I’ve been playing games for all my life. I started with Pokémon Crystal at the ripe age of 6 and mashed my way through without understanding any English at all besides “yes” and “no”. Needless to say, it took me over a year to beat the game but, oh boy, was it a great feeling to finally be able to do so. I moved on to some cheap Disney games and was bitterly disappointed, because I was too much of a dumb clutz to finish them all. Beating a game was always a goal I worked tirelessly to accomplish, although I also wanted to see all the content and explore every nook and cranny.
Image credit: Tiia Tikka
Later on, I moved to the game platform Steam that keeps track of how long you play each game and how many achievements you’ve gained. Being a completionist with too much free time, I eventually gathered 4147 achievements in 120 games, with 59 games fully completed. It was great, but eventually I started wondering if it was worth of my time spending 60 hours fishing in a game to get a single achievement. Video games are an easy way to rack in those sweet moments of accomplishment, but I needed to achieve something in real life too.
Perhaps it sounds silly, but I tried treating my everyday life as if I was playing the Sims, a popular life simulation game. Eating a snack before heading out filled up my hunger bar and I already felt as if I had accomplished something and was ready to head out. As I grew older, I wanted to be less of a weirdo. Instead of living in my own world, I set up small goals to sprinkle some dopamine in my daily routines. Counting steps and keeping up a go-for-a-walk streak, not stepping on cracks in the sidewalk, those kinds of things. Admittedly I retain some amount of childishness. Then again, most people like to collect “achievements”, such as diplomas, and hang them on their living room wall.
On a related note, I started playing Pokémon GO in 2016, which has small daily tasks that snowball into hefty bonuses if you play daily. It forces me to leave the house every day, because I can’t reach any pokéstops from the comfort of my own room. Like that, I managed to set up some goals to look forward, and also feel accomplished as I slowly crawl towards completion in the game – reaching the max level and catching all the pokémon. Luckily, new pokémon are added periodically so I probably won’t reach that goal anytime soon.