As I’m starting this post, I’m struck by how often the phrase “_________ says it all” is immediately followed by a more expansive explanation that includes details that weren’t present in what “__________” was. All of which to say is that the title of this post is an accurate representation of its contents in summary. I got hired (me, personally) by the leader of my Free Company in Final Fantasy 14 to do some work to help make our company projects proceed more smoothly. I’m now the person trolling the markets for the materials we need in mass quantities that our companions haven’t been able to acquire by the time we need to start distributing materials. The leader sets a price cap and gives me the in-game money (plus a 10 percent commission that is meant to also cover sales tax) for however much of whatever material it is he needs and I run around the various data centers and servers buying it all up, keeping whatever money is left once that is all over. We negotiated the details of it over the weekend prior to me writing this (two weekends ago from when this gets posted) and I got sent on my way to buy fifty thousand each of two different things last night (as of writing this). I got my money, did my research, filled out my little tracking spreadsheet (that also calculates profit margins, my current pay total, and the quantity purchased), and spent about four hours buying it all. It was actually a lot of fun! I’ve been interested in how the game’s economics work, from a player perspective, and this was a very interesting glimpse into it that I couldn’t have gotten any other way. While I definitely still prefer to spend my time playing the game, I am kind of looking forward to the next time I get to do a shopping hunt like this one, and not just because it has been the fastest I’ve made a huge amount of money in my almost ten months of playing the game.

All of which highlights why my therapist and I talk about this game all the time. Typically, if you’d played something for an average of two hundred hours a month for ten months straight, talking about it with your therapist would be an indication that you’re getting help for your addiction. That’s usually where a lot of this stuff goes and the whole “player gives up on their life in order to continuously play their online game” trope exists for a reason! Addictiont to online gaming is a real problem! But it isn’t my problem. My bills get paid, my job gets done, my apartment gets cleaned, I eat my meals, I get (often inadequate, but I’ve been getting poor sleep longer than I’ve been playing video games) sleep every night, and I’m not spending money I can’t afford to spend on it. In fact, playing it has actually made me spend less money because I’m not buying as many books and video games as I used to, nor am I paying for a bunch of streaming subscriptions. I haven’t calculated out the specific amounts, but I’m probably saving somewhere upwards (but probably not that far upwards) of one hundred bucks a month now that I’ve narrowed my entertainment focus. What I’m getting out of this game, the reason I keep going back to it constantly, is comfortable socialization and a degree of satisfaction and accomplishment that my life has been almost devoid of for the past few years. When I put in effort to Final Fantasy 14, I get a reward based on that specific effort. When I figure out something difficult, I get a comensurate reward. When I spend a bunch of time on something, I get a reward for that. Effort put in always produces some kind of satisfaction or achievement.

Not so in real life. I busted my ass for a year and a half on this project and all I got to show for it was worse physical health and immediate suspicion and accusations of not working at all the instant I stopped working at that frenzied pace and returned to what would be considered a “normal” pace. I helped develop a product, proving time and time again that I had the foresight to know when something was going to end in disaster and that I had the management skills required to help this gang of introverts work together enough to solve problems without breaking the project’s schedule like they did on EVERY. SINGLE. PROJECT. prior to this one. All I got for all that effort is a talking to from my boss that some of my coworkers were concerned about whether or not I was doing any work while I was in the office because it wasn’t immediately clear and apparent to them what I was doing every minute of the day once the project was over and I wasn’t directly working with them forty hours a week (it would be more if any of them were in the office for longer than that). Even today, as I keep plates spinning and do my best to keep my priorities in order and the most demanding work getting done the quickest, I still get people commenting about how I’m not doing the work they think I should be doing and how I really need to reasses my priorities (I wish my boss would tell them they’re wrong instead of leaving it to me, given that I check my priorities with him every two weeks, but I’ve long since given up on expecting him to come to my defense when people are complaining about stuff they don’t understand). All I get out of this miserable job and it’s fifty hours of work a week is enough money to continue living in this day and age.

Throw in isolation from Covid and being one of the only people I know who still masks properly, the isolation of almost all of my friends slowly fading out of my life because I didn’t have the energy to constantly pull them into my day-to-day or week-to-week orbit thanks to my health problems, and the acute isolation that is realizing the only people I spend much time in physical proximity with are the same coworkers I don’t trust to have my back on anything, and you can maybe see why I latched onto the first thing that consistently rewarded my effort, that gave me fun and comfortable socialization with people that largely share my values, and provided me with an escape from the misery that has been this year (personally, professionally, and politically). Typically, as my therapist and I talk about this (she was fascinated to hear about the job I got as it provided an on-ramp to all of these discussions we have every couple sessions), we turn towards what, if anything, I can do to get this kind of rewarding experience outside the game and there’s really not a lot. Trying to avoid catching Covid means not doing a lot of stuff in physical proximity to other people since that requires an unacceptable amount of risk on my part, to expose myself to people who aren’t taking the same precautions that I am. Getting another job, in this economy, requires finding something that has the same (or preferably better) income potential and job security that my current one days (a thing I’ve yet to find). Increasing social contact with my old friends… well, I’m not sure how much I want that given how things have played out, and it’s not like I can make new friends anywhere but the realm of the purely digital these days, thanks to the Covid precautions. None of them have easy solutions and the standard “keep doing this job until I pay off my student loans and can afford to take a job that pays less” line of reasoning is a difficult one to displace, especially when my source of escapism also helps me save money by not buying all kinds of other video games (I spent more on video games during my two-week break from FF14 than I’d spent in the three months prior put together, just to have other interesting stuff to play).

I’m going to try to spend a bit more time doing other stuff, still, just for my own well-being, but it’s difficult to deny the enjoyment I get out of the game and it’s casual socialization. Especially now, when I’ve got stuff going on in my personal life that I’m trying to not think about since that’s the only way I can handle them until I either hear back from the relatives I sent that letter to or enough time passes that I’m confident I’m not going to hear back from them. Better to just keep my life together, keep working towards paying off my student loans, and let myself have one nice, fun thing in my life that I don’t need to feel guilty or miserable about.