Anyone else having trouble gaming right now?

This. Just hauling iron in a gym or at home feels so pointless, I hate it. For me, work is exercise. Lift heavy stuff, dig holes and move earth. But work is winding down.

So this afternoon as I was making a little bike trip with the kids (exercise! Ada on the back of mine, the boy on his own) I saw this elderly couple working their front yard. Struck up some banter with them. He was having trouble with some 75cm ground spikes that used to hold up a fence.
Heavy clay about a foot beneath the top layer a d some of the spikes had bent. I asked the kids to hang around and went to work. An hour later I was dirty, sweaty and thoroughly exercised. The old man would have died digging those bastards out. Felt good.

I’ve struggled to get into games at all for the past few weeks, around the time they implemented WFH and social distancing here. It didn’t help that on top of that stress there was a 5.7 earthquake with an epicenter just 3 miles from my home, something that I’m not used to in the least. Between the increasing COVID-19 numbers and the frequent aftershocks, I really have struggled ti disconnect and get into games. It’s frustrating, because games are usually my method of disconnecting!

Things have been getting a little easier this week and I’ve actually been able to get into some games, which makes me happy! Hopefully it’s the start of a trend and I can get back to my regular pastime.

It’s tough to concentrate on anything really. I’m a musician and producer by trade, so staying at home for days or weeks at a time is my normal routine. That being said, I have very close friends that have lost people to this already, and my girlfriend is immunocompromised due to some medication she’s on. It’s hard to not be in a constant state of worry.

This is sort of like that twilight zone, where Burgess Meredith loves to read, has all the time in the world, and breaks his glasses.

well put.

It doesn’t require much - a simple walk and some stretching would do for starters. I lost ~30kg last year and saw my best results when I added a 7km (a little less than 5mi) walk every other day. Going all out from the start, nearly dying on the floor either from lifting (too) heavy weights or your heart rate spiking due to cardio intensity is a good way to start hating the exercise or even injure yourself.

That said, it doesn’t take long for body to adjust to medium intensity exercise - maybe 2-4 weeks, and then you slowly become used to it and eventually start to crave it. The benefits are immense, if you can dedicate about an hour every day or every two days (in the beginning) it will pay off greatly in the long run.

And as I’ve realised in this quarantine you can do pretty amazing workouts at home, with no or minimal equipment (resistance bands etc) required.

I’ve been there, between a condition that causes chronic pain, and worry about personal/family stuff. I guess prior exercise is why I’m doing ok with now.

Minimizing exposure to the bad news is good (hard in my case if family involved) but if not personal, ignore is great. But you’ll then just be left in this, err restless? state.

  1. Sit down with a game that usually grabs you, make yourself play it past game start up (that varies by game I know). Get into the meat of the game even if it isn’t grabbing you. Either a) it has, you are good for a bit … or

  2. b) it didn’t. Take a break, get a snack, stretch, watch a video, whatever. But no jumping into what worries you. Then pick a different game (if you’ve been through a few start backlog games) and go to 1.

Repeat. Usually something grabbed me before I hit back log games. Constant pain is nasty stuff. Sorry to hear it.

If it persists, the “unable to game” and, of course, the pain, consider seeing a therapist who specializes in chronic pain. I am, and it is unexpectedly helpful, esp. with me being a “tough guy” not therapy type person. A side bonus, the therapist is usually happy to have change from the usual pain patient who is there to kick opioid abuse. Or at least that’s the line the pain doctor used on me. >.>

Seek help.

I’ve been going on Xbox nightly and joining a party with friends and just bullshitting. We’re not even playing the same games most of the time, we’re just chatting and socializing. That, to me, has been more important than the actual games. Talking to other people and keeping those connections open is important.

I caught up with a guy I haven’t seen since college, almost 20 years ago, on Xbox live last week.

We allied with another galleon in Sea of Thieves and joined a 8 person party, now I have 4 new friends.

I got my son’s friends dads gamertags and got them all together into a 6 player Mincraft lobby on Saturday. Watching the kids have a virtual play date, with voice chat, was awesome. They make some crazy shit.

I think it’s a pretty great feature. I know a lot of people are using Zoom right now for remote nights at the bar, dinner parties, Tinder dates, etc, and Xbox Live or Discord can serve the same purpose.

Same here, Xbox has been just about my only social contact outside of my family the last couple weeks. We’ve been doing a bit of Division 2 together, me and 2 other friends, but usually we just hang out in a party for about a half hour first and just chat. It’s nice to be able to do that, I wish I could do it more really.

I do think based on your posts that you would benefit greatly from removing yourself from the nightly news and from and P&R threads. It is possible to care, and worry too much about things you can’t control. I know I have backed away from the nightly newscasts.

I’m starting to have trouble. I tried to start Kingdom Come and Bannerlords. When I got the first “fetch an item” mission early on in both tutorials a sense of tedium hit me and I quit. Usually I can play a game for hours, now it seems to be minutes.

Sounds like you need new games my friend. I used to love RPGs and I spun up Division 2 and saw all the skill trees and items slots and immediately quit the game and went back to Apex Legends.

I have been playing COD Warzone for some more instant gratification. I like playing solo and hunting down the three man teams like I’m the Predator. Only problem is it looks like it doesn’t like having only 8gb of ram and gets laggy.

I’ve been on an immersive sim kick playing Dishonored 2 currently. I originally decided to do two levels a night, but that went out the window immediately and I have been sticking to one a night. Even then, the levels are massive. One of them took me 5 and a half hours to get through since I explore every nook and cranny. Thinking of doing Mankind Divided or revisiting Thief 2 next, or maybe Arx Fatalis.

Hijacking thread, because it almost fits here…my soothing of my anxious mind diversion, Dead State, because nothing takes your mind off of a real world pandemic, like a good zombie pandemic…

Umm…now you are making me want to pick up division 2…

I log into GW2 every day for the freebie. I play Eternal one or two times. Then… meh. Today I tried to start Phoenix Point but I ended up updating the Epic interface and then Phoenix and AOW: P. After that I was bored and came back here.

So yeah. Some trouble. :slight_smile:

Holy crap! What is that pustulant yellow spot doing there?

Squeeze it before the infection spreads.

I am finding it hard to game as well at the moment but I started playing Bannerlord and this is something that you can really sink your teeth into, even if it is only 30 minute gaming sessions at a time. It is helping me to do a bit of that each day.

Yeah, that and The Division 2 are the poster children for 16GB of RAM.

This is me. As soon as I come across something that irritates me, the game is done. A non skippable tutorial, a town that is way too big, too much conversation, a mechanic I hate, too many puzzles, save points. Not respecting my time. I sound like grandpa simpson. I don’t think Im a gamer anymore. :frowning: