jessa

After spending days working at my laptop, I thought of a diversion: idle games. Yes, I may be in my 30s, but playing digital games is part of my growing up, so…. I have already tried being out in the sun and reading books, but this time I wanted to be visually stimulated.

First, I downloaded Ragnarok Origin Classic because my husband has been playing it with his “online friends” every day for about a month now. I use the term loosely, since they’ve never actually met, and laughing together through a screen doesn’t guarantee they’d vibe in person. Listening to him laugh through his gameplay, I thought it would turn out the same way for me, but it didn’t. Perhaps, if I had played it in grade school, I would have had the same ardor as my husband. Or if I have the community to play with. But the time investment seemed too much for me, given my work and personal projects. So I opted for idle games instead.

I downloaded The Cozy Florist on my tablet after seeing a Facebook ad and was initially disappointed because the ad was actually different from the game—false advertising. Still, since the game looked appealing, I played it for two days, and after that, I found the routine less and less entertaining and more and more numbing. I can feel my brain zoning out as my eyes roll from side to side and my fingers tap, tap, tap while completing tasks that keep you in the game. I barely read what the characters are saying because they bear no consequence in the gameplay, which is to just tap your hours away harvesting the flowers and fulfilling orders.

I tried to talk myself out of stopping to play because it might just be the game I am getting disinterested in, so I downloaded another game, Viladia: Cozy Pixel Farm. Okay, yes, I’ve been looking for farming/gardening idle games. While the pixel game reminded me of all the fun I had as a child playing pixel games like Pokémon, Sims Pets, and Final Fantasy IV, playing it for two days gave me the same numbing feeling.

Here’s a rundown of what I realized after playing idle games like The Cozy Florist and Viladia:

• If you don’t have anything to do with your day, and the day after that until the next, it would be so easy to be sucked into these games, because they give a feeling of accomplishment without accomplishing anything tangible. The accomplishment is so superficial that you would want to keep coming back to prove yourself wrong.
• They get you hooked by keeping the tasks easy but time-bounded, making you want to stay to see how things would turn out once you tick the box. If you’re like me, who doesn’t want to be kept on edge, I stay longer than I’d like just to see what’s next. But like a hamster wheel, you keep running and running without going anywhere.
• The trap feels the same with social media; you’d be given just enough dopamine for you to linger around some more until you’re already two hours deep without noticing, because your mind is too addled to make adult decisions like making better use of your time.
• And because your mind is in a stupor, even exiting takes deliberate effort. Your brain conjures a reason to stay—hmm, maybe I’ll wait just a little longer, the materials I need are almost ready—and you have to consciously talk yourself out of it before you finally swipe away and tap OK.

Because I don’t think it would be a better use of my time, and I have already intoxicated myself with too much pleasure from idle games, which eventually turned tyrannical over my hours, I decided to uninstall all three games and hopefully redeem the following days.

But hey, I am still keeping Tsuki Adventure 2, which has been on my tablet for two years already, and it only needs a few minutes of my time; a nice way to have something to play around with, especially when games were such a big part of growing up.

What I found effective for snapping out of the pull of these games is having someone to be accountable to by meeting them face to face, and being around people who are physically active. But if numbing yourself is the goal, escaping the weight of real life for a while, then idle games will do exactly that. Just don’t be surprised when the hours disappear.

As for me, I’d probably go back to reading.