Recovery and Destiny

Having never really recovered from the sleep schedule destruction of daylight savings time, I elected to take some vacation at the end of the week. I devoted that time solely to two pursuits: waking up on time and going to sleep on time. As a result my brain was fuzzy and I accomplished basically nothing else. Instead I played Destiny 2. I logged about 44 hours in the game in the last week and a half as a result.

Going in deep with Destiny 2 has been really invigorating for my gamer self. It is clearer to me now why people are so upset about Halo Infinite’s lack of content. Most players are coming from games like this. I haven’t spent any money yet and there’s seemingly no end to the stuff I have to do. I will most likely buy some of the expansions because the missions feel really good. The PVP feels better because the rewards for playing help with single player and co-op progress. Everything feels integrated in a way that the newest Halo title simply hasn’t pulled off. Of course, it is unfair for a game with a lifespan measured in months to compete with games like Destiny 2, but that is the world they entered as a live service title. Destiny 2 has been live since 2017. Despite some removals it has 4+ years of content.

At the same time, Destiny 2 has really highlighted for me all the problems I have with all-in viral content. I get sucked in and it’s all I can think about. I end up with a big spurt of rage to master with things like this. The intentional depth and complexity that these companies build sucks me in. The abuse of intermittent reinforcement psychology certainly doesn’t help either. I often lose sight of the slower to reward but more fulfilling projects I’ve set my sights on.

For intense activities like binge gaming, usually, once I “figure it out”, I kind of wander off and do something else. I make some progress and get the byproducts of whatever the activity is, but I usually don’t quite hit the big bang final milestone of progress. I will probably never finish a raid. It is much more likely that I will obsess over every bit of everything necessary to prepare for one and then drop the game once I’m sure I could do it if I wanted to. This is incredibly frustrating for me. I’ve been “almost good” at many things: games, drawing, lifting, but never really great. And all of these extreme bouts of focus came at the expense of abandoning all of my other interests for months or more.

I’m still going to play Destiny 2. Right now I’m poking and prodding this obsess and crash cycle to figure out what, if anything, I can do about it. After a lifetime of this, the one thing I do know is that fighting my interest directly will just make me miserable. I’m hoping that maybe I can find a way to either retrigger the cycle on command to get benefits, or push the wave to marks of completion so that I can hold onto the side effects as meaningful results.

Reading

Hally and I finally got through book 12 of Le Morte d’Arthur, which we are reading out loud together. Wikipedia tells me this version is using Caxton’s book numbering. I guess there are a lot of versions of this. The book is fascinating but also sometimes sluggish and frustrating. I think we’re about 2/3s of the way through by page count now?

I started reading Nobu volume 8 but have not finished it due to Destiny.

The Journey Continues

This weekly is late. I blame video games, but also Daylight Savings. Let’s push through this week and see what’s on the horizon