So did I start playing less? Sad to say, no, in fact, I have been playing more. It is part an ever-ongoing mission to escape the sad life I lead. It’s a good life, but sometimes it is tiring.

I picked up Mahoutsukai no Yakusoku (mahoyaku), and started a Japanese Arknights account. Thankfully, Arknights is the kind of game that I only need to stare at for a few minutes in a day, in which I auto the stages I need to farm that day, though I admit it is very easy to get caught up in watching Annihilation runs.

But oh how Mahoyaku is ruining my life now….With the start of the June Bride event, my interest in playing it revived (I was always a sucker for the June Bride concept). I had hoped to play it as a kind of throwback to the days when I mostly played what I call “anime boy png” games, in which essentially you tap at a screen, doing quests and the like, to eventually obtain enough points or currently for a card of a character you like. I used to play these a lot, such as Love Live! School Idol Festival and Ensemble Stars!, but quit after I had started GBF. Now that I’ve essentially dropped GBF for good, I cannot help but find myself drawn to these games again. I had a brief stint with MLQC, an otome game, but quickly found myself running into the same problems I had before: to consistently get the cards you wanted, you either had to save up for a long time, or whale, and I wasn’t having that, and soon enough the habit dropped off, about 5 or so months in.

I’ve picked up Twisted Wonderland, but I find it is not entirely within my range of interests either. Also admitting I an interested in any product of what I call “The Mouse” goes against my principles and general dislike of Disney. The setting and story are interesting, but the latest event having the premise of an exotic theme, and therefore pointing to its only Brown/Black characters is pretty damning, and has left a sour taste in my mouth. Suffice to say, I likely will not be playing this event.

But I digress. What should I do? The easy answer is to keep dropping games- after all, it’s been tiring enough autoing Mahoyaku all day, literally. The MP gauge fills up every 50 minutes, so in between the time, I am still autoing stages for the completion bonus to gain rewards from trading those. And yet I know that in the back of my mind, something will make me want to pick up another game after quitting this one. Maybe it’s the satisfaction of just collecting cards and looking at nice art (as an artist, I find mobile game art has been VERY good quality, and great to look at). Maybe it is embarrassingly an attempt to fill the void of companionship in my heart- after all, with no real friends close to me in real life, the best I can do is chase after them in the virtual world.

I would be lying if I said that I didn’t like Mahoyaku. The characters are very likeable, the setting interesting, the story compelling, and the game design itself is quite nice. I like the card art for the most part, and it’s not a very difficult game to play. And yet, as my phone heats up from the constant use in the summer heat, I have to wonder what it is that I’m doing.

I’m anticipating the release of a game later on, After L!fe, and it looks good. It’s also going to be released in English, so that is already a plus over Mahoyaku, so I’m looking forward to giving it a try. But the thought of dropping Mahoyaku makes me uneasy. Maybe it’s sunken cost fallacy getting to me- after all, I’ve grinded quite a bit in Mahoyaku. It would be a shame to drop it. It is the closest I will ever feel to being passionate about something, as someone who by and large lacks any kind of strong emotion in their life. I only started feeling strongly about it after reading the character stories, and I’ve found Nero in particular to be very relatable. How could I leave this game when I feel like it speaks to me?

Thus we come to the inevitable: money. In the end, Coly is a corporation that seeks to make money, and they do so in their games, which are by and far rather appealing, as a lot of mobile games are. The thought that Coly is not my friend is vey sobering. As nice as the game is, they could care less that I am spending time on it instead of studying for an exam in a subject that I loathe. So should I devote any more time to it? Likely no. But the losses that come with it is something to consider.

When I decided that I would quit GBF for good, I left pretty much all of the GBF servers I was in, which were former crews, and mostly full of people that liked me. It is worth noting that for a lot of college, GBF was my source of socialization, and without it, I spent more time on studying, but found myself to be very lonely, if not as much as I was at the beginning of college. Mobage represents a lot of things for me, and community is one of them. I admit I do not heavily spend time in fandom as I used to- I more or less consume and talk about content on my own, without talking to others about it. So to lose even that tenuous connection seems to me a loss I am not quite willing to take.

As I’ve pretty much said in my first post, mobile games…mean a lot of different things to me. The question is, if I quit, what’s the trade-off? What do I get in return? I’m not sure, and I’m nervous to find out. Perhaps it requires more than just dropping a game, only to start another. It requires a whole shift in lifestyle, if I were to make something of myself. Am I even allowed to do that now? Not with the CPA exam looming over me, it seems. I don’t know where to go next or what to do next. Perhaps it is time for me to prepare a brief goodbye to Mahoyaku and the short moment of joy it has brought me, while I negotiate my need for something to look forward to, and pretty boys to look at (laughs).

Something I am struggling to come to terms with is that no matter how much a thing may bring you joy, the moment it does not, it is not bad to part ways and find something else. I think of this as the creator of mikumiku_ebooks has stated that she was no longer posting on it to focus on herself. It is time for me to leave mobile gaming behind? In the end, the pros outweigh the cons. All that is left is for me to convince myself that the cons aren’t worth pursuing anymore.

Signing off.