I'm addicted to Minecraft and I'm not even playing it
I don't know if this is the right sub for this since my obsession is less about PLAYING and more THINKING about playing
Basically I often get this URGE to play the game
I would get ideas of structures I want to make (in particular, medieval buildings), and I would start to ponder how to achieve those designs, what blocks to use, how to get those resources, how to produce them and automate them
Then the ideas grow and I start thinking about functional aqueducts and sewage systems, gears and watermills, either with mods or playpretend
I even researched these topics and I'm fascinated by them, how did Romans build aqueducts, how did they work? How do you make bricks and how are traditional roofs constructed?
I live in Europe near the countryside, here is full of ruined buildings taken over by nature which trigger these ideas oh so much
Redstone, dont get me started on redstone and what u can do depending on the version you are playing! I did spend several days constructing working analog clocks and treefarms both in beta and with modern redstone.
I have a folder with all the images that inspire me and several txt files of ideas ( cities construction plus lore plus enviromental details on how to do sounds, animated stuff etc)
then editing textures
etc etc etc
you get the point!
the funny thing is that... I CANNOT PLAY MINECRAFT!
I would set everything up, or start blind, or play that version or that other, think ways to avoid what's coming, making a planner on how to play and then... I just wander aimlessly in a world and close the game after 5 mins, or actually start for a while and then close it, or get the "why am I even playing?" and close it
Sometimes besides this I even get this anxiety swelling up in me before the quit.
One time I got a panic attack(?) from thinking about the game!
Was during University, I barely slept cuz bad combo of late lessons plus bus travel time, I slept like at most 4 hours each day,
AND YET
I had to carve another 30 mins cuz this new mod just came out, "CREATE". Basically it adds gears and such. So I would spend 30 mins each day exploring the mod.
My panic attack started when I was thinking how to use the mod to play in an amplified world defendind a village and I couldnt think of ways to use it instead of vanilla mechanics
and I was there panicking, my neurons buzzing, breathing hard, thinking thinking on how to use all the potential of the mod!
I'm so tired of this cycle, because I'm spending even entire free days thinking about the game! And it's making me miserable!
Imagine someone spending 12 hours of their free day from work just standing in theliving room thinking, having internal battles of ideas in their mind...
Yeah, sometimes I felt satisfaction making that cool building or that redstone contraption, but, even if I could play, at what cost? days spent in front of a screen with nothing tangible, real, in my hands?
Besides minecraft I dont play any other game. Used to!
Was addicted to pokemon, remember finishing Diamond in 2-3 days when I was a kid, what got me to quit was realizing I was... making a spreadsheet of type matchups plus moves and stats for each pokemon in a romhack to find the mathematical best team to beat the endgame arena...and I was like "ok that's stupid, im not even enjoying myself anymore"
Used to play TF2, Ive like 1.7k hours on that, stopped cuz got boring since I cannot control the fun, the fun is dictated by the other players present plus I felt it was a waste of time, I'm not getting anything out of this game
I tried to quit Minecraft, the problem is that
I get obsessed with games that have an high potential, see pokemon, oh if only they added this n that it would have made a better game without such a stricking ludonarrative dissonance etc. In fact one thought pattern I have with minecraft is "thinking about how I would change it to make it perfect for me" which is the only thought I dont mind, since if I complete it I can just leave it with the rest of my completed ideas in The Folder on my pc. I can accept it and I can turn it off whenever I want, my problem is with the urge to play that it's obsessive
I really like the "mosaic" way of building of the game, I look outside and see textures and the frame upon which the tiles are ordered. It's voxel art. Minecraft is basically an infinite box of legos that doesnt cost a country worth of left kidneis. And with traditional art I cant make a world I can walk in n explore, I can make a miniature but I dont have the place and I cant explore its insides
redstone and circuits, I love problem solving when I have simple basic tools and clear rules to achive specific complex tasks, that's why I liked math in highschool and coding
In Conclusion: How can I stop this urge to play minecraft when, in practice, it doesnt even make me happy since I can't even play it and even if I did it would make me feel miserable for having wasted hours of my time on something untangible?