Spurious Logic

Earworm Gameplay

Is this stupidity? I hate this game but I still play it. I've got far, far more important and pressing events in my life and still this slips into my consciousness at inopportune times. "Should I play Daniel Léon at left back... but who can play at right back?" during a project meeting; "Thoughts on the viability of a two striker system when your team doesn't have control of the midfield" during a long walk amongst freshly cut barley fields on a beautiful Sunday evening; "How do I motivate the team" during the commute into work.

Ok, so the last one's not so bad but overall it's amazing how much headspace this game can occupy. It is possible to play obsessively (and in the past, I have done so too) but if you're like me and you do actually have to go to work, help out around the house etc... You know, actually live your life then you're not going to be getting up at 8:00 on Sunday morning just to grind out another season that day. You're not going to neglect your relationships and real life just to get some team you don't know about into the top league of their country.

Not unless you've got other problems.

When I was playing excessively I was mostly single, either during my unfinished masters thesis (I wouldn't have finished the thesis anyway but that's a whole other series of posts) or immediately after that, when I was doing odd jobs. I had too much free time as a masters student as I really didn't want to work on the thesis and doing odd jobs (some were very odd) left me with free time and enough money for beer and rent but not a lot else so I had to occupy myself cheaply and football manager games are great for eating up time with minimal cost.

I'm not playing obsessively now; not anywhere near it. Ten minutes here or there when I have downtime but as I said above it does take up headspace. I find myself thinking about during idle moments. If there's something more important going on obviously that gets priority but I could see people unable to get it out of their mind. It's like the earworm you just can't shake and for some people that's a real issue.

So while I can see how the game gets cited during divorce cases as a cause grievance or as a prime example of obsessive computer gamer behaviour in research papers (the current prime example being MMORPG's) all of these issues will have some other root. The obsession with this escapist world is a symptom, not a cause. As far as addictions go, it's pretty mild. No physical addiction, no damaged lungs or kidneys, minimal psychosis. Once you've bought it , all it costs is your time.

Which sometimes is too much.

So it's the same as everything else, a little is fine, good even but too much of anything is detrimental. I feel that in this last stint I've been quite disciplined (this does echo the relapsed alcoholics plea of "But I can control it this time"). I've forced myself to look at the time I do have available and to be honest, the saga of Moratalla comes in at the bottom of my priority list. It tends to run in the background of real work I do at home. I'm spending more time and effort on these posts and updating the look of the site as I'm seeing it more frequently than I am playing. This of course was the entire purpose of this exercise. Pick something which you really enjoy which you feel comfortable exposing about and just write.

Write even if it's crap. Even if you have to wring the words out with painful effort. Even if it means going back and editing a month old post because the structure isn't good enough. Just get the words down and worry about perfection later.

Picture (cropped) from Flickr user Marco Wessel