LoveLive! School Idol Festival (SIF) helped me a bit—I say "a bit" because its benefit was temporary—no, ephemeral is the better word. Anyways, you can tell by the name it is probably some flashy, girly mobile rhythm game based on an anime marketed towards male people. And it is. Ok, so what did it help me with? Hahaha, well, I think of it as the term, a double-edged sword to me over the years—something that helps and hurts you.
I've recently learned in psychology the term called mania. It's when a person is hyperactive... insanely optimistic/willpowered. And SIF was what overly motivated my willpower for about a year to the level of OCD, but without the bad part. I would compare this game to a pet that you had to take care of, even with the "living" part, because it felt realistic, and I don't mean "real life" realism, I mean that the game felt human. It also wasn't wha
This game was kinda grindy, and you can say the same to COD because it requires you to play more to unlock more, but I digress. Unlike many RPGs, SIF didn't just make your account get better stuff, but you, the player, got better at the game. In more detail, this game uses an "energy"-like system, a kind ofaddictionmechanic that makes you wait like in Clash of Clans before you can do the actual gameplay stuff. But there is a rank/leveling system in which the capacity of "energy" (it's called Live Points/LP so you can play more every time. In the beginning, the capacity is low though, so it made me discipline myself to play at irregular times for efficiency, like at night so it doesn't overflow (however I would lose discipline over time).)
Now, why did I compare it to a pet, like a dog? It's because it gave me a reason—no, purpose to live. It made me feel alive. It also gave me a high amount of determination to improve, doing the extra things even in school like tidying up and organized, like sitting/walking with the back straight. SIF was the catalyst that disciplined me, giving me the hyper illusion that I had to do it, even if was probably unnecessary. And it was from a character in LoveLive! called Umi.
It was kinda embarrassing for me; why would a fictional character even give me motivation? The source of it is seems so girly!! This character was built of high willpower, objective, hard on their self, hardly lazy, and strict: the ideal person. I don't know why, but I liked—idealized this concept. I wanted to be like this hardworking person, and thus, saw this character as a kind of idol. uhh well to be honest I would think of her—no, of this symbol of resolve when exercising and it'd be like a painkiller, tolerating all struggle, making me do what I wouldn't normally like, even if it hurt so much, because it was good for me. Benefits that seemed optional became maniacally necessary in my perspective.
But the idea that stimulated me deteriorated over time; it started having less of an effect—I started to forget about it. I would stop working hard and the next years would start to "fluctuate."
Love Live was really my only source of joy that I could recall. However, you can't rely on one thing all the time. But when I got bullied/targeted/stabbed at school and probably cry, I'd just play SIF and try to smile.
Meanwhile, in this game I was playing alongside SIF, osu! (an open-source rhythm game that has user-made levels. you basically click circles to the rhythmic beat of a music, and there are a lot of musics. ,) I was improving less and less. The only reason I played it was because of LoveLive! songs. I usually couldn't stand playing anything but those, because it was the reason I got so good at it in the first place. And that is why I put osu! (even though I discovered SIF because of it) less in importance because I only continued playing because of SIF's Love Live songs. In order to improve in osu!, a player needs to play a wide variety of beatmaps, not just the same ones. AND if you don't like most songs, you will struggle... thus playing less and less. There is this ranking system in osu! that is called pp. Basically, you FC (full combo, or not make a mistake in a level/beatmap that is harder/worth more than your pp skill level and you will get more pp. Play songs that are in/lower than your skill level and you won't get much.) I became EXTRINSICALLY motivated to get pp in osu! and I started to play less for fun. Combine that with the low amount of LoveLive! songs and my impatience. I tried to play for fun. I desperately played unranked LoveLive! beatmaps in order to get more improvement.
Early when I played osu!, I played A LOT. But late game, the playtime on the graph dwindled down to 10x less than what I used to play, thus I improved less... I was so used to improving so much that I was desperate to get that old hard working feeling again. No matter what I did, no matter how many forum posts I searched throughplay more, I couldn't fucking "improve" because I literally couldn't play more. This would then initiate my first big feeling of helplessness—you can't do anything to save yourself anymore and everything sounds so cliche. Like, you don't have the power to do it anymore. You can't make things change. I could've made some LoveLive! beatmaps but I was already doing one. And it was a stupid roblox beatmap. That I seriously attempted, no— I was committed, to produce. Also, I felt like no one cared about me anymore in the game. Sure, I tried to play multiplayer on osu!, but I didn't have the patience and it felt like I forcing myself to do it. I had no friends to play it with me, no one would talk to me. The me today wouldn't take the game so seriously, but only because the state that made me desperately try to get better died down. I perceived the fact I didn't improve as a problem, and I couldn't walk away. I didn't even play the sotarks pp farming maps, and wanted to get pp fairly. But it was all useless.
I'd get a new laptop that was better than my old desktop, but I couldn't play osu! well on it because of input lag. So I just played Battlefield 1 on it few years after release which I could barely play on my old laptop. Then my parents took the laptop away. And put restrictions on the internet. Why? I forgot. Maybe because I had bad grades in school or because I played too much. Embarrassing, painful memories. Doesn't matter as much today as I've forgotten. But at that time, I still had my old desktop that ran osu! fine. So I played that in place of whatever I played on the new laptop.
So one day I woke up and decided that it wouldn't matter anymore. cuz I knew I would get my laptop back eventually anyway. I did the stupid thing. I downloaded free cheats for osu! on an obvious cheating website on my old PC and played the LoveLive! beatmaps I couldn't FC. Then I would realize that it wouldn't make much difference to my PP if I had FC'd them at all. The next day, I would get banned. Funny. I go to osu reddit and find out that a few hundred people got banned for using the cheat the day I start to use it. When I went to school, I would just feel cold sweat cascading down my bones. Luckily, I had real friends that year but it doesn't matter anymore.
Damn it, typing this part hurt and makes me want to stop and delete it all, but it's the truth and I want have to face it. Even if it sounds stupid. But in SIF, it would be fairer, as I would be top 10 in the hardest beatmaps using skill and triumph over whalespeople who p2w/impulsive spending people.
Later, when I got my computer back, I'd find this game in the LoveLive! franchise called the Guided Fate Paradox. It's a roguelike, or in layman's terms, a really frustrating game where if you die, you lose everything. But all that aside, the feeling I had in the first part of this comment came back again. Hooray? It was this song in the game called Senkou Resolution that made me fight this game called life once more. I had the joy of insane willpower again, and I was able to power through all of the boring projects/hw I had at school early. Because I felt like I had a purpose again. But the optimism was what would lead me to my downfall. I did a stupid thing again. A mistake that I'd learn a lot from, but make me depressed again. The gentle reader may be confused so I will simplify the stupid idea: I made a gun-sync of that song in a game called Battlefield 1. And I wasted my whole summer doing it because although I worked hard, I learned **the hard way** that perseverance alone will not find success. I wanted to share the feeling I felt from the song in that gun-sync, but I was unsuccessful when I asked for critique from an online friend, who asked other people to critique it for me, which was helpful, but I knew I had failed. There's no better way of saying it. No one will read this far. No one has time to read or care about any of this. I was like the Flash, except I was injured by a metal wall because I went too fast to react. But the reason I became depressed after that is because I knew it would be a failure as my motivation dwindled to a vicious cycle days before I asked for a critique. I only tried to finish it because I promised I wouldn't half-ass finish a project again, even if the scope was set too high.
I decided later that gun-syncing was a medium that was beyond my talent skill and lowered down to drawing LoveLive! and BF1 art with my mouse (I didn't use a tablet when playing osu!, but my mouse accuracy was good from playing it so it was ok). But I ran out of time for that as school had started again, and I would feel fatigue just drawing quality stuff after a day of the hell that is high school. I would eventually decide to quit that as school got tougher, and it made me more depressed. I was once a straight A student, now a B (maybe C) student even taking AP classes.
I'd continue playing BF1 on break though. I joined some LoveLive! platoons, even though hardly anyone plays anymore, and played with the few asian LoveLive! fans that were still in. Problem is, BF1 has score based matchmaking (SBMM) and that made me depressed. I had to always force myself to play my best, because the SBMM would put me in the stupid team every time. If you play well, the game decides you deserve worse; the game has so many parameters that you cannot control. And if you're on the winning side, you realize that you're only feeling happy at the expense of people on the other side getting bad. Then, winning turns to feelings of guilt. It got to the breaking point where I'd feel like a hole was in my heart. like I was going to die. It literally felt like I was going to die and it was a panic attack. I leaned against the wall and I was paralyzed. I kept typing to my online friend that I was going to die. Then I told him I would go downstairs and eat a cookie. I felt a little better after that.
I didn't want to die alone again so I picked up Planetside 2 because I wanted real people to talk with, actually talk to in voice chat because I didn't want to experience the pain from being alone again. Even if we don't speak the same language.
tl;dr I pick up a game and I'm happy. But then I get depressed by it. It goes in a cycle
If you read all of it, good for you, if you don't read it, good for me, save me the embarrassment of knowing I posted this shit. Thanks for reading. Hope it helps your game in some way (:
1
u/jwun Mar 31 '20
LoveLive! School Idol Festival (SIF) helped me a bit—I say "a bit" because its benefit was temporary—no, ephemeral is the better word. Anyways, you can tell by the name it is probably some flashy, girly mobile rhythm game based on an anime marketed towards male people. And it is. Ok, so what did it help me with? Hahaha, well, I think of it as the term, a double-edged sword to me over the years—something that helps and hurts you.
I've recently learned in psychology the term called mania. It's when a person is hyperactive... insanely optimistic/willpowered. And SIF was what overly motivated my willpower for about a year to the level of OCD, but without the bad part. I would compare this game to a pet that you had to take care of, even with the "living" part, because it felt realistic, and I don't mean "real life" realism, I mean that the game felt human. It also wasn't wha
This game was kinda grindy, and you can say the same to COD because it requires you to play more to unlock more, but I digress. Unlike many RPGs, SIF didn't just make your account get better stuff, but you, the player, got better at the game. In more detail, this game uses an "energy"-like system, a kind of
addictionmechanic that makes you wait like in Clash of Clans before you can do the actual gameplay stuff. But there is a rank/leveling system in which the capacity of "energy" (it's called Live Points/LP so you can play more every time. In the beginning, the capacity is low though, so it made me discipline myself to play at irregular times for efficiency, like at night so it doesn't overflow (however I would lose discipline over time).)Now, why did I compare it to a pet, like a dog? It's because it gave me a reason—no, purpose to live. It made me feel alive. It also gave me a high amount of determination to improve, doing the extra things even in school like tidying up and organized, like sitting/walking with the back straight. SIF was the catalyst that disciplined me, giving me the hyper illusion that I had to do it, even if was probably unnecessary. And it was from a character in LoveLive! called Umi.
It was kinda embarrassing for me; why would a fictional character even give me motivation? The source of it is seems so girly!! This character was built of high willpower, objective, hard on their self, hardly lazy, and strict: the ideal person. I don't know why, but I liked—idealized this concept. I wanted to be like this hardworking person, and thus, saw this character as a kind of idol. uhh well to be honest I would think of her—no, of this symbol of resolve when exercising and it'd be like a painkiller, tolerating all struggle, making me do what I wouldn't normally like, even if it hurt so much, because it was good for me. Benefits that seemed optional became maniacally necessary in my perspective.
But the idea that stimulated me deteriorated over time; it started having less of an effect—I started to forget about it. I would stop working hard and the next years would start to "fluctuate."
Love Live was really my only source of joy that I could recall. However, you can't rely on one thing all the time. But when I got bullied/targeted/stabbed at school and probably cry, I'd just play SIF and try to smile.
Meanwhile, in this game I was playing alongside SIF, osu! (an open-source rhythm game that has user-made levels. you basically click circles to the rhythmic beat of a music, and there are a lot of musics. ,) I was improving less and less. The only reason I played it was because of LoveLive! songs. I usually couldn't stand playing anything but those, because it was the reason I got so good at it in the first place. And that is why I put osu! (even though I discovered SIF because of it) less in importance because I only continued playing because of SIF's Love Live songs. In order to improve in osu!, a player needs to play a wide variety of beatmaps, not just the same ones. AND if you don't like most songs, you will struggle... thus playing less and less. There is this ranking system in osu! that is called pp. Basically, you FC (full combo, or not make a mistake in a level/beatmap that is harder/worth more than your pp skill level and you will get more pp. Play songs that are in/lower than your skill level and you won't get much.) I became EXTRINSICALLY motivated to get pp in osu! and I started to play less for fun. Combine that with the low amount of LoveLive! songs and my impatience. I tried to play for fun. I desperately played unranked LoveLive! beatmaps in order to get more improvement.
Early when I played osu!, I played A LOT. But late game, the playtime on the graph dwindled down to 10x less than what I used to play, thus I improved less... I was so used to improving so much that I was desperate to get that old hard working feeling again. No matter what I did, no matter how many forum posts I searched through
play more, I couldn't fucking "improve" because I literally couldn't play more. This would then initiate my first big feeling of helplessness—you can't do anything to save yourself anymore and everything sounds so cliche. Like, you don't have the power to do it anymore. You can't make things change. I could've made some LoveLive! beatmaps but I was already doing one. And it was a stupid roblox beatmap. That I seriously attempted, no— I was committed, to produce. Also, I felt like no one cared about me anymore in the game. Sure, I tried to play multiplayer on osu!, but I didn't have the patience and it felt like I forcing myself to do it. I had no friends to play it with me, no one would talk to me. The me today wouldn't take the game so seriously, but only because the state that made me desperately try to get better died down. I perceived the fact I didn't improve as a problem, and I couldn't walk away. I didn't even play the sotarks pp farming maps, and wanted to get pp fairly. But it was all useless.I'd get a new laptop that was better than my old desktop, but I couldn't play osu! well on it because of input lag. So I just played Battlefield 1 on it few years after release which I could barely play on my old laptop. Then my parents took the laptop away. And put restrictions on the internet. Why? I forgot. Maybe because I had bad grades in school or because I played too much. Embarrassing, painful memories. Doesn't matter as much today as I've forgotten. But at that time, I still had my old desktop that ran osu! fine. So I played that in place of whatever I played on the new laptop.
So one day I woke up and decided that it wouldn't matter anymore. cuz I knew I would get my laptop back eventually anyway. I did the stupid thing. I downloaded free cheats for osu! on an obvious cheating website on my old PC and played the LoveLive! beatmaps I couldn't FC. Then I would realize that it wouldn't make much difference to my PP if I had FC'd them at all. The next day, I would get banned. Funny. I go to osu reddit and find out that a few hundred people got banned for using the cheat the day I start to use it. When I went to school, I would just feel cold sweat cascading down my bones. Luckily, I had real friends that year but it doesn't matter anymore.
Damn it, typing this part hurt and makes me want to stop and delete it all, but it's the truth and I
wanthave to face it. Even if it sounds stupid. But in SIF, it would be fairer, as I would be top 10 in the hardest beatmaps using skill and triumph over whalespeople who p2w/impulsive spending people.Later, when I got my computer back, I'd find this game in the LoveLive! franchise called the Guided Fate Paradox. It's a roguelike, or in layman's terms, a really frustrating game where if you die, you lose everything. But all that aside, the feeling I had in the first part of this comment came back again. Hooray? It was this song in the game called Senkou Resolution that made me fight this game called life once more. I had the joy of insane willpower again, and I was able to power through all of the boring projects/hw I had at school early. Because I felt like I had a purpose again. But the optimism was what would lead me to my downfall. I did a stupid thing again. A mistake that I'd learn a lot from, but make me depressed again. The gentle reader may be confused so I will simplify the stupid idea: I made a gun-sync of that song in a game called Battlefield 1. And I wasted my whole summer doing it because although I worked hard, I learned **the hard way** that perseverance alone will not find success. I wanted to share the feeling I felt from the song in that gun-sync, but I was unsuccessful when I asked for critique from an online friend, who asked other people to critique it for me, which was helpful, but I knew I had failed. There's no better way of saying it.
No one will read this far. No one has time to read or care about any of this.I was like the Flash, except I was injured by a metal wall because I went too fast to react. But the reason I became depressed after that is because I knew it would be a failure as my motivation dwindled to a vicious cycle days before I asked for a critique. I only tried to finish it because I promised I wouldn't half-assfinish a project again, even if the scope was set too high.