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I'm starting to think that perhaps I shouldn't permit myself to play video games anymore. I thought of this while watching Scrubs. They had a guest character played by Michael J. Fox, who's severely OCD. I saw some of myself in some of his behaviors. Mostly when he's been standing there washing his hands and can't stop. Not that I do that. The compulsion, however, is familiar. And the incredible frustration that he's doing something that he knows he doesn't want to, knows intellectually he shouldn't, yet can't make himself stop. That lack of control over self is possibly the most terrifying and frustrating experience ever.
The worst thing about my compulsions is that my awareness of them is usually phrased in the negative. I'm often not conscious of something that I have to do, just that I can't seem to do the thing that I should be doing. Something that in plenty of cases I actually want to be doing, and always something that I know is necessary to get results I want. People don't really ask me often why it took me five years to finish high school and seven to finish college. This is why. Sometimes I'd go to do an assignment and be completely unable to start working on it. I still don't know why, and I don'[interrupted here by Good Eats starting...how's that for a demonstration?]t see any reason to think it won't continue to plague me.
But I was going to talk about video games. I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics recently, a game that I really want to love, and would very much like to finish. I really like it. There's a ton of neat stuff going on. However, I just spent a good four or more hours wandering around doing non-plot fights while I had some people work on "Propositions". This is after I promised myself when I started playing that I would try to focus on moving forward in the plot and not get sidetracked by obsessively seeking completeness. See, this kind of game often has lots of stuff you can collect, sometimes hidden, and the like. I'm good at finding these things. As a result, I tend to try to find them all. I haven't actually completed a Final Fantasy game since IV. I get side-tracked trying to get everything and spend obsessive amounts of time performing uninteresting tasks toward that end, until I eventually lose track of the plot sufficiently that when some other activity comes along and distracts me from the game (which I'll have been obsessively playing every waking moment), I don't get back into it. I'm not really kidding, either. Ask![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
velvetmouse or my brother how many hours I spent in the damn Golden Saucer, or playing the card game in FF VIII sometime if you don't believe me. I'm not proud of it. But I couldn't move on until I'd gotten everything there was to get out of where I was. And those questions have started to become somewhat open-ended.
It's funny, because I was never the type to wander around fighting things just for the sake of XP...gaining levels isn't a sufficiently tangible reward; it's not something to be obtained. But getting everything possible out of the Casino, or collecting more cards in the card sub-game, or finding all the treasure hunt things in IX (I did that one), or learning all the skills for a character in IX (or...and this is where it gets especially terrifying...Tactics) are things that I have to do. If I'm at a stage of the game where something can be obtained, I pretty much have to do so. If the thing can be obtained at any time...it's hard for me to just pick it up as I go; I tend to wander around getting everything I can until the area is clear and I can move on. IX was ok for this, as skills can't be gotten until you get far enough into the gain to get the items which teach them, and similarly for the treasure hunts (and there are a limited number), but I still had the problem that I spent so much time with hunts that I kind of lost track of the plot and then was easily distracted by life and never finished it.
So I'm starting to think that playing this kind of game is a bad idea. They capture my attention so I get obsessed with playing them and find it hard to do anything else for a while. Then they often have an aspect which lets me get obsessed with collecting something. If that aspect involves doing uninteresting things (repetitive easy fights, boring subgames, etc.), I might get frustrated with myself when I can't stop doing something I'm not enjoying. If it takes too long, I may get so caught up in it that I never finish the game, which is...frustrating. If it has both of these problems, well, it's not pretty. "Replayability" may be a good thing for most people, but it tends to lead to games which have nifty stuff that can be rewarding in its own right, but tends to distract me from ever getting around to finishing the game. (Notice that part of the obsession is that if too much time passes in which I'm not playing, I lose interest. The same thing happens to me reading, and it's why it's almost impossible for me to read a new book in a series without going back and reading all the existing ones first. Hence my putting Wheel of Time off until it's finished.)
I think one of the reasons I consider Final Fantasy IV to be the definitive game of the genre is that I can finish it in the amount of time I could spend obsessively playing before I need to go on to doing other things. I think I may have to largely restrict myself to games with a play time measured in minutes or hours. Then I just have to worry about obsessively starting over when something goes wrong. But I think that's a whole other ramble (not to mention another thing which drove my brother absolutely nuts when he watched it).
Not sure if I'm going to dive back into FFT now or not. I'm pretty sure it's best if I don't give FF-XII a spin. I'm quite confident I'd get stuck wandering around doing boring fights in order to gain Licenses, possibly relatively indefinitely. An unlimited supply of goals which aren't that far away...tough to avoid.
Please pardon my rambling. I might go back and clean this up a bit. We'll see.
The worst thing about my compulsions is that my awareness of them is usually phrased in the negative. I'm often not conscious of something that I have to do, just that I can't seem to do the thing that I should be doing. Something that in plenty of cases I actually want to be doing, and always something that I know is necessary to get results I want. People don't really ask me often why it took me five years to finish high school and seven to finish college. This is why. Sometimes I'd go to do an assignment and be completely unable to start working on it. I still don't know why, and I don'[interrupted here by Good Eats starting...how's that for a demonstration?]t see any reason to think it won't continue to plague me.
But I was going to talk about video games. I've been playing Final Fantasy Tactics recently, a game that I really want to love, and would very much like to finish. I really like it. There's a ton of neat stuff going on. However, I just spent a good four or more hours wandering around doing non-plot fights while I had some people work on "Propositions". This is after I promised myself when I started playing that I would try to focus on moving forward in the plot and not get sidetracked by obsessively seeking completeness. See, this kind of game often has lots of stuff you can collect, sometimes hidden, and the like. I'm good at finding these things. As a result, I tend to try to find them all. I haven't actually completed a Final Fantasy game since IV. I get side-tracked trying to get everything and spend obsessive amounts of time performing uninteresting tasks toward that end, until I eventually lose track of the plot sufficiently that when some other activity comes along and distracts me from the game (which I'll have been obsessively playing every waking moment), I don't get back into it. I'm not really kidding, either. Ask
velvetmouse or my brother how many hours I spent in the damn Golden Saucer, or playing the card game in FF VIII sometime if you don't believe me. I'm not proud of it. But I couldn't move on until I'd gotten everything there was to get out of where I was. And those questions have started to become somewhat open-ended.It's funny, because I was never the type to wander around fighting things just for the sake of XP...gaining levels isn't a sufficiently tangible reward; it's not something to be obtained. But getting everything possible out of the Casino, or collecting more cards in the card sub-game, or finding all the treasure hunt things in IX (I did that one), or learning all the skills for a character in IX (or...and this is where it gets especially terrifying...Tactics) are things that I have to do. If I'm at a stage of the game where something can be obtained, I pretty much have to do so. If the thing can be obtained at any time...it's hard for me to just pick it up as I go; I tend to wander around getting everything I can until the area is clear and I can move on. IX was ok for this, as skills can't be gotten until you get far enough into the gain to get the items which teach them, and similarly for the treasure hunts (and there are a limited number), but I still had the problem that I spent so much time with hunts that I kind of lost track of the plot and then was easily distracted by life and never finished it.
So I'm starting to think that playing this kind of game is a bad idea. They capture my attention so I get obsessed with playing them and find it hard to do anything else for a while. Then they often have an aspect which lets me get obsessed with collecting something. If that aspect involves doing uninteresting things (repetitive easy fights, boring subgames, etc.), I might get frustrated with myself when I can't stop doing something I'm not enjoying. If it takes too long, I may get so caught up in it that I never finish the game, which is...frustrating. If it has both of these problems, well, it's not pretty. "Replayability" may be a good thing for most people, but it tends to lead to games which have nifty stuff that can be rewarding in its own right, but tends to distract me from ever getting around to finishing the game. (Notice that part of the obsession is that if too much time passes in which I'm not playing, I lose interest. The same thing happens to me reading, and it's why it's almost impossible for me to read a new book in a series without going back and reading all the existing ones first. Hence my putting Wheel of Time off until it's finished.)
I think one of the reasons I consider Final Fantasy IV to be the definitive game of the genre is that I can finish it in the amount of time I could spend obsessively playing before I need to go on to doing other things. I think I may have to largely restrict myself to games with a play time measured in minutes or hours. Then I just have to worry about obsessively starting over when something goes wrong. But I think that's a whole other ramble (not to mention another thing which drove my brother absolutely nuts when he watched it).
Not sure if I'm going to dive back into FFT now or not. I'm pretty sure it's best if I don't give FF-XII a spin. I'm quite confident I'd get stuck wandering around doing boring fights in order to gain Licenses, possibly relatively indefinitely. An unlimited supply of goals which aren't that far away...tough to avoid.
Please pardon my rambling. I might go back and clean this up a bit. We'll see.
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But thanks...and thanks for the recommendation. I may take a look.