Mindless multiplayer eats up me-time

There’s many things I’d like to do with my spare time. Unfortunately when that time rolls around, all I want to do is to relax with something passively engaging, and multiplayer shooters are perfect for that.

Helldivers 2, Team Fortress 2, Deep Rock Galactic, Mordhau. Whatever multiplayer game I find myself sticking to, they share the same qualities:

• Instant action: You launch the game, and you can find yourself in the thick of it within a minute. This is killer, it’s hard to avoid temptation when mindless fun is a single click away.
• Unpredictability: Despite repetitive elements, objectives, and gameplay, no two games/rounds of a multiplayer game feel the same due to how everyone plays differently.
• Agency: Unlike the mundanity of everyday life, the scaled down worlds of multiplayer games give us something we can make a tangible difference to. From dominating the other team’s players to carrying out a successful mission, simply playing releases those feel-good chemicals.
• Transience: Multiplayer games are often disposable, meaningless. While I have fond memories of each game, 99% of what happens is immediately filtered out of my brain and forgotten. They don’t demand the same mindful focus and attention that single-player games do.

And that’s before you get into extrinsic motivation traps, where you find yourself playing a game for reasons other than it being fun – levelling up gear, increasing your competitive rank, not wanting to miss out on seasonal events, etc. Overwatch had me hooked with all that a decade ago.

I know that as long as play doesn’t become unhealthy and I’m having fun, it’s okay. But with that being said, it’s hard to shake off modern society’s view that that being unproductive is bad. That, and there are times where I genuinely want to do something else, but multiplayer games are low-effort and scratch that itch.

I think a better writer and person could pivot this blog post with a big ‘and here’s how I overcame it’ section – set up barriers, uninstall certain games, get my time back – but no. Despite it all, I still want to have something for when I’m tired and want to chill. Realistically if I got rid of every timekiller game, I’d simply move on to other mindless engaging filler: watching YouTube, chilling in voice chats, reading countless forum posts, etc. I don’t know.

I’d like to do more meaningful things with my time – read more books, write more blog posts, finally play those single-player games I’ve been meaning to try – but you’d have to unscramble half me noggin first.