I went on a binge, playing Innovation on BoardGameArena.com. This was the first week since finishing graduate school where I stayed up past 1am every night.
The implementation of Innovation on BGA is quite good and it is really convenient to have a community of players around the world. This is especially true when you join the “Arena League” where you are always just a few minutes from having an available opponent.
I think that a proper league ranking system would just give you a number, maybe some sort of ELO score, but that would be a bit too dry. Instead BGA created six levels to gamify the journey itself. Once you’re in the system, there’s always yet another rung on the ladder, culminating in the “elite” level with the final goal to reach number one.
It didn’t help that I lucked into a couple easy wins over “elite” players in my first few games. Like a good casino, this beginner’s luck sucked me in hard. Subsequent games put me back in my place, being properly crushed in most of my games against top ranked opponents. There were a few games where I was “just one turn away” from victory, but that is the point of competition at the upper levels. One wasted turn is what separates the elite from us mere mortals.
In the end, I made it to “gold” in that week, It was quite gratifying to know that my obsessive gameplaying against myself during the quarantine of early 2020 turned out to be decent training. Still, I must quit this Arena. It’s too easy to click play again, and again, and again.
This was a fun one week fling, but it would have made a bad marriage. I slept only a few hours every night and was on the verge of being chronically sleep deprived. The effort to become truly great would have been monumental. It’s one thing to use your actions wisely; a whole other level of to never waste an action. The juice isn’t worth the squeeze.
A few days after stopping BGA, I’ve started to feel a deep sense of relief. I had been in the grips of a addiction and didn’t realized it. Just like quitting Facebook last summer, I hadn’t realized how deeply this thing had dug its tendrils into my subconscious until after I stopped.
It’s a little embarrassing to go on a run bragging about kicking digital addictions, and then admit how easy it is to fall right back into it. Even so, I am happy to report that I’ve stayed off this drug for the two months after that week of gluttony. I’ll log onto BGA on Friday nights to play with my friends, but that’s it. To be clear, this isn’t a feat of will power, but a consequence of getting really into the I Ching. It’s a good reminder that it is a whole lot easier to quit for something better.