What I Wish I’d Known Before Starting a Videogame During Essay Season

Playing videogames as a distraction to responsibility is fun for a little while until you realise more effort has gone into your virtual life then your real one. Photo credit: Myself

Last essay season I was responsible for the worst case of self sabotage against myself since I took Economics as an A-level…

It all started as a simple act of procrastination. I sit on my bed, two-hundred something words of what seemed to be the beginning of a sub-par essay. But I wasn’t even focusing on the words anymore.

I was looking directly through the laptop screen beyond the words and into an a daydream that begged me to do anything but work, and it didn’t have to ask me twice. My downfall was Animal Crossing. For those who haven’t heard of this colourful sickly sweet Nintendo game series, it basically involves community simulation (much like Sims) where you interact with overbearing and overtly cordial anthropomorphic animals. As well as this, you maintain the town you live in, planting flowers, picking weeds, you can fish, catch bugs and dig up fossils all in aid of completing the in game encyclopedia.

A dead eyed photo of my character catching a sea bass.

It’s this exercise in everlasting perfection, of trying to maintain in game relationships with town residence, keeping the town tidy and trying to catch all bugs and fish…which consumed me to a point where I can only now understand, how addiction comes in many forms. Why finish my essay, which is due in the following morning, when I can live in this happy utopia virtual reality where I’ve created a beautiful garden?

This is more more instant gratification than going through any degree can give me.

But there comes a point, in every addiction where you retreat back into yourself and evaluate your life. That point came when I switched on the game, and there was nothing to do.

Let me elaborate. I had been working through collecting all the bugs, fish and fossils, been watering the plants, tending to the weeds and all that.
But on a particular stressful day, where I couldn’t even open my essay document; let alone write it. I turn on the game, only to be greeted by the perfectly watered plants, by the full fossil roster, by NO weeds to pull.

Then it hits you. You’ve been putting more time and effort in your virtual life than reality. You have no life. You’re close to perfection on this town but you haven’t left your bed all day. To this day I haven’t caught all the bugs and fish and its deliberate. I won’t water all the plants, I won’t weed all the weeds…

Can’t believe I nearly had an existential crisis, due to a game which is primary aimed at eight year old children.

Moral of the story: never start a videogame, when you have imminent responsibility looming above you.

With thanks to Suzie Patterson