Stop playing your favorite game

Eliot Lefebvre — Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST

Do we have everyone's attention? Great. Now do exactly that. Stop playing your favorite game. Not forever, just for now. Just let it rest and play something else for a while. That's the idea proposed by Bio Break in an entry about letting go. The idea, as it's put forth, is that the best way to fight burnout is to prevent it from happening in the first place. If you're really enjoying a game and are just a few days away from a major goal, why not put it down and savor that instead of pushing forward until the game has stopped being fun?

Of course, it's hard for us to behave that way -- if we're enjoying a game, our inclination is to keep playing until we aren't, at which point burnout kicks in and we start almost dreading logging in. But it's an interesting idea and a different approach to keeping ourselves engaged. It's a lot easier to go back to a game if you've just let it sit for a while and have had some time to think about it fondly without being reminded of its blemishes. Absence can indeed make the heart grow fonder, and perhaps you should let your favorite game be absent for just a little while. You'll still be almost at your next major checkpoint when you get back, after all.

Stop playing your favorite game originally appeared on Massively on Wed, 09 Dec 2009 10:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Daily Grind: Leaving your last love behind

Krystalle Voecks — Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EST

Filed under: Culture, Opinion, The Daily Grind, Roleplaying

Let's face it - we invest a lot in our characters over time. Maybe you have that one devoted main that you come back to, no matter what happens. Perhaps you've spread your love over a series of alts. Whatever the case may be, the truth is that many of us tend to get emotionally invested in our characters as time passes. We've worked hard, gotten them nice gear, picked up a nice mount, gotten an in-game house, etc. (depending on game). So, when the shine has worn off your old favorite game, and you're at the point where it's time to move on, how do you say goodbye?

The team here have done everything from visiting favorite zones one last time; logging out in a particularly pretty area; throwing a party with friends as a way to burn off back-stocked food/drink; or logging out in the place where we felt we had the most fun in the game. There again, others on the team just logged out and didn't really care, although it seemed like more often than not, that was the case in games we didn't really click with anyway. This morning we thought we'd ask you - when you've moved on from game to game, retiring your old adventuring 'friend' as it were, did you do anything special before you signed out and shut the account down? Or did you just sign out without a second thought? If you did something special, what did you do?

The Daily Grind: Leaving your last love behind originally appeared on Massively on Mon, 16 Mar 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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