• Ænima
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    8 months ago

    I started noticing something about my gaming habits that directly correlates, I believe, with my ADHD and hobby abandonment. I primarily play single player games – I know, a neurodivergent that avoids multiplayer games, shocker – and as soon as I look into cheating at it using something like Cheat Engine to manipulate the number of in-game items available to me, I lose interest in playing it soon after.

    Similarly, hobbies tend to fizzle out as soon as I buy the tools or templates to do it better. Woodworking was fun until I bought stuff to make a table saw jig and a bunch of tools to do it easier and nicer. 3D printing was my life until I bought a new, nicer printer and a bunch of accessories to print different filaments.

    I recently bought and played “Amnesia: The Bunker” (amazing game, highly recommend if you’re into those games, even moreso now after the Halloween update). Because each ‘item’ in the game is individual and unstackable, I can’t cheat by finding and manipulating numbers such as ammo or crafting item amounts. I have to find them during playthrough and pray I can get what I need with some really brutal settings possible.

    I’m on my 4th playthrough, with over 50 hours in about 2 weeks, and I am still enjoying it. Each playthrough is different. I like to randomize the custom difficulty settings (added in the aforementioned update) and not look at them so I have to discover the settings as I play. Sometimes, it’s a little easier, and other times it’s much, much harder! The randomness adds uniqueness to each playthrough and makes it feel like a new experience.

    I’m trying to find a way to do the same thing with some of the hobbies I used to enjoy. If anyone has any ideas based on the above info, or personal observations of a similar nature in your life, let’s have a dialogue! I’m always interested in learning more about my mind, and the minds of other neurodivergents.