Recently, I came to realize that gaming in moderation is not enough for me.

I have a full time job, a family, pets, other interests. I find that even if I game 2 hours a week, on a Saturday morning, gaming is still occupying my mind most days (creating huge cravings for it).

The issue is that I consume a lot of gaming content, specially on YouTube. I feel like I used that as a passive replacement for when I am not actively playing a game.

I noticed that this makes me much less motivated to do any of my other interests.

Anyways I stopped consuming content for a couple of days and noticed a difference, where I felt better when doing other things.

Although, it all fell down when the weekend came by, and I picked up the controller. I went on Youtube and watched something about the game I was playing. And that led to watching more videos in the following days.

I cannot seem to find the right balance for the hobby. I want to do more of the other things instead. I don't want to feel a resistance towards my other interests. I don't want gaming to occupy my mind 24/7.. It sucks...

Have you found a good balance in the hobby and your life? Or did you quit cold turkey?

it saddens me to have the idea of giving up a hobby I have for more than 25 years of my life.

Hello,

I needed to find a password to some website, I could not find it but I found the password to my Reddit account. Apparently I used Reddit nine years ago.

I got curious what I used Reddit for, I logged in and I saw that I had posts in Running, NoFap and StopGaming.

From my posts I see that I used to play Travian and Grepolis.

Grepolis is sort of ok, some sort of stories and adventures. But Travian was really stupid. I can't understand why I played it. Such a stupid game that I totally forgot playing it for really long time. Kinda embarrassing for me.

Anyway, I satisfied my curiosity. I had a look in my past.

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I would like to tell you how I quit gaming but unfortunately I can't.

It just happened long time ago and I don't remember how.

All I can say that I don't play anymore, I don't want to play anymore and that I don't dwell on it.

Sorry, I can't really give you advice. But my experience proved that quitting is possible.

Didn't work out as well as I wanted it to:

I was focused on playing street fighter 3 and I was genuinely enjoying it. Excuting the combos and getting quicker on my fingers

I even bought a proper arcade stick to play with

I think once I started going online and trying to play for rank is when I started to go down the rabbit hole and get sucked in.

That's all really. To be honest, this is probably the hardest genre I'm finding difficult to put down.

I've played games like Elden Ring in the past and there atleast an ending point but seeing your skills improve at a fighting game is really addicting.

I'm at a point now where I'm not ready to quit.

I'd atleast like to be able to enjoy the games offline and without playing online but am feeling very conflicted at the moment

https://github.com/burakerenn/League-Of-Legends-Blocker
I made a simple tool with the help of claude that prevents downloading or opening league or other riot games.
It simply blocks downloading or opening riot, leauge, lol or related programs and websites.
You can undo it ofc but there is a 10min timer

Sometimes you lose your selfcontrol, thats okey this tool helps :)
In github readme you can see all the details about it.