🙈 See no idler 🙉 Play no idler 🙊 Make no idler

I've found I would make a bad Jedi. A game character I've been playing was involved with some mystery amulet and been stuck in a time loop for a while. After refusing to just die and pass away for long enough I've been contacted by an Evil and asked to embrace it. In a split-second it took to consider I managed to lodge a justification and accepted the contract like an EULA (EoLA?). So, yeah, apparently I'm a sucker for the dark side.

That made me consider my life choices and whether I would do something like that to avoid death and go on with my post-human adventure.

Beyond that spicy moment of flavor, the game is actually quite barebones. Just a few skills to level and jobs to take. Yeah, that and getting a "Holy" job title despite clearly turning into an abomination. An ironic non-turn of events. Anyway, the flavor text clearly describes the position as being extremely violent - while getting a shitty pay raise, but allowing about 3 OOM increase in constant happiness level (mediated by a rental agreement and a skill of not giving a flying fuck AKA meditation).

So yeah, it's a "number go up" Skinner box, a never-ending crescendo of a Shepard Tone. Like many other games like that out there. And this one too is "out to get you".

But, just like the virtual light bulbs run on real electricity, that virtual character sacrificed my real soul to perpetuate their existence. How truly evil of them!

TBH I'm prone to be sniped by those dophamine pumps^W drains and especially vulnerable while being down. Maybe it is the other way around and they help me do get out, get some quick wins, and get back on track - with the alternative being "laying down lethargic". I don't know, I didn't measure. But I'd be very surprised if the recovery time is actually smaller.

After a few "prestiges" the stream of winning started to dry up ("a game design error, the progression balance is out of tune" - lamented my inner game designer) and the real sacrifice started to become apparent. "I'm failing my family, right now, I should be doing something else instead of this" I thought. "Just one more loop" the character thought back, claiming one more sleepless night for themselves.

In general, I need some pacemaker to glue me to a screen and be productive. Music works. But shit like this apparently works too. But unlike music it has a way more frequent failure mode of gluing me to itself instead.

Then the next night comes. And I'm once again getting hijacked deep into the night. "I have to fight this, this is unhealthy" I think and a helpful associative memory immediately jumps the rest of the DSM-5 "substance abuse" criteria on me. Thanks, mem!

Finally, the urge to know what's up next, beyond those level requirements starts to lose an uphill battle with the Levels of Outcome Strategically Expected by Ratiocination (LOSER) mentality. It's my chance to claw my soul back! So I say "sorry dude", dump the simulation string to the Cloud Storage and close the damn tab.