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1,001 Days Without Video Games vs 1 Year With Them
6 months ago
Don't do it first. Do it better.
Four years ago today, I started something that I never expected would be what it became. What was meant to be a short break from video games so I could focus on something more important turned into a self-imposed challenge to do something I would long have thought was impossible: Not play games for much, much longer than I originally intended, and more specifically, doing so WILLINGLY.
Let alone happily.
Even fulfillingly.
I said a while back that I'd done it and that more detail would be coming. I've had long enough to reflect, and so I did. I wrote a little something taking a look at what I've learned about myself. I tried to make it read like something meant to self-analyze without being self-aggrandizing, to really take myself seriously.
So, despite that, the fact that I'm posting it publicly is kind of self-indulgent, but I feel like I've earned the right to feel good about myself, which isn't something I can always say so I make use of every time I can. If that doesn't interest you, you're not missing anything by skipping this journal. I'll still be happy, though.
Written March 8, 2025
As I mentioned in a journal here ( https://www.deviantart.com/evertide.....ays-1010524255 / https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#jid:10780894 ), on January 12, 2024, I completed a self-imposed challenge of going 1,001 days without playing a video game. I said there would be "more to come when I've had time to think," and then more never came. Enough time has passed that I should fix that, especially since I now have more perspective.
First, one may wonder why I would do that in the first place. After all, I've owned game systems since I got a Sega Genesis for my eighth birthday. At home and on the go, I've played games. I've heard more than once from my parents that I played too much and needed to go outside and find other things to do.
In this case, it came from how, after playing HuniePop, I was so inspired and motivated that, after three years when I couldn't write anything that could really be called a story, I finally, finally had started writing again. I knew what I'd started would be a milestone for me and I knew I needed to do whatever I could to keep it special. I felt like myself again as I hadn't felt in a long time.
After finishing that game, I picked up the sequel which happened to have just been released. Had fun but then hit a roadblock at the end. That day was April 16, 2021. I decided to take a break from it to focus on the story, especially since my birthday wasn't too far away. I then decided I would finish the story in time to post it as a birthday present to myself, and I did. That story became "Guide to Dating an Alien," a story I'm still quite proud of, especially since it was the first of several stories that helped me reaffirm that I'm right to call myself a writer.
And that started something I couldn't have foreseen. To my amazement, I went a month without playing anything, something that I wouldn't have believed I could willingly do since age eight. I'd watch people play, sure, but I didn't play. I'd never gone that long without playing video games since I started, and it made me wonder, "I had a reason for doing this and I was right to do so...but I didn't know I had the discipline to take myself so seriously that I'd set such a personal goal, one that only I would really care about, and still see it through. It feels good to know that I can do it, but...can I do it again, just to see if I can?" So, I did.
Then I kept doing it and challenged myself to go for a year.
At some point, another thing occurred to me. I had this thought, when I was writing stories, I was doing things that don't just make me happy: Other people enjoy them, and it makes me happy that they enjoy them. Not just that, but taking time off from games meant I had more time to write them, and what was more, I was making good use of that time. When I play a video game and beat some big challenge in it...who cares? Nobody but me. Now, maybe nobody but me needs to care, and nobody would care but me that I wasn't playing games either. But it matters less because games are just me enjoying some make-believe, whereas writing is much the same except I'm doing things to better myself and validate my unique worth, however small that is.
Whether that thought was right or wrong, I wanted to get the perspective I needed to find out.
But I still wanted to get back to games. I even had a plan for how I would reward myself: First, I would hook up the good old GameCube, the same one that I owned growing up and brought with me when I moved out, the one that had been in storage for over a decade. I was going to play one of my favorite games of all time, Metroid Prime, and then its sequel and finally 100% them so I'd know I'd beaten all they had to offer. It might be the last time I played anything on it, so I wanted to give it a proper sendoff. After that, I would start resolving some unfinished business: I would play, and 100%, Prime 3 to see if it lived up to all the hype I'd heard over the years (and so I could validate myself as a Metroid fan), which meant buying a refurbished Wii. Then I'd clear Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, some of the earliest games I can ever remember playing and that I enjoyed but was not very good at on account of how I was...you know, like, seven years old, so I'd resolve my oldest unfinished gaming business. After that, Twilight Princess, a game I'd had a great time playing but never got around to finishing.
And, on the day I had gone a year without games, I got a call from my mom (who was visiting at the time with my dad) a little before I was going to start playing: "Want to come over for dinner?" Me in my head: "No, I have something really personally important to do, but if I say no, then I'll think back on this with guilt and not triumph." Me out loud: "Okay." So, fine, I'd do it the next day: "A year and a day" sounds just as good. And what happened the next day? My dad called in the morning: "Want to go to the baseball game today?" Me in my head: "JESUS GOD, NO! But I'll feel bad again if I don't." Me out loud: "Okay." With my timetable ruined, I somehow got it in my head that I should just not bother trying and see if I can go a second year without games.
Thanks, Mom and Dad, I never forgot that I wouldn't have done this without you, and you didn't even know what you were setting me up for. They never knew until I told them around November 2024.
So, I did it again. Then I said to myself, "Okay, final challenge: A nice, even 1,000 days. That's plenty. If you can commit to that, you can commit to anything."
And, ta-daaa, I did. But I gave it an extra day just to make sure.
It almost felt like the end or beginning of an era when I fired up the Cube at 6 PM on 01/12/2024. Feeling like I'd come back to a second home that I had left behind after a while. I'd proven how seriously I could take myself and had accomplished some major writing milestones since then. Now it was time to do things just for me. And it was just as classic as I'd remembered, along with Prime 2, and reaffirmed their spots as a couple of my favorite games anywhere, ever.
Finally, it was time for something familiar but new: Prime 3. At almost every turn, it lives up to its reputation I'd heard so much about for so long. Such a great game that I'm actually a little bummed to see that Prime 4 might actually come out yet. I might eat those words if it comes out and it's as good as the trilogy, but a recurring theme I've seen in games, shows, and many, many other things is that there's a lot of value in just leaving well enough alone. As the saying goes as of now, how many times has something been rebooted, remade, or otherwise rereleased and everyone regretted it, especially when it's "updated for modern audiences," which has become the magic words for a modern curse. Sometimes it works, but it fails enough that I'm usually of the opinion that the odds are better to not risk it. But we'll see how that goes, and I'm holding my breath that it'll work out; even if it doesn't, it won't spoil my opinion of the trilogy.
Once that was done, it was time to party like it was the early 90s. Youtuber Civvie 11 once said that Wolf 3D is the FPS genre distilled into its purest essence, which is just as well since it's the direct predecessor to Doom. I always remembered when I was a kid, my mom sometimes nicknamed me "mein lieben" after the SS death cries. Playing them for the first time since the early 90s and finally conquering them felt like one of the first chapters in my gaming history had been returned to and finished. It didn't take me long to go through everything twice, but Wolf 3D and Spear of Destiny are still must-plays for everyone at some point.
Then the last bit of unfinished business: Twilight Princess. My first time through, I'd played it over a summer when I was home from college, but then I had to go back before I finished it and even though I went home most weekends, I didn't have the patience to finish it. Not long later, I tried it again and got to the same point as before when somehow, my interest just died. For those familiar with the game, that was just after finishing Snowpeak. It kept nagging me that I played so much and remembered so much of the game but didn't finish it, and it was time to clear that off the long-awaited to-do list. I still had great memories of the game: Midna had some huge shoes to fill since I'm pretty sure everyone who ever played Ocarina of Time (and even most of us who didn't) were all still sore about Navi, and yet she not only endeared herself to me right around the time she was starting to warm up to Link despite being a cheeky pest at first, but by "that point" of the game (you know the one if you've played it), I had started to come around to her and was genuinely worried that if I took too long to save her, she would die and I really didn't want her to die, and after that, she keeps getting better. Running around Hyrule Field on Epona just for the thrill of it while that music plays (which has been on my generations of iPods for over 15 years) gave me a rush normally reserved for dreams where I can fly. Reaching Hyrule Field was when the game went from "good" to "great," and Midna's Lament is when the game went from "great" to "unforgettable." Yet again, just as great a game as I remembered, and so satisfying to see it through to its conclusion. After that, I did something I'd never done before: A three-heart playthrough. To be fair, this isn't a hard game to do that with, even if you're also giving yourself "no bottles" and "no magic armor" restrictions. Still felt like I'd done all there was to do. (Except Rollgoal but I don't care.)
I didn't plan on this, but I just happened to finish Twilight Princess one year after ending my self-imposed video game hiatus. Waiting to get back to games in the hopes that they'd be that much better was still 100% worth it.
So, a couple of months after that, we finally come to the point of this introspection. I started taking a break from games to do something else that was special for myself so that I could feel like myself again and to just plain like myself again. Then it became a personal challenge. Then it was to understand myself better and gain some perspective that may stick with me through the rest of my life. The reasons for doing it changed, or more accurately they were added onto, but the base idea was the same: Personal growth. Now I've gone 1,001 days without playing video games and finished a year where I played them again, and had a couple of months to think.
The final question and arguably the one I set out to answer when I started this challenge years ago: Was I happier without video games than I was with them?
The answer: Overall? Yes.
I have no intention of quitting gaming or taking another super long hiatus, but while there have been days when I couldn't play games due to other commitments or I just didn't feel like it, I've gotten more overall satisfaction from writing, as shown by how, with a one-day exception, there hasn't been a single day since August 31, 2023 that I haven't done any writing at all. Games make me happy and I like being happy, and they're sources of inspiration (and sometimes some darn good reading) too which I can always appreciate, but I'm very aware now that I get more out of writing, both on a personal level and because, when I do well with writing, other people enjoy it too, whereas playing a game is just for me. In both cases, I do things that are good for me: I love it when people enjoy what I write, but I write because it makes me feel good in more ways than I can put into words. I play games to enjoy them, but I write because it's in my very nature and I love that part of myself.
I've known for a long time that sometimes people moderate or abstain from things because however good they might feel, they're harmful in excess or in the long run, and other times they abstain from things not because they're bad but because they seek more long-term growth elsewhere. It feels like I've learned to appreciate games more now that I've learned to balance my life with them better and I've reaffirmed what I already knew about myself: That they're great to have but I can be (and still am) fulfilled without them.
In fact, right here from sitting down and putting my thoughts into words, I get that same feeling all over again. And being happy with yourself, and knowing what you need to do that, is a reward that's both the journey and the destination.
Let alone happily.
Even fulfillingly.
I said a while back that I'd done it and that more detail would be coming. I've had long enough to reflect, and so I did. I wrote a little something taking a look at what I've learned about myself. I tried to make it read like something meant to self-analyze without being self-aggrandizing, to really take myself seriously.
So, despite that, the fact that I'm posting it publicly is kind of self-indulgent, but I feel like I've earned the right to feel good about myself, which isn't something I can always say so I make use of every time I can. If that doesn't interest you, you're not missing anything by skipping this journal. I'll still be happy, though.
Written March 8, 2025
As I mentioned in a journal here ( https://www.deviantart.com/evertide.....ays-1010524255 / https://www.furaffinity.net/journal...../#jid:10780894 ), on January 12, 2024, I completed a self-imposed challenge of going 1,001 days without playing a video game. I said there would be "more to come when I've had time to think," and then more never came. Enough time has passed that I should fix that, especially since I now have more perspective.
First, one may wonder why I would do that in the first place. After all, I've owned game systems since I got a Sega Genesis for my eighth birthday. At home and on the go, I've played games. I've heard more than once from my parents that I played too much and needed to go outside and find other things to do.
In this case, it came from how, after playing HuniePop, I was so inspired and motivated that, after three years when I couldn't write anything that could really be called a story, I finally, finally had started writing again. I knew what I'd started would be a milestone for me and I knew I needed to do whatever I could to keep it special. I felt like myself again as I hadn't felt in a long time.
After finishing that game, I picked up the sequel which happened to have just been released. Had fun but then hit a roadblock at the end. That day was April 16, 2021. I decided to take a break from it to focus on the story, especially since my birthday wasn't too far away. I then decided I would finish the story in time to post it as a birthday present to myself, and I did. That story became "Guide to Dating an Alien," a story I'm still quite proud of, especially since it was the first of several stories that helped me reaffirm that I'm right to call myself a writer.
And that started something I couldn't have foreseen. To my amazement, I went a month without playing anything, something that I wouldn't have believed I could willingly do since age eight. I'd watch people play, sure, but I didn't play. I'd never gone that long without playing video games since I started, and it made me wonder, "I had a reason for doing this and I was right to do so...but I didn't know I had the discipline to take myself so seriously that I'd set such a personal goal, one that only I would really care about, and still see it through. It feels good to know that I can do it, but...can I do it again, just to see if I can?" So, I did.
Then I kept doing it and challenged myself to go for a year.
At some point, another thing occurred to me. I had this thought, when I was writing stories, I was doing things that don't just make me happy: Other people enjoy them, and it makes me happy that they enjoy them. Not just that, but taking time off from games meant I had more time to write them, and what was more, I was making good use of that time. When I play a video game and beat some big challenge in it...who cares? Nobody but me. Now, maybe nobody but me needs to care, and nobody would care but me that I wasn't playing games either. But it matters less because games are just me enjoying some make-believe, whereas writing is much the same except I'm doing things to better myself and validate my unique worth, however small that is.
Whether that thought was right or wrong, I wanted to get the perspective I needed to find out.
But I still wanted to get back to games. I even had a plan for how I would reward myself: First, I would hook up the good old GameCube, the same one that I owned growing up and brought with me when I moved out, the one that had been in storage for over a decade. I was going to play one of my favorite games of all time, Metroid Prime, and then its sequel and finally 100% them so I'd know I'd beaten all they had to offer. It might be the last time I played anything on it, so I wanted to give it a proper sendoff. After that, I would start resolving some unfinished business: I would play, and 100%, Prime 3 to see if it lived up to all the hype I'd heard over the years (and so I could validate myself as a Metroid fan), which meant buying a refurbished Wii. Then I'd clear Wolfenstein 3D and Spear of Destiny, some of the earliest games I can ever remember playing and that I enjoyed but was not very good at on account of how I was...you know, like, seven years old, so I'd resolve my oldest unfinished gaming business. After that, Twilight Princess, a game I'd had a great time playing but never got around to finishing.
And, on the day I had gone a year without games, I got a call from my mom (who was visiting at the time with my dad) a little before I was going to start playing: "Want to come over for dinner?" Me in my head: "No, I have something really personally important to do, but if I say no, then I'll think back on this with guilt and not triumph." Me out loud: "Okay." So, fine, I'd do it the next day: "A year and a day" sounds just as good. And what happened the next day? My dad called in the morning: "Want to go to the baseball game today?" Me in my head: "JESUS GOD, NO! But I'll feel bad again if I don't." Me out loud: "Okay." With my timetable ruined, I somehow got it in my head that I should just not bother trying and see if I can go a second year without games.
Thanks, Mom and Dad, I never forgot that I wouldn't have done this without you, and you didn't even know what you were setting me up for. They never knew until I told them around November 2024.
So, I did it again. Then I said to myself, "Okay, final challenge: A nice, even 1,000 days. That's plenty. If you can commit to that, you can commit to anything."
And, ta-daaa, I did. But I gave it an extra day just to make sure.
It almost felt like the end or beginning of an era when I fired up the Cube at 6 PM on 01/12/2024. Feeling like I'd come back to a second home that I had left behind after a while. I'd proven how seriously I could take myself and had accomplished some major writing milestones since then. Now it was time to do things just for me. And it was just as classic as I'd remembered, along with Prime 2, and reaffirmed their spots as a couple of my favorite games anywhere, ever.
Finally, it was time for something familiar but new: Prime 3. At almost every turn, it lives up to its reputation I'd heard so much about for so long. Such a great game that I'm actually a little bummed to see that Prime 4 might actually come out yet. I might eat those words if it comes out and it's as good as the trilogy, but a recurring theme I've seen in games, shows, and many, many other things is that there's a lot of value in just leaving well enough alone. As the saying goes as of now, how many times has something been rebooted, remade, or otherwise rereleased and everyone regretted it, especially when it's "updated for modern audiences," which has become the magic words for a modern curse. Sometimes it works, but it fails enough that I'm usually of the opinion that the odds are better to not risk it. But we'll see how that goes, and I'm holding my breath that it'll work out; even if it doesn't, it won't spoil my opinion of the trilogy.
Once that was done, it was time to party like it was the early 90s. Youtuber Civvie 11 once said that Wolf 3D is the FPS genre distilled into its purest essence, which is just as well since it's the direct predecessor to Doom. I always remembered when I was a kid, my mom sometimes nicknamed me "mein lieben" after the SS death cries. Playing them for the first time since the early 90s and finally conquering them felt like one of the first chapters in my gaming history had been returned to and finished. It didn't take me long to go through everything twice, but Wolf 3D and Spear of Destiny are still must-plays for everyone at some point.
Then the last bit of unfinished business: Twilight Princess. My first time through, I'd played it over a summer when I was home from college, but then I had to go back before I finished it and even though I went home most weekends, I didn't have the patience to finish it. Not long later, I tried it again and got to the same point as before when somehow, my interest just died. For those familiar with the game, that was just after finishing Snowpeak. It kept nagging me that I played so much and remembered so much of the game but didn't finish it, and it was time to clear that off the long-awaited to-do list. I still had great memories of the game: Midna had some huge shoes to fill since I'm pretty sure everyone who ever played Ocarina of Time (and even most of us who didn't) were all still sore about Navi, and yet she not only endeared herself to me right around the time she was starting to warm up to Link despite being a cheeky pest at first, but by "that point" of the game (you know the one if you've played it), I had started to come around to her and was genuinely worried that if I took too long to save her, she would die and I really didn't want her to die, and after that, she keeps getting better. Running around Hyrule Field on Epona just for the thrill of it while that music plays (which has been on my generations of iPods for over 15 years) gave me a rush normally reserved for dreams where I can fly. Reaching Hyrule Field was when the game went from "good" to "great," and Midna's Lament is when the game went from "great" to "unforgettable." Yet again, just as great a game as I remembered, and so satisfying to see it through to its conclusion. After that, I did something I'd never done before: A three-heart playthrough. To be fair, this isn't a hard game to do that with, even if you're also giving yourself "no bottles" and "no magic armor" restrictions. Still felt like I'd done all there was to do. (Except Rollgoal but I don't care.)
I didn't plan on this, but I just happened to finish Twilight Princess one year after ending my self-imposed video game hiatus. Waiting to get back to games in the hopes that they'd be that much better was still 100% worth it.
So, a couple of months after that, we finally come to the point of this introspection. I started taking a break from games to do something else that was special for myself so that I could feel like myself again and to just plain like myself again. Then it became a personal challenge. Then it was to understand myself better and gain some perspective that may stick with me through the rest of my life. The reasons for doing it changed, or more accurately they were added onto, but the base idea was the same: Personal growth. Now I've gone 1,001 days without playing video games and finished a year where I played them again, and had a couple of months to think.
The final question and arguably the one I set out to answer when I started this challenge years ago: Was I happier without video games than I was with them?
The answer: Overall? Yes.
I have no intention of quitting gaming or taking another super long hiatus, but while there have been days when I couldn't play games due to other commitments or I just didn't feel like it, I've gotten more overall satisfaction from writing, as shown by how, with a one-day exception, there hasn't been a single day since August 31, 2023 that I haven't done any writing at all. Games make me happy and I like being happy, and they're sources of inspiration (and sometimes some darn good reading) too which I can always appreciate, but I'm very aware now that I get more out of writing, both on a personal level and because, when I do well with writing, other people enjoy it too, whereas playing a game is just for me. In both cases, I do things that are good for me: I love it when people enjoy what I write, but I write because it makes me feel good in more ways than I can put into words. I play games to enjoy them, but I write because it's in my very nature and I love that part of myself.
I've known for a long time that sometimes people moderate or abstain from things because however good they might feel, they're harmful in excess or in the long run, and other times they abstain from things not because they're bad but because they seek more long-term growth elsewhere. It feels like I've learned to appreciate games more now that I've learned to balance my life with them better and I've reaffirmed what I already knew about myself: That they're great to have but I can be (and still am) fulfilled without them.
In fact, right here from sitting down and putting my thoughts into words, I get that same feeling all over again. And being happy with yourself, and knowing what you need to do that, is a reward that's both the journey and the destination.
