"When you’re stressed about making enough gold, and gaining enough xp to optimise your play-through of a casual farming simulator, you know you might be doing something wrong."
Hello everyone! In honour of ReachOut's Level Up fundraiser this week, I'm here to share an amazing contribution by our own @adzukitty on how gaming and mental health can go hand in hand 🎮
Save file 1. Day 10. Spring. Year 1.
Shoot. I forgot to bring my pickaxe to the mines again. Guess I have to restart the day. That’s such a silly mistake to make, and it’s the fifth mistake this playthrough. I’ll just start a new file.
Save file 6. Day 3. Summer. Year 1.
It’s been a couple weeks since I’ve gotten a chance to talk to the villagers - I’ve been so busy trying to get to the bottom of the mines before it’s too late and I have to restart the file again. So I lost a couple of friendship points - it’s fine, I’ll get to that later.
Safe file 32. Day 27. Spring. Year 1.
2:00am. Passed out.
It’s okay, so I’ll be a little tired tomorrow and my medical expenses will be a little higher. No matter - I can just have a couple coffees. The more time I spend being productive, the more money I make, the better my life. Yeah, I’m not having fun right now, but it will be worth it because I’ll set myself up to have an easy win later. The harder I work now, the easier it will be later. It doesn’t matter that I’m not having fun anymore. It will all be worth it in the end.
I decided to stop playing for a couple of weeks - unfortunately I had burnt myself out and it was becoming a chore to play. Then I began to notice something.
June 3. Winter. 2024.
1pm.
Shoot. I woke up too late. My day’s gone - why did I sleep in so much? I’ve wasted so much time. I’m never going to get anything done. There’s no point doing anything today. I’ll try again tomorrow.
July 26. Winter. 2024.
2am.
I’m so tired, but I did so much today. But I don’t think I did enough. I did so much more yesterday. I failed today. I’ll have to try harder next time.
August 6. Winter. 2024.
A notification from an old friend - ‘Hey, how’s it going? Haven’t heard from you in a while. Everything ok?’
Oh.
I forgot they even existed. I’ve been so busy with work and study, I forgot that I promised we’d play Stardew together.
‘I started a new farm without you in the end,’ he continued, ‘I’m up to year 2 but you can still join if you want!’
I spent so much trying to optimise my set up for the rest of the game by restarting over and over again that I hadn’t made any progress at all. How did I manage to turn Stardew Valley, the coziest game to ever be made, into a challenge where I end up restarting the day until I get the perfect outcome so I am set up for the rest of the run? And how did I convert my gameplay mannerisms to real life? Or was it the other day around?
Then it dawned on me. This whole time, I had been trying to speedrun and min/max my life. I was so fixated on getting things done as quickly as possible to the highest standards that I was no longer enjoying my life, just like in Stardew. The only difference is that I couldn’t just restart the file in real life if I made a mistake, meaning I never got the chance to do over and it felt like all my mistakes just piled up and made me feel horrible.
But what else started to pile up was my achievements. Because in real life, you don’t have a chance to restart the day, you get to progress. So even though I had to live with all the mistakes I made, I was still able to grow and become a better person.
I started a new save file with my friend. This time, no resetting.
With him by my side, we progressed further than I ever did by myself. It was the most rewarding playthrough I had ever experienced. If I made a mistake - it didn’t matter. It was so insignificant in the grand scheme of things. I made progress because I kept going in spite of my perceived failures.
Today. August 20. Year 2024. 9am.
The new farm is going great – I’m enjoying the game more than I have before by myself. Maybe it’s better to play with others – it’s a lot less lonely. As I write this now, I’ve tried my best to implement this new gameplay strategy into my real life. Once I entered that alternate headspace where I allowed myself to relax and enjoy the game, I felt calmer in real life too.
I used to see video games as a way to distract me from the stressors of reality, but in retrospect, it just exacerbated what I was feeling in real life. This allowed me to recognise my more problematic patterns of thinking, like perfectionism and a tendency to lean to an isolated lifestyle. Once I started recognising those patterns and learning how to change them is when I found Stardew to become the most rewarding. Instead of worsening my unhelpful thinking patterns, it began to enhance the changed patterns.
What games do you play? I’m curious if you have had a similar experience – have you ever recognised patterns of thinking you are cultivating through games? I wonder if they conducive to growing your soul.
