How Did I Quit Playing Games? #Gate上线Pre-IPOs

I know many people have gaming addictions; even if you don’t, your family members might. Playing games is emotional consumption, and there’s nothing particularly wrong with that in itself. But it kills time—emotional consumption isn’t impossible to have, yet too much of it isn’t good, because life can’t be spent consuming most of your time, leaving only a small portion for production. This is especially true in the early stages of building up your life—doing so may push your life into a negative loop.

But the moment a game is produced, all its mechanism design hits human nature. It exists to keep you spending more and more time on it. Like desserts: many people know they’re unhealthy, but once they see cake and ice cream, they can’t move—they’re hooked because the sugar-and-oil ratio is engineered to go after you. If you rely only on instinct, it’s very easy to fall in.

So today, I’m going to talk about how I quit gaming. Pay attention: quitting games doesn’t mean I don’t touch games anymore. I’ll still play new fun games—but the moment my rational brain takes over, I delete them immediately.

I’ve mentioned this in many places: from childhood, I was a gaming addict. In school, I skipped classes, used VPNs to get past restrictions, and played games all night long. I wasn’t spared from getting scolded by my parents.

This “game” thing doesn’t need to be demonized. It’s the same as other hobbies. Some middle-aged people like fishing—that has no difference from games. You can understand them as a kind of “drug” that excites your brain. It’s just that game design has been artificially refined—especially online games—so it looks particularly addictive, and it also interferes a lot with “doing proper things.”

So how did I quit gaming in my third year of high school? I figured out one thing. What is the essence of any online game? In truth, it’s a social game. Put simply, it’s designed so that you play all night by yourself. Once you enter the game, there aren’t any other real people around. The whole server is just you. I believe a lot of people would find that boring.

We get addicted to a game because there are people around to talk and share experiences, because there are rankings in the game—if you play well, you get praised, admired by others. That’s what keeps us chasing better performance and higher scores, combat power, titles—and constantly spending money, grinding time, and researching strategies.

But people who are addicted to games must have had this experience: in a server, after you’ve been playing for a while, suddenly there’s no one left; or in a game, after you’ve been playing for a while, everyone gradually stops playing. Why? Because game companies open new servers—new players can’t possibly come in and compare levels and combat power in the same place with people who’ve been playing there for a year, right? So opening new servers is inevitable. As soon as new servers open, the old servers will inevitably become dead water. You can only wait for merges, or events like national wars. Otherwise, no new players will come; only old players will leave. Then whether you play or not is just a matter of time. See? The ultimate fate of any game you’ve gotten addicted to is having no one left—dead servers, no social value anymore—and the process is very fast. Very fast, your experience curve starts to go down.

Which games are truly worth spending our time, money, and effort on? The ones with more people playing, ongoing activity, and everyone caring deeply about the names on the rankings—only here are the rankings meaningful. For example, if you get a title in a game, it’s not just that your deskmate will envy you. It’s not that in the game you can receive a little follower. Rather, everyone around you will envy that title and recognize your achievement in the game. And it’s not just for a few months—it’s for years, even decades. You can keep playing the same game, without needing to switch after your deskmate stops playing and then having to move to a new server and restart a new game. If it were like that, your early accumulation and effort would only have a shelf life of a few months or even shorter.

The essence of games is social interaction. If you’re capable, find a game where people from all over the world are on the same server. Every improvement in strategy, every rise in status in the game, is real accumulation—and it can earn you more status in social circles, because everyone doesn’t switch games. Can you find one? I believe many people have already figured it out: this—this TM is real life.

How much money can you spend on games? For a small game, a server with a few thousand people playing—you might spend a few thousand, and you can basically dominate. For a bigger one with tens of thousands playing—spend tens of thousands, and that’s your limit. Even for a nationwide game, if you spend 1,000,000, you’ll be considered a big brother revered by many. But in real life, what is that worth? Nothing at all. Last time I said it—my wear and tear from trading in a single day is already more than that. I’m leaving such a huge game unplayed, and going to a small pond to be the big shot?

Gaining emotional value in games is very cheap—you could even say it’s a low-cost way to experience the joy of winning in competition. But you need to understand why: because not many people are truly competing with you in good faith. It’s not because you’re that amazing. This “amazing-ness” is an illusion. Look at some smaller sports events—why can Olympic champions not make much money, and their fame is just so-so? It’s because there’s little entertainment value, or the venues are limited, which results in a limited audience, so the commercial value is low and income is low. Low income means not many countries or people are training in that sport—get it? It’s not that you’re not capable; it’s that the base for competition is too small, so the overall level isn’t high. That’s why picking the best among the small fry is easier.

One day in my third year of high school, I thought of this, and I was suddenly struck by lightning. Being addicted to games and not producing anything—doesn’t that just mean I can’t compete in reality, so I run here to find a sense of superiority? From elementary school to middle school, if I just played around, I could still get the top score in the whole school. But once I got into a top-track class at a provincial key school, if I kept playing around, I couldn’t even get into the top few. So I decided to maintain an attitude of playing around in front of my classmates and teachers, like it wasn’t that I couldn’t do it—it was just that I didn’t study seriously. Then I switched to being the big shot in that tiny game server, because there were fewer people competing with me and their quality was worse, and I didn’t really care about the game. Isn’t that cowardice?

From then on, I decided that from now on, I would only play one game seriously—real life. That place is always lively, with the most competitors. The data there never resets, and people can’t just quit because of all kinds of reasons. The newest players and the oldest players are all on the same server—so all your accumulation leads to long-term results.

Once I completely figured this out, I went from the bottom of the class to the top, and then in college, I earned more than 10,000 yuan a month through side projects. I no longer need to deliberately rest. A teenage gaming addict plays every day, happily and endlessly—that’s rest. But what I do every day is also a game—only you call it work, and I call it rest.