My Advice to Gamers: Stop Making Yourselves Miserable

As a dad in my mid-30s, I’m starting to feel a bit differently about myself. I certainly don’t feel wise, I still do plenty of things that are pretty dumb. But I do feel like I’ve spent enough time on this earth to actually have the occasional bit of advice to dole out. I’ve seen enough, experienced enough, and have reflected enough to understand some truths about life.

Perhaps the biggest thing I have come to realize is how important it is to do things that make you happy. This seems obvious as hell, but it can be a bit trickier in practice.

In pretty much every hobby and interest I’ve ever had, I’ve seen people that take that hobby to a place where it doesn’t give them joy anymore. I am a big fan of the Detroit Pistons and proceeded to watch them lose 28 games in a row this year. Watching the games wasn’t fun. Discussing the games wasn’t fun. Finally, I reached a point where I just had to take a break.

I know people who love gambling on sports, but generally only place low probability wagers that always lose, and it makes them sad. I have friends who obsessively read books and then reach points where they just can’t find any new book that they really love.

Sometimes, the things you care about the most can lay the biggest traps that make you the most miserable. As I’ve become more ingrained with the gaming community on Twitter, I’ve started to see how often this hobby can make people genuinely unhappy. Over the years, I have encountered many of the same issues that I’ve seen other people have. Yet now, at my current age, I think I might genuinely love video games more than I ever have before. That is because over time, I’ve learned more about myself and how to enjoy them in the healthiest possible way. So buckle up kiddos, and prepare for some life advice.

You Don’t Need That Platinum Trophy

Since I’m old, I remember when achievements first launched on the Xbox 360. It was an incredibly cool feature, and I felt the same rush many trophy hunters still feel as I watched my gamerscore fly well above anyone else I knew. Since achievements were so new, a lot of the early ones weren’t too crazy. There were plenty of games that I could get every achievement on without all that much extra work.

Slowly, as developers learned more, and as trophy/achievement hunting became a real thing, we have seen them become more complicated and time-consuming. Opening up “How Long to Beat” and seeing a 40-hour game turn into an 80-hour game for a platinum is not uncommon.

One of the biggest things I often notice from trophy hunters is how often they complain about the platinums they are going for. I always see tweets talking about how terrible a certain achievement will be to get, or how awful this trophy will be, etc.

If you are truly enjoying your hunt for a trophy, then by all means, do it, have some fun. But when you hate the thing you are doing half the time, I think it’s time to just stop. There are those occasional games that you absolutely love that you just don’t want to end. It makes sense to me to trophy hunt in these cases, as it is a nice excuse to stay in that universe. Spending double the amount of time in a game you just think is OK, and constantly pausing to reference a guide so you don’t miss anything as you go seems absolutely miserable. Spending 80+ hours with a video game is a really crazy commitment, and it’s not an undertaking that should be taken lightly.

And look, I’m a guy spending multiple extra hours a week on a gaming blog. This could be considered work to many. I personally enjoy it and find it fun. If you truly love trophy hunting and get joy from it, then I’m not judging you one bit. But if I had multiple tweets a week talking about what a pain in the ass it is to write this blog, I think a lot of people would question why the hell I still do it. When I see trophy hunters who are almost always negative, I feel the exact same way.

Turn Down The Difficulty If Needed

Earlier this year, I played Prince of Persia: The Lost Crown on hard and absolutely loved it. The extra challenge enhanced the game for me and gave it the added intensity that I wanted.

Then, it reached a point where that intensity went too far.

The final boss of The Lost Crown is a very difficult multi-phase fight. Finally, after an hour of trying and feeling eager to just complete the damn game, I put it down to normal and was able to clear it.

Because of soulslike culture, there is a weird subset of people who are very concerned about others having difficulty options available for video games. They think that if you have a difficulty option, the temptation to lower it means you will not get everything out of the game that you could have if you had just gotten better and overcame whatever is stopping you.

I personally disagree with this mindset. If I take days to beat a boss, I don’t feel a rush when I beat it. I feel annoyed, and I feel relieved. It’s the same thing I feel when I’m having a rough night playing basketball, and I finally sink a shot after several misses. I guarantee that I left The Lost Crown with a much more positive impression because I turned down the difficulty at the end.

In the end, it’s a damn video game and a hobby. Getting good enough to beat a game on hard or even normal is great, but if you have to take it down to easy, that is ok too. Assess what makes you happiest, and go from there. In the end, this hobby is about fun and not about pride.

Quit That Game That You Hate

We have all had a game that we weren’t feeling at all, and then, out of nowhere, it just clicked for some reason. There is something magical about a moment like that. We also all probably have regrets about a game we quit early or mid way through. I was a teen when I played Final Fantasy 9, and for reasons I don’t remember, I just burned out on it after 15 or 20 hours. I still see the occasional tweet hyping up the game decades later and kind of feel like I screwed up.

But the beauty is that there is nothing stopping me from trying it again one day. In fact, I do plan on playing it again when I have the time. Outside of a few rare scenarios, you can always go back to a game you didn’t like down the road. Quitting it doesn’t have to be a permanent farewell.

There is no exact hour point where it’s easy to make the call to drop a game. But I would say, if you boot it up 2-3 different times, and don’t feel excited about playing it each of those times, and don’t feel good when you finish each session, it is probably time to drop it, or at least take a break.

Sometimes, it’s not even the game, and it’s your own mood. I have had plenty of games that I dropped for a bit and then picked up down the road and started having fun all over again. I also have games that I did not finish, and still hold up as classics. They just didn’t have 80 hours of fun for me. It might have been 60 hours instead. That is still a lot of enjoyment and is well worth the investment! There is no shame at all in quitting a game, and learning when to quit games has made me so much happier as a gamer.

Take Breaks, Touch Grass, Seriously

But maybe the thing that made me the happiest as a gamer was having a child. That might seem illogical, but when you have a baby, obviously, your free time starts to shrink dramatically.

I realized that with a baby, I suddenly had to take breaks.

Before my child, my days off were almost all composed of gaming, with quick breaks to eat, work out, let the dogs out, etc. When you have a child, you have no choice but to take extended breaks from gaming. Once my child goes to sleep, I still have to wrap up some chores, get my work out in, etc. It is almost impossible to game for much more than three hours in a row when you have a baby or a toddler.

And I’ve slowly grown to realize… that this is a very good thing!

When Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth came out, I got a pretty bad cold. To help avoid my child getting sick, I was quarantined in my basement. All of a sudden, I had two days to game like I was in my mid-20s again. I did pretty much nothing but play video games on each of those quarantine days.

And I slowly realized that it just doesn’t feel good to game that much. I forgot how lethargic and weirdly out of it I would feel sometimes after a really long gaming session. I think more than anything else, I love gaming more than ever before because I can’t just do it whenever. I have a lot of time in between to reconnect with the real world, interact with my child, and yes, even touch grass.

Something about getting out there and doing other things refreshes your spirit and makes that feeling of sitting down to game that much more special.

I imagine that as a dad, I will spend a lot of time in the next few decades telling my daughter not to quit and not to give up. When things get hard, keep going, and good things will happen is pretty normal parenting advice.

But when it comes to some things, the opposite can be the wiser choice. Video games are probably your hobby and not your job. Feel free to quit, give up, and not try as hard. This is the most fatherly advice I can give.