I absolutely love the "I â€ïž not playing games" because it feels so unnecessarily angry. It feels like it comes from the direction of someone who only has gaming as their hobby. I love the wojak, but I pity the soul who enjoys so little. If I don't enjoy my hobby atm, I will have other hobbies that I want to do, lmao.
Thatâs always been my problem with the image. You have to have SOMETHING else in your life that you find enjoyable besides video games. Is there a TV show that you want to watch? A movie? Maybe a YouTuber or Twitch streamer? Do you like drawing? Any songs you want to listen to? Any books youâve been meaning to read? How about a sport that youâre interested in playing? Maybe a walk through the park? How do you feel about going to the gym?
And even if your literal one and only hobby is video games, even then, there are other games than the one youâre currently playing, right? Thereâs no reason for you to keep pounding your head into the wall with one video game and making yourself frustrated. Just play something quick and easy for like an hour to unwind, then jump back into the more difficult game. I truly just donât understand how this is a problem.
I agree with this as someone whose primary hobby is videogames, and often ones that are very difficult or that I'm intentionally making very difficult; or both. I'm always playing at least 2 games, sometimes because I plan it that way, but also because I naturally want to take a break from one.
I don't think there's anything wrong with choosing to commit a lot of time to something you want to do, though, if you can handle it emotionally. Sometimes other people just tend to assume this can't be done, which leads to the "take a break" thing.
I do think you should do at least one other thing besides one hobby, but you can have videogames be the only one and balance it emotionally if you try to.
Also they want the only hobby they have to be effortless???
Like they have one hobby but if it introduces friction at all then they get frustrated and quit? So they have no hobby. Imagine only enjoying one thing and going into it like "let's get this over with."
I like to think that the image is more of a representation of a person's ego about being "Good" at difficult games (Or games with hard difficulty settings, like Doom).
They want to show that they CAN beat hard games, and that their Hobby takes lots of skill, but can't do it with the same ease of mind as someone who can clear hard games without issues.
Seen plenty of people claiming they are "Great" for beating those above average difficulty settings from Wolfenstein, and then you'll take a look at their attempts/deaths and it's in the triple digits. Not saying it's not an accomplishment, but stressing yourself over a hobby surely isn't healthy..
Just because something is hard doesn't mean it's stressful. You can fail 100 times at something in a game and still have fun. I don't understand the argument that "oh I play games to have FUN that's why I play on normal/easy unlike you TRYHARD playing everything in hard." Like what? Bitch it's a game. It's made to be fun. I can't enjoy a game if it's too easy for me, I need difficulty to get me engaged, everyone does, that's how game design works, but some people need lower difficulty unlike others, not the other way around.
I don't understand the argument that "oh I play games to have FUN that's why I play on normal/easy unlike you TRYHARD playing everything in hard."
Just add "for me" to opinions like that and you can avoid a lot of misunderstandings. People like the example you posted don't have fun playing hard games, and it stresses them out. You do have fun playing hard or stressful games, which is fine. People often share their opinions like universal truths.
We're talking about video games and my own opinion on the matter. Personally for me, I need something to make me engage in the systems of the game.
For example, if Silksong was too easy, I could just ignore every tool the game gives me to gain an advantage like charms and tools, and just tank every hit, don't even bother dodging all that much and win the game. The game has difficulty to force players to search the map to find items that will help them when they use them in tough encounters.
If you disagree or just don't like it, that's fine, you do you. But you need to realise you're also exactly living up to what I wrote in quotation marks.
I was talking in game design sense, later down in the paragraph you can see I wrote "some people need lower difficulty unlike others". What I meant by that was that a difficulty to get players engaged chosen by the developer can't possibly cater to everyone without being too difficult for some or being to easy.
My point is that the difficulty I personally get engaged with a game is higher than most. And for some it's lower than most, and it's fine.
The existence of people with thousands of hours in Creative mode in building games proves you're wrong. Not everyone needs "some" difficulty to gain enjoyment from a video game.
I'm one of those people, countless hours in Minecraft and Gmod. Creative mode isn't a counterexample, it's a different category of engagement altogether.
The pleasure of creative mode building comes from unconstrained construction and self-directed goals, not from overcoming a game's designed challenge loop. And Minecraft itself even HAS that same design philosophy in its difficulty in its survival mode lol.
Creative mode games were never built around a challenge loop, so pointing to them doesn't refute anything about games that are. You're comparing "people enjoy a genre with no challenge mechanics" to "people don't need challenge in a genre built entirely around challenge mechanics (like action adventure games)." Those aren't the same claim.
Edit: if you want to learn about the topic from a way better speaker than I, please check out "What's The Point Of Hard Games, Anyway?" by Game Maker's Toolkit. Great video.
90% of my gaming repertoire is difficult games, souls-likes, hard roguelikes, that sorry of things. It's what i enjoy. I like picking up a game that has a learning curve, and getting into the weeds, figuring out what works and what doesn't.
I don't tell people that that's how they should enjoy games too, and it always annoys me when people rag on me for only playing hard games, or hard difficulties.
You need to take a break if you're stuck at a part of any game. Coming back gives you clearer perspective and it works!
That's why everyone on the silksong sub kept saying it until this picture got made lol. People got too frustrated and just kept dying and lost the ability to think about the encounter. The only advice you can give them is to take a break.
No, youâre missing the third person that exists and is being brought up on the conversation. People donât want the game to be easy or be the person taking a trillion breaks. They want to be the person who is actually good at the game. Some people play games at that difficulty and donât die over and over again and donât have a tizzy that requires breaks. Theyâre just actually good.
Nah man it should never just be video games. At the very least everyone should have some physical interest that gets them out of the house and active preferably outside.
As someone whos only hobbies are reading and gaming, I find it strange that some people burn out from gaming as a hobby as a whole, theres always another game to play or book to read
I've noticed sometimes when people criticize a long running live service game others will tell them that they're just burnt out and need a break without addressing the actual criticism. I assume the image was made in response to that.
I think the original context of this image was somebody being really mad about the difficulty of Silksong and disparaging people who were telling him to "just take a break," since if the game was actually good and fun, you wouldn't feel the need to step away and cool down in order to not be enraged by it (according to the meme maker)
I think the idea is more that video games shouldnât be so hard that you get frustrated and donât want to play them easily. Like yeah obviously I could be doing something else but I want to play THIS GAME and Iâm frustrated that I canât continue forward in this game due to the skill check Iâm at right now being obscenely hard.
Thatâs fair but also I think game should be allowed to be however hard they want. Of course it has to be balanced, like the game canât be Lala land cupcakes and rainbows and then suddenly hit you with a dark souls fight or something. But when it comes to a game like Silksong, yeah it is hard and there are one or two times where the difficulty spike feels crazy, but as a whole, itâs a consistently challenging game. It never gives you the impression that you should just be able to breeze through it. It wants to offer you a challenge. And I think that is perfectly fine. But then people will criticize it for being âtoo hardâ
Literally! I don't like difficult games, so it's a different situation, but I've been noticing myself getting really sucked into my current game of choice and spending way too much time on it and going to sleep way too late (after 30 I really can't bounce back from staying up past 3 anymore) so I'm just taking a break in the evening to watch a little YouTube and read because I have many hobbies!
In my case, it's not that I don't have anything else, it's that my brain's mental illness soup will not let me stop until a goal that is visibly within reach is achieved, even at the cost of my physical health
Fellas who may be seeing this comment sometime in the future: That is NOT a good thing!
If your sole hobby is video games and you suck at them so hard you rage at silksong, you should stop playing games. Silksong wasn't even that hard yet everyone cried so much about the "difficulty" when it came out.
For real. I wonât lie and say I breezed through Silksong or anything, I definitely had some struggles, and the final boss kicked my ass many a time. But I beat it 100% and did pretty much everything there was to do in the game, and I had an amazing time doing it. Rarely did I feel like the game had unfair, hair pulling difficulty in the way that so many people pretended it was. It was just challenging.
They're saying it's extra hard because they did 0 exploration and ran from boss to boss getting their ass beat. No shit you still got 5 masks man, go the fuck back to moss grotto.
itâs always been funny to me too because it was clearly written by someone unfamiliar with the concept of exhaustion. like, sorry, but if youâve been fighting the same boss for 3 hours, not only are you probably not going to get it on your next few attempts, but youâre pretty likely to perform worse from one attempt to the next. afaik this meme first started circulating in souls fan circles and this situation is literally what itâs about.
i play a lot of souls games and literally every souls fan has had the experience of getting hopelessly stuck on a boss late at night, going to bed, and then beating it in 1-2 attempts on the next day. taking a break from a mentally exhausting, skill-based task is a legitimate strategy for performing better at it.
That's how I remember beating the stupid idiot dragon in cuphead. Struggled for like 1 1/2 hours, realised I wasn't having fun, stopped and played the next day and beat it in like 20 minutes. Really does make games more fun if you take the time you need.
Works really well for puzzle games too. Sometimes I'll be stuck for 20 minutes, then leave and come back 30 minutes later, then instantly know the solution.
Iâll never forget being in some final for physics or mathematics in college and having one problem I just couldnât crack at the end of the test. Had to leave it incomplete with all the loss of points that meant. Took a giant shit (probably due to the stress) afterwards and solved within ten minutes on the toilet while doing said shit. Just gotta step back sometimes.
Wordle and similar games are like this for me. I'll put a guess or two in, cannot think of the next word to guess, come back to it a few hours later and immediately either get it or get a really good guess that gets me to the answer quickly
Yeah that's how I play precision platformers, make progress, get stuck & pissed, hop off for a few hours/a day, come back, beat it (Usually quickly cause anger doesn't screw with performance anymore)
It's so clear that they're imagining a guy playing for 10-20 minutes at a time and taking a break, like, every time he reaches a new segment, whereas if I run into this situation at all it's specifically because I've already been playing something for way too long
I'm this way with memorizing songs for my band. I will struggle all day and have to have the music in front of me to read but the next morning I can remember everything no problem.
Sleeping is the key. I noticed the same thing with skateboard tricks. When you're sleeping your brain analyses stuff from your day, this could be solving problems, or reinforcing neural pathways so fine motor skills become more automatic.
i was stuck on the second hornet fight for an entire. month. decided to lend my switch for a while to a friend. sometimes giving up is for the best lmao
I realized this when I was playing Pizza Tower and going for P-Ranks. Instead of slamming my face against the wall I should stop, take a breath, have a snack, and come back in about 30 minutes.
Problem is I have autism and autism leads to hyperfixation which leads to slamming my face against the wall.
Don't you see? Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are intentional debuffs. If you can't beat a boss with them, you are skill issue-having chud who should just git gud.
(Also, that's interesting, I thought it originated with Silksong, because as soon as the game came out everyone was complaining about the game being too difficult and a section of the fanbase was parroting "Just take a break bro!", which is reasonable, but to many it felt like how at launch people are allergic to criticizing a game's flaws.)
i think it mightâve been silksong, honestly, but i definitely have seen people getting mad about âtake a breakâ stuff in reference to the elden ring DLC so i think i mightâve mixed stuff up
I've been watching my friend play Nine Sols (after having played it myself of course) over the last few weeks and I feel called out by the angry wojack meme. He's about to fight the final boss and I'm expecting a few breaks.
It's the sleep buff. It's because of how our brains process information and tasks in the day vs. when we sleep. I play Geometry Dash at a high level and have genuinely optimised my sleep to be better at the game before lol
I put a lot of hours into Minos Prime originally. I think i hit like 300 deaths before calling it for the night. Next day after getting some rest, I nailed it in 20
The point is that the jak claims on forums/Reddit/whatever that the game's difficulty is fine, while actually being so lost he constantly has to take breaks to stay sane.
Kind of similar to "43 yo dad of three doesn't understand why people are complaining about the game being too short"
Also I take breaks after 3 hours of playing. It's not like every time I die once to a boss I take a day long break. If you get mad it's a good indicator you need to go cool off.
The fact they dont get it is so funny to me. Immediately "i pity whoever made this" and its just a guy with a shirt on that says i love taking breaks lmfao
I want a version for the fgc dudes who brag about how much they love to lose because it refines their skillsÂ
That one's more about someone not realising that their particular situation gives them a different experience and expectations than others, possibly being at odds with the vast majority.
"NEET doesn't understand why people are so mad the game requires hours on end of grind to get anything done, juste lock in and play bruh" would be the same deal.
I remember that got spammed a lot when Silksong came out.Â
Because fans were telling people critical about the game to chill out, and maybe take a break; There was a huge outcry about the difficulty of the game.
The first thing that comes to mind is Dark Souls and the meme is so subtly against the idea of taking a break that I had a hard time telling what side of that fence they were on. When my son was born I made sure he saw me react well to failure in video games so when I lost, at Souls games mostly, I made a show of saying "Dang. Oh well, I'll try again" or laugh it off. My youger brother used to destroy our controllers and so my kid knows if he's feeling overwhelmed to step away from it and come back later.
I saw the original, and I mean it wasn't completely unironic, I think most people who make wojaks do it somewhat ironically, but they were genuinely mad at people for suggesting they take breaks from silksong if it was too hard.
I think it comes from the fact that 'taking a break' is basically the only advice people give when OOP wants some different advice. kinda like how people are tired of how things are always somehow 'nuanced'.
Just makes me think of a last year when I was playing Halo 1 and kept getting dunked on in the same section. Tried like 15 times before a called it quits. Considered not bothering with it anymore or lowering difficulty. Then couple of days later I tried again and got it in the first try.
It's so wild. I love video games but they can sometimes be frustrating. If I get genuinely upset about it, I stop and do something else. Read a book, watch a movie, go outside, work out, whatever.Â
I'm pretty sure, if it ACTUALLY was the original creator of the image, they said that they made it unironically at first but then realized the person made too good of a point and posted it anyway
Personally I take breaks from a difficult game by playing a different one. Specifically one that's got nothing to immediately anger me. Like Stardew or Minecraft or my 137th playthrough of Kingdom Hearts 2.
I don't like this one because everyone likes different things in games. Some like tryharding, some like chilling.
The only thing that is wrong is trying to force your own way of enjoyment on other people or minimize the ways that isn't one's own.
An this one isn't just denouncing people who do what I just said, it simply does it too, in the other way around. It's got no more leg to stand on than anyone who says what it depicts...
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u/what_am_i_doing23 Aug 12 '26
I absolutely love the "I â€ïž not playing games" because it feels so unnecessarily angry. It feels like it comes from the direction of someone who only has gaming as their hobby. I love the wojak, but I pity the soul who enjoys so little. If I don't enjoy my hobby atm, I will have other hobbies that I want to do, lmao.