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Playing Video Games Taught Me the Pleasure of Work
Work can be a lot of fun without the real life anxiety
When I was a child, and my dad would come visit every other weekend, Sunday afternoon was often reserved for watching football. I can’t remember whether he was a Jets or Giants fan, or anything about the content of the actual games, other than I found them painfully boring and was unable to comprehend why anybody would feel differently. So if you were to tell me that 20+ years later, I would spend 68 hours over three weeks playing Madden 22, an NFL simulator game — plus many more watching actual football games, football documentaries, and reading football news — I would have not believed you.
I’ve been a gamer for four years or so and a sports fan for half that time. While looking for a new video game to get hooked on, I asked a friend if she thought I’d like Madden. “Madden is life,” she responded. So I downloaded it, slogged through some tutorials, and indeed, Madden quickly became life, so much so that it made living my “real” life significantly more difficult.
Most afternoons, I can’t help but knock off work early to play Madden. I do the bare minimum — start the article I am supposed to be finished with and send one out of maybe six emails I need to reply to — before I am drawn to the PS5 controller like a…
