When The Game Becomes the Habit

 I've been getting up early to play video games.

Not because there's some raid that needs running or some event I can't miss. Not because I'm deeply invested in the story or desperately want to see what happens next. I get up early to play because that's what I do. It's the routine. It's been the routine for years.

But lately I've been asking myself a question I'm not sure I want to answer: Does this still make sense?

How It Changed

I've been gaming for over forty years. It started as something I genuinely loved, a hobby that was mine before I had kids, before the career consumed everything, before life got complicated. I wasn't chasing connection or trying to fill a gap. I just enjoyed it.

But then my son got into gaming, and suddenly it became something more. When he and his mother moved five hundred miles away, gaming became our bridge. We couldn't be in the same room, couldn't throw a ball in the backyard or go to a movie together. But we could log into the same world, run the same dungeons, talk about the same games.

It gave us shared language when distance made everything else harder. It kept us connected when I couldn't just drive across town to see him.

That mattered. For years, it really mattered.

Now my son is almost thirty himself. He has a family, a career, responsibilities that don't leave much room for twelve-hour gaming sessions. He moved on. The thing that helped keep us connected isn't what keeps us connected anymore. We talk about other things now. Real things. Life things.

But I'm still logging in.

The Sunk Cost of Virtual Worlds

World of Warcraft has been part of my life for two decades. Twenty years of characters, achievements, gear, progress. Guilds I've been part of. Content I've cleared. Expansions I've played through from launch day. The muscle memory of keybinds I've used for so long I don't even think about them anymore.

Walking away from that feels impossible. Not because the game is that good, necessarily. But because of everything I've put into it. The time, the effort, the identity I built around being someone who plays this game.

That's a sunk cost, and I know it. I know the rational move is to evaluate whether the game still adds value to my life now, not whether it justified the investment I made years ago. But knowing something intellectually and feeling it emotionally are different things.

What I'm Trading

A couple hours every morning while the rest of the house is still asleep. Time I could spend reading books I actually want to read. Writing more consistently. Planning what comes next now that the career structure is gone. Or just sleeping, which at my age would probably be the smarter move.

Instead I'm doing world quests and delves, leveling alts, and running the same content I've run dozens of times, chasing gear upgrades that will be obsolete in the next patch. I'm maintaining progress in a game that resets its goalposts every few months.

It's not that the games are bad. Some of them are genuinely good. Well-designed, engaging, worth the time if you have the time to spare. But do I have the time to spare?

I used to. When I was working sixty-hour weeks and needed the escape, gaming was how I decompressed. When my son was younger and lived far away and we needed something to do together, gaming was how we stayed connected. When the world shut down during the pandemic, gaming was how I stayed sane.

But the context has shifted. The career is gone. My son doesn't need me to run dungeons with him anymore. The distance that made gaming essential has been replaced by other ways of staying close. And I'm sitting here wondering why I'm still doing this.

The Comfort of the Known

Here's what I think is actually happening: Gaming is comfortable. I'm good at it. I know what to do, how to do it, and what the outcomes will be. There's no ambiguity, no uncertainty, no risk of failure that actually matters.

Real life right now is the opposite of that. I don't know what comes next. I don't have a clear progression path or a set of objectives to complete. There's no quest log telling me what to do or achievement system confirming I did it right.

Gaming gives me that. It gives me structure, progress, accomplishment. Even if none of it means anything outside the game.

That's not a great reason to keep doing something.

The Question I Keep Avoiding

Would I miss it if I stopped?

I think the honest answer is: not as much as I'm afraid I would.

I'd miss the routine, probably. The familiar comfort of logging in, the muscle memory of rotations and keybinds, the low-stakes problem-solving that doesn't require much thought. But would I miss the actual games? The content? The progression?

I'm not sure I would.

And that might be the most important thing I've realized. I'm not playing because I love it anymore. I'm playing because I've always played. Because walking away feels like admitting I wasted all that time. Because I don't quite know what to do with those morning hours if I'm not gaming.

Those aren't good reasons.

I'd miss the people that I've connected with over the years.  Guild members and social media friends.

What Comes Next

I don't know yet. I'm not ready to uninstall everything and walk away cold. The investment is real, even if it's sunk. The habit is strong, even if it's not serving me anymore.

But I think I need to start being honest about what gaming is and isn't doing for me now. It's not keeping me connected to my son anymore. It's not helping me decompress from work stress I don't have. It's not filling a gap that needs filling.

It's just... what I do. And maybe that's not enough anymore.

Maybe those morning hours could be better spent building something that actually matters. Writing more. Thinking more. Reading books instead of quest text. Planning a future instead of optimizing a character.

Or maybe I just need to let myself sleep.

I don't have the answer yet. But I think I'm finally asking the right question.