It’s around 10pm. My fiancée just went to bed. I boot up Stellaris on my computer. I’m sitting at the desk in the corner of our house in Kingston, Ontario. When I turn around I can see my silhouette in the glass of the sliding door, and the reflection of the computer screen: my 23rd century empire in space, built upon thousands of little decisions over dozens of hours about physics research, trade routes, fleet queues, planetary management, exploration, and so much more.
I look at the time and it’s past 2am. I keep going, just a little bit more. Finish this war. Colonize that world. Complete the ecumenopolis (a whole planet covered by a single city).
It’s 4:30am. The rewards are getting further and further apart. The game is lagging as I approach the year 2500.
6am. She’ll be up soon and wonder what the hell I’m doing. I finally shut the laptop and sneak off to bed. In an hour I’ll pretend I’ve been there since around midnight.
The next day my mind is not free. Bumping sci-fi synth anthems loop in my ears. My conscious thoughts about work and groceries and wedding planning are relentlessly forced off into the ditch by the heavy traffic of what I could do work towards next: build a Dyson Sphere to reverse my power deficit, create a federation with two of my neighbours as a bulwark against a third, and organize my two dozen planets by their predominant resource type.
I get ideas in the shower and while walking downtown. I try to think about a writing project, but it’s like trying to listen for a single bird through a brick wall while electronica blasts away on the stereo.
I don’t play that night, because I’m exhausted. Nor the next night, because we stay up watching a movie. But the urge isn’t diminished after only a couple days. Everything is clouded by it. I’m watching the hours and minutes and seconds tick by ever so slowly until I can play again. I see myself playing again. It’s not fun. It’s not inspiring. It’s just necessary. I think of what George Carlin said about drugs. At the start, it’s 99% pleasure, 1% pain. But eventually, those numbers reverse, and it’s 99% pain, 1% pleasure—but you’ll do anything for that 1%, that little fix, the last one.
A beautiful spring weekend passes. There will be so many others, I tell myself. I can enjoy the next one. I can write that thing, whatever it is, when I conquer this galaxy at last. All that matters is getting back in front of the screen. I don’t even care about what I am building at this point. I’m obsessed with the story of my game, on and off screen, but there is no joy in watching it unfold anymore.
What does finishing mean anyways? If I stop to think about this I’ll realize I am a mess and this is not healthy and I am chasing a dragon that is eating me alive. In fact, I do stop to think about it—a lot. I recognize that I need to stop. This thought it repeated and then pushed off into the ditch like all the rest.
I’ll just finish this playthrough, and then I’ll stop. I’ll never play again. I’ll delete the game for the fourth time.
But just a few more hours. Just one more night to binge and get my fix and I’ll be done.
Stellaris
That was six years ago, but I’ve been in that loop many times since then. Stellaris has only gotten better (a modern game that continuously improves with every “DLC”, or downloadable content, that is released).
With some distance (it’s been well over a year since I’ve played it) I can tell you that it is a grand, awe-inspiring, remarkably complex, and incredibly replayable game that rewards strategy and spurs imagination. It has been crafted with passion for over a decade by designers who love science fiction (the patch updates used to be named after science fiction authors like Isaac Asimov and Ursula K. Le Guin) and who clearly want to make a game that they themselves want to play. It is an achievement.
I would love to play Stellaris again, and this time really explore its writing, embrace its design, and enjoy its offering. But I know that original impetus wouldn’t last. It’s like the alcoholic who thinks that, this time, they’ll savour it. They’ll go slow and enjoy the drink itself, not what the drink does to them. So they pick up a glass, and time passes, and trouble has returned.
Is the problem the game? Or is it how I engage with the game?
Cold Turkey
This last Tuesday marked six months since I last played a video game.
There is so much wrapped up in that sentence. First, “video game” sounds childish, like a time warp not only to my youth, but to a whole other era in which games were played with quarters in shopping mall arcades and for a half an hour at a time on a square box TV set in the basem*nt. Gaming today is a global entertainment industry that is on track to be worth over a trillion dollars by the end of the decade. Gamers transcend age, class, nationality, and region. And yet, “video game” is the best we’ve got to describe the things people actually play.
Second, six months doesn’t sound like a long time. The longest I’ve probably gone without playing a video game was a full year, back in 2013 when I drove from France to Tanzania and lived in sub-Saharan Africa. I can try to play casually, say once a week as a way of taking a break—like watching a YouTube video while eating lunch. But these little exposures quickly become compulsive. When I get hooked into a game, a weekend away from it can feel like a lot longer than six months feels to me right now.
Third, I don’t actually remember the game, just that it was November 7, 2023. I’m sure I could have told you very specifically what the game was and where I was in it up until December. But now it’s faded. Healthy Gamer, aka Dr. Alok Kanojia, is a popular YouTuber and medical expert who focuses on gaming addiction. He has some fascinating insight into exactly how and why this change happens in the brain over time, and how games (and gaming addiction) affect us chemically and physiologically.
Finally, there is the simple fact that I am writing to you about this. In my post about a couple weeks ago, I talked a little about how to square playing the game with how I present myself as a reader, writer, consultant, father, husband, etc. Depending on the crowd, video games can be the subject of countless hours of passionate conversation—or a mark of profound shame that I pretend to know nothing about.
I struggle to find a happy medium not only in how I wish to be perceived (why can’t I just be a guy who likes to play games?) but in how much I play (why can’t I play one evening every couple weeks?).
I binge or go cold turkey. The reason for this is my temperament, sure. But I think it’s also in my own history with games, and the kinds of games I like to play.
Baldur’s Gate
I’m a ludophile. I love games. Board games, card games, campfire games, video games. It was the gamification of theatre that drew me into that world as a teenager and kept me going through my 20s: the warmup and training games of acting class as well as the game-like approach to rehearsing and performing a scene. Even writing a play can feel like playing a game with the characters and an audience.
I could write a book on my personal history with games. I could go back to when I got a Nintendo (the original NES, released in 1985) from my mom for Christmas at around five or six years old, and track my gaming life from then through Sega and TurboGrafx 16 to getting a PC at around age 13. I could talk about Command & Conquer, Ys Books I and II, Civilization, SimCity, Transport Tycoon, Warcraft, Starcraft, Age of Empires, The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and so many other titles. They informed my childhood and stoked an early interest in interacting with (not just observing) other worlds. Like the books I read and the movies I watched growing up, games fed and nurtured my imagination.
I’ll tell you about one.
At around age 14 I was walking through the Compustore at Market Mall in Calgary. When I was home for a holiday or through the summers, I would loiter in the store and salivate over recent game releases. This time they had a computer on a stand showing the character creation screen of a newly-released Baldur's Gate (1998).
I waited a few minutes for some frustrated college student to get past the introductory screen where you determine your ability scores. This is where you roll digital dice over and over until you’re satisfied with your stats. Modern games would never incorporate such a tedious feature, but in retrospect there was something special about it. It was as if the game was signalling to the player: you will be rewarded for sticking through, and putting in your time—a lesson that would be repeated throughout.
I took the keyboard and mouse at the demo table. I could have spent hours in the mall, creating characters, imagining their stories. Two of the portraits—a wizard and an archer—burned into my brain, and the lofty yet shadow-tinged music was perfect. It captured precisely the sense of deep adventure, high-stakes fantasy and immersive action I didn't realize I had been craving.
I walked by that Compustore several dozen more times. Each with a vain hope that the game would be on display again. The heart-stirring music. The invitation to another world, vast and brimming with the possibilities not of someone else's script, but of my own imagination.
Months pass before I finally got my hands on the five CD-ROMs that constituted Baldur’s Gate. I fell into the game, followed by Baldur's Gate II (2000). I remember showing my mom the opening cinematic of the latter, where a stitch-faced Irenicus is revealed as your jailor and tormentor—a clip I thought was as good as any movie. She smiled, nodded, and was probably horrified at the person I was becoming.
The making of Baldur’s Gate I and II is now game development legend. The original team at BioWare in Edmonton had virtually no experience making games, but they created a cultural and creative touchstone that continues to influence the global industry today.
The original games featured an isometric view (you look down but at an angle), a sophisticated engine that incorporated 2nd edition Advanced Dungeons & Dragons rules but in real-time, and a sprawling, full and reactive world that took itself both very seriously and not seriously at all. Based on the success of the two Baldur’s Gate titles, BioWare went on to make other groundbreaking works, such as the Dragon Age and Mass Effect series, and Star Wars: Knights of the Old Republic.
I didn’t know any of this at the time I first played. I was simply immersed. And for years afterward I would walk by Compustore to see what games might be on display or even on demo out front.
Loops
Keza MacDonald has been writing about games for The Guardian—often about the challenge of making time for games while raising a young family—for over 15 years. In her weekly newsletter, Pushing Buttons, she consistently pushes back against the idea that playing games is shameful or silly or childish.
Games now form a rich catalogue of material that crosses the ill-defined lines between entertainment and art. They are a truly international language for telling stories that has evolved far beyond playthings for kids; a fast-moving vehicle for people to come together through multiplayer experiences or streaming or just talking about games; and a form of creative expression, and enjoyment, that stands shoulder-to-shoulder with film and painting and sculpture and music.
If I’m honest with myself, I can’t part with feelings of shame and secrecy when I play video games. I don’t feel them when I play board games or D&D, which are social. I don’t experience the feelings when I watch a movie or television series, or read a book, or even scroll mindlessly on my phone (an activity that is an order of magnitude more trashy and less useful than any game). There is something in me, some collection of apparently responsible adult voices from the 90s and 2000s, some sense of discretion or obligation, that says games are stupid and for children and they are rotting my brain.
Games share an addictive quality with other vices such as smoking, drinking and junk food. I remember going on a family vacation to Hawaii when I was 15. My grandparents had a computer in their place, right in the hallway. For hours and hours, stealing time whenever I could, I played Baldur’s Gate. On Maui! I remember my grandmother was aghast, even angry, that I was so hooked on the game and willing to play it right in their hallway. “Go outside!” I rushed through all the dialogue and combat because soon I wouldn’t be able to play. I wasn’t really enjoying it anymore. I was playing for the next fix.
When I descend too far down the rabbit holes, it is unhealthy. I feel physically unwell, mentally trapped, and emotionally drained. The “core gameplay loop” (also called a compulsion loop) replays in my mind when I take a walk, eat a sandwich, or go to bed. I can’t help but plan what I’ll do next when I play. I put things off. I stay up late. I eat poorly. I’ll just play a bit longer, to acquire one more level, or conquer one more planet, or build one more district. It’s never enough, so I end up angry with myself, and the cycle continues.
Are the dopamine reward loops just too powerful for me to resist? Much like social media and the very presence of our mobile phones, are these massive companies just too smart for me? Or is my whole approach negative from the beginning, and I am setting myself up for failure before I even start? Is the very feeling of shame the thing that makes games compulsive, destructive, and consuming?
The answer is probably in between. Growing up, junk food was highly restricted during weekdays when I was at boarding school—until I was home, and then it was a free-for-all. This conditioned me to binge on junk when it is available, and function quite well when it is not.
Such food is filled with stuff my body wants (or thinks it wants) from an evolutionary perspective, and I am tricked into eating poorly. Games are, or can be, different. They aren’t necessarily bad for me, whereas poor nutrition always is.
The answer is moderation. But how can I be my own referee? How do I ensure that I’m really playing games primarily for research and discovery, to mine ideas and methods, to learn about the craft of storytelling, instead of getting trapped in the loop?
I don’t have a good answer. I’ve gone cold turkey before. And, six months ago, I stopped playing completely once more. Since then, I am far less distracted and have been a lot more productive. There is more space in my mind for creativity and the rest that creativity requires.
I am not free of vices, of course. I still watch YouTube while eating a lunch sandwich. And I can get hooked on a good TV show, even if it’s playing in the background, to the point that I stop thinking about anything else.
I have a lot of friends who have a healthy relationship with games and gaming, who can enjoy them like most people enjoy going out to the movies. They are enriched, enlivened, inspired by what they play. Some go on to make games of their own.
I figure, if I can’t play video games well, I shouldn’t play them at all. But that means there is a whole section of the library that I am not allowed to venture into, because I’ll end up eating all of the books instead of reading them. I can’t help but feel like I am missing out on good books. And maybe more to the point: the fact that they are forbidden makes me want to read them all the more.
Disco Elysium
If I had the time—meaning, no job, no kids, no Substack to write each week—there are dozens of games I’d like to play from start to finish. It would take hundreds if not thousands of hours to get through each of them just once. And the joy of many games is in the replay.
Like all forms of entertainment, a game can be cheap, mass-produced, consumer trash. It can also be a towering work of artistic achievement. Or, it can be something in between, with all the vagaries of taste and exposure and context interceding for you.
When it comes to writing, a few games are literary masterworks. Suzerain, for example, is a political simulation that was written more than it was developed: it features a whole world of possibilities and challenges, where you play almost exclusively through dialogue between characters. You focus not on battles or exploration, but language and conversation. It sounds like I’m describing a series of board meetings. And maybe I am. But think of Aaron Sorkin’s writing in The West Wing: the day-to-day stuff of running a country should be and usually is quite boring, but he finds the inherent drama without losing a sense of place and time.
There is one game I would love to play from start to finish and report back here. Disco Elysium, a 2019 RPG that continues to be heralded as one of the best games ever made, is undeniably a literary experience. I never finished it. When I’m ready, it could be a starting point for me to tie games into this practice of writing—and perhaps a chance for me to play something mindfully, not compulsively.
Disco Elysium feels like a novel deep in its bones and never escapes that in its core gameplay, which is almost entirely about reading. There is no combat. All action is narrative action. The game deals with failure, death, history, politics, and a truly nuanced exploration of human nature. It’s funny (I laughed out loud several times when playing it) and poignant, thought-provoking and compelling. Like the best book, it changes you, and leaves you with a new way of seeing the world.
Perhaps the greatest achievement of the game is how it rewards the players. In most games, you level-up or acquire money or become more skilled in order to play better—you become more powerful, and that in itself is the feeling you come back to. In Disco Elysium, failure is often more meaningful than power, and weakness can lead to more interesting places than success.
The core gameplay loop in the game is not advancement, but discovery. In other words, the reward the game offers its player is the chance to learn and understand (ie, read) a little more. Creativity can be the same: the more you make, the more you get to see what’s next.
If that’s not literature, what is? It sounds like anathema to the dopamine loops of Stellaris, where I rush through to get my fix. In any case, it’s worth a try.
But for now, I think I’ll sign up for another six months of abstention. After all, games aren’t the only thing where I look up and the clock is suddenly two hours ahead. Writing can feel like that too.
Do you play games? Do you have a healthy relationship to them? If this is entirely foreign to you, is there something else that is dangerous or compulsive for you?
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Writing
I’m still revising a short story, Lifeguard, originally written for the NYC Midnight Short Story Contest. Should have it done and ready to submit by the middle of next week!
Reading and Listening
Finishing the audiobook of American Gods by Neil Gaiman.
Quote of the Week
“We are addicted to our thoughts. We cannot change anything if we cannot change our thinking.”
