I’m writing this because I’m not sure where else to put it.
Something needs to change. I logged off of work at 10:45, slept around 11:45. I woke up at 6, and have been working since around 7:20. But I can’t get rid of this weird feeling in my chest- I should have slept more. The physical toll this job has taken to my health…is something that needs to change.
I’m back.
Well, not really. I don’t have much to say. I don’t think I did in the first place.
I intended to make this blog a thing, and then didn’t.
I talked at length about my gacha addiction, and safe to say, life got to busy that in the end, I naturally came to quit. Somewhat. I play Genshin Impact or Granblue occasionally, but safe to say, the habit has been broken. Of course, if I’m not careful, it’s easy to get sucked back in, but for now, work has been keeping me busy enough to keep me at bay.
I’ve had a lot of life changes recently, but I think things are trending in a good direction, though it hasn’t been easy.
I’m still not sure what to do with this blog. I’d like to think it’s an informal thing to talk about how I try to improve my life and myself. It’s been difficult, but I think I’m making bits of progress here and there. Come along for the ride.
This is a bit of a spur-of-the moment decision, but I’m going to try taking July off of mobage. Well that’s a lie, I’m going to sign in to Arknights so my monthly card isn’t wasted, but likely no farming, or very minimal. Very. No farming on JP, and no farming on Twisted Wonderland. I might only do dailies on Mahoyaku because I know I’m gonna regret not farming it at some point, so I will try.
It’s kinda silly, I know. The whole purpose of this would generally be to quit gaming, but to be honest, I think I’d be happy if i stuck with just one, and for now, Mahoyaku is the one that brings the most joy, even if quite a bit of grief. I like Arknights and I know a month is a lot of time for farming, but I guess I can take the loss if it means that I can spend time doing other things. I like the game and all, and while I am still sitting on that fic I wanted to write, I’m willing to take some time off.
What’s the goal? To not spend too much time on gaming, as I am now stuck in the loop of wanting to study, and then sitting down to start autoing dailies. That’s really not fun. It takes away from my concentration, and it overall sucks. Thankfully, I don’t need to go hard on every Mahoyaku event so while it’s very distracting, I can go back to slacking like I was before. I’ll see. Hopefully it comes to a point that I don’t have to play it anymore, either.
I absolutely want to fill this hole in my heart, but with fulfilling things, not things that only drain me. Mobage isn’t there to make me happy, it’s there to take my money, and I don’t want to feed into it too much. But I like the sensation of belonging, so perhaps I can keep playing, especially when I have the means to not save/minmax so much as I would a f2p player, but I’ll see when that time comes around.
Thankfully, since CC started, I haven’t had to log in to Arknights in the morning like I usually do. It has been replaced with a rather awful manga habit, but I can remedy that more easily.
I want to see how this goes. I want what is best for myself. I want to fix my sleep schedule, make it so that I can wake up in the morning and go skateboard, or draw, read, or study Japanese. Especially that- my illiteracy is driving me up the wall, haha.
If I decide to go through, I’ll log it on my mobile games blog. I’m too lazy to link it right now, but it’s https://reoplaysgbf.wordpress.com , I think.
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.
The other day, my mother’s boss came by with her kids, and my mother had offered to let them have my old toys, which were gathering dust in boxes out in the shed-of-sorts. Turns out I didn’t need to bring all of them down, but it just so happened that things I thought I’d never see again were in them, in particular a few items that were special to me, mixed among the careless purchases of my youth.
I managed to save a certain item from my mother, who was offering it to the younger sister, but I couldn’t seem to save something that my friend had given me as a gift. I suppose you could guess what it was, but I thought that it was missing, perhaps even thrown out, yet here it was. She asked me about it and I mumbled out an answer, and she asked. “But can I have it?” which was so clear it shook me entirely. Can you imagine a three-year-old asking you that? You can’t say no to kids, so I let her have it, and here I am, sitting 48 hours later, in regret.
I admit, before it got put away into the shed the gift had been sitting in my room, in a crate, where I put a lot of similar items. I didn’t exactly miss it. Yet when the kid took it and put it in her bag, I felt the tears well up in my eyes. It felt so sad to see something I hardly remembered. But I did remember. In junior year of high school I even wrote an essay on it and what it meant to me, because it meant a lot. Of course, the essay was so bad that I didn’t get a grade on it, but it clearly meant something to me at the time.
I had thought that giving it away was a mature move, but I still find myself sitting here, thinking about whether or not the kid is treating it well or has just thrown it away, or worse, mutilated it as kids are wont to do. It made me think of the other things I had lost, previously a much-favored limited Daft Punk pin from a fanzine that only had one print run, and before that, my Wii. I was so upset when I heard my mother had thrown it out that I texted friends about it, ranted on social media, the whole charade. She said that I wasn’t playing it and hadn’t for a very long time (I more or less stopped playing video games when I entered middle school, which was a good 10 or 11 years ago), and there was no use keeping it around, so she threw it out. I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t even ask me or think of selling it off! But it’s been a few months since, and while I still feel a pang of sadness, I’m over it. So I imagine I’ll be over the loss of this gift, the loss of my pin, and the loss of my Wii, and probably the countless other things that my mother threw out in the name of cleanliness.
I am a sentimental sap, even if at all the wrong times. I thought I could pride myself on not wanting things, saying that every time my parents offered to get me something, I always said “No, I don’t need anything. If I want anything I’ll get it myself.” And yet I have to admit I am stupidly attached to things, because they hold meaning, however small and relatively insignificant it meant. To me, that gift from my friend meant the world- it meant they thought of me at that particular moment they saw it in the shop, knowing I would like it, and they were very right. It’s not the only gift of theirs that I got, but it’s one of the few that I still know where to find.
I suppose the hardest part of it all is how unexpected it is. Yes, I am upset my parents do not treat all of my possessions with the same respect I do (although I suppose you could say my allowing of them to sit in a storage box is hardly respect), but if I had known I was going to lose it, I would been able to brace myself. The day I lost that pin, I retraced my steps in the pouring rain, trying to find it, but to no avail. I was so sad, I sat for two hours in a classroom, trying to study in vain until I took a nap and slept off the sadness. (Sometimes sleeping off a feeling really helps). But nothing can prepare you for sudden loss except for perhaps a lack of possessiveness-recognizing that things will inevitably slip through your fingers, whether you like it or not. You won’t even know when until it’s too late.
It feels silly to think this way about material possessions. Human relationships are the harder thing to lose, and I find myself with less and less of them as the years go on and as I retreat further and further into myself. But so long as things have meaning to them, I like to believe they are not insignificant. After all, why do people hold on to things for years, passing them through generations? Possessions are not meaningless-they are extensions of our personality, and losing them means losing a small piece of ourselves as well.
So I hope that kid treasures what I allowed her to take. She probably won’t and never will, maybe even throwing out the doll before she’s old enough to remember who allowed her to take it (I did not give it away), and know what it meant to them. I suppose, in short, I should “get over it.” So that’s exactly what I intend to do, no matter how long it takes.
(The older I get, the more convinced I am that minimalism is the way to go but lord, the things I will have to throw out. And anyone who knows me knows I love my books. A fruitless endeavour.)
I’ve graduated.
Okay that might be preemptive because I have yet to receive a grade for one class but I think I’ve passed. So there we go . I’ve done it.
Typing this as of 9:41 PM, with a large, daunting project looming over me that is due tomorrow midnight, I realize that my body is not as resilient nor strong as it used to be. I am only 21 but I am approaching my physical limits sooner than I’d like. It is not that I find my body failing me (if that is the right way to put it), but that it is incredibly unhealthy for me to do so, and with a limited supply of coffee, I can only push it so far.
I began relying on coffee as early as middle school, as I stayed up later and later, getting less and less work done, all while still waking up at 6:30 every day to take the train to school. I think I’ve been relying on coffee then to get me through everything, thinking “I can’t sacrifice anything but sleep.” It has enabled me to develop unhealthy habits, sleeping late at night knowing that drinking a cup or two of coffee the next day should get me through, at least towards the end of what you’d call a working day.
Last semester, I had en epiphany. I realized that in fact all-nighters would not do me good and have not done me any good. Too many of them have been spent in delirium, unable to think straight or keep working for longer than a few minutes as I fought to stay awake. So I have not done a true all-nighter since, but I’ve seen more 5 AMs than I’d like to count. Last finals period, saddled with multiple papers and exams, I slept only 4-5 hours every night- I think that span of 5 or 6 days, I only got 24 hours of sleep total. I thought I was fine until I realized, an hour before an exam, that my chest hurt, and this was unusual as I had never experienced it before. It persisted through the day, but luckily it went away. I was afraid for a moment there that I had caused myself a serious health problem.
It appears I haven’t really learned- I have found myself staying up again until 5 AM the last couple weeks or so, and it hasn’t been pleasant. Coffee is no longer there to prop me up, which is how I am avoiding this project to type this up near 10 PM. (Another problem it has enabled- rampant procrastination).
What with the quarantine and trying to restrict my expenses, I believe this is a good time as ever to finally wean off of coffee. I have roughly 3 weeks’ supply left- I think I can learn to drink less, sleep more, now that the stakes are low.
Signing off.
The proliferation of idol-raising mobile games has been astonishing over the years, likely due to the success of Ensemble Stars, which I myself played for about a year or so. I cannot seem to escape it- it seems nearly everyone I know plays at least one, at least on the interwebs. It’s rare I find someone that does not.
I’ve been finding myself wishing I could play some again, but the ones I’ve picked up never seem to stick. I liked The Idolm@ster SideM, but the outfits are tacky and the gameplay quite boring. The language barrier prevents me from playing Cinderella Girls, Shiny Colors, Starlight Stage, and I’ve lost interest in the Love Live! franchise a while ago. I tried the Uta no Prince-Sama game, but found myself bored quickly, and couldn’t bring myself to progress in the story to unlock more songs (and I only like a couple of UtaPri songs myself). I downloded A3!, both in English and Japanese, but I haven’t been able to keep up with it at all- the gameplay isn’t interesting, and too many bad gacha rolls left a sour taste in my mouth, as much as I love the concept and the characters. BProject also had a language barrier, and I couldn’t find time to play, as rhythm games are Very time-consuming. I even played Mr. Love: Queen’s Choice, but I lost interest after about 3 months. I downloaded On Air! to try it, but I couldn’t understand the gameplay, even though I liked the art style.
There’s something appealing about the idol game genre, however. I’ve found myself astounded by how devoted people can be to characters, and the closest I’ve been to that is idolizing Umi Sonoda and Akatsuki (EnStars), but beyond that, interest has petered out quite easily. I myself wish I could have been so devoted, and I feel that the times I were happiest were when I was playing such games. Granblue Fantasy has been a more fulfilling ride, having achieved more in that game than I have most other games, but it feels less satisfying. GBF is accompanied by a lot of groaning, with some excitement, but mostly groaning.
It may be simply a language barrier preventing me from enjoying most games. And the appeal of idol-raising games is that, well, you get to raise them. This is more apparent in Shiny Colors, I think, where you get to do real work in promoting your idol and enhancing their skills, instead of just playing beatmaps or some kind of event. In a sense maybe I am looking for a kind of companionship in the 2D realm, where I can grow alongside someone and support them, without them asking much of me in return (besides my own money, I suppose). I have always enjoyed reading translations of my favorite characters, seeing their quirks and their relationships with other characters. If I had to choose just one game to play, I’d probably choose Shiny Colors or On Air!. A3! is more closer to the idol raising genre, but you only level up cards themselves, and in itself is a long grind. But the sense of growth may be what I am looking for, seeing as how I lack so much of it in my own life.
The biggest barrier has been money. I try to be strictly F2P, and I more or less am, with the exception of the occasional item purchase, but I often find myself overwhelmed with wanting this card and that, and it’s a never-ending onslaught of attention-grabbing units that everyone simply must have. The same could be said for Granblue- the number of limited units they released the past year alone is staggering, some of which are very necessary for meta purposes (looking at Summer Alexiel).
But I want to keep returning to question of why I have been so enamored with the idea of idol-raising games, despite having difficulty keeping up with them. Perhaps it is like supporting real-life idols, without the exploitation attached. Or it is simply having something to look forward to every day- after all, every morning I wake up and think about how much closer I am to E2-ing SilverAsh. Maybe it’s the nostalgia- I played them for much of high school into college, and it’s a familiar, comfortable feeling.
I do think the market is rather oversaturated, and the success of Ensemble Stars! and The Idolm@ster is hard to compete with, though A3! has been doing very well, well enough to get an English release. I think everyone wants in on the market, but it is a very expensive and costly one, and not one I am sure I want to promote. Many players get by with not spending any money at all while some throw thousands into these games, but in the end, they are very good at keeping you hooked. Perhaps it is lucky that I do not understand Japanese, otherwise I’d probably be finding myself trapped in these games.
For now, it’s hard to escape. Every popular franchise seems to get a gacha game these days (looking at the Star Wars and Avengers games). In the end it seems irrational to spend so much time in something that may end, leaving you with. nothing but spent time and money spent, never to be returned. If I lived in a household where console games were permitted, perhaps I’ll be happier. I don’t know.
But in the meantime, I will continue working on E2 SilverAsh, trying to upgrade my Granblue grids, and figuring out where to fixate my attention next. Maybe someday I can break out of this mobile game loop, and pick up a new hobby. I’ve been entertaining the idea of doing math, or studying Japanese, or drawing more. We’ll see, but only after this semester ends.
Signing off.
I’ve been thinking, once I graduate from college, hopefully get my CPA license (though that sounds defeatist so let’s say I will), I realize there are a number of things I could do, provided I can afford it.
I know I want to keep drawing, I want to get better, because I know there’s thing I want to draw. Maybe I’ll dabble in writing?
I thought briefly about taking dance classes, but along with regular dojo visits, iI think my schedule will be busy enough. But I want to make time to read, to write essays, to analyze things I enjoy. I want to go back to taking piano lessons, maybe even try to go to music school (though Julliard seems to be a pipe dream) and learn conducting, or composition. Though orchestral music has not been a constant interest so perhaps maybe not *laughs*. I’ve even thought about taking classes in the future, like math classes, or physics.
It’s exciting, thinking about the things I want to do. I haven’t really put much thought into it in high school and college. I dabbled in things but never allowed myself to really get thrown into something, that takes my entire attention. So I want to figure out what that is. It feels as if most of my life, I’ve been putting things on hold, especially the last few years. I keep thinking, “Once I graduate, I want to do these things.” Which was odd because why not now? The short answer is that I’ve restricted myself to focusing only on school, but really it means me dragging myself through schoolwork while trying to find some instant gratification in mobile gaming.
I’m still not sure what I want to do in the future. I’m okay with accounting so long as I’m good at it and competent, but I want to be good at whatever I do. I want to make enough money to be comfortable, engage in hobbies, and get the things I want. I wonder how that’ll look like.
But I haven’t even graduated, so I better focus on this lecture instead of typing this all out, lol.
(I also want to eventually write more interesting things than this-I can’t help but feel that as a 21 year-old. I could be writing more interesting, real things.
I’ve been playing Arknights for a good month (I would have hit thirty days tomorrow) but in a moment of distraction, I accidentally hit the “Delete Cache” button and subsequently lost all my game data. Of course my first reaction was despair, thinking about how I had worked so hard to get to where I was (I was at 325/400 enemies defeated in Annihilation!) but then I thought, maybe this is a good thing.
I’ve been playing mobile games since freshman year of high school since a friend introduced them to me, and ever since, I can’t seem to spend time without them. How many countless hours have I spent grinding away, trying to get stronger? But I’ve gone through a lot of games, and dropped a lot of games, so I think it’s safe to say that a couple months from now, I would have stopped playing Arknights. In fact, just as I picked it up, I stopped playing the Star Wars game, Galaxy of Heroes. It seems as if my life is a never ending cycle of picking up one game, and losing another.
Part of me thinks it would be a good thing, to get rid of all the games I play. Looking at my iPad, I have nineteen (!) downloaded, only 2-3 of which I play regularly. I tend to cycle between games, slacking on one week and another the next, but in the back of my mind I’ve always thought, “Man it would be great if I could quit.” And it seems silly, being unable to quit a mobile game of all things. It feels silly to be attached to something within your screen and is so…insignificant compared to console games. But I’ve met a lot of friends through them, and for now they’re a hobby I do genuinely enjoy.
But they’re definitely distracting. I’ve spent a lot of time sitting on game wikis, looking up from work to tap on the screen to auto the map again, and staying up late. Hell, I picked up Dragon Raja two weeks ago and it was already getting me to stay awake at 3 AM, and subsequently put me behind in work.
I know I should quit. It would be good for me. But everywhere I feel like I am surrounded by people who play them, and a complete purge seems impossible. So maybe what I need to learn is to manage my reaction and relationship to them. I’ve never had the healthiest relationship with them. I think Granblue Fantasy is the best demonstration of that, the hours I spent feeling inferior because I couldn’t grind out grids fast enough, to compete in Guild Wars effectively, and overall am still working on grids that were supposed to be done a year ago. Not to mention the never-ending salt at people pulling limited units in the gacha. It was painful, and I finally made myself quit January 5th. Of course I decided to pick it up again when a friend and I ended up talking about it, thinking “Oh it won’t be too bad. I can take my time.” But I realize I’ve fallen into that mindset before.
I am reluctant to call this an addiction but then I remember I was in this same position years ago, in high school, when I had just 5 games downloaded instead of this ridiculous 19. And I think, maybe it would be for the better if I do delete them all. But something pulls me back, saying “Wouldn’t it be nice to have something to tap away at? And see progress? And also have cute anime boys?” and it pulls me back in. And back then I could see the effect it was having, and now I am realizing it is happening again. I have friends who play multiple games and it feels normal but when I really think about it, it’s not what I want in life. I have no many aspirations and yet I am always stuck in a loop of never having enough free time because I spend too much time on homework because I spend half the time mobile gaming.
I’m also reluctant to quit because I recognize it is a matter of impulse control, and lack of discipline. I think, even if I quit these games, I’ll always find something else to spend my time on. Just the last few days, instead of doing homework, I ended up drawing a bit in a sudden fit of motivation to work on art. Am I going to struggle with this forever? Am I ready to make a big step by quitting mobage altogether? We’ll see. For now, I am fine with slacking in the games I do have. But I need to cut down. Prioritize. There’s so much I want to do- reading, drawing, learning Japanese….I don’t have time to spend on gaming. I want to allow myself this because I enjoy games, I genuinely do, but I need to figure out ways to control myself, and honestly mobile games are not the best for that, when you need to be participating constantly. So it’s time to look elsewhere.
I just hope I don’t look on this post in a few weeks, having picked up a new game. It’s always the same where I go on about how they’re negatively impacting my life, then refuse to change, and then act shocked when things are going downhill. Maybe it’s symptomatic of a larger personal issue, but I’lll leave it at that. I need to sleep.
Signing off.
Wannabe Musings 