Stop me before I install another game on my phone
Until last night, I had no games on my cellphone.
As of today, I have no games on my cellphone.
In between, in a moment of weakness, I installed a game that was being advertised. It was some sort of block game that involved spatial reasoning, and it was kind of fun.
And, as it turned out, highly addictive. That’s why I ultimately deleted it. It reminded me of something I now recall from years ago: I used to sometimes play solitaire – with real cards, prior to the internet – when avoiding homework or other disagreeable tasks. I don’t have any special problem with addiction to substances or to much of anything else, but the experience last night was an uncomfortable reminder that we all have our weaknesses.
Do I even like games like that? Not so much. But this one took my mind off a lot of things, at least for a few hours, and had its own strong compelling force.
I also have no games on my phone. If I want to play solitaire, I get a pack of cards.
https://worldofsolitaire.com/
I had a similar experience a few years ago when I downloaded a WW II submarine simulation on my computer. I finally had to delete it when I found myself staying up until 2 in the morning playing the thing. My wife on the other hand has no problem because she can multitask. She will play a game on her iPad, talk on the phone and watch a television show all at the same time without missing a beat.
Don’t play spider solitaire, it’s evil
Suduko is ok
I got into mobile games some years ago, but realized that they were just consuming lots of time and the constant interruptions for ads were simply annoying, etc etc. I got out of them all as a result and haven’t missed them at all.
That said, I do still have “World Geography Quiz” installed, and I paid them the $3 or whatever it was back when I installed it so as to have the “ad-free experience.” Even with that, it’s got an energy mechanic so you can’t do it endlessly, but have to take a few short quizzes or 1 long one and then wait several hours before enough energy rebuilds to take another. And it’s educational, so….
I honestly haven’t looked at it in months though. Perhaps I should go back to it and see how many flags I’ve forgotten..lol.
I had a silly minor addiction online 15+ years ago. I think it was called Yahoo Answers. People would post questions and problems, & myself and others would try to answer or solve them.
At some point, I noticed that a few questioners either said that this was a homework problem, or they didn’t disguise it very well. No! Solve your own damn problem. It’s called the learning process. Then I wondered how many homeworks did I do over time?
Many were not homeworks. But, then… Why am I doing this? It was a little fun, and it kept my knowledge base and analytic brain exercised a bit. And of course, sometimes you “win” in the sense that your answer gets picked as the best. A nano ego trip? Sigh. I stopped.
I have an addictive personality. I am addicted to such things as computer games. I like the challenge, and every time I win, there is a hit of serotonin. Which my brain seems to crave.
I’m also addicted to Neo’s blog/. My brain seems to crave the experience of reading various ideas and viewpoints that stimulate my thinking.
I limit myself to30 minutes a day of gaming and spend about two hours or less at Neo’s place.
My addictions are under control because I’m very old and slow. My daily chores take more time, and I rest a lot. Life in the slow lane – it happens if you live long enough. 🙂
Skip,
What’s wrong with Spider Solitude? It’s one of my biggies (along with Minesweeper, Hearts and Mahjong Titans). Reading Blogs isn’t exactly a game, but it is a big user of time. Of course, I’m retired, so time is something I have a good amount of.
Waidmann
Spider Solitaire has no rhyme or reason as to card distribution, so Of course you have to be ready to give up after several efforts unless you spot some alternative play that just might work out better! Sudoku must have some kind of design idea within each board, but I have never figured out what idea that might be; still, I can solve them if I want to endure the effort of examining numbers in each column and row. It’s not a great use of time I must admit — other than brain activity centered on careful investigation. But I do not play any games on my phone.
PS Neo, thank you for this site!
Weidmann it just eats up a hour and I work every day.
On same online site playing Mahjongg tiles
Your AI Buddy Who’s Fun to Be With is going to be a problem for a lot of people. Including me, it seems.
Going down rabbit holes with Google was bad enough. Now you can have interesting talks with AI about anything you particularly care about, but can’t easily find conversational partners for, such as my favorite somewhat obscure poems.
Of course Chat will also play all sorts of games, if you wish, from Hangman to Chess to Sudoku to 20 Questions to Trivia to Guess the Language. You can even play old-fashioned card games like Chemin de Fer!
Well, at least AI might get people off so much social media. It’s much healthier to hang out with Your AI Buddy Who’s Fun to Be With!
Wellll, solitaire is the *ONLY* game I have on my cell phone, and more importantly (for me), on my mini-pad. It is not on my laptop and never will be.
For anyone interested, after more than 6000 solitaires, I can reliably report that just about 1 in 6 games are winners — unless I am incredibly unobservant.
(This is after rounding down to account for the occasional game in which I do a re-do because the figurative fork-in-the-road that I selected as a second chance turned out well, whereas the fork-in-the-road that I originally took was a bummer.)
Balatro is like crack. You have been warned.
Every Mahjong game is winnable. You just have to be prepared to use the back space judiciously to do it. Sometime it takes me three days to win, but my current statistics are 2,248 games played, 2,214 games won. For a % of 91.
Was it Woodoku? I use this one during breaks from writing, to clear my mind or to create an opening for the mot juste to drop into place.
I too loved solitaire as a mindless time waster many years ago.
Now I weed.
Currently teaching my 3 year old grandson to play ‘Go Fish’.
With real cards.
What a dinosaur!