The Cynical Optimist

It is amazing how long you can feel guilty about something and not do anything about it. It is amazing how long you can continue to do something that you derive no actual pleasure from. It is amazing how long you can realize that something is taking up way too much of your life for no actual benefit, and how you can just continue to let it, to feel like you need it. I am sure anyone who has ever been addicted to something, or been overweight, or maybe a bad relationship can relate to this. Now I am not comparing what I am about to talk about to any of those things, all of them are way worse than what I am going to talk about, but the general feeling is about the same.

I lost my last real job in July of 2010, my original plan after having lost the job was to stay home with my children and work on my writing. Reality came back to me then and I got a job working a graveyard shift at a motel, so I could be with my kids until they start school and bring in some money into the house, and hopefully continue with my writing too. But my story here really begins with those weeks I was home with my children.

I did work on my writing, I actually was getting a lot done, I was starting to feel comfortable writing again, and I thought really finding my voice. But something happened. I hit a wall on something I was working on one morning and thought I would goof off online for a little while. I hoped on Facebook and trolled for a bit, and I can’t remember why, but I clicked on Farmville.

It was fun, there I was a small digital farmer planting and harvesting crops raising animals and collecting money from them to do it all over again. I added friends to the game and through them I was able to build things and expand my farm. I decided to try other games, so on to Frontierville, Cafe World, Cityville, Kingdoms of Camelot, Warstorm, and a few others that held my attention for awhile.

The games started out as a fun distraction, an enjoyable way to kill fifteen minutes to an hour each day. I can’t tell you when that changed, when they stopped being fun and started being an obsession, but it happened. I once wrote a short story about a kid who becomes obsessed with a shitty game and the games changes him and drives him mad, and eventually kills him. I wrote that story in my teens, long before this thing called Facebook came around, but if I ever revisit and rewrite that story, it would be perfect for these Facebook games.

The first time you play one of these games you know what you will be doing forever on them. You plant, cook, start something going, you come back when it is done and collect it, you use the money to start it again, you build things, and collect items, you send requests to your friends to help you out on all of this, you answer your friend’s request for help, and the next time you play you do it all over again. I know when I write it that way you can’t see how that would be fun, but it is sometimes, and at first. But that is it, that is the entire depth of the games and it continues endlessly in that direction. There is no ultimate goal you are working towards, you can make your own goals of being a higher level than all your friends. Or like me, in Cafe World, converting all your stoves to lightning stoves, it takes me about two to three weeks to get one lightning stove, seriously. You can make your own little progressive goals like that, but there never will be a “You Won” screen on the game, you don’t win, you just continue.

Once I started working the night shift the games took on a new importance to me, the hours at night can be quite long, there are long periods of absolutely nothing going on. It took my body a few months to adjust to the new schedule, I would be here eight hours with almost atleast six of them absolutely dead. I was only sleeping five maybe six hours a day and not the good sleep either, there are daytime noises, alot of light, and it was too damn hot. When you work nights you never really get enough sleep, because you rarely get good sleep, we humans just don’t seem to be made to be nocturnal creatures, our bodies are just accustomed to being awake when the sun is out, and resting and sleeping when it isn’t. So, at first I was very tired and just trying to get through the night, actually my waking time was spent just trying to get through it to get back to bed. Well, I had started these games at home during the day, but they are perfect for night.

The games don’t require anything more than pointing and clicking, there is little to no strategy involved in them, you point, you click and you do that again. Which I guess in a technical sense is all games, but with these games you are not going to die, no one is racing you, and nothing really moves except your mouse. It is just the repetitive point and click. I know it is not especially fulfilling, but I would be tired and it would pass the time. I also know there are lots of ways to pass the time, but this was easiest, I didn’t have to buy a crossword book, I didn’t have spend endless amounts of time sifting through the junk on the web to find what I wanted, and I will tell you this the crap they show on tv late at night will rot your brain quicker than these games will. It was the simplest way to pass my time and keep me awake, sign on to Facebook, click the link and I am there.

These games start out like a gateway drug, let’s use Farmville as the example here. At first you log on and you have maybe eight plots to plant on, you add a few more, you buy a cow. Now you can plant crops that take anywhere from 2 hours to 2 days to grow. First you plow the land, say 15 plots, then you plant the crops, say 2 hours for raspberries, that is 15 more clicks. The whole process takes maybe five minutes. Simple, short fun. Two hours later you harvest your raspberries, 15 more clicks, then you plow again, 15 more clicks, then you add some more plots with your new money, 5 more clicks, now you plant, 20 clicks, and you buy a chicken coop with your money, the game gives you a duck pond too, but you have to build it, so you request supplies from friends, and look someone gave you a cow, so you put that out too, now you plant blueberries, a 4 hours crop. This time the whole process takes you 15 minutes. Now I am not going to keep going, but you get the idea, you keep coming back and doing the same thing, but it also keeps getting bigger, what starts out as distraction for a few minutes starts taking a bigger and bigger chunk of your time. As of right now, for me to harvest, plow, plant, and harvest my animals and building, and request from my friends, takes around 45 minutes, and if I go and visit all my neighbors farms it can add another 20 minutes. The games just get bigger and bigger, you do the same thing over and over, but on an increasingly bigger place. Think about what I could be accomplishing with that time, just on Farmville we are talking about six to eight hours a week, and that isn’t my only game.

I can’t figure out how it happened, but the games have given me the illusion that I have made a commitment to them. If I plant a field of pattypan squash, I feel like I have made a commitment to be back on the farm in 16 hours when they are ready. I am looking at the clock to figure out when that is, if I am home and relaxing in a chair, I see the clock and know I have to get up and go harvest my squash, and I will stop whatever I am doing and go do that. Don’t read that wrong, I am not going to leave my kids in the bathtub because my squash is ready, but if I am watching a show or playing a game, I will pause it and go harvest my farm and then come back to it. So get that, I will stop doing something I am enjoying to go do something I am not, out of an obligation that doesn’t exist.

When I plant crops, or start a dish I look at the clock and see what I can plant to match up to when I can get back online. All night I will do short time crops and dishes, one, two, or three hours. Then I will plant something that I can get before I go to bed or to match up to when I get back to work. I will get to work with the imperative in my mind that I have to go harvest. And as soon as I get settled into work, there I go logging in and wasting my time, but feeling relieved that I got there in time, that my crops didn’t wither, and my dishes didn’t spoil. There is something severely wrong with this.

When did I come to this realization, I think I have been working up to it for a while now, but yesterday I was playing Mass Effect 2, and I was enjoying the hell out it. It has deep gameplay, an interesting story with interesting characters, and I played it for hours, I was just having too much fun to quit. And that is why I play games for that escape and fun. Farmville, Cityville, Frontierville, Cafe World, none of them, gives me that. I am playing them out of habit and because there is almost a worry of what will happen if I quit, if I let my crops wither, or don’t make my login bonus, I have my Cafe World log in streak up to 90 days and the idea of missing a day almost causes me physical pain, but I am deriving no actual pleasure from continuing it.

So tonight I got on like normal, I spent two hours doing all my usual stuff, but you know what, I am going to quit. I am done. I have crops that are ready and dishes that will soon be ready, I am not going back for them. Let’s see if I can quit cold turkey on this digital drug, and maybe find something constructive to do with my time. I remember when I quit smoking for a year, one of the first things that struck me was how much time I had on my hands when I quit, sometimes I just didn’t know what to do with myself, I am betting I find the same thing here, because it feels like they have taken months of my life.