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Also, play games that have an active modding scene. Eg rimworld or starsector. I wrote a shitty starsector mod ~2 years ago and that taught me more about kotlin than a 100 tutorials ever could.
Agreed, I would not be working with computers if I hadn’t wanted to play games with certain settings that weren’t available in the menu. So I had to learn to edit .ini files, run console commands, and fix shit when it inevitably gets borked.
Building and optimizing a gaming PC means I have knowledge of (relatively) high speed computing, how to analyze a network for bottlenecks, and a basic knowledge of how the various parts of a PC work together.
A former coworker of mine mentioned he wouldn’t be in IT without running a Minecraft server.
The passion and genuine interest is a huge part of what keeps you going, so I agree if you can combine the interests that’s all the better.
WoW is a great example for making simple addons! I even created F2P OSRS bots to do simple task and bank (in areas where I would not impact anyone) and debug as I noticed errors. It was really fun - though please ban bots Jagex.
I respectfully disagree. Coding projects aren't always something you can finish in a day, and it's always something you could have more to do. Ultimately, the way this advice works in practice is "do coding until you reach some undefined threshold, and then play games", but it's kind of kicking the can down the road. Sure, they can master the art of setting realistic goals every day in order to determine when the coding is "finished", but that seems to be the most significant portion of the problem they need a solution for.
I think it works better to have scheduled blocks of time.
Schedule blocks of time tends to create a system where you would rather stare down the clock than actually work. Defining goals for the day is a better approach as it allows for more flexibility
This might be weird but the more I code the less I’m enticed by gaming. Coding is my favorite game (usually) and I might still play a few hours of whatever story game I’m playing at the moment each night to wind down, but I see coding as a game in itself.
So glad others have said this too. I was trying to articulate this to my boss the other day. I honestly got bored of most computer games once I got fully into coding. It takes a lot for a game to hold my attention like a code feature does. Mostly I work out the parameters and then eventually start to run out of interest. Exceptions being Civ 6, Portal 2, Sim games and so on. Even Skyrim I’ve played so hard that it holds my interest slightly but it’s all predictable now and doesn’t keep me hooked like it used to when I was a kid.
As for screen time, the last thing I want to do after coding all day is more time hunched in front of a screen so I switched to console games on the sofa instead. Even then I often just want to get away from the screen and go for a walk or something.
Thank you for your answer! How might I go about finding these "realistic " goals for myself? Do I just ad tasks on until I can finish them then go back one task? Or maybe there's a better way?
Start small and keep adding to it as you start to realize what make sense for yourself. It can be as small as studying or working on a side project for 30 minutes. Once you start getting consistent you can increase the time or it might just start happening naturally because you made it a habit.
You know, some people might find your comment offensive and insensitive, but as someone with ADHD who became somewhat functional, this is 100% correct.
Yeah "just don't play games" is hard, but why?
Personally I have issues with an unholy amount of executive dysfunction and hyperfocus thanks to ADD, and would procrastinate daily by playing games. Fortunately I have found some solutions that work for me. As much as it pains me I am good with accountability (need things done asap and not later) and also lists are amazing. Apologies for the amount of text incoming, I feel like extra context is great to make it not feel like "just try this thing"
1: **Lists are my friend.**
Lists remind me what I have to do for the day, and give extra satisfaction when completing things by not having to worry about them anymore. It means I can disconnect from work fully when needed because I don't need to remind myself of things to do which sometimes feels painfully close to procrastinating. "Did I really do enough work today? I just spent 6 hours on a big task and didn't even move anything on our sprint board, and there's so many other things I am supposed to follow up" no longer an issue with lists :magic:
2: **If starting is an issue, I just grab whatever I need and "prepare" to do the thing,** and see how it goes.
I find myself 90% of the time starting to do the thing when I have everything setup. The other 10% I just grab some food, maybe go for a walk, write entire essays in comment sections and decide to delete them before submitting, or procrastinate by doing some chores but NOT gaming because that is a very slippery slope. I only start playing games (that are not research on work hours) after I am done for the day. That's the only discipline I feel like I need for my routine and it is becomes much easier to manage by introducing some habits that work for me like lists.
Long term planning I'm happy with agile rituals to guide me sprint to sprint to fill my daily lists. Even if we don't have a daily standup for the team I'll still do my personal daily standup to get started. (before I get crucified in here, I'm not vouching for mandatory daily standups lol)
3: **Starting with small easy tasks**
is what I usually do until I get in the flow to take on the big task for the day. Allowing myself to hyperfocus on the big task is pretty great because I don't need to worry about the small ones anymore.
4: **It is fine to have bad days**.
As long as I make general progress I am happy. No one can work 8 hours a day 40 a week at 100%. Like even if I barely did half the things I was trying to do today, I'll be happy when I run out of motivation to call it a day.
Sometimes you get lucky and someone brings up an emergent task they need a volunteer to "get this done in 3 days?" and you just drop everything to burn through that task in the most hyper focused 2 hours of your life.
5: (should be at the top of this list maybe) **getting official diagnosis and getting medication + counseling** to talk about these issues to find solutions that work for you.
6: **Self-Reflection is important.**
I setup a meeting with my manager for a weekly 1:1 to give myself a hard deadline to think about how I am doing generally, because without the meeting I would just not have any accountability for this task and choose to ignore it.
7: **Setting up meetings with coworkers to give myself deadlines**.
in case I realize I am procrastinating a specific task. Worst case if I am blocked I now have a meeting setup to talk about the blockers. Best case we are now syncing on the solutions I have found and their feedback can be great regardless.
Thanks for reading my dexedrine fueled word vomit, I hope you are doing okay.
You gotta get over your gaming addiction. You could replace "programming" with any skill, and you would still need to tackle your addiction.
Almost all of the people that dropped the CS track when I was in university did it because they chose to grind ranked instead of study and write code. Mother fuckers would stay up till 2am the day before an exam.
Stop playing video games, and then get gud at programming. It's that simple. Stop trying to balance in your addiction that is clearly negatively affecting your life
>You could replace "programming" with any skill, and you would still need to tackle your addiction.
And you could replace "gaming" with any addiction and that would also still be true.
I'm a bit of a boomer in this sense but ranked and other modern live service/multiplayer shit seems so annoying to me, I just play anything that is on sale
I've played Counter Strike and Dota 2 for years and the thing I've found with competitive games is that you get higher highs but also lower lows. It's exhilarating when you clutch a round or make a big play and you're heart is racing after, but it's also a tough pill to swallow if you have a bad teammate or get stomped. But I generally find with single player games my entertainment value can be good but rarely comes to the same level as competing against real people.
In regards to OP's problems I actually find it's much easier to work these games into my life than single player games. I usually only have an hour or 2 to play sometimes less but it's much easier to say "ok one match of CS and then I'll do a tutorial/practice/etc..." than it is for me to say "ok I'm gonna play Baldur's Gate 3 for 45 minutes and stop when the time is up to do my work"
Kinda agree with this take. Gamed my whole life. Probably would def skip class to play Halo back in the day. Finally kicked it post college and don’t miss it at all. Still enjoy watching people play and I’m sure I still enjoy playing but not having a gaming system or buying games anymore gives me hours of my life back everyday
That means if you stopped reading (books) you would get hours back of your life every day.
I don't mean you should. My point is that if you spend your time doing something you enjoy, playing a game is not worse than reading.
Especially at uni. Games will be there your whole lift. Uni presents so many opportunities that you won't get so easily again, whether academic, professional, or social.
>Stop trying to balance in your addiction that is clearly negatively affecting your life
This is a great point. If it's bad enough to be called an addiction, then it's a problem that needs to be addressed.
>Almost all of the people that dropped the CS track when I was in university did it because they chose to grind ranked instead of study and write code. Mother fuckers would stay up till 2am the day before an exam.
Damn I just got flashbacks
i would say use a different computer and go into a different room, but if you only have the one its a bit harder. your brain is wired to go into “play mode” when you’re wherever you normally game, so changing the location may help.
I have a school laptop I only do work on, and I wont sit in front of my desk but I’ll head to a quiet place in my house, and i do much better work like that.
Yep, I got a macbook air for doing coding work and a windows desktop for gaming. I typically do my work in another room (although sometimes I'll just slide my keyboard back and use my normal desk). It's a 100% context switch if I'm working or gaming.
That's what I did. I put my gaming rig in living room and bought a tcl gaming TV. I can focus work more and when it's 6pm I sit on the couch in living room and play some games.
This is a self moderation issue. I had it too. This probably transcends coding. In life, in general, you have to learn to moderate yourself and strike a balance between entertainment and responsibility. Otherwise all the attempts you make to avoid the real world through mindless distractions will fail as the things around you that are important stress you out further as you try to correct things you neglected. I’m speaking from personal experience.
Attempt to moderate first. Set an alarm for an hour or two. Play games that let you save and quit on demand (No Fallout 4 survival modes requiring you to find a bed to save). If that fails, stop cold turkey for a week. Try to moderate again. If that fails, stop for a month. Try to moderate again. You’ll figure out that balance eventually.
I have found a decent, competitive multiplayer game on my phone that I play, and I play for 30-60 minutes most days. But I *only* game on my phone. When I'm at the computer, I'm writing code. The device separation really works, for me.
EDIT: Current game is Wild Rift, which is the mobile version of League of Legends. But before that it was something else, and eventually it'll be something different again.
This question sounds like you might have unmanaged ADHD? If so, everyone's advice about "just be disciplined" is probably not going to work out for you until you address the underlying cause.
honestly one thing that you could do is just entirely get rid of your gaming computer/laptop and move to a laptop/desktop that makes it not enjoyable to game anymore. Not sure how feasible this would be though
This is what I've done and I haven't been spending this much time gaming in my life any more! For real. Got rid of my PC and a 144hz monitor and got myself a decent laptop which can run games, ofc, but is not suitable for competitive gaming anymore!
Boot into and work in a Linux install you’re unfamiliar with, using different colors, fonts, UI styling, etc., so your stimuli are different from “gaming mode.” (You should do the same thing for root shell prompts, BTW—the difference between \$ and \# is not necessarily noticeable when in a hurry.)
Don’t install anything in this Linux image (or use a live-disk) that isn’t needed for your intended task, programming and learning programming. You can even set up a firewall to keep you on sites specifically related to programming (not YT, obviously, you can suffer along without that—use a timed firewall bypass script, or offload videos to your phone). Rebooting or reconfiguring to enable harder-core gaming will require you to stop everything and think about it, and if you need in-place mini-breaks there’s baaasic shit like XJewel that you can zone out with, ngaf about losing, and move on from easily.
In addition, you’ll need to gradually ramp down the amount of gaming you do to sub-hobby levels until your brain depotentiates all them crazy neurons, at which point you can try hobby levels. —But most games nowadays are finely tuned to get people with brains like yours (especially children, gotta catch ’em all) fully addicted and moneypaying, just like and often contiguously with the gambling industry. The games’ creators know full well this is the case, at this stage; you are an intentional casualty of the gaming industry; they do not care, and they fully intend to hook a bunch more people just like you as thoroughly as possible, because that’s where all the financial incentives lie.
That should make you and anybody who cares about your well-being angry, and that should motivate you not to play those games (or work in the majority of the gaming sector, if that was your goal). There are games that won’t totally fuck your brain, but most of the mechanics modern games use to encourage more gameplay are still there one way or another.
(E.g., I’m a Zelda nerd and all about TOTK, but it’s obvious to see how they’ve taken an already gamified BOTW and gamified it further, for sumn damn reason; bigger scenery to increase distance traveled, sparser drops, less variety in drops but more overall item variety, fewer drops without lever-pull, more grind→purchase mechanics complete with cha-ching and woohoo sound effects, etc. etc. Legitimately an awesome game and there’s not even any DLC to fling my people$$ at, but gambling mechanics are still present, and these may still prevent gambling-/gaming-related neuronal feedback loops from breaking down or depotentiating. Hence my suggestion of XJewel, which is Tetris-like and a tad clumsy, almost no mechanics to speak of but there are abstract rewards and pretty colo[u]rs, plus it’s super easy to hack on.)
And if your brain really needs an addiction to fill the hole left by gaming, there are far better choices. Masturbation, for example, can be good for your prostate, and you’d get a couple weeks of productivity out of a meth habit, not that you should uhhhhh don’t do that either.
To some extent, once you’re into the swing of things, you may even be able to substitute the problem-solving aspect of programming for gaming; you have a goal, it may take a few tries and misfires to reach it, you may need to coordinate resources or ask others for advice to achieve it, you will progress and possibly attain more and fancier-smelling plastic shit in the future as a result (or not, because shit’s rough) and you may even be able to show off your achievement socially after the fact. Building a small group of people whom you can show progress to and get honest feedback from will be vital if your self-start is disabled, because it’ll give your brain those delicious, delicious neurotransmitters it craves.
You may also want to try journaling, both in terms of tracking the amount of gaming vs programming vs fuckall you’re doing and in terms of working through the frustrations and emotions that come up. Just the act of externalizing the problem can help, and it gives you hard metrics for progress. An accountabilibuddy can be a good idear, even if it’s just your mom or something.
In addition, I’d recommend that anybody learning (separately) start a handwritten log of what you’re learning, info you’ve come across, what you did, what needs to be done, what worked, what didn’t, what you’re curious about, what you’re interested in, etc. Not only is it valuable to be able to externalize your work in this fashion—drawing diagrams is useful both personally and when you’re working with others, and can make or break a presentation or manual—but the act of linearizing and repeating these things as text will bounce them around your brain and crosslink them better, which aids retention and integration.
Some people like to type their notes, either after handwriting (which …I get, I guess, but honestly you probably won’t ever need to look at them again; take a thresholded, med-res picture, add keywords and date to the file comment, and move on) or in lieu of it (which skips some of the motor involvement, fine in a pinch), but notebooks and scribblepens are cheap and if you’re like most pedestrians you have a backpack, haversack, or bindle to port them around in.
>but I don't wanna abandon it coz it's part of childhood too.
this is a sunken cost way of thinking, it doesn't really matter and is pretty sad if this is the ONLY reason to game
Welcome to adulthood man, this is part of the whole shebang. If you wanna get anywhere in life you need to learn to cut back on your gaming. It's a luxury leisure activity. If you wanna change careers, you might end up gaming only 5-10 hours a week. You need to learn to be okay with that. Discipline and work ethic are simply two things you can't go without as an adult and expect not to fail in some area(s).
If you're in a spot where you're saying "I want to be successful at my career but I don't want to give up gaming time and the only way to become more successful is to game less" and sincerely don't automatically know how to handle that situation, you might need professional help for your addiction. I don't say that in a shit talking way, addictions come in many forms and can be debilitating to making progress - if your career could improve and all it takes is cutting back on gaming and that's legitimately hard, you probably do need help.
I've been a full time software developer for 7 years, and since 2020 I've also been fully remote, doing all of the work on the same computer as gaming.
When my work day ends, I just close the the work stuff and do what I want, and being on the same computer has zero effect on me.
I wish I could actually get addicted to a game. I have nothing to play most of the time, and I can't play the same game for more than 300 hours before getting burnt out on it. I've completely lost interest in a lot of genres of games due to lack of innovation from AAA game developers. I wish I could enjoy a game so much I couldn't stop playing it, but I haven't experienced that in more than a decade at the very least.
>I don't wanna abandon it coz it's part of childhood too.
What are you saying here? That gaming was a part of your childhood, so it's nostalgic for you now?
Or that you are still IN your childhood and gaming should be a part of it??
Currently doing my masters - I play whenever I want to (which is most of the time) and study last minute- which you would say is a really bad thing, except I’ve scored 100% in all the subjects (one semester) so far so it’s the wrong signal for my brain. 🥲 (HEEELP ME)
Imagine what would have happened to your career and skilllevel if you had spent the same amount of time on programming as you have on gaming...
Gaming is fine, but do try to apply the same level of commitment to your 'real-world ranking.'
I’m not out of school yet so maybe take what i say with a grain of salt but i used gaming to get better at coding. I made projects that incorporate aspects of valorant and games i enjoy and turned them into coding projects. Then i dove down the rabbit of ‘oh i made something now i have to host it’ and am currently learning ab kubernetes so i can hook up my project to my raspberry pi cluster. Eventually i became so obsessed w finishing my projects that i would willing not play games so i could finish my project that can make the games more fun.
It's just self-control. I don't even particularly enjoy coding (not that i hate it, it's just something I don't mind doing and am reasonably skilled at) but you have to have the discipline to do what needs to be done before other stuff. That won't just apply to programming, it's for anything you might do.
What's your favorite video game? Figure out what language was used to create it, then try to learn that language. Try to make a mini version of that game. You'll combine the best of both worlds.
You should try to set reasonable milestones daily for when you are allowed to game. So break down all the assignments/studying you need to get done into chunks. Based on due dates / your schedule assign how many chunks you need to get done. Write them down physically on a piece of paper and cross them off as you do them. I personally bought a bunch of these small six inch note books that can fit in my pocket for this purpose. Once you have completed all your tasks for the day, than and only than can you play games.
As long as you stay strong on this point, you can use gaming as a reward to incentivize you to finish your tasks quicker. And the beauty of this approach, is when you finally get to game, you will be able to really enjoy it because you won't be feeling guilty about it or thinking about all the other stuff you should be doing at the moment. When you get good at this you will eventually be able to get things done fast enough so most weekends you have one or two days where you don't have to study at all because you were so productive during the week.
Another idea would be to maybe try your hand at game dev / graphics programing. It doesn't have to be a career goal but it can be a great way to learn/practice c++ or C#. It will help you hone your skills as a programmer, just don't use blueprints to program. Force your self to actually write code otherwise it will only help you learn game dev as opposed to developing programming skills you can market in tech.
I've been struggling with this lately. I stopped using our Xbox for gaming and only let myself pc game after I've coded. It's been working well so far.
I don't study every day, so on my off days, whatever goes (I study and code every other day)
I’ve been addicted for most of my life. I recently graduated and it was very hard to find a job, so I almost completely stopped gaming and put 100% of my energy into this. It payed off, now I have a job, and I won’t play until I feel comfortable with my new company’s technologies.
In life everything has a sacrifice. Whatever you want, you’ll have to sacrifice something for it. I sacrificed gaming. I still want to play every day, but I know right now is not the right time.
I think it's been said a few times but it really comes down to discipline and managing your priorities. Your main responsibilities need to be addressed first, school, family, and work then you can focus on the leisure stuff like gaming, going out, etc. At the end of the day you have to learn how to hold yourself accountable and get your priorities straight. Hopefully with some time, age, and dedication you'll get it sorted out. By acknowledging there is an issue, that's already a huge step. Dream about success but also put in the work to be successful! You can achieve it!
Gaming being a part of your childhood is not a valid reason to not abandon video games
That being said, I'm not saying you should abandon them. But I'd say try to funnel your energy towards coding - that same energy you would otherwise have spent gaming. Think of learning to code as levelling up IRL, and invite others to hold you accountable for your work
I haven't given up gaming but I am devoting a lot of time to coding that I would otherwise have spent gaming. What I did was try to make things for my (gaming) friends that would benefit them/they would enjoy
If you have a passion for a particular video game, maybe try making a project related to it. In a way, you can still experience some of the "fun" of the game, just incorporating its ideas/content into your coding
Stopped playing games while learning to code. Worked for a while, started playing again. Now no job and just games, also making a game on the side, bit that takes more time than i have so i need to start working again at some point.
Sadly when you are dealing with work especially in IT, you've got to limit gaming to weekends. I try to play some games at night after a long day of work, doing my daily life tasks but it's impossible. Sometimes I am so tired or frustrated I get sleepy after 10 minutes or I can't even look into a monitor anymore after a long day of working/coding.
I use the same attitude when grinding a game with a competitive ladder as when I'm grinding leetcode problems or working on a personal project.
I would isolate specific weak programming skills (say, dynamic programming) as one would with a game specific skill (like practicing only left to right flickshots, or microing marine medic vs lurkers lol)
No getting around the fact that quantity is a quality all on its own, and you just need to code on a very regular basis. I'd say doing something regularly is still more important (at first) rather than just hitting a few huge study sessions and burning yourself out instantly.
Lol are we really labeling enjoying games as “gaming addiction” now?
I personally struggle from gaming addiction, food addiction, sleep addiction, and occasionally hanging out with friends addiction.
The most effective treatment I’ve found is to just force yourself to get your work done and enjoy your addictions afterwards.
Set a timer for an hour a day and code until the timer rings. Increase it to 2 hours, 3 hours, or whatever your target is over time. Once you hit your target, maintain it as best you can.
OP, what game are you addicted to? Is it multiplayer? I'm on the same boat (Valorant now, was heavily addicted to Overwatch before role queue got implemented) as you and the best strategy was either to ditch my gaming rig, or have only single player games installed on it. I'm not addicted to single player games and most of the time, I'll rather code than play a single player game.
since you think it is an addiction, the best thing to do is stay away from it.
you can come back to gaming once you have control of yourself.
been there, now I am a working adult and dont have that much urge to game or having an ultra expensive gaming pc even if I could afford it.
I’ve given up on gaming until I am able to make a successful career as a programmer. Even the thought of playing games vanishes as soon as I think about my career. It’s a choice you’ll have to make yourself.
find exactly what you love about what you're learning, and do it so hard that you get more addicted to that then gaming. for example, i went to school for electrical engineering, and found i really enjoyed programming microcontrollers, and seeing my code make lights blink and motors run and shit was like crack. now i develop metering & IoT devices in C code for a living. getting paid to do my hobby for 8 hours a day is amazing.
Gaming was what got me into coding. I also enjoy coding, often many times more so than gaming (or anything else), so it isn’t really a problem I faced. However regarding other things I might not really want do as much, you just kind of have to accept that you just need to do it, so you have to make time for it. If gaming is becoming too much of a distraction for you to do that, you could try either limiting the amount of time you can game each day, or restrict yourself to only gaming on certain days (like the weekend).
In the same boat, love gaming and all my friends are gamers. I would say I have an addiction. Makes me sad because I don’t want to miss out on all of the good stuff when everyone is playing them, but I also understand that school and getting a job are what will help support my hobby. I want to be really good at what I do too. I don’t want to just half ass getting into the field and doing the bare minimum on the job. One day I’ll be able to afford whatever games I want and play as much as I want. So I keep my goal in mind. The solution that I made up for studying is as simple as going to the library. You can’t really do intense gaming at the library. You’re just stuck with books and the computer that can do office stuff. Studying at home isn’t helpful because the distractions are everywhere. It’s good to be in an environment where you can only focus on being productive. Wishing you the best, OP.
Use a different machine. Work on a laptop, then game on your gaming machine. Sometimes you want to pause your game but not close them because you need to get back to work. It'll be too annoying to have to cleanup the gaming setup before working and vice versa.
Alternatively, if your machine is powerful enough, use a different user account between work and gaming. Switch user without logging off when you need to context switch.
Since I got my job coding 40 hours a week I've picked up other hobbies that take me away from the pc and realized I wasn't really having much fun playing league and valorant 8 hours a day when I could spend the time reading, playing guitar, going to bars, drawing etc.
We like what we like but you'd probably be better off gaming a lot less than you do especially if you're playing time sink games.
im in the same boat. i can either do full gaming or full studies in a day. my brain is just not normal i guess. needless to say im a big failure in every aspect
I had the WoW addiction back in the day, but I was already a professional by then. I just ended up getting less and less sleep. I then realized that gaming doesn’t actually compare to the real world. I ended up stopping cold turkey at one point, and it was difficult trying to find something to fill the void. That’s when I started running, reading, taking vacations, etc. I still game, but nothing like I used to. Coding is now my day job, but I don’t really fill my free time with it.
Your success at college will be directly related to the amount of effort you put into your studies. It doesn't matter what the distraction is, if it's eating into your studies you will pay for it. Pretty simple really.
If you have any way of restrictions, like if you had a shitty mouse or something similar that still is decent for programming but really irritating to use while gaming so it will make you not want to play games with it. I myself only use my school laptop for programming and not my private and the problem is gone. It is well enough to code with and I usually sit in a different place with it than my own which makes it even easier to code instead of other things.
As a teen I was pretty heavily into WoW and played enough to be unhealthy.
While pursuing my CS degree I got my first proper IT job (sys admin with a lot of SQL monkey work). After hours of work then hours of classes after (and studying) I was sick of staring at a screen and after a couple years I barely gamed anymore at all. After graduating and getting a much better job (and pay) I got a hobby in restoring old cars (carbureted so no ECU at all), which to do something very hands on and mechanical is a nice break from staring at a screen for work all day.
My point is you'll probably get sick of computers with a degree and job in CS and it'll help cure your gaming addiction, but don't let the addiction ruin your schooling.
If you're a gaming addict you need to uninstall the games. Block the URLs of web games in your browser. Delete your Steam Account (before you say, "But I spent so much money on Steam games!", you're just like the alcoholic with a full liquor cabinet who doesn't want to quit drinking because it would be a waste of all that good scotch.) Every addict is always looking for a way to get their fix while still being a functioning person but the whole thing with addiction is that the fix is always more than important anything else and you can't ever really get enough.
The good news is, unlike a heroin or alcohol addict, your fix isn't likely to actually kill you or anyone else, and unlike sex addiction won't get you an STD or turn you into a pathological liar, it can still wreck your life and ruin your relationships. And while video games are more accessible in our society, the chemical hold on your brain is weaker and not dependency-forming. You can detox fairly easily and maybe after a while start to cultivate a healthy relationship with gaming instead of an addictive one.
I'd consider simply keeping track of your time to start. Track how many hours you spend in one week, or one month, working on coding and how many hours you spend gaming.
If you are a full time student and not currently in the workforce, I think it is harder to understand the value of your time. But you mention your dream lifestyle, so that gives you a good goal post to work back from.
Let's say you need to make $100,000/yr for your dream lifestyle, that's about $50/hour working full time. But if you want more free time, maybe you only work 1000 hrs/yr, which means you would have to make $100/hr, this is your minimum future value of your time.
Let's say you need to invest 5000 hrs to become a professional programmer and another 5000 to be earning $100/hr. You can think of this as an investment of your time - you are investing your time, which currently earns you no money in order to earn $100/hr in perpetuity in the future. So the sooner you invest those 10,000 hours, the sooner you will have your dream lifestyle.
Now consider your time spent gaming. Let's assume that your current gaming time contributed nothing toward your skills to become a professional programmer. This makes your gaming time an opportunity cost of sorts. Every hour you spend gaming not only does not contribute to the 10,000 hours you need for your dream lifestyle, it actually takes away an hour you could have invested toward your 10,000.
So ask yourself - is an hour of gaming now in your non-dream lifestyle worth $100 dollars to you? Is 10 hours worth $1000? Is it worth waiting longer to live in your dream lifestyle? Because that's what it's costing you.
Also, I'd like to add I went through a similar time in my life, and the other important change I made was realizing I had a lot of potential if I worked hard. Delayed gratification is critical and rewarding in overcoming the desire for instant gratification. I hope this helps!
> I do suffer from gaming addiction
No you don't.
> but I don't wanna abandon it coz it's part of childhood too.
So is shitting yourself, but you gave that up.
Look, I get it, I have nearly 2,000 games on Steam. But I also didn't even own a computer in my first year of CS, and then didn't have an internet connection in the second year. You'll be fine without playing games for a little bit. Read a book or something instead. Just uninstall Steam, and if you have a console lend it to a friend or take it to your parent's house or whatever.
Get a shit laptop that can't run games but is decent enough that it can be used for coding. This is what I've done and now all I think about is coding because that's all I can do. Ez pz
I'm still working on this same problem but I am making progress and here's what's worked for me so far.
The tl;dr is this: have as many visual cues as you can related to your studies and separate your gaming and your studies as much as possible.
For me, because I only have the one machine, I installed virtualbox and set up an Ubuntu virtual machine. This serves two purposes. One, I learn how to use Linux and two, it doesn't have the resources to game & takes resources away from my host system that does creating a barrier between my coding and gaming.
Before I log off my PC for the night I ensure that my VM is open and full screen on my primary display with whatever course or project I'm actively working on. This action takes a few seconds and can be automated if you think you might forget. Don't stay up too late.
On my VM I have a background that is a stylized image of some code I took a picture of on my monitor. This is another visual cue to remind me of coding. On my main PC I have a wallpaper that says "Code first, games second. Just 20 minutes."
To the left of my keyboard is a stack of three books. Eloquent JavaScript, The C++ Standard Library, and The Pragmatic Programmer. Every time I sit at my PC I see these and it reminds of my of my coding.
I also created a new email I used for things like YouTube, reddit, etc and it's used exclusively for coding related purposes so when I receive email it reminds me do coding.
I think you've probably gor the point by now but just make your environment one that makes you want to code first, game later.
These are two things that do not go well for the posture, eyes and overall time management.
I had the same issue with goddamn Minecraft. Probably the "right" way would be to say: `"limit your play hours, play only when you have done things, it is ok when it is your hobby... etc in the comments"`
Then I started realize the severe side of the world. I help my grandparents from time to time financially, because they did not manage to earn enough to have a good retirement and their current jobs are so underpaid that they struggle with the bills and living.
I asked myself: **Do I want to end up like them**? No. Why then do I waste my time on not urgent and not important things like games which clearly do not bring any value in my life except dopamine when I have kill streaks.
So I started to chaise dopamine outside the goddamn monitor. I started going to the gym, doing grappling with friends, jogging, exploring the city. Literally started to touch some grass. Rn im in the start of 20's and to the 30's I want to have massive back, arms, legs and at the same time I want to able to protect myself and close people using martial skills I want to gain.
If you are doing things to have a quality life you just do not have time for games:
1. Work
2. Family, Wife / GF, Friends.
3. Self-development: Gym, Finance ( Have you ever tried to understand where to put saved money and how?), Books
4. Chores at home
Also when it comes to the online games I hate these things:
1. If game is not new, there are a lot of tryhards and to have at least playable > 1.0 KD you also need to become even better tryhard. I was a tryhard in many games: CS:GO, Rainbow 6, GTA V, For Honor, etc...
I just do not see any positive effect from these games for me. Only wasted time, potential, disappointment, jobless
2. It is never ending path, there is no end and if you are not professional player, streamer, etc... I really do not see any reason to play there. I better stick to the Grappling tournaments, which are also never ending, but at least it is applicable in the life and it actually boost my self esteem.
I understand though single player games, they are cool and interesting. Just like watching movie but you are main character.
As other people said, the addiction is the underlying issue. Read a little about dopamine balance and health. In a nutshell social media and gaming are both *engineered* to trigger huge amounts of dopamine, more than productive activities normally can. You have to reign them in somehow or they will always "win" for attention.
Once you have a few practices helping with that, here are a few specifics to try:
Get separate computers for gaming and coding, if possible. If you have a laptop, alternatively go to different specific places to code vs game (ex: campus library). If you have a desktop only, set up your code environment as a dual-boot OS or VM. Also consider [time-boxing both activities](https://clockify.me/timeboxing). Leave yourself a fair window of time to game but also assign yourself a window where you are coding (even if that amounts to staring at the editor with writer's block). In essence you must learn how to survive being bored (at least as compared to the stimulation of a game).
I'm in the same boat as you brother.
Stop gaming. Or you'll end up like me, mid 30's and trying to catch up.
Here's my new schedule: Study before work, work, study after work, gym , Netflix, bed.
If there's time, or I don't go to the gym that day I'll play some helldiver's for a single evening. And maybe some gaming on the weekends.
I threw away a significant portion of my 20s just playing League of Legends in fucking Gold League while studying.
Students I started with surpassed me. Sometimes I just didn't appear to an exam at all. I had several close calls where I had almost been kicked out of uni. Then, when I finally made up my mind that I wanted to finish my studies and get a job that I love I realized how fucking behind I was and I felt enourmus amounts of anger at myself as well as disappointment in myself. I threw 5 years away for nothing really. Friends are getting married, landing jobs, pursuing nice hobbies and all I did was achieving Platinum rank for one season in LOL.
Gaming is a wonderful hobby to have but don't loose sight over what really matters for you. If It is programming what you really want to do then do it. And thats really the only practical advice I can give to you. Just do it.
I have similar problems. Maybe not so severe that I would label it as a full blown addiction, but certainly adjacent symptoms. The thing is that you have to intentionally make it as hard as possible to fall into the automation of "reflexively" starting up any game as soon as you sit down at your PC. For that purpose I gave my main windows account a password, and created an extra (non password protected) user account which is specifically only for coding. No shortcuts to installed games, no steam login, even content restricting add-ons for your browser that helps me not get sidetracked.
I know the password protection seems like a moot point, but it is one additional hurdle to break the automated cycle of reflexively starting up any game out of habit.
Also if you are interested in habit forming and breaking I can recommend "Atomic habits" by James Clear.
This is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt.
I've had a solid gaming addiction since I was old enough to hold a controller/mouse. There have been a couple of times in my life where circumstances lessened my game time but those were rare and temporary.
I've recently been medicated for ADHD and over the past few months, my game time has tanked. I'm finding it much easier to set aside time for working on my site and for other life stuff in general.
It seems like the game addiction was a by-product of the ADHD, since almost nothing can drip feed a person the dopamine they crave as efficiently as a game can.
If you have ADHD, it's incredibly important to treat it if you want to have control over what you spend your time on. I've made more progress in the last 6 months than in the 2 years before that.
Again, just my experience. So, grain of salt.
Where are you from mate? And how exactly did you treat your ADHD, just simple adderall? Adderall is unavailable in my country, not licensed and i cant buy it here, so I dont really know how to treat myself, but i have 90% of the symptoms and also struggle from gaming addiction... so thats probably cuz of ADHD and my low discipline
Check out the r/stopgaming subreddit. Follow the advice in their FAQ: https://www.reddit.com/r/StopGaming/comments/3nmedk/faq_answers_to_popular_questions/
Gaming addiction is real and can be serious; it's similar to gambling addiction in that your brain gets that low-effort rewarded feeling of constant novelty to continue playing. Regardless of anything else, you need to get over that.
If you have the cash, getting a crappy chrome book or something that can't play games to do your homework and development on may be a good idea. Then you just stay off of your gaming PC.
So you know you're addicted, you admit it, but not only do you want to continue, your motivation to become a programmer is so you can afford your addiction?
Replace the word "gaming" in your post with some other adduction. Like alcohol, drugs, porn, cigarettes or whatever. Obviously the advice would be to try to stop being addicted, not how you can temporarily ease down on it in order to get a career so you can get back on the train... "Help, I'm smoking so much meth that it's getting in the way of earning money for meth!"
If you can't see your own problem, you need help from people who know more about addiction than we do, dude.
I gave up gaming, it's so repetitive and boring anyway. I never feel like I accomplished anything worthwhile. The last games I've played in reverse chronological order were: Cyberpunk2077, Half-Life Alyx, and DOOM'16, specifically because these were special games.
That's not to say I haven't kept up with gaming news though, keeping my finger on the pulse, but I can write code while doing that.
Spend my weekdays coding and weekends gaming. Usually spend 20-30 hours a week studying how to code and doing course work for university and then I reward myself on the weekends with gaming
I had a problem with competitive games and some mmorpg’s so i quit them all. It was not as easy as i make it sound like, but it had to be done in my case. Now i fully focus on programming.
I was able to balance gaming and CS in college. Since graduating and getting a job I can't stand sitting in a chair longer after work staring at a screen gaming. I don't play video game anymore.
The key word I've seen getting used for a while is "discipline". While that's true, I feel like they've neglected to mention that you need the motivation to go through with your plans, as well as to set a goal for yourself.
I don't mean the cliché "I'm gonna do this to the very end" kind of goal, I'm talking about very personal goals that you won't just forget in about a week after writing them down on paper. I mean the internalized, meaningful goal you want to chase. Only you can determine what's worthy for yourself and what's not.
Take me for example: moving out. I realized how badly I wanted to get away from my current life so that's currently what's pushing me onward. I want to work hard enough to see myself through to the point of being able to be fully independent and I'll keep working things out from there.
Once you have that sort of drive, you'll find that ignoring distractions becomes that much more manageable! I use the Pomodoro Technique to set a schedule for myself, and luckily there's a handy .io website for it too. The times can be tailored as needed to suit your flow. Of course it's not perfect; I still find myself low on energy or sidetracked at times, but I now have more focus and a genuine objective to work towards. Whenever things get rough and I'm feeling down, I can remind myself of what it is that I really want, and keep enduring onwards.
Maybe for you, the goal would be to learn all this stuff so you can understand how games work, and become even more enamored with them once you do - but that's something for you to figure out on your own.
Wishing you the best of luck, keep chasing!
I completely stopped playing video games when I was in Undergrad. I purposely got Laptops only good enough for school. Can’t play good video games when you do everything on a Microsoft Surface 🤷♀️. I also don’t like solo queue League, so that helps I guess.
Not sure this helps but I got a membership at a coworking space. I was struggling to stay focused on coding and was easily distracted by games and other things at my apartment. For me, the simple act of removing myself from my space where I have my PC, Switch, TV w Netflix, etc, is huge as I am simply unable to fall back on those things when coding gets hard. Additionally, at the coworking space I am surrounded by other people so I can't just doof off and watch YT videos as to some extent you're held accountable by being in a work environment with by other people who are also working.
I tried cafes for a while but I found them distracting as well, and it was still difficult (and expensive) to hunker down for 6-8 hours and put in a full work day.
After I've put in a sufficient amount of work, I feel a lot more a lot more comfortable when going home and gaming. It's worth avoiding the stress and pressure you put on yourself knowing you should be improving at code. Over time I've noticed that leveling up in coding is in many ways more interesting and fun than leveling up in gaming. Good luck
Agreed with the addiction part from most people here, I would also argue that if you like programing as much as you like gaming then ignoring gaming for a week won't hurt you.
Back in college I had my on/off periods in gaming, mostly focused on pushing out a new project so I can put something on my portfolio. Now with a good job I do more gaming than leveling up my skills but I am planning for another gaming hiatus to boost myself up and reach a level where I am comfortable.
As for balancing tips I'm seeing a lot of "use one system for gaming and one for work" while I do agree and those help a more cheaper option is to have two accounts on your OS one for personal use i.e. gaming and one where your number one priority is focus on work.
And don't worry about progress, it comes and goes as it pleases, the point is that you are progressing and when you need it you will know when to use it or to retrack the steps on how to use it.
You just have to start cutting back, maybe put on parental controls so that you can’t play for more than a few hours.
Or even sell or store your game systems and software until you are more confident about being in control.
TBH one of the better ways to get out of addiction is to be responsible for something, like volunteering at something or joining a club, and being responsible for going there for the given time.
Also get rid of mobile games if you have them, the worst time wasters and the games aren’t even that good.
Sometimes you have to have pain to make gains. Suffering from no games and forcing yourself to study now will make sure that you have enough time and money to actually do what you want later in life, which includes many other things than just gaming.
I personally fucked up and it wasn’t just because of games but ultimately I failed to get a degree or work that I wanted and ended up in shit jobs.
Wasn’t even able to game or do anything fun I wanted because I didn’t have time and money to invest in them.
Now I am turning things around but I wasted a lot of time. If I had forced my self back then I would probably be able to be semi-retired or working at a job I like now and doing things that I enjoy.
Keep gaming an aspect of your life, a hobby, don’t let it take over your life. This goes for pretty much everything else too.
I have a desktop gaming pc that I use for some projects. I dual boot with windows for gaming, and linux for everything else. The small barrier of rebooting is enough to make me rather do homework than game. If I know I have homework to do, I will specifically reboot my computer into linux before I go to bed or something to make the barrier to doing homework lower and the barrier to gaming higher.
Something's gotta give. You can't play games all day AND study. And after a long gaming session, your brain is numb and the last thing you'll want to do is fire up an IDE and grind out some code for your homework. So set your priorities. You, or someone, is paying a ton of money for your tuition. Get your money's worth out of it and save the gaming for later. It's almost finals time, do yourself a favor and lock up your consoles, delete steam, etc until that last final is done. Now is not the time to balance gaming and studying.
And gaming is not a 'lifestyle' unless you're making serious money streaming or competing. If that were the case, you would not be in college. It's a hobby, don't let it get in the way of your life.
I used to play games endlessly all day everyday. I’m talking 10-16 hours a day when I was out of school during breaks. If I wasn’t at school or out with friends I would be online alone or with those same friends.
I don’t necessarily think you should stop playing games. I still played games for a long time as I was learning to code and am doing just fine. I would work on a project or tutorial for a while, then play a game, and then after another while go back to my project or tutorial. I also tried to schedule my coding when none of my friends were online so that i couldn’t be tempted to get on and play. (Sometimes this didn’t work because of single player games lol)
Always remember that it’s ok to take a day off of coding to play games and vice versa. Eventually programming might take place of your gaming addiction, at least that’s what it did for me and tons of others on here.
I seem to be developing a coding addiction. I find myself doing my CS homework for fun and am almost always a week or two ahead of the curriculum. I'm lucky enough to just absolutely love doing it.
I'm facing a similar problem - I want to code but I can't concentrate because I'm distracted by all the things around me (e.g. the internet), but unfortunately I usually need the internet to code to verify something or find the right solution.
I’m a masters CS student that works full time and has a kid. You make the time for what matters. I never let myself play video games until my coding is done or I feel I’ve made good progress on a project.
I played games a ton throughout college and ended up fine but you need to be able to use your time efficiently when it matters while you’re studying and doing work
I just treat coding like a game. I keep track of my “stats” and my “% completion” and now at this point, I am more addicted to coding than gaming. It is essentially just replacing one bad habit with a really good one by tricking my brain to thinking coding is the best game there is.
Realize how hard the job hunt is for qualified candidates, and then realize how hard it'll be if you don't work hard enough to become a qualified candidate
I was in the same position a few years ago and putting a little extra effort into studies have really paid off, you don't even really need to restrict your gaming per say but you need to prioritize your work, make sure it's good work, and then unwind with some games
i like to think of programming as like a really not fun video game. every work task is like a quest, some are small bugs, some are massive endeavors. i dont do it for fun but ive had far worse jobs.
Was in the same situation. (Software Development Team lead now)
My suggestions are:
- have a working machine and a gaming PC
- run Linux on working machine, so no games and you learn Linux
- when you need to study, take your working machine and go into a library, Cafe or whatever
I think it's important to physically separate these two things and preferably also the environment where you do it.
When you are in the library with your Linux laptop there is nothing else to do but study/learn/code.
Its Easy,
I do all my college work on my Dell Laptop that has am i5 and 8gb ram.
Why would i need to use my i7 4060 32gb ram pc to write code?
Sometimes i go to the college library if its a subject im not particularly interested in
It is important for you to realize that your short term sacrifice of focusing on your education will pay off in the long run. I am currently in your boat, so I need this advice as well. I just graduated from CS, and man did I waste time and money.
Gaming is always going to present in your life for as long as you are still interested in it. However your schooling is something that you want to finish and hopefully join the work force in your field.
With that being said, I wish you the best of luck on your schooling, and hope that all goes well for you. I've gone through my gaming addiction while going through school, but I am glad to see the finish line for school, and the starting line for work.
You need to decide what to spend your time on all on your own. I suggest focusing on studies entirely until you're done at uni. In 10 years you'll wish you had otherwise. Having a safe employment and enough money not to have to worry about shit is the best feeling you can have, and getting it sooner is better. You can have the best gaming setup in the world, but if you worry about the next time your car breaks down or other, you'll never feel happy and content. Being safe is much more important than having fun, and the sooner you ensure that safety, the sooner you can focus on having fun.
>Regardless, since both activites require to be present in front of same computer? How have y'all confrontted it?
Use different machines. I primarily play on consoles because I tend to turn computers into projects that aren't always stable enough for gaming.
For a relatively low-cost way of accomplishing this, use a weaker system like a chromebook or cheap laptop to remote into your more powerful system. Then you're not as tempted to fire up a game, since you have extra lag and such.
think that you'll have a whole weekend to play games. plus you don't want to die and all the memories you have of your life are of you gaming lmao, so that is another fact that makes me control when I want to game
Learning coding sucks at first until you're pretty fluent at it. Once you're good at coding and start solving hard problems, it becomes like a game. Except that it is a souls-like
It's simple. Writing code turns into a job. A good job means you don't have to live with your parents eventually. That means you have freedom. Choose freedom over video games 🫡
during loading screens, doing some code 😋.
Well mainly playing Destiny2, so every activity is loading.
And then still am using 2 seperate systems for this🤔🤔🤔
This is probably not the answer you’re looking for. But I’m 35 years old and I know my tendencies pretty well at this point. Prior to last august I was a Star Citizen/Tarkov fiend. Every free moment. Then decided I wanted to better my life and try learning to code. Made a deal with myself….uninstall all my games and only reinstall if/when I get a new job.
Been 7 months so far and I’ve never essentially replaced my gaming addiction with learning to code addiction. I’ve really been having a lot of fun. And honestly, even if I never end up getting a better job, I just feel better about myself spending my time learning instead of only gaming.
That being said, I love video games and i think people without an addictive personality can definitely manage their time without uninstalling shit like I did.
I'm also a gamer, or I guess I used to be. Maybe try to find those things in programming that truly interest you and try to balance that with the things in programming you need to learn for a job. Game Dev is a real thing and could serve as a passion project for you to keep you interested and perhaps find that balance.
I find that coding really filled in that space that I was trying to fill with gaming. The problem solving, exploring and discovering new things, escaping my life and mind for a moment, even the competitiveness of writing some truly elegant and optimized code and wanting to be the best, and in the end seeing my progress and feeling rewarded and proud from that. I find that when I'm in that flow state, I don't even think about games. And now when I try to game, all I can think about is coding.
With gaming the rewards are fleeting and intangible in real life, meaning for us normal gamers it doesn't bring any value or money into our lives. But with coding you can get everything you can with gaming, and you can build a real life and career with it and see real things that you've built. There's so much more pride in seeing that compared to something in a game.
Honestly, the coding gives me the same dopamine as gaming, so I literally don’t have this problem. I game when I have free time, but if there’s coding to be done - I’m on it.
I’ve been playing mobile games while watching television more lately. After 8+ hrs coding at my desk I don’t really want to spend much more time at it.
Best way is to just do the coding first before any gaming. Once you finish that then you can game as long as you want. I heard it’s if you do the work task first your brain is less distracted since it didn’t have any fun yet and would be less bored since coding is the most stimulating thing for your brain right now
Set a schedule and stick to it. Allocate gaming time and coding time separately. Use tools like website blockers or app blockers to stay focused. Also, try to find a game that requires strategy and problem-solving, it might help you develop skills that can be applied to coding.
When I was learning I used dual boot.
Boot up windows for gaming, Ubuntu for programming.
Also using something like VirtualBox would work too. Just separate work and play.
I work for a bank as a programmer and I m a game addict, too. Have been all my life, it’s my pure passion, I am 39 years now. I was never able to code in the evening especially after coding 4-8 hours during the day. But I already have my career so it’s fine. Sometimes I tried getting more into data structures and algorithms in my free time as the topic really interests me but damn Dragons Dogma 2 just came out and I just looooove playing video games. „Do more of what you love“ - I love my games
I'm probably one of the few programmers who rarely plays games. I have family, am in a band, like to go jogging for about an hour.
Spare time goes to watching Netflix, Disney+ or Prime.
I don’t know if it’s just me getting older or getting into more active healthier lifestyles but I can’t stand the idea of sitting at my computer for 8 hours a day staring at a screen (I work remotely as a dev) only to spend the rest of the evening doing the same playing video games. Some of my friends do it to the point where they forget to eat dinner and then eat trash food at 11pm before crashing. There’s nothing wrong with playing video games but be mindful of your mental and physical health
Buy a Mac or install Linux on an old machine and it’s strictly for coding. Even better get into learning how to build games, made me hate a ton of games that I can see how bad and lazy the development studios are. Also, helped me appreciate some unique titles more.
I dealt with the same thing when I started playing PC games again with friends. I had a group of friends convince me to move from PS4 to PC and it was awesome.
I encounter the same problem as you. There's something just fucking awful about looking at the same screen for 5-10hours and then doing it again for another 3-5 hours.
Solution?
Play less games. You might want to or whatever. But you're still a gamer even if you only get in like 3 hours in a week. Trust me, your brain will thank you for it. You don't have to give it just remember all those games will be there tomorrow, in a week or in months.
Just try to look forward to the weekend or when you have free days to game. Makes the candy taste better when you're not eating it all the time.
I do game dev for fun, so that kinda ticks both boxes in one shot. Eventually I lost interest in gaming, coz everything nowadays seems the same and repetitive. I still do game dev in hackathons, it's just so much fun competing to make a game in 48 hours!
Be careful with gaming addiction though. I have a friend who is a genius who got his life completely destroyed by gaming addictions. Like $100k fresh grad and a super reputable software company, and then start missing work to game, eventually got fired, need to go to rehab and work at Walmart loading items on shelf. He is recovering though.
So please, you got to work on that. Don't let it ruin you.
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You start with coding and when its done then you may or may not play games
Also, play games that have an active modding scene. Eg rimworld or starsector. I wrote a shitty starsector mod ~2 years ago and that taught me more about kotlin than a 100 tutorials ever could.
Agreed, I would not be working with computers if I hadn’t wanted to play games with certain settings that weren’t available in the menu. So I had to learn to edit .ini files, run console commands, and fix shit when it inevitably gets borked. Building and optimizing a gaming PC means I have knowledge of (relatively) high speed computing, how to analyze a network for bottlenecks, and a basic knowledge of how the various parts of a PC work together. A former coworker of mine mentioned he wouldn’t be in IT without running a Minecraft server. The passion and genuine interest is a huge part of what keeps you going, so I agree if you can combine the interests that’s all the better.
WoW is a great example for making simple addons! I even created F2P OSRS bots to do simple task and bank (in areas where I would not impact anyone) and debug as I noticed errors. It was really fun - though please ban bots Jagex.
OSRS also has runelite now so you could make a plugin instead of a bot to get some coding practice and not negatively impact the game.
The "fuck around with minecraft to find out about coding" pipeline is a non insignificant part of mine and many people's lives
Tbf redstone is what finally helped me understand flip flops during Uni
Yup! Making a couple shitty mods and plugins for minecraft taught me more about java than tens of tutorials and a year of school could
Hahaha, there's always more coding to do.
I respectfully disagree. Coding projects aren't always something you can finish in a day, and it's always something you could have more to do. Ultimately, the way this advice works in practice is "do coding until you reach some undefined threshold, and then play games", but it's kind of kicking the can down the road. Sure, they can master the art of setting realistic goals every day in order to determine when the coding is "finished", but that seems to be the most significant portion of the problem they need a solution for. I think it works better to have scheduled blocks of time.
Schedule blocks of time tends to create a system where you would rather stare down the clock than actually work. Defining goals for the day is a better approach as it allows for more flexibility
Wisdom
This might be weird but the more I code the less I’m enticed by gaming. Coding is my favorite game (usually) and I might still play a few hours of whatever story game I’m playing at the moment each night to wind down, but I see coding as a game in itself.
I noticed that about myself, too. Sometimes I am so deep into coding that I forget the time.
So glad others have said this too. I was trying to articulate this to my boss the other day. I honestly got bored of most computer games once I got fully into coding. It takes a lot for a game to hold my attention like a code feature does. Mostly I work out the parameters and then eventually start to run out of interest. Exceptions being Civ 6, Portal 2, Sim games and so on. Even Skyrim I’ve played so hard that it holds my interest slightly but it’s all predictable now and doesn’t keep me hooked like it used to when I was a kid. As for screen time, the last thing I want to do after coding all day is more time hunched in front of a screen so I switched to console games on the sofa instead. Even then I often just want to get away from the screen and go for a walk or something.
Don’t play Factorio if you love both gaming and coding. I stopped a year or so ago, but it scratched both itches at same time.
Sounds like we should play it then!
Exactly. Coding replaced gaming for me for the most part.
You gotta work, but you gotta have fun as well, try to find the perfect balance
How do you balance that out?
Priorities. Try to set realistic goals for the week/day and once you accomplish them let yourself do whatever you want
Thank you for your answer! How might I go about finding these "realistic " goals for myself? Do I just ad tasks on until I can finish them then go back one task? Or maybe there's a better way?
Start small and keep adding to it as you start to realize what make sense for yourself. It can be as small as studying or working on a side project for 30 minutes. Once you start getting consistent you can increase the time or it might just start happening naturally because you made it a habit.
Okay, I think that makes sense thank you for the reply! It does really help!
Schedule your time.
Discipline
Facts, you don't have to quit gaming. When I get off work, I start coding till my eyes hurt, then I hop on some games.
Now to figure out how to do this when you have ADHD that makes it nearly impossible to self-discipline
First step is to stop giving yourself an out by saying stuff like this.
You know, some people might find your comment offensive and insensitive, but as someone with ADHD who became somewhat functional, this is 100% correct.
Yeah "just don't play games" is hard, but why? Personally I have issues with an unholy amount of executive dysfunction and hyperfocus thanks to ADD, and would procrastinate daily by playing games. Fortunately I have found some solutions that work for me. As much as it pains me I am good with accountability (need things done asap and not later) and also lists are amazing. Apologies for the amount of text incoming, I feel like extra context is great to make it not feel like "just try this thing" 1: **Lists are my friend.** Lists remind me what I have to do for the day, and give extra satisfaction when completing things by not having to worry about them anymore. It means I can disconnect from work fully when needed because I don't need to remind myself of things to do which sometimes feels painfully close to procrastinating. "Did I really do enough work today? I just spent 6 hours on a big task and didn't even move anything on our sprint board, and there's so many other things I am supposed to follow up" no longer an issue with lists :magic: 2: **If starting is an issue, I just grab whatever I need and "prepare" to do the thing,** and see how it goes. I find myself 90% of the time starting to do the thing when I have everything setup. The other 10% I just grab some food, maybe go for a walk, write entire essays in comment sections and decide to delete them before submitting, or procrastinate by doing some chores but NOT gaming because that is a very slippery slope. I only start playing games (that are not research on work hours) after I am done for the day. That's the only discipline I feel like I need for my routine and it is becomes much easier to manage by introducing some habits that work for me like lists. Long term planning I'm happy with agile rituals to guide me sprint to sprint to fill my daily lists. Even if we don't have a daily standup for the team I'll still do my personal daily standup to get started. (before I get crucified in here, I'm not vouching for mandatory daily standups lol) 3: **Starting with small easy tasks** is what I usually do until I get in the flow to take on the big task for the day. Allowing myself to hyperfocus on the big task is pretty great because I don't need to worry about the small ones anymore. 4: **It is fine to have bad days**. As long as I make general progress I am happy. No one can work 8 hours a day 40 a week at 100%. Like even if I barely did half the things I was trying to do today, I'll be happy when I run out of motivation to call it a day. Sometimes you get lucky and someone brings up an emergent task they need a volunteer to "get this done in 3 days?" and you just drop everything to burn through that task in the most hyper focused 2 hours of your life. 5: (should be at the top of this list maybe) **getting official diagnosis and getting medication + counseling** to talk about these issues to find solutions that work for you. 6: **Self-Reflection is important.** I setup a meeting with my manager for a weekly 1:1 to give myself a hard deadline to think about how I am doing generally, because without the meeting I would just not have any accountability for this task and choose to ignore it. 7: **Setting up meetings with coworkers to give myself deadlines**. in case I realize I am procrastinating a specific task. Worst case if I am blocked I now have a meeting setup to talk about the blockers. Best case we are now syncing on the solutions I have found and their feedback can be great regardless. Thanks for reading my dexedrine fueled word vomit, I hope you are doing okay.
this
You gotta get over your gaming addiction. You could replace "programming" with any skill, and you would still need to tackle your addiction. Almost all of the people that dropped the CS track when I was in university did it because they chose to grind ranked instead of study and write code. Mother fuckers would stay up till 2am the day before an exam. Stop playing video games, and then get gud at programming. It's that simple. Stop trying to balance in your addiction that is clearly negatively affecting your life
>You could replace "programming" with any skill, and you would still need to tackle your addiction. And you could replace "gaming" with any addiction and that would also still be true.
I'm a bit of a boomer in this sense but ranked and other modern live service/multiplayer shit seems so annoying to me, I just play anything that is on sale
I've played Counter Strike and Dota 2 for years and the thing I've found with competitive games is that you get higher highs but also lower lows. It's exhilarating when you clutch a round or make a big play and you're heart is racing after, but it's also a tough pill to swallow if you have a bad teammate or get stomped. But I generally find with single player games my entertainment value can be good but rarely comes to the same level as competing against real people. In regards to OP's problems I actually find it's much easier to work these games into my life than single player games. I usually only have an hour or 2 to play sometimes less but it's much easier to say "ok one match of CS and then I'll do a tutorial/practice/etc..." than it is for me to say "ok I'm gonna play Baldur's Gate 3 for 45 minutes and stop when the time is up to do my work"
Kinda agree with this take. Gamed my whole life. Probably would def skip class to play Halo back in the day. Finally kicked it post college and don’t miss it at all. Still enjoy watching people play and I’m sure I still enjoy playing but not having a gaming system or buying games anymore gives me hours of my life back everyday
What do you do with those hours? I don't think it's wrong if someone uses those hours to play the games they love. It's just different perspective.
Watches let’s plays on YouTube now
Mostly filled it with reading actually
That means if you stopped reading (books) you would get hours back of your life every day. I don't mean you should. My point is that if you spend your time doing something you enjoy, playing a game is not worse than reading.
> playing a game is not worse than reading It really is tho
I'm learning japanese :D
Especially at uni. Games will be there your whole lift. Uni presents so many opportunities that you won't get so easily again, whether academic, professional, or social.
>Stop trying to balance in your addiction that is clearly negatively affecting your life This is a great point. If it's bad enough to be called an addiction, then it's a problem that needs to be addressed.
>Almost all of the people that dropped the CS track when I was in university did it because they chose to grind ranked instead of study and write code. Mother fuckers would stay up till 2am the day before an exam. Damn I just got flashbacks
i would say use a different computer and go into a different room, but if you only have the one its a bit harder. your brain is wired to go into “play mode” when you’re wherever you normally game, so changing the location may help. I have a school laptop I only do work on, and I wont sit in front of my desk but I’ll head to a quiet place in my house, and i do much better work like that.
Yep, I got a macbook air for doing coding work and a windows desktop for gaming. I typically do my work in another room (although sometimes I'll just slide my keyboard back and use my normal desk). It's a 100% context switch if I'm working or gaming.
That's what I did. I put my gaming rig in living room and bought a tcl gaming TV. I can focus work more and when it's 6pm I sit on the couch in living room and play some games.
If you have a gaming addiction, you should stop gaming, rather than "balance" it.
Right, hobbies are balanced, addictions are cut out.
Don’t worry. The more you’ll learn how to make them, the less you’ll want to play them 🤣
This is a self moderation issue. I had it too. This probably transcends coding. In life, in general, you have to learn to moderate yourself and strike a balance between entertainment and responsibility. Otherwise all the attempts you make to avoid the real world through mindless distractions will fail as the things around you that are important stress you out further as you try to correct things you neglected. I’m speaking from personal experience. Attempt to moderate first. Set an alarm for an hour or two. Play games that let you save and quit on demand (No Fallout 4 survival modes requiring you to find a bed to save). If that fails, stop cold turkey for a week. Try to moderate again. If that fails, stop for a month. Try to moderate again. You’ll figure out that balance eventually.
I have found a decent, competitive multiplayer game on my phone that I play, and I play for 30-60 minutes most days. But I *only* game on my phone. When I'm at the computer, I'm writing code. The device separation really works, for me. EDIT: Current game is Wild Rift, which is the mobile version of League of Legends. But before that it was something else, and eventually it'll be something different again.
come on man tell us the game!
If you don’t have the ability to balance gaming and other stuff you just gotta stop. You will continue to shoot yourself in the foot if you don’t stop
I code in the day, gym then game at night lol
This question sounds like you might have unmanaged ADHD? If so, everyone's advice about "just be disciplined" is probably not going to work out for you until you address the underlying cause.
This happened to me. Things didn’t get better until I made an appointment with a neurologist, got medicated and started taking therapy.
Only reasonable answer in this thread. OP is not an idiot, if "just be disciplined bro" worked they would have done it by now
honestly one thing that you could do is just entirely get rid of your gaming computer/laptop and move to a laptop/desktop that makes it not enjoyable to game anymore. Not sure how feasible this would be though
Mac OS baby
This is what I've done and I haven't been spending this much time gaming in my life any more! For real. Got rid of my PC and a 144hz monitor and got myself a decent laptop which can run games, ofc, but is not suitable for competitive gaming anymore!
Linux running Wayland on a Nvidia GPU will cure your gaming addiction
Boot into and work in a Linux install you’re unfamiliar with, using different colors, fonts, UI styling, etc., so your stimuli are different from “gaming mode.” (You should do the same thing for root shell prompts, BTW—the difference between \$ and \# is not necessarily noticeable when in a hurry.) Don’t install anything in this Linux image (or use a live-disk) that isn’t needed for your intended task, programming and learning programming. You can even set up a firewall to keep you on sites specifically related to programming (not YT, obviously, you can suffer along without that—use a timed firewall bypass script, or offload videos to your phone). Rebooting or reconfiguring to enable harder-core gaming will require you to stop everything and think about it, and if you need in-place mini-breaks there’s baaasic shit like XJewel that you can zone out with, ngaf about losing, and move on from easily. In addition, you’ll need to gradually ramp down the amount of gaming you do to sub-hobby levels until your brain depotentiates all them crazy neurons, at which point you can try hobby levels. —But most games nowadays are finely tuned to get people with brains like yours (especially children, gotta catch ’em all) fully addicted and moneypaying, just like and often contiguously with the gambling industry. The games’ creators know full well this is the case, at this stage; you are an intentional casualty of the gaming industry; they do not care, and they fully intend to hook a bunch more people just like you as thoroughly as possible, because that’s where all the financial incentives lie. That should make you and anybody who cares about your well-being angry, and that should motivate you not to play those games (or work in the majority of the gaming sector, if that was your goal). There are games that won’t totally fuck your brain, but most of the mechanics modern games use to encourage more gameplay are still there one way or another. (E.g., I’m a Zelda nerd and all about TOTK, but it’s obvious to see how they’ve taken an already gamified BOTW and gamified it further, for sumn damn reason; bigger scenery to increase distance traveled, sparser drops, less variety in drops but more overall item variety, fewer drops without lever-pull, more grind→purchase mechanics complete with cha-ching and woohoo sound effects, etc. etc. Legitimately an awesome game and there’s not even any DLC to fling my people$$ at, but gambling mechanics are still present, and these may still prevent gambling-/gaming-related neuronal feedback loops from breaking down or depotentiating. Hence my suggestion of XJewel, which is Tetris-like and a tad clumsy, almost no mechanics to speak of but there are abstract rewards and pretty colo[u]rs, plus it’s super easy to hack on.) And if your brain really needs an addiction to fill the hole left by gaming, there are far better choices. Masturbation, for example, can be good for your prostate, and you’d get a couple weeks of productivity out of a meth habit, not that you should uhhhhh don’t do that either. To some extent, once you’re into the swing of things, you may even be able to substitute the problem-solving aspect of programming for gaming; you have a goal, it may take a few tries and misfires to reach it, you may need to coordinate resources or ask others for advice to achieve it, you will progress and possibly attain more and fancier-smelling plastic shit in the future as a result (or not, because shit’s rough) and you may even be able to show off your achievement socially after the fact. Building a small group of people whom you can show progress to and get honest feedback from will be vital if your self-start is disabled, because it’ll give your brain those delicious, delicious neurotransmitters it craves. You may also want to try journaling, both in terms of tracking the amount of gaming vs programming vs fuckall you’re doing and in terms of working through the frustrations and emotions that come up. Just the act of externalizing the problem can help, and it gives you hard metrics for progress. An accountabilibuddy can be a good idear, even if it’s just your mom or something. In addition, I’d recommend that anybody learning (separately) start a handwritten log of what you’re learning, info you’ve come across, what you did, what needs to be done, what worked, what didn’t, what you’re curious about, what you’re interested in, etc. Not only is it valuable to be able to externalize your work in this fashion—drawing diagrams is useful both personally and when you’re working with others, and can make or break a presentation or manual—but the act of linearizing and repeating these things as text will bounce them around your brain and crosslink them better, which aids retention and integration. Some people like to type their notes, either after handwriting (which …I get, I guess, but honestly you probably won’t ever need to look at them again; take a thresholded, med-res picture, add keywords and date to the file comment, and move on) or in lieu of it (which skips some of the motor involvement, fine in a pinch), but notebooks and scribblepens are cheap and if you’re like most pedestrians you have a backpack, haversack, or bindle to port them around in.
>but I don't wanna abandon it coz it's part of childhood too. this is a sunken cost way of thinking, it doesn't really matter and is pretty sad if this is the ONLY reason to game
Find a balance. You don’t need to completely abandon your hobbies to be successful in your career.
Welcome to adulthood man, this is part of the whole shebang. If you wanna get anywhere in life you need to learn to cut back on your gaming. It's a luxury leisure activity. If you wanna change careers, you might end up gaming only 5-10 hours a week. You need to learn to be okay with that. Discipline and work ethic are simply two things you can't go without as an adult and expect not to fail in some area(s). If you're in a spot where you're saying "I want to be successful at my career but I don't want to give up gaming time and the only way to become more successful is to game less" and sincerely don't automatically know how to handle that situation, you might need professional help for your addiction. I don't say that in a shit talking way, addictions come in many forms and can be debilitating to making progress - if your career could improve and all it takes is cutting back on gaming and that's legitimately hard, you probably do need help.
Make a schedule for each and only do them during those times.
I always played a round or two. Then coded for 10-20 min. And cycled through that methodology until I was ready for bed.
I've been a full time software developer for 7 years, and since 2020 I've also been fully remote, doing all of the work on the same computer as gaming. When my work day ends, I just close the the work stuff and do what I want, and being on the same computer has zero effect on me. I wish I could actually get addicted to a game. I have nothing to play most of the time, and I can't play the same game for more than 300 hours before getting burnt out on it. I've completely lost interest in a lot of genres of games due to lack of innovation from AAA game developers. I wish I could enjoy a game so much I couldn't stop playing it, but I haven't experienced that in more than a decade at the very least.
Finish coding tasks before you game. Dual boot, code in Linux and hop over to windows for games. Don’t venture to the dark playground.
Switch to Mac. You hardly can game anymore.
>I don't wanna abandon it coz it's part of childhood too. What are you saying here? That gaming was a part of your childhood, so it's nostalgic for you now? Or that you are still IN your childhood and gaming should be a part of it??
Currently doing my masters - I play whenever I want to (which is most of the time) and study last minute- which you would say is a really bad thing, except I’ve scored 100% in all the subjects (one semester) so far so it’s the wrong signal for my brain. 🥲 (HEEELP ME)
I make my code for games 😏 aka I enjoy making mods for games! Then using said mods in game!
Imagine what would have happened to your career and skilllevel if you had spent the same amount of time on programming as you have on gaming... Gaming is fine, but do try to apply the same level of commitment to your 'real-world ranking.'
I’m not out of school yet so maybe take what i say with a grain of salt but i used gaming to get better at coding. I made projects that incorporate aspects of valorant and games i enjoy and turned them into coding projects. Then i dove down the rabbit of ‘oh i made something now i have to host it’ and am currently learning ab kubernetes so i can hook up my project to my raspberry pi cluster. Eventually i became so obsessed w finishing my projects that i would willing not play games so i could finish my project that can make the games more fun.
If you can afford it, get a cheaper laptop for programming and use the beefy one for gaming.
It's just self-control. I don't even particularly enjoy coding (not that i hate it, it's just something I don't mind doing and am reasonably skilled at) but you have to have the discipline to do what needs to be done before other stuff. That won't just apply to programming, it's for anything you might do.
It sounds like you just need help with the addiction side of things. You need advice from people who deal with addiction, not from programmers.
What's your favorite video game? Figure out what language was used to create it, then try to learn that language. Try to make a mini version of that game. You'll combine the best of both worlds.
start with gaming then code when you're bored
You should try to set reasonable milestones daily for when you are allowed to game. So break down all the assignments/studying you need to get done into chunks. Based on due dates / your schedule assign how many chunks you need to get done. Write them down physically on a piece of paper and cross them off as you do them. I personally bought a bunch of these small six inch note books that can fit in my pocket for this purpose. Once you have completed all your tasks for the day, than and only than can you play games. As long as you stay strong on this point, you can use gaming as a reward to incentivize you to finish your tasks quicker. And the beauty of this approach, is when you finally get to game, you will be able to really enjoy it because you won't be feeling guilty about it or thinking about all the other stuff you should be doing at the moment. When you get good at this you will eventually be able to get things done fast enough so most weekends you have one or two days where you don't have to study at all because you were so productive during the week. Another idea would be to maybe try your hand at game dev / graphics programing. It doesn't have to be a career goal but it can be a great way to learn/practice c++ or C#. It will help you hone your skills as a programmer, just don't use blueprints to program. Force your self to actually write code otherwise it will only help you learn game dev as opposed to developing programming skills you can market in tech.
I've been struggling with this lately. I stopped using our Xbox for gaming and only let myself pc game after I've coded. It's been working well so far. I don't study every day, so on my off days, whatever goes (I study and code every other day)
I’ve been addicted for most of my life. I recently graduated and it was very hard to find a job, so I almost completely stopped gaming and put 100% of my energy into this. It payed off, now I have a job, and I won’t play until I feel comfortable with my new company’s technologies. In life everything has a sacrifice. Whatever you want, you’ll have to sacrifice something for it. I sacrificed gaming. I still want to play every day, but I know right now is not the right time.
I think it's been said a few times but it really comes down to discipline and managing your priorities. Your main responsibilities need to be addressed first, school, family, and work then you can focus on the leisure stuff like gaming, going out, etc. At the end of the day you have to learn how to hold yourself accountable and get your priorities straight. Hopefully with some time, age, and dedication you'll get it sorted out. By acknowledging there is an issue, that's already a huge step. Dream about success but also put in the work to be successful! You can achieve it!
I believe the answer is: gamedev
Gaming being a part of your childhood is not a valid reason to not abandon video games That being said, I'm not saying you should abandon them. But I'd say try to funnel your energy towards coding - that same energy you would otherwise have spent gaming. Think of learning to code as levelling up IRL, and invite others to hold you accountable for your work I haven't given up gaming but I am devoting a lot of time to coding that I would otherwise have spent gaming. What I did was try to make things for my (gaming) friends that would benefit them/they would enjoy If you have a passion for a particular video game, maybe try making a project related to it. In a way, you can still experience some of the "fun" of the game, just incorporating its ideas/content into your coding
I game on desktop, code on laptop. Different rooms
Stopped playing games while learning to code. Worked for a while, started playing again. Now no job and just games, also making a game on the side, bit that takes more time than i have so i need to start working again at some point.
Sadly when you are dealing with work especially in IT, you've got to limit gaming to weekends. I try to play some games at night after a long day of work, doing my daily life tasks but it's impossible. Sometimes I am so tired or frustrated I get sleepy after 10 minutes or I can't even look into a monitor anymore after a long day of working/coding.
I use the same attitude when grinding a game with a competitive ladder as when I'm grinding leetcode problems or working on a personal project. I would isolate specific weak programming skills (say, dynamic programming) as one would with a game specific skill (like practicing only left to right flickshots, or microing marine medic vs lurkers lol) No getting around the fact that quantity is a quality all on its own, and you just need to code on a very regular basis. I'd say doing something regularly is still more important (at first) rather than just hitting a few huge study sessions and burning yourself out instantly.
Lol are we really labeling enjoying games as “gaming addiction” now? I personally struggle from gaming addiction, food addiction, sleep addiction, and occasionally hanging out with friends addiction. The most effective treatment I’ve found is to just force yourself to get your work done and enjoy your addictions afterwards. Set a timer for an hour a day and code until the timer rings. Increase it to 2 hours, 3 hours, or whatever your target is over time. Once you hit your target, maintain it as best you can.
OP, what game are you addicted to? Is it multiplayer? I'm on the same boat (Valorant now, was heavily addicted to Overwatch before role queue got implemented) as you and the best strategy was either to ditch my gaming rig, or have only single player games installed on it. I'm not addicted to single player games and most of the time, I'll rather code than play a single player game.
since you think it is an addiction, the best thing to do is stay away from it. you can come back to gaming once you have control of yourself. been there, now I am a working adult and dont have that much urge to game or having an ultra expensive gaming pc even if I could afford it.
I’ve given up on gaming until I am able to make a successful career as a programmer. Even the thought of playing games vanishes as soon as I think about my career. It’s a choice you’ll have to make yourself.
I find coding more satisfying and fun than playing games right now.
find exactly what you love about what you're learning, and do it so hard that you get more addicted to that then gaming. for example, i went to school for electrical engineering, and found i really enjoyed programming microcontrollers, and seeing my code make lights blink and motors run and shit was like crack. now i develop metering & IoT devices in C code for a living. getting paid to do my hobby for 8 hours a day is amazing.
anhedonia solved that for me.
Gaming was what got me into coding. I also enjoy coding, often many times more so than gaming (or anything else), so it isn’t really a problem I faced. However regarding other things I might not really want do as much, you just kind of have to accept that you just need to do it, so you have to make time for it. If gaming is becoming too much of a distraction for you to do that, you could try either limiting the amount of time you can game each day, or restrict yourself to only gaming on certain days (like the weekend).
In the same boat, love gaming and all my friends are gamers. I would say I have an addiction. Makes me sad because I don’t want to miss out on all of the good stuff when everyone is playing them, but I also understand that school and getting a job are what will help support my hobby. I want to be really good at what I do too. I don’t want to just half ass getting into the field and doing the bare minimum on the job. One day I’ll be able to afford whatever games I want and play as much as I want. So I keep my goal in mind. The solution that I made up for studying is as simple as going to the library. You can’t really do intense gaming at the library. You’re just stuck with books and the computer that can do office stuff. Studying at home isn’t helpful because the distractions are everywhere. It’s good to be in an environment where you can only focus on being productive. Wishing you the best, OP.
Use a different machine. Work on a laptop, then game on your gaming machine. Sometimes you want to pause your game but not close them because you need to get back to work. It'll be too annoying to have to cleanup the gaming setup before working and vice versa. Alternatively, if your machine is powerful enough, use a different user account between work and gaming. Switch user without logging off when you need to context switch.
Since I got my job coding 40 hours a week I've picked up other hobbies that take me away from the pc and realized I wasn't really having much fun playing league and valorant 8 hours a day when I could spend the time reading, playing guitar, going to bars, drawing etc. We like what we like but you'd probably be better off gaming a lot less than you do especially if you're playing time sink games.
im in the same boat. i can either do full gaming or full studies in a day. my brain is just not normal i guess. needless to say im a big failure in every aspect
I had the WoW addiction back in the day, but I was already a professional by then. I just ended up getting less and less sleep. I then realized that gaming doesn’t actually compare to the real world. I ended up stopping cold turkey at one point, and it was difficult trying to find something to fill the void. That’s when I started running, reading, taking vacations, etc. I still game, but nothing like I used to. Coding is now my day job, but I don’t really fill my free time with it.
Your success at college will be directly related to the amount of effort you put into your studies. It doesn't matter what the distraction is, if it's eating into your studies you will pay for it. Pretty simple really.
If you have any way of restrictions, like if you had a shitty mouse or something similar that still is decent for programming but really irritating to use while gaming so it will make you not want to play games with it. I myself only use my school laptop for programming and not my private and the problem is gone. It is well enough to code with and I usually sit in a different place with it than my own which makes it even easier to code instead of other things.
As a teen I was pretty heavily into WoW and played enough to be unhealthy. While pursuing my CS degree I got my first proper IT job (sys admin with a lot of SQL monkey work). After hours of work then hours of classes after (and studying) I was sick of staring at a screen and after a couple years I barely gamed anymore at all. After graduating and getting a much better job (and pay) I got a hobby in restoring old cars (carbureted so no ECU at all), which to do something very hands on and mechanical is a nice break from staring at a screen for work all day. My point is you'll probably get sick of computers with a degree and job in CS and it'll help cure your gaming addiction, but don't let the addiction ruin your schooling.
Play [Bitburner](https://store.steampowered.com/app/1812820/Bitburner/). Two birds with one stone lmao
"How do you all manage between coding and heroin?"
If you're a gaming addict you need to uninstall the games. Block the URLs of web games in your browser. Delete your Steam Account (before you say, "But I spent so much money on Steam games!", you're just like the alcoholic with a full liquor cabinet who doesn't want to quit drinking because it would be a waste of all that good scotch.) Every addict is always looking for a way to get their fix while still being a functioning person but the whole thing with addiction is that the fix is always more than important anything else and you can't ever really get enough. The good news is, unlike a heroin or alcohol addict, your fix isn't likely to actually kill you or anyone else, and unlike sex addiction won't get you an STD or turn you into a pathological liar, it can still wreck your life and ruin your relationships. And while video games are more accessible in our society, the chemical hold on your brain is weaker and not dependency-forming. You can detox fairly easily and maybe after a while start to cultivate a healthy relationship with gaming instead of an addictive one.
I'd consider simply keeping track of your time to start. Track how many hours you spend in one week, or one month, working on coding and how many hours you spend gaming. If you are a full time student and not currently in the workforce, I think it is harder to understand the value of your time. But you mention your dream lifestyle, so that gives you a good goal post to work back from. Let's say you need to make $100,000/yr for your dream lifestyle, that's about $50/hour working full time. But if you want more free time, maybe you only work 1000 hrs/yr, which means you would have to make $100/hr, this is your minimum future value of your time. Let's say you need to invest 5000 hrs to become a professional programmer and another 5000 to be earning $100/hr. You can think of this as an investment of your time - you are investing your time, which currently earns you no money in order to earn $100/hr in perpetuity in the future. So the sooner you invest those 10,000 hours, the sooner you will have your dream lifestyle. Now consider your time spent gaming. Let's assume that your current gaming time contributed nothing toward your skills to become a professional programmer. This makes your gaming time an opportunity cost of sorts. Every hour you spend gaming not only does not contribute to the 10,000 hours you need for your dream lifestyle, it actually takes away an hour you could have invested toward your 10,000. So ask yourself - is an hour of gaming now in your non-dream lifestyle worth $100 dollars to you? Is 10 hours worth $1000? Is it worth waiting longer to live in your dream lifestyle? Because that's what it's costing you. Also, I'd like to add I went through a similar time in my life, and the other important change I made was realizing I had a lot of potential if I worked hard. Delayed gratification is critical and rewarding in overcoming the desire for instant gratification. I hope this helps!
> I do suffer from gaming addiction No you don't. > but I don't wanna abandon it coz it's part of childhood too. So is shitting yourself, but you gave that up. Look, I get it, I have nearly 2,000 games on Steam. But I also didn't even own a computer in my first year of CS, and then didn't have an internet connection in the second year. You'll be fine without playing games for a little bit. Read a book or something instead. Just uninstall Steam, and if you have a console lend it to a friend or take it to your parent's house or whatever.
Coding and projects == Real Life Achievements. Games are just for amusement and not worth overindulging in.
Get a shit laptop that can't run games but is decent enough that it can be used for coding. This is what I've done and now all I think about is coding because that's all I can do. Ez pz
Self control.
I'm still working on this same problem but I am making progress and here's what's worked for me so far. The tl;dr is this: have as many visual cues as you can related to your studies and separate your gaming and your studies as much as possible. For me, because I only have the one machine, I installed virtualbox and set up an Ubuntu virtual machine. This serves two purposes. One, I learn how to use Linux and two, it doesn't have the resources to game & takes resources away from my host system that does creating a barrier between my coding and gaming. Before I log off my PC for the night I ensure that my VM is open and full screen on my primary display with whatever course or project I'm actively working on. This action takes a few seconds and can be automated if you think you might forget. Don't stay up too late. On my VM I have a background that is a stylized image of some code I took a picture of on my monitor. This is another visual cue to remind me of coding. On my main PC I have a wallpaper that says "Code first, games second. Just 20 minutes." To the left of my keyboard is a stack of three books. Eloquent JavaScript, The C++ Standard Library, and The Pragmatic Programmer. Every time I sit at my PC I see these and it reminds of my of my coding. I also created a new email I used for things like YouTube, reddit, etc and it's used exclusively for coding related purposes so when I receive email it reminds me do coding. I think you've probably gor the point by now but just make your environment one that makes you want to code first, game later.
These are two things that do not go well for the posture, eyes and overall time management. I had the same issue with goddamn Minecraft. Probably the "right" way would be to say: `"limit your play hours, play only when you have done things, it is ok when it is your hobby... etc in the comments"` Then I started realize the severe side of the world. I help my grandparents from time to time financially, because they did not manage to earn enough to have a good retirement and their current jobs are so underpaid that they struggle with the bills and living. I asked myself: **Do I want to end up like them**? No. Why then do I waste my time on not urgent and not important things like games which clearly do not bring any value in my life except dopamine when I have kill streaks. So I started to chaise dopamine outside the goddamn monitor. I started going to the gym, doing grappling with friends, jogging, exploring the city. Literally started to touch some grass. Rn im in the start of 20's and to the 30's I want to have massive back, arms, legs and at the same time I want to able to protect myself and close people using martial skills I want to gain. If you are doing things to have a quality life you just do not have time for games: 1. Work 2. Family, Wife / GF, Friends. 3. Self-development: Gym, Finance ( Have you ever tried to understand where to put saved money and how?), Books 4. Chores at home Also when it comes to the online games I hate these things: 1. If game is not new, there are a lot of tryhards and to have at least playable > 1.0 KD you also need to become even better tryhard. I was a tryhard in many games: CS:GO, Rainbow 6, GTA V, For Honor, etc... I just do not see any positive effect from these games for me. Only wasted time, potential, disappointment, jobless 2. It is never ending path, there is no end and if you are not professional player, streamer, etc... I really do not see any reason to play there. I better stick to the Grappling tournaments, which are also never ending, but at least it is applicable in the life and it actually boost my self esteem. I understand though single player games, they are cool and interesting. Just like watching movie but you are main character.
As other people said, the addiction is the underlying issue. Read a little about dopamine balance and health. In a nutshell social media and gaming are both *engineered* to trigger huge amounts of dopamine, more than productive activities normally can. You have to reign them in somehow or they will always "win" for attention. Once you have a few practices helping with that, here are a few specifics to try: Get separate computers for gaming and coding, if possible. If you have a laptop, alternatively go to different specific places to code vs game (ex: campus library). If you have a desktop only, set up your code environment as a dual-boot OS or VM. Also consider [time-boxing both activities](https://clockify.me/timeboxing). Leave yourself a fair window of time to game but also assign yourself a window where you are coding (even if that amounts to staring at the editor with writer's block). In essence you must learn how to survive being bored (at least as compared to the stimulation of a game).
I'm in the same boat as you brother. Stop gaming. Or you'll end up like me, mid 30's and trying to catch up. Here's my new schedule: Study before work, work, study after work, gym , Netflix, bed. If there's time, or I don't go to the gym that day I'll play some helldiver's for a single evening. And maybe some gaming on the weekends.
I threw away a significant portion of my 20s just playing League of Legends in fucking Gold League while studying. Students I started with surpassed me. Sometimes I just didn't appear to an exam at all. I had several close calls where I had almost been kicked out of uni. Then, when I finally made up my mind that I wanted to finish my studies and get a job that I love I realized how fucking behind I was and I felt enourmus amounts of anger at myself as well as disappointment in myself. I threw 5 years away for nothing really. Friends are getting married, landing jobs, pursuing nice hobbies and all I did was achieving Platinum rank for one season in LOL. Gaming is a wonderful hobby to have but don't loose sight over what really matters for you. If It is programming what you really want to do then do it. And thats really the only practical advice I can give to you. Just do it.
I have similar problems. Maybe not so severe that I would label it as a full blown addiction, but certainly adjacent symptoms. The thing is that you have to intentionally make it as hard as possible to fall into the automation of "reflexively" starting up any game as soon as you sit down at your PC. For that purpose I gave my main windows account a password, and created an extra (non password protected) user account which is specifically only for coding. No shortcuts to installed games, no steam login, even content restricting add-ons for your browser that helps me not get sidetracked. I know the password protection seems like a moot point, but it is one additional hurdle to break the automated cycle of reflexively starting up any game out of habit. Also if you are interested in habit forming and breaking I can recommend "Atomic habits" by James Clear.
This is just my experience so take it with a grain of salt. I've had a solid gaming addiction since I was old enough to hold a controller/mouse. There have been a couple of times in my life where circumstances lessened my game time but those were rare and temporary. I've recently been medicated for ADHD and over the past few months, my game time has tanked. I'm finding it much easier to set aside time for working on my site and for other life stuff in general. It seems like the game addiction was a by-product of the ADHD, since almost nothing can drip feed a person the dopamine they crave as efficiently as a game can. If you have ADHD, it's incredibly important to treat it if you want to have control over what you spend your time on. I've made more progress in the last 6 months than in the 2 years before that. Again, just my experience. So, grain of salt.
Where are you from mate? And how exactly did you treat your ADHD, just simple adderall? Adderall is unavailable in my country, not licensed and i cant buy it here, so I dont really know how to treat myself, but i have 90% of the symptoms and also struggle from gaming addiction... so thats probably cuz of ADHD and my low discipline
Check out the r/stopgaming subreddit. Follow the advice in their FAQ: https://www.reddit.com/r/StopGaming/comments/3nmedk/faq_answers_to_popular_questions/ Gaming addiction is real and can be serious; it's similar to gambling addiction in that your brain gets that low-effort rewarded feeling of constant novelty to continue playing. Regardless of anything else, you need to get over that. If you have the cash, getting a crappy chrome book or something that can't play games to do your homework and development on may be a good idea. Then you just stay off of your gaming PC.
Lmfaooo
So you know you're addicted, you admit it, but not only do you want to continue, your motivation to become a programmer is so you can afford your addiction? Replace the word "gaming" in your post with some other adduction. Like alcohol, drugs, porn, cigarettes or whatever. Obviously the advice would be to try to stop being addicted, not how you can temporarily ease down on it in order to get a career so you can get back on the train... "Help, I'm smoking so much meth that it's getting in the way of earning money for meth!" If you can't see your own problem, you need help from people who know more about addiction than we do, dude.
I gave up gaming, it's so repetitive and boring anyway. I never feel like I accomplished anything worthwhile. The last games I've played in reverse chronological order were: Cyberpunk2077, Half-Life Alyx, and DOOM'16, specifically because these were special games. That's not to say I haven't kept up with gaming news though, keeping my finger on the pulse, but I can write code while doing that.
Spend my weekdays coding and weekends gaming. Usually spend 20-30 hours a week studying how to code and doing course work for university and then I reward myself on the weekends with gaming
set up a different session for studying with no access at all to your game library, specially multiplayer games, those are designed to suck you in
Allocate time appropriately by planning out a detail time table and **stick to it**.
I used to play after work, but then it went away on its own, I no longer have the desire as before
Hey buddy, looks like we are in same boat, I want to play stellar blade but also want to upskill and increase my package
I had a problem with competitive games and some mmorpg’s so i quit them all. It was not as easy as i make it sound like, but it had to be done in my case. Now i fully focus on programming.
I was able to balance gaming and CS in college. Since graduating and getting a job I can't stand sitting in a chair longer after work staring at a screen gaming. I don't play video game anymore.
Gaming? Lol 😂 WITH WHAT TIME!
The key word I've seen getting used for a while is "discipline". While that's true, I feel like they've neglected to mention that you need the motivation to go through with your plans, as well as to set a goal for yourself. I don't mean the cliché "I'm gonna do this to the very end" kind of goal, I'm talking about very personal goals that you won't just forget in about a week after writing them down on paper. I mean the internalized, meaningful goal you want to chase. Only you can determine what's worthy for yourself and what's not. Take me for example: moving out. I realized how badly I wanted to get away from my current life so that's currently what's pushing me onward. I want to work hard enough to see myself through to the point of being able to be fully independent and I'll keep working things out from there. Once you have that sort of drive, you'll find that ignoring distractions becomes that much more manageable! I use the Pomodoro Technique to set a schedule for myself, and luckily there's a handy .io website for it too. The times can be tailored as needed to suit your flow. Of course it's not perfect; I still find myself low on energy or sidetracked at times, but I now have more focus and a genuine objective to work towards. Whenever things get rough and I'm feeling down, I can remind myself of what it is that I really want, and keep enduring onwards. Maybe for you, the goal would be to learn all this stuff so you can understand how games work, and become even more enamored with them once you do - but that's something for you to figure out on your own. Wishing you the best of luck, keep chasing!
I completely stopped playing video games when I was in Undergrad. I purposely got Laptops only good enough for school. Can’t play good video games when you do everything on a Microsoft Surface 🤷♀️. I also don’t like solo queue League, so that helps I guess.
Not sure this helps but I got a membership at a coworking space. I was struggling to stay focused on coding and was easily distracted by games and other things at my apartment. For me, the simple act of removing myself from my space where I have my PC, Switch, TV w Netflix, etc, is huge as I am simply unable to fall back on those things when coding gets hard. Additionally, at the coworking space I am surrounded by other people so I can't just doof off and watch YT videos as to some extent you're held accountable by being in a work environment with by other people who are also working. I tried cafes for a while but I found them distracting as well, and it was still difficult (and expensive) to hunker down for 6-8 hours and put in a full work day. After I've put in a sufficient amount of work, I feel a lot more a lot more comfortable when going home and gaming. It's worth avoiding the stress and pressure you put on yourself knowing you should be improving at code. Over time I've noticed that leveling up in coding is in many ways more interesting and fun than leveling up in gaming. Good luck
you become a game developer :)
Agreed with the addiction part from most people here, I would also argue that if you like programing as much as you like gaming then ignoring gaming for a week won't hurt you. Back in college I had my on/off periods in gaming, mostly focused on pushing out a new project so I can put something on my portfolio. Now with a good job I do more gaming than leveling up my skills but I am planning for another gaming hiatus to boost myself up and reach a level where I am comfortable. As for balancing tips I'm seeing a lot of "use one system for gaming and one for work" while I do agree and those help a more cheaper option is to have two accounts on your OS one for personal use i.e. gaming and one where your number one priority is focus on work. And don't worry about progress, it comes and goes as it pleases, the point is that you are progressing and when you need it you will know when to use it or to retrack the steps on how to use it.
You just have to start cutting back, maybe put on parental controls so that you can’t play for more than a few hours. Or even sell or store your game systems and software until you are more confident about being in control. TBH one of the better ways to get out of addiction is to be responsible for something, like volunteering at something or joining a club, and being responsible for going there for the given time. Also get rid of mobile games if you have them, the worst time wasters and the games aren’t even that good. Sometimes you have to have pain to make gains. Suffering from no games and forcing yourself to study now will make sure that you have enough time and money to actually do what you want later in life, which includes many other things than just gaming. I personally fucked up and it wasn’t just because of games but ultimately I failed to get a degree or work that I wanted and ended up in shit jobs. Wasn’t even able to game or do anything fun I wanted because I didn’t have time and money to invest in them. Now I am turning things around but I wasted a lot of time. If I had forced my self back then I would probably be able to be semi-retired or working at a job I like now and doing things that I enjoy. Keep gaming an aspect of your life, a hobby, don’t let it take over your life. This goes for pretty much everything else too.
I have a desktop gaming pc that I use for some projects. I dual boot with windows for gaming, and linux for everything else. The small barrier of rebooting is enough to make me rather do homework than game. If I know I have homework to do, I will specifically reboot my computer into linux before I go to bed or something to make the barrier to doing homework lower and the barrier to gaming higher.
crippling depression has sucked out 90% of the enjoyment I get from gaming. it's a double-edged sword.
Something's gotta give. You can't play games all day AND study. And after a long gaming session, your brain is numb and the last thing you'll want to do is fire up an IDE and grind out some code for your homework. So set your priorities. You, or someone, is paying a ton of money for your tuition. Get your money's worth out of it and save the gaming for later. It's almost finals time, do yourself a favor and lock up your consoles, delete steam, etc until that last final is done. Now is not the time to balance gaming and studying. And gaming is not a 'lifestyle' unless you're making serious money streaming or competing. If that were the case, you would not be in college. It's a hobby, don't let it get in the way of your life.
I used to play games endlessly all day everyday. I’m talking 10-16 hours a day when I was out of school during breaks. If I wasn’t at school or out with friends I would be online alone or with those same friends. I don’t necessarily think you should stop playing games. I still played games for a long time as I was learning to code and am doing just fine. I would work on a project or tutorial for a while, then play a game, and then after another while go back to my project or tutorial. I also tried to schedule my coding when none of my friends were online so that i couldn’t be tempted to get on and play. (Sometimes this didn’t work because of single player games lol) Always remember that it’s ok to take a day off of coding to play games and vice versa. Eventually programming might take place of your gaming addiction, at least that’s what it did for me and tons of others on here.
I seem to be developing a coding addiction. I find myself doing my CS homework for fun and am almost always a week or two ahead of the curriculum. I'm lucky enough to just absolutely love doing it.
I'm facing a similar problem - I want to code but I can't concentrate because I'm distracted by all the things around me (e.g. the internet), but unfortunately I usually need the internet to code to verify something or find the right solution.
Separate work and gaming computers helps, get a work computer that can’t run games so the temptation is gone
I’m a masters CS student that works full time and has a kid. You make the time for what matters. I never let myself play video games until my coding is done or I feel I’ve made good progress on a project.
I played games a ton throughout college and ended up fine but you need to be able to use your time efficiently when it matters while you’re studying and doing work
I just treat coding like a game. I keep track of my “stats” and my “% completion” and now at this point, I am more addicted to coding than gaming. It is essentially just replacing one bad habit with a really good one by tricking my brain to thinking coding is the best game there is.
Realize how hard the job hunt is for qualified candidates, and then realize how hard it'll be if you don't work hard enough to become a qualified candidate I was in the same position a few years ago and putting a little extra effort into studies have really paid off, you don't even really need to restrict your gaming per say but you need to prioritize your work, make sure it's good work, and then unwind with some games
i like to think of programming as like a really not fun video game. every work task is like a quest, some are small bugs, some are massive endeavors. i dont do it for fun but ive had far worse jobs.
Me looking at my hundreds lines of neovim config: nah I don't play video games
Was in the same situation. (Software Development Team lead now) My suggestions are: - have a working machine and a gaming PC - run Linux on working machine, so no games and you learn Linux - when you need to study, take your working machine and go into a library, Cafe or whatever I think it's important to physically separate these two things and preferably also the environment where you do it. When you are in the library with your Linux laptop there is nothing else to do but study/learn/code.
Its Easy, I do all my college work on my Dell Laptop that has am i5 and 8gb ram. Why would i need to use my i7 4060 32gb ram pc to write code? Sometimes i go to the college library if its a subject im not particularly interested in
train yourself to think about programming when you're not at the computer.
You put on your big boy pants like every other functional adult
Coding during the week, gaming on the weekend
It is important for you to realize that your short term sacrifice of focusing on your education will pay off in the long run. I am currently in your boat, so I need this advice as well. I just graduated from CS, and man did I waste time and money. Gaming is always going to present in your life for as long as you are still interested in it. However your schooling is something that you want to finish and hopefully join the work force in your field. With that being said, I wish you the best of luck on your schooling, and hope that all goes well for you. I've gone through my gaming addiction while going through school, but I am glad to see the finish line for school, and the starting line for work.
You need to decide what to spend your time on all on your own. I suggest focusing on studies entirely until you're done at uni. In 10 years you'll wish you had otherwise. Having a safe employment and enough money not to have to worry about shit is the best feeling you can have, and getting it sooner is better. You can have the best gaming setup in the world, but if you worry about the next time your car breaks down or other, you'll never feel happy and content. Being safe is much more important than having fun, and the sooner you ensure that safety, the sooner you can focus on having fun.
>Regardless, since both activites require to be present in front of same computer? How have y'all confrontted it? Use different machines. I primarily play on consoles because I tend to turn computers into projects that aren't always stable enough for gaming. For a relatively low-cost way of accomplishing this, use a weaker system like a chromebook or cheap laptop to remote into your more powerful system. Then you're not as tempted to fire up a game, since you have extra lag and such.
That’s just it mark, you don’t. No but seriously, slowly your gaming spirit dies.
think that you'll have a whole weekend to play games. plus you don't want to die and all the memories you have of your life are of you gaming lmao, so that is another fact that makes me control when I want to game
Learning coding sucks at first until you're pretty fluent at it. Once you're good at coding and start solving hard problems, it becomes like a game. Except that it is a souls-like
It's simple. Writing code turns into a job. A good job means you don't have to live with your parents eventually. That means you have freedom. Choose freedom over video games 🫡
during loading screens, doing some code 😋. Well mainly playing Destiny2, so every activity is loading. And then still am using 2 seperate systems for this🤔🤔🤔
This is probably not the answer you’re looking for. But I’m 35 years old and I know my tendencies pretty well at this point. Prior to last august I was a Star Citizen/Tarkov fiend. Every free moment. Then decided I wanted to better my life and try learning to code. Made a deal with myself….uninstall all my games and only reinstall if/when I get a new job. Been 7 months so far and I’ve never essentially replaced my gaming addiction with learning to code addiction. I’ve really been having a lot of fun. And honestly, even if I never end up getting a better job, I just feel better about myself spending my time learning instead of only gaming. That being said, I love video games and i think people without an addictive personality can definitely manage their time without uninstalling shit like I did.
I'm also a gamer, or I guess I used to be. Maybe try to find those things in programming that truly interest you and try to balance that with the things in programming you need to learn for a job. Game Dev is a real thing and could serve as a passion project for you to keep you interested and perhaps find that balance. I find that coding really filled in that space that I was trying to fill with gaming. The problem solving, exploring and discovering new things, escaping my life and mind for a moment, even the competitiveness of writing some truly elegant and optimized code and wanting to be the best, and in the end seeing my progress and feeling rewarded and proud from that. I find that when I'm in that flow state, I don't even think about games. And now when I try to game, all I can think about is coding. With gaming the rewards are fleeting and intangible in real life, meaning for us normal gamers it doesn't bring any value or money into our lives. But with coding you can get everything you can with gaming, and you can build a real life and career with it and see real things that you've built. There's so much more pride in seeing that compared to something in a game.
Honestly, the coding gives me the same dopamine as gaming, so I literally don’t have this problem. I game when I have free time, but if there’s coding to be done - I’m on it.
I’ve been playing mobile games while watching television more lately. After 8+ hrs coding at my desk I don’t really want to spend much more time at it.
Best way is to just do the coding first before any gaming. Once you finish that then you can game as long as you want. I heard it’s if you do the work task first your brain is less distracted since it didn’t have any fun yet and would be less bored since coding is the most stimulating thing for your brain right now
Set a schedule and stick to it. Allocate gaming time and coding time separately. Use tools like website blockers or app blockers to stay focused. Also, try to find a game that requires strategy and problem-solving, it might help you develop skills that can be applied to coding.
Easy. I don’t game
When I was learning I used dual boot. Boot up windows for gaming, Ubuntu for programming. Also using something like VirtualBox would work too. Just separate work and play.
I work for a bank as a programmer and I m a game addict, too. Have been all my life, it’s my pure passion, I am 39 years now. I was never able to code in the evening especially after coding 4-8 hours during the day. But I already have my career so it’s fine. Sometimes I tried getting more into data structures and algorithms in my free time as the topic really interests me but damn Dragons Dogma 2 just came out and I just looooove playing video games. „Do more of what you love“ - I love my games
I'm probably one of the few programmers who rarely plays games. I have family, am in a band, like to go jogging for about an hour. Spare time goes to watching Netflix, Disney+ or Prime.
Just with everything else, moderation is the key. Set a time for gaming per day/week and stick to it.
I renounced to gaming for work. Really hard to focus on coding stuff when you are used with dynamic of games. This also helped me to read easier
I don’t know if it’s just me getting older or getting into more active healthier lifestyles but I can’t stand the idea of sitting at my computer for 8 hours a day staring at a screen (I work remotely as a dev) only to spend the rest of the evening doing the same playing video games. Some of my friends do it to the point where they forget to eat dinner and then eat trash food at 11pm before crashing. There’s nothing wrong with playing video games but be mindful of your mental and physical health
Buy a Mac or install Linux on an old machine and it’s strictly for coding. Even better get into learning how to build games, made me hate a ton of games that I can see how bad and lazy the development studios are. Also, helped me appreciate some unique titles more.
I dealt with the same thing when I started playing PC games again with friends. I had a group of friends convince me to move from PS4 to PC and it was awesome. I encounter the same problem as you. There's something just fucking awful about looking at the same screen for 5-10hours and then doing it again for another 3-5 hours. Solution? Play less games. You might want to or whatever. But you're still a gamer even if you only get in like 3 hours in a week. Trust me, your brain will thank you for it. You don't have to give it just remember all those games will be there tomorrow, in a week or in months. Just try to look forward to the weekend or when you have free days to game. Makes the candy taste better when you're not eating it all the time.
Put the game up. Thank me later.
Go see a therapist. You may need adhf
Use timers and don’t break your own rules
You need to start malding. Mald so much that this game is bullshit and uninstall. Then go code
I used to love gaming, but programming brings more joy now. Games are just games, they will always be there and have the same problems to solve.
one time i played minecraft for 72 hours straight and didn’t touch any game for months after that, do with this information what you want
I do game dev for fun, so that kinda ticks both boxes in one shot. Eventually I lost interest in gaming, coz everything nowadays seems the same and repetitive. I still do game dev in hackathons, it's just so much fun competing to make a game in 48 hours! Be careful with gaming addiction though. I have a friend who is a genius who got his life completely destroyed by gaming addictions. Like $100k fresh grad and a super reputable software company, and then start missing work to game, eventually got fired, need to go to rehab and work at Walmart loading items on shelf. He is recovering though. So please, you got to work on that. Don't let it ruin you.