Quitting video games: because life is too short for simulations.

video games are really only just the emulation of real life right [Applause] video games are derived in real life especially these games that are like mmorpgs that just require you to continue to invest more and more time doing mundane tasks tasks that you know sometimes can be a little bit challenging but overall video games are a lot easier in real life right but you're still using your mental energy right you're still investing time and effort into achieving the next level the next milestone right completing the quest whatever it may be and then at the end of the day you feel exhausted you feel tired you feel you feel like you know you've done a lot and over time when you make this a regular habit when you're spending hours and hours on every day putting all of this mental energy into these games you realize that nothing is changing in your real life nothing's changing your reality i want to give you a bit of a back story so i started gaming around the age of five years old was playing consoles such as the nez and snares and then later on it was things such as the n64 dreamcast playstation one xbox and then when the high speed internet came around gaming online with different mmo rpgs leading up to about the age of 10 years old i did game quite often but it wasn't as bad as it got after the age of nine years old so i got heavily in to so many different shoot em up games and i just couldn't get enough of them and it got really really bad down the line it got to the point where i got into a game known as a world of warcraft and when i got in to this game i never wanted to get off it i just completely stopped doing everything else in my life i stopped socializing with all my friends completely and i was just solely focused on this game it literally became my world when i'd actually go and have to eat food i'd eat as quickly as possible so i could get back to gaming you're putting all this energy into this virtual reality but your actual reality isn't changing and i feel like a lot of people who get stuck on these things and get so invested is because in virtual reality they have some sense of power right they have some sense of of prestige of achievement of success but in their actual life majority of the time they're not successful right they don't have any power they don't have anything that they look forward to in their reality this is why it's so addicting for them to just run to games because they feel like they have a better life in this virtual world i grew up gaming i had a and my parents treated me we had an n64 when i was like six seven that was cool i had some computer games it was always like you have to come home and you have to uh do your schoolwork first and then you can play and then you have to be off by nine pm or some [ __ ] like that so my parents did a good job they did a cool job with that one summer where i binged and this is an interesting summer played magic online like nine hours a day for a summer with my brother now it wasn't very fun even though it felt fun at the time so i would literally game every hour that i possibly could around the clock wake up the next day and do it again and again and again when i'd get bored of a certain character i'd create another one start with it from the beginning it was just like going going going going going if i look back on it why did i get a gaming addiction well one my parents from a young age and other people just allowed me to play games and they weren't aware of why it's not a good thing but also my family life was not very good there's a lot of ups and downs there's many times for years and years and years that i was depressed i wasn't necessarily happy with myself and my life and what was going on in my whole human experience so it had pretty much become a crutch and something to switch off from the outside reality most of the time when you're addicted to these virtual worlds it's because you don't like the world that you live in right and i feel like all of that just ties down to you not taking responsibility for yourself as you could have guessed it from the title and the thumbnail of this video i am no longer going to be streaming video games on twitch a lot of things in my life have happened where i honestly need to be out and active and be there for my family to help them and and support them not only that but like my own mental health and my own physical health have been kind of deteriorating just over these past few months getting back into gaming i took a break for a while and i had a really good job and things were really good i had friends in real life and honestly like i felt healthier than ever i was working out eating right uh sleeping well and doing things you know as they in my opinion should be and when i came back to streaming on twitch for my me and my personal health me and my family's health like it's it's the right decision honestly it's been forever since i've gone outside and even like talked to somebody not really but you know what i mean like it's gonna take some time to get used to if you can invest all of this time into these games or to scrolling on social media or to you know whatever it is that it may be that's not actually changing your life for the better in a positive way then how can you make excuse that you don't have time this is the reason why i quit games because they take they're designed for you to spend time so much time on it in this virtual world and you get this false sense of achievement you get this false sense of success when really nothing is changing in your life and the world of gaming is just way worse than when i used to game because when i used the game there wasn't smartphones everywhere they didn't exist like when i go to the gym there's people that are on cardio machines that are just gaming the whole time they're being a dopamine addict as they're meant to be doing something that's really really good for them and man i'm telling you if i had this when i was younger like oh i would have literally never stopped gaming whatsoever i've never had a break from it if you're not monetizing it somehow i think it's pointless if you are not monetizing games somehow it's pointless right and i know if i had been around now when i used to be into gaming i'd have been like wow they're making really really good money from it because people like pewdiepie and other big gaming youtube channels such as ninja which there is so many out there now they make so much money so for someone like myself if i'd done that and built a successful youtube channel that was with gaming and then i'm getting a lot of attention and a lot of people loving me and just saying loads of nice things which obviously you also get negative feedback as well and then i'm making a lot of money at the time from it consistently so i can have whatever i want and do whatever i want at such a young age the likelihood of me just getting fully sucked into that world and never wanting to get out of it would have been very very highly likely right because for me video games really pulled me in when i didn't feel good about myself and i wanted something to make me feel good immediately i'm sorry but video games suck they're just not the point of life they're a nice distraction here and there but to just spend life staring into a screen think about what you really want in life and is it to play video games in computer games that's why i quit but yeah guys i hope you guys support me in this decision i think a lot of people you know find comfort in playing video games every day and it kind of just like uh separates you from what's going on in the world with you know what's happening in ukraine and and with russia i haven't spoke about it too much but my heart really goes out to all the people in ukraine uh and all the people in russia who don't want to be a part of you know the war that's going on because those people are just like me and you they just want to live their lives and um sometimes it's easier to just stay at a computer all the time and not worry about the world but that's not real the real life you know i mean like that's just lying to yourself [Music] i think that most people without really being taught or trained feel afraid to be around drug dealers to be around the illegal drug industry if you like to have a sense of innate caution being so close to something that could take their life away and you know the chances you're actually going to wind up dead not that terrifying but there's a broader sense in which getting involved with the drug game could take many years of your life away and both men and women i think feel a similar sense of creeping terror being in any way close to illegal prostitution even if they're left-wing even if they say sex work is work to actually be in that way or actually be in that brothel or be surrounded by you know pimps and players a certain kind of fear and some people are afraid of it not because they're afraid of being a victim of it but because they're afraid of their own desires and where that's going to take them some people are afraid because they're aware that if they let their desires get the best of them they could lose years of their life that way i don't think people have this kind of instinctual caution when it comes to video games but we should i watched a whole bunch of youtube videos lately about the 3ds that's the video game system you see in the background 2ds 3ds it's a nintendo set of consoles console line is shutting down the shop that sells the games is closing down not worth explaining there are all these videos that just came up last week or two from these guys reflecting on the games they played on this system in the last 10 years of their lives making recommendations for what you should buy before it gets shut down and just the way these guys listed off the names of video games the titles that they played from beginning to end and sometimes adding in that they went back five years later and played it again and you can google around and like each one of these titles is 40 hours 60 hours just recognizing whether it's a 40 year old man talking about the last 10 years of his life going from age 30 to age 40 with this console or it's a 20 year old man who's talking about going from the transition from childhood to adulthood you know you should feel afraid you should feel concerned in the same sense that being involved in the drug game or being involved in the pimping game it's not that your life is on the line in the same sense as going into a war zone or a battlefield but man you're risking the quality and the quantity and the meaning of your life in a much more insidious way just a couple of days ago i had a voice call with a man about 60 years old and i'm gonna be honest to you the only reason i gave him the time to talk to him is that he was about 60 not that many of the viewers who get in touch with me or of that age group thought he might have something interesting to say but it was just as frustrating and just as pointless as talking to a very immature teenager a reminder that getting older and getting wiser are two completely different things i said this guy directly at one point look you're in your 60s i'm in my 40s i want to talk about what you're going to do in the next five years of your life and i'm only really interested in talking to people who are going to make something happen in the next five years people who have ambitions to change the world to accomplish something great in the next five years i want to hear what it is you're gonna do in the next five years and then we can talk about what you've done in the last five years and basically why you didn't make it happen already i want to talk to people who are ambitious and man you know if that ain't you this conversation is not gonna happen at all i was polite i was too polite i'm making it my new year's resolution to be a lot less polite the next time that happened because apparently i was so polite that he completely ignored it he completely missed the point of what it was that i was saying to him so directly having great ambitions doesn't guarantee that you're ever going to have any great accomplishments but you can try and you can fail and out of that failure even if it is only failure that you ever encounter in the pursuit of those ambitions you're gonna become a better person than you ever would be sitting around and pressing those buttons [Music]