Stress Versus Video Games..

[Spacescifi]

Is it not ironic when we game to escape stress only to be stressed out over the game itself?

Trading real problems for imaginary ones LOL!

It can be a vicious cycle of sorts....but it leads to confronting or ignoring what is truly stressing you out and finally making some judgement calls about what should and will be done.

Obviously... no stress goes away if you ignore it, but it is all too easy to delude oneself and say, 'I just like the game!' Or 'I like the challenge!' when in reality a person may be using it as a way to escape unpleasant challenges instead of actually doing what they can to improve their situation.

I am not anti-gaming, but I do know that balance is a must.

Part of me still wants to see if I can beat this or that challenge, but I must admit I can reap similar 'highs' from other activities that reap more benefit.

Like exercise. or honing skills in a hobby or mathematics.

Edited August 22, 2021 by Spacescifi

[kerbiloid]

Under real stress people don't play.

[Spacescifi]

7 minutes ago, kerbiloid said:

Under real stress people don't play.

 

There is no such thing as fake stress. There are varying degrees of stress.

Extreme stress will often mean ignoring gaming, but extreme stress is often a sign of procrastination anyway.

Too little. Too late.

Better to not wait for high stress to motivate.

[DDE]

Entertainment is simulated stress under controlled conditions. Heck, sports are entertainment as well as exercise, and sports is in many ways simulated combat.

[kerbiloid]

12 minutes ago, DDE said:

sports are entertainment as well as exercise, and sports is in many ways simulated combat.

+1
Chess are massacre.

[Lewie]

14 hours ago, Spacescifi said:

Is it not ironic when we game to escape stress only to be stressed out over the game itself?

That’s Doom in a nutshell

[Shpaget]

On 8/22/2021 at 1:55 PM, kerbiloid said:

Chess are massacre.

"You there! Peasant at A4, go get your disposable self trampled under that horse so my tower has  better view at the enemy."

[kerbiloid]

34 minutes ago, Shpaget said:

"You there! Peasant at A4, go get your disposable self trampled under that horse so my tower has  better view at the enemy."

Both players have 32 squares for 16 "pieces" (sic! "pieces"! they even don't count them persons!), i.e. twice as much as they need.

There is four squares between the closest "pieces" of the opponents, so no accidental conflict is possible.

Only bad, evil nature can make them start killing each others "pieces". And see - it happens!

[Nuke]

i have this problem with more competitive online games. in games where everyone is encouraged, nay required to play at a high level, it can really stress you out. i have that problem with mwo where its not uncommon for you to regularly encounter esports caliber players in your matches. the usual fix is to take breaks and play something more relaxing like ksp or minecraft (i play on anarchy servers so that's kind of a stretch to call it relaxing, a simple mistake can cost you everything). you have to regularly ask yourself "am i having fun?" and if the answer is no, maybe you ought to take a break. 

Edited August 24, 2021 by Nuke

[Nuke]

On 8/22/2021 at 11:15 AM, Lewie said:

That’s Doom in a nutshell

doom is very relaxing. theres no grind, and you arent fighting esports players, at least in sp. 

[kerbiloid]

World of  Tanks  looks like a very relaxing game.

You can calmly and pacefully keep sitting in your garage and poking around your tank as long as you wish. No need to get outside.

[magnemoe]

10 hours ago, Nuke said:

i have this problem with more competitive online games. in games where everyone is encouraged, nay required to play at a high level, it can really stress you out. i have that problem with mwo where its not uncommon for you to regularly encounter esports caliber players in your matches. the usual fix is to take breaks and play something more relaxing like ksp or minecraft (i play on anarchy servers so that's kind of a stretch to call it relaxing, a simple mistake can cost you everything). you have to regularly ask yourself "am i having fun?" and if the answer is no, maybe you ought to take a break. 

KSP tend to be relaxing except then its not 

[Lewie]

11 hours ago, Nuke said:

doom is very relaxing. theres no grind, and you arent fighting esports players, at least in sp. 

Whaaaa? 

(Are you joking? I can’t tell, lol....gotta love text-based communication!) 

 

[Nuke]

7 hours ago, Lewie said:

Whaaaa? 

(Are you joking? I can’t tell, lol....gotta love text-based communication!) 

 

no. doom is relaxing. the synth thrash, the tearing of fleash, the hellscapes. its beautiful. 

[kerbiloid]

Don't forget the skull furniture.

[kerbiloid]

Also we forgot to mention the Blood, the game which gives a lot of ways to relax (they even had to put 2..3 types of weapon on every digit, and they are really different and individual, not just three types of the same).

And the Caleb's healthy and tactful humour! What can be better than a good benevolent joke joked at the right moment?!

***

And DukeNukem 3d with its set of relaxators, such as: freezer, shrinker, devastator, mine, remotely controlled hand grenade, and a whole lot of local things you can use.

Edited August 26, 2021 by kerbiloid

[Stormpilot]

I can sorta agree. I’ll go and play a game to relax and it works only really if the game is working. Games for me like War Thunder can be frustrating. Even games like workers and resources Soviet Republic can be stressful when things are going wrong!

[Spacescifi]

The real irony is when I simply play for fun.... gaming can be fun.

 

Like yesterday I played Oolite with the basic starter ship,, zero upgrades, and flew it on a basic starter trade mission where you will get ambushed by FLEETS of pirates. If I was trying to level up I would be upset.

 

But instead I simply bobbed and weaved and yawed a lot, trying to see if I could somehow fly all the way to the planet (ten min away the way I was flying with a fleet literally on my tail)

 

I took some damage to my thrusters from laser beams, and I even laughed when they finally, as if frustrated, fired a missile at me about 6 minutes in. It hit me but I survived still (do less damage if you don't hit them head on and are running away with near full shields).

I ended up dying trying to use an asteroid for cover by crashing into it because I could not pull up fast enough at high speed.

Nonetheless I had fun laughing at the CPU's poor aim skills.

If not for the asteroid I would brought the entire pirate fleet to the home station where galcop would have intervened anyway and likely kicked their butts. While I would still be laughing.

I sold all nearly all my weapons anyway, so that's why I was laughing at those CPU's.

As it was some of their ships were literally fast enough to fly ahead of me.

 

Stupid AI LOL.

 

Edited August 27, 2021 by Spacescifi

[Nuke]

best sp games can hit you with is artificial stupidity. to think with all the advancements in machine learning they would have made some improvements over basic decision trees. and for most games there are always unused gpu resources you can run neural nets on. things like unused cpu cores or the tensor cores in my gpu. (i only lose about 15% of my eth hash rate playing kerbal). would probibly be unrealistic to make every ai in a game use those resources. but if you have alpha ais running neural nets, and beta ais using decision trees. it would be like fighting a mad scientist and his derpy goons. 

Edited August 28, 2021 by Nuke