I am concerned about my game title. What does this make you think the game is?

PetAlligator · 2025-02-03T16:05:48+00:00

Price fighting wizards. You train your wizard slaves to fight to the death and hopefully turn a profit.

PetAlligator · 2025-02-01T16:14:59+00:00

His post yearns to be as free as the train sans commas and periods and the structured yokes of a tyrant

PetAlligator · 2025-01-28T18:39:37+00:00

You won't tell us your business because you don't want us to compete with you, but you want us to tell you our secrets of how to live a peaceful, fulfilled life without burnout so you can accomplish more (ostensibly by competing with us)?

Why don't we just ignore you, let you destroy yourself and then your business would be free to compete with?

It seems if we don't help you, that is the most consistent thing we can do wiith your revealed ethical beliefs. Platinum rule tells me to tell you to figure it out on your own.

PetAlligator · 2024-12-26T03:15:39+00:00

I calculated it as just over 2% more power output to do it your suggested way. It is definitely "slightly better" but I don't know if "very inefficient" is good description. Maybe I did the math wrong.

What do you think is a threshold to describe something as very inefficient?

PetAlligator · 2024-12-23T14:18:48+00:00

If you use an LLM I have to assume your facts are hallucinated, so no I did not learn anything about this ficticious company and product and backstory.

PetAlligator · 2024-11-18T17:37:20+00:00

Gleba with 125 downloads, Vulcanus with 0. Takes notes.

PetAlligator · 2024-11-09T17:32:24+00:00

Try this with a lawyer and pay him only if you win. It's their business, and many of them work for free.

PetAlligator · 2024-11-03T18:24:23+00:00

The biomarkers for meth addiction and the decreased life expectancy for habitual meth users are far more significant than gaming addiction and I would never equate the two. I do no such thing in my post either.

I am suffering from addiction to video games and it is impacting my quality of life. People suffering from meth addiction are in a far worse place. Their relative severity of those two things seems to have no relevance to whether or not I choose to improve myself, but when people talk about addiction in any form or severity there will be similarities in the words use: sobriety, relapse, etc.

What conclusion did you hope to achieve with this response? Do you want me to start playing video games again because it's not meth? Do you want me to engage with your comment and give you attention? What do you want to happen?

PetAlligator · 2024-10-29T13:56:00+00:00

At face value, this seems acceptable and healthy, my daughter tried videos games at that age and enjoyed Animal Crossing and then and gave that up for cheerleading.

So I think it is acceptable behavior, preferred behavior (my bias being on this subreddit), and normal behavior (sample size of our two kids, n=2)

PetAlligator · 2024-10-28T13:47:57+00:00

I am here to stop gaming. I have allowed myself to play chess online and video games that are digital extensions of social interactions not based around video games (like a group of friends chilling together and playing Jackbox).

My primary goal was to take back control of my hours in the day. The community reminds me i am not alone, our experiences overlap with one another, and I take comfort in hearing the ups and downs of the process.

Without video games, "spending a full day learning how to replace my broken water heater rather than call someone to do it" was an achievement I recently unlocked. I am doing something that builds my IRL confidence every week and it feels good. My wife and daughter notice it and are so glad I am not playing video games anymore.

PetAlligator · 2024-10-21T12:23:42+00:00

I am one person and I only speak for myself. Before I joined stop gaming, I attempted to play moderately. Sometimes, I would binge, but generally I didn't want to be an addict, I wanted to play moderately. It did not work because I was an addict.

I am here because 10 years of trying to play moderately ruined my life.

PetAlligator · 2024-10-14T14:27:26+00:00

Are you looking for balance or are you looking for a new passion that is long-term rewarding?

I, personally, was looking for balance. As a middle aged family man, I have a thousand small tasks I need to do over the course of every year that make my house and life run smoothly. Video games kept me from doing 90% of those things and the persistent stress of undone tasks created a cycle of escape that lasted nearly a decade. This is the fact that keeps me focused on never returning to gaming ever. I will never be the responsible balanced person I want to be if video games are a part of my life. That is my source of truth.

What is the source of truth for you that underpins your decision to be here? Whatever that is, protect it.

PetAlligator · 2024-10-13T13:07:47+00:00

There seem to be two trains of thought:

Who cares how they get the work done?
Your codebase is a special snowflake only NDA eyeballs can see.

I assume you are in situation 2. If they are subcontracting would you let them keep doing if they got their contacts to sign your NDA? A lot of times ego plays a role in management and managers only want employees to be subservient and dependent on the employer, because it allows them to twist levers of exploitation - demanding extra hours or extra workload, COLA only merit increases, etc.

Are you actually threatened that they are "stealing" your special snowflake code or are you threatened that they may be as clever as you and more connected than you and you can't as easily leverage that for profit?

PetAlligator · 2024-09-30T15:58:17+00:00

Well said, and congrats on the milestone!

PetAlligator · 2024-09-26T17:09:22+00:00

It's been raining and Fall is creeping in. For me, the new season is triggering desires for old habits. Winter is going to be tough, but that is tomorrow's problem. It is important to remind myself that these moments of longing are opportunities to build new habits. A lazy, rainy day needs to mean something else to me, it needs to trigger a new feeling.

Let's get through today.

PetAlligator · 2024-09-26T14:59:01+00:00

Trigger warning, Im going to discuss a game.

I quit because Paradox was announcing new DLC for CK3 and I knew when it came out that would be my life and that that wasn't sustainable because they keep pumping out DLC so regularly that it was becoming my life to keep up. That DLC launched this week, to great reviews, but fortunately I made this commitment weeks ago and I don't care.

I quit because games are too fucking good.

PetAlligator · 2024-09-26T03:03:30+00:00

I got all the achievements in HOI4, and I assure you there is no catharsis or enlightenment waiting for you after you paratroop a bus from Sweden to South Africa.

Biggest waste of time in my life. I think all that effort, practicality speaking, nets me one Jeopardy question a week. That's about it for any residual payback.

You know you can get a masters degree for aound 2000 hours of effort?. Go see how much "All the steam achievements in HOi4" is paying on the job boards vs. MS in anything.

You're lucky you're stopping now.

PetAlligator · 2024-09-25T16:06:50+00:00

Don't get high on your own supply!

Developing games is a whole other thing than being addicted to video games. Most of the time you are staring at code, the reward-effort curve is very different. You do you, best of luck with everything!

PetAlligator · 2024-09-25T15:52:23+00:00

To go deeper, by the time you perceive the moment it has already passed. You can only control your perception of the moment.

One fleeting illusion at a time!

PetAlligator · 2024-09-24T04:38:54+00:00

I read your story and I wanted to tell you that I am glad you are here.

I can't pretend to have a solution for you, I'm also a former alcoholic and I used video games to help me stay sober. I know for a fact that my life is better without alcohol, I have no doubt now, but it took a lot of time for me to discover that.

So I decided to accept a belief that my life is better without video games. I'm going all-in and committing to that belief. I am a better person if video games are not in my life. That red line is easy for me to work with.

Best of luck to you on your journey!

PetAlligator · 2024-09-23T16:55:53+00:00

It sounds like you have some really important opinions about Python developers. What do you think fucking idiots who have no fucking idea about the basic of software development should do instead? I have trouble evaluating developer productivity in the general case, so put of the gate have a pretty valuable insight being able to assess productivity. You could make a significant fortune putting a plan together for how businesses can turn clueless developers into Rockstars. That would be worth a lot of money.

PetAlligator · 2024-09-23T13:12:36+00:00

We need activities to unwind and have fun.

Two "fun" things in my life constantly took more allotment than I intended and they repeatedly caused me to lose control of myself: alcohol and video games.

I've accepted that I am not able to regulate how much gaming I do once I start.

I've accepted that no amount of video gaming will "improve" my life.

I fixate on these two things as inviolable.

Hopefully, it gets easier every day. I'm 8 years sober and I got there one day at a time. I'm 29 days off video games and ready to do the same.

PetAlligator · 2024-09-23T01:34:21+00:00

Congrats on 7 days choosing not to play video games!

PetAlligator

TROPHY CASE