Has it ever happened? You sit there, clicking on those beds for the third hour in a row, your eyes are a bit bulging, but inside there is a pleasant feeling. Well, like, I'm doing something. I'm "farming". My level is rising there, some numbers are trickling in. But if in the evening you stop and ask yourself🤔"What has really changed in my life in these five hours?" I feel somewhat awkward.
In this arises the very illusion. It's as if we are running a marathon, sweating, panting, while in reality, we are just pedaling on an exercise bike that is bolted to the floor in an 8-bit room.
Work that isn't work
The biggest problem with Pixels is that it mimics real engagement. Our brain is such a simple thing. It’s given tasks, it performs them, receives a reward (even if it's just the sound 'ding' and a picture of a berry) and releases a dose of dopamine. That's it, the checkbox is already checked 'I was productive today'.
But it's a deception. It's a 'horizontal' movement. You can grow a thousand berries, but you haven't become smarter, you haven't mastered a new skill, so it's not even a fact that you've become richer, because while you were clicking, the token's price might have dropped so much that your efforts turned into pennies.
Why are we falling for this?
Because real progress is difficult and often boring. To learn a language or improve your skills in a profession, you really have to make an effort, and the result is somewhere far away, in the fog. But in Pixels, everything is simple:
Planted, and it has already grown.
I drank an energy drink and ran further.
Having completed the quest, you gained experience.
Such fast food success. Quick, cheap, but zero vitamins for real life. The worst part is that this game constantly 'changes the rules of the game'. You just built a strategy, and the developers already cut the limits. You run again just to not fall back. It's not development, it's some endless attempt to catch up with a train that has long left.
Where is the real profit?
Listen, I’m not saying that games are evil. It's just that you want to kill time, okay? But if you catch yourself thinking that Pixels is your 'second job' or 'path to success', it's worth slowing down.
The real result that stays with you when you turn off the computer. Currency can be blocked, the game can be shut down, the server can go down. What will you have left then? The ability to click quickly on virtual land?
My advice (to myself too) is to measure success not in gaming resources, but in how much energy you borrowed from your real future for this picture. If you're playing to relax, then great. If you're playing because 'you need to develop', then my friend, we're in an illusion.
Time is the only resource that doesn't respawn here. Maybe it's better to spend it on something that doesn't depend on server updates?@Pixels #pixel $PIXEL
