Deleted Steam to increase productivity wish me luck

I'm a big fan of strategy games like Hearts of Iron, Europa Universalis, and all Total War series (Warhammer 2 in particular). Really awesome games. On top of being fun, i believe they helped me in development of capacity for delayed gratification. But, problem with them is they never end. Each game is different from previous one, which makes them infinitely interesting. I noticed i'm spending more then few hours per day in playing them (Warhammer lately). All that time could be spent in new asset creation, or in doing more healthy activities rather then sitting in front of PC and looking at the screen, which is my work also. I failed in self discipline by limiting the time i spend playing them. Problem with that was, i noticed when i'm not playing them i think about them. Instead of focusing on work, im thinking about my next campaign moves in the game, or next battle plan for online match. Which was signal for red alert and this radical measure. So i deleted them all and deleted Steam. For now i don't even feel like i did some sacrifice, i'm actually excited about limitless options of new free time activities i can do. Something which will involve removing my ass from my PC hopefully. So wish me luck to endure this radical change in life. Better productivity and better, healthier life in general is the goal here.

 

But you weren't wasting time.... that was market research......



Good luck!

Checked my Steam account recently, and it said I have approx. 3600 hours into EU4 as well. But I had to stop playing that game for the most part when I got married due to the time required to complete a game causing various issues.

 

Good Luck!

I'd write more, but I have to get back to the market research.

 

Good luck with your decision. There are definitely times when playing games less will give you more time to develop your own game. You will want to periodically do some market research, though. I've gone a long time without playing other games in order to have more time to invest into my own game development, but that has left me a bit out of touch with the market.

The best thing to do is periodically play other games for an hour each and think very critically about the game design of each. Think about what works, what doesn't work, and why the dev made certain choices. Spend time looking at menus in popular games to get idea for your own menu systems. But (somehow) don't spend thousands of hours playing a single game, because that is not market research.

 

That is true, however i am asset store publisher. I make 3D characters for asset store and i work freelance as 3D character artist... So i don't actually need to do market research that much i think.

 

@Tom_Veg
There has a lyrics in my favorite Chinese song: "No matter how fun the thing is, you will put down sooner or later."
You feel like wanna get a life now right? Haha. You can play, just learn to self discipline and time management. Never take it too serious, it's just a game, an entertainment, you won't die without it but foods and healthy. Maybe you can draw 2 hours per day to try out new games and read some books (Using apps like Flipboard) for researching. When playing games or doing works, try to stand instead of sitting. You can buy those bar table for working which I feel pretty good. Scientific proof our brain will act smarter when standing, plus it's healthy too.

 

When I was a teen I played a lot. My record is 24+ hours straight (Little Big Adventure 2 on PC). Now, when I'm over 30, I don't play almost at all. I lost 99% of my passion for gaming. I'm much more interested now in making games, since I see it as a very interesting, creative business with a massive profit potential.

 

@Quingu
Me too. I lost a lots of passion in gaming too now comparing to teen where I could play overnight to grind level, beat 100 floors of hell, getting secret weapons and so on. I wonder is because we already grow up or games nowadays always disappoint us. Hmm...

 

Life without Steam day two. Yesterday was rough. On many occasions during the day i felt the urge to play game. As consolation i played youtube videos of people playing the game in the background while i worked. The game in question is Warhammer 2 (Total War)... But today nothing. Entire day, zero desire. I think i have just debunked recent study about gaming ending up on the list of disorders. I'm completely detoxed after just two days... I feel there will be times where desire to play the game (or any other game) will return, but i highly doubt it will be in same force as it was yesterday. I feel like i have accomplished something lol. Congratulating myself entire evening.

 

I'm in the same situation, in the last few months I've wanted to prepare my game for mobile and release it, but the following distractions happened...

- I bought an Xbox One X and now play Rocket League every day (it is now a well ingrained habit)

- I kinda stopped playing games for a very long time, and now in the last couple of months have spent many hours on Steam games, specifically the 4x Space Genre which can suck you up and spit you out after a whole day as time flies by and you realise its time to go to bed... As I got older I realised these are the kind of games I love now, not FPS shooters and dungeon crawlers...

Now the tough part is getting focused and getting back onto my game.

I guess I've been helped out a bit though... just had to send my XBOne back to MS as it had a hardware issue.

Now I just need to delete Steam for a while...

 

Need to update situation. I reinstalled Steam . The fact Steam is installed have calming effect for some reason. The problem without it started to happen in times when i had everything completed. All work and other chores. Then feeling of "something is missing" started to creep in. I tried to replace lack of gaming with work. But my productivity sucked. So eventually i decided to install it again.

I don't feel defeated at all. What i realized my goal was bout unrealistic and bad. Gaming is big part of my life. Why removing it completely. There is no need for that. Only thing what is needed is balance. Maybe this experience will help me in the future if i will struggle with balance again. It was worth giving it a shot

 

Sounds to me like you are bored of characters. Otherwise they would interest you more than some random steam nonsense.

 

Not true. Im not back to excessive gaming. I only installed Steam and one game so far. Warhammer. I dont play it every day. And when i play it's two hours top. I just got back from vacation, feeling fresh. And working on some new characters which are something different, that keeps me excited.

 

Whenever I've done excessive gaming, it's always been an avoidance strategy linked with depression, so whenever it happens, excessively, try to move away from alternative computer activities ie do physical things or life/family things.

I find then, it regulates what I do on the computer (which gradually returns to work).

 

Good strategy. I have just done something similar by going 20 days on vacation without work and PC .

 

I actually think some games can be healthy.

I play a few games of StarCraft a day. All the precision of management and keeping track of things I think is cognitively healthy.