Does anyone actually find video games boring and a waste of time? And by extension gamification of anything is not a motivating drive? Every ADHD advice usually centres around some form of gamified strategy but to me this is flawed. How do you manage dopamine without it being gamified?
It’s very rare that I can find myself engaging with any video games these days and it’s usually down to a few reasons:
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The gameplay is something that I recognise the mechanics of and feel like I’m playing something I’ve already played and once I recognise it there’s little reason to continue. Completion or challenge of the game is not a motivating factor to stick with it.
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I have so many things that I need to be doing that I can’t even do and anything not on the list and video gaming is a waste of that time that could be going to literally anything else.
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Narratives in games are… not that interesting. I usually find the balance between interactivity and story always off and any gameplay is either boring or the narrative is boring so one is always cancelling the other out, so “engaging” with a story is cumbersome and at that point I may as well watch a passive form of media.
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Online multiplayer is rarely fun as I have little time to invest in being any good at a game to the level I can enjoy it. Usually the enjoyment comes from making other people’s lives miserable by beating them.
Oh and forget about achievements, they are just a bunch of todo items that I can’t process at all as they are either micro indicators of progress in the game and useless eg. You do literally nothing aside from play the game as intended and you get some achievement. Or it’s some ridiculous set of tasks that I get task paralysis by which in the end there’s zero reward for accomplishing so why bother.
So, I live for progress indicators. Doesn’t sound as fun when you call them that, but unlocking that skill tree, looting better gear, leveling up, oh God how I love leveling up.
I’m as old school as the term “beating the game”. Most games today pretty much push you along the storyline until you get to the end, but I was raised on that desire to beat the game. So, I ride it out to the end, collecting progress indicators the whole way.
I just think it’s funny how we’ve ADHDed ourselves into opposite extremes.
I used to like this… but then my Ultimate Online shard went tits up and I lost everything years ago. Since then I don’t see the point to do something like that again because in the end the grind gets me nowhere in the real world. even my Pokémon Blue cartridge has lost it’s battery and my saves and work all gone.
What’s funny is that at some point in the past year or two, I’ve accepted that all the progress isn’t really worth anything, I’m just enjoying having something feed me that dopamine. I’ve been flipping through games like crazy and just moving on when I start to get stuck or bored.