a burden laid down.
Screen time blues!
Meditation can sometimes be described as a withdrawal of support for our identity's dreamscape.
To those whose visual sense gate is the primary avenue of that dream's indulgence, trying to free yourself from such an addiction can almost be impossible.
It is a collectively held Koan for modern times.
Like any addict, testing out an abstinence of screen time will illicit endless credible reasons why just a return for a little taste, is still OK.
The legs of this thread can be some of the proof of this.
For me, this thread has been about sorting out the merely-neutral aspects of gaming from the actively harmful. It has been a struggle to search through all my gaming habits, to try and achieve some clear understanding. But it is a shared space, and others have had their say too.
The thing is, I think computer game designers are moving towards a conjunction of aspects that are both attractive and toxic: violence, power, winning, challenge-reward, dopamine rush, spectacle. All of that makes it highly addictive. It is a complex mixture, and you don’t see it in the same measure in every game.
It is like opening a clenched fist, each attempt gets us further towards a free and open hand.
In a way, games cause an intensification of desire, because you explore in them all the things you want from a fantasy dreamscape. Everything that you may not have expressed in this lifetime but that you did secretly desire you may have found in games.
That is why I think detachment, sobriety, is harder to find for those who have played many games.
Well, I was wrong. When casually reading this thread over the past few months I thought: "at least I don't have that problem". Ay carumba, I just realized I do. Not the first time this has happened. So, I join the letting-go-of-games circle.
The thought that I am free of the negative aspects of games was not totally deluded - I was really not playing much during this time so forgot or felt there was no danger going forward. But my "thing" is that I periodically get "hooked" for a few days or even weeks and then go overboard, negatively impacting my sleep, duties, relationships, state of mind etc. With all the dopamine-dumping from the gaming I later feel like shit. What a clear example of chasing pleasure leading to suffering. Ugh. (is it obvious that I just had a relapse?)
Some preliminary thoughts:
I think going forward I'll try to just not play games - and focus on my actual life - instead of analysing it too much.
We are not the first, nor will we be the last to have a brush with addiction. Whether it’s games or alcohol it can hook you and convince you that ‘more is better’. I loved @genkaku’s down to earth wisdom on this.
A sound plan. Until it really penetrates that games are just an expression of mind, an inaccurate abstraction of something that is pretending to be real but is not, and then you can really let go. If you can let go of the idea of winning then you’ve made a big step.
My experiments with mindful playing have also largely stopped. I still have not played recently either a computer game or D&D, all of it was just stuff coming back up from when I used to play. Once in a while I return in my thoughts to it, just to unfold it a little further.
Gaming is not necessarily negative for everyone. @person seems to have found a happy way forward with it, and my cousin uses it to unwind for a few hours a week. And the social aspect of pen and paper Dungeons and Dragons is a major redeeming feature. But for me, the things I am most drawn to are the things that are least healthy — MMORPGs and compulsive strategy games such as Civilisation or Panzer General for example.
Thank you @Jeroen, I found the post both insightful and helpful.
"unwind for a few hours a week." --> This idea is what gets me into trouble. I'm certain others can do it. It just seems I have an addictive streak. Luckily, I manage to beat it down relatively fast, at least with games.
I’ve been wondering about poker, and have put together a few thoughts together.
The Negative
The Positive
So it’s actually quite balanced. It has a few nasty sides such as “addicts”, “promotes gambling” but compared to a game like God of War it isn’t that awful.
Certainly. Board games have a long history in my family, we used to play Chess or Stratego or Halma or Monopoly or set up the shuffleboard, which was a physical game of sliding round wooden pucks along a wooden board with the intention of forcing as many pucks as possible into the scoring areas, a little similar to Bowls. Old games from the 1970’s.
The thing is, about half the family would play to win, and the other half would play to have fun. So sometimes competition would get a little heated, and sometimes someone would try to cheat by fiddling with the game board while people were distracted. It was funny at times. But my grandfather was one of those who played for fun and he was usually the oldest adult, so a lot went by his say-so.
I’ve toyed with the idea of introducing D&D to my cousins family, but I think they are still a bit too young for it, the kids are 10-6-4-2 years old, and although my cousin and his wife have a good command of the English language, the younger children do not. Maybe in a few years’ time, and if I do I may buy a starters box set for them, with all the printouts and materials for a first adventure. D&D can be daunting if you’re just reading the Players Handbook.
Personally my best memories of playing D&D were from when I was 13-25 years old, and could easily find friends at school or uni to play with. Later came the computer game development and playing period when I made my hobby my work, and got carried along by that. And nowadays because I don’t live in an English-speaking country anymore, the problem is finding people to play with — even if I wanted to.
I wrote this in the first couple of pages of this topic, but more of the stickiness of games keeps revealing itself. It’s been a process, to dip back into games with playing board games with my cousin and his family, reading the D&D Players Handbook, and watching Baldurs Gate 3 videos. Perhaps I’ve tried to do too much, looking deeply into it.
I was wondering if the importance we attach to winning is not due to a primitive instinct about winning fights over food, perhaps among young siblings? Getting to eat if you win would be a powerful evolutionary motivator and might embed this kind of instinct in the genes.
I’m an only child, but I remember the stories my mother (who had four siblings) tells about how her mother would share out food at the dinner table, even going so far as counting the exact number of cherries each sibling would get. There was some competition, definitely.
Of course sharing is a better way forward than fighting over food, because it strengthens the bonds in the group and increases cooperation, increasing survival of the group more than just survival of the strongest would if you were to fight. There have been some fascinating studies in this field.
There are many collaborative board games where the players work together against the game. Team sports have a similar aspect. Though there is winning and losing there is also cooperation.
Yes there are definitely good aspects to games as well. I will try to make a list…
As long as it doesn’t get out of hand. My cousin is a classic case, when he was a teenager he played a lot of Counterstrike and Eve Online, so quite a few hours, then he met his wife and got a job as a software developer and had kids, and he started playing solo games like No Man’s Sky and recently Baldurs Gate 3, because he has to fit it into his schedule. He now plays just a few hours a week, and he seems happy with that.
He is an example of someone who used to play a lot of hours, then found other interests, ramped down his gaming, and keeping it all in manageable hours. He admits to being “a little bit addicted” in that he can’t stop gaming altogether, and complains that the battles in BG3 are so time-consuming. But he does have his priorities straight, and that’s admirable.
For me, my last brush with a big game was Mass Effect 3 on the Xbox, after I quit my job, and I spent quite a lot of hours on that. And yes, I did get very angry about the ending, as did a lot of people.