Category: health

Feeling depressed after finished a game

(I wrote a related post in Chinese here.)

I recently finished a visual novel (a game genre). It is a great game with fully voiced feature, and it has good ending. However, after I finished the game, I felt depressed and empty until now (around a week now). The feeling is just similar to grief. I believe that, how good the game is, then how empty it will be. This is because the fictional and realistic are totally different thing. Whatever you feel through fiction, when you come into reality then they are just gone. And you found that, what you gained was just emptiness.

I searched online, and found that this type of depression is called post-game depression.

I have summarized the factors that cause me having post-game depression.

  1. The player (you) has great empathy – you can feel like game character feels.
  2. Game characters have realistic characteristics – you will feel that the game characters like a real person.
  3. Fully voiced dialog – just like those scamming dating app, you feel the heartwarming speech.
  4. The game character(s) match the player’s favour – you like the character.
  5. The story is long – you spend time with the game, causes you attached to the game character.
  6. The story is reasonable and logical – it may contains science fictional element, but story flow is reasonable.
  7. Good ending, but without finalize everything – you see the happy ending, but looks like something is missing.

In conclusion, you are attached to a fictional story that is somehow realistic (especially in the characters’ relationships), but when the story ended, then it is ended. Nothing else. This causes the player feel something suddenly missing.

In order to cope this bad experience, I am trying to (i) pay more attention on my spiritual life (i.e prayer and bible reading); (ii) talk to someone else (e.g. join Discord); (iii) listen to sad songs/musics; and (iv) re-imagine the whole game with a more completed story. Time passing will make me forget the game and the feeling, but this is really a bad experience. 😕

Civilization 4 quote I like most

When I played Civilization 4, there is a quote I like most

Tell me what you eat, and I will tell you what you are.
by: Anthelme Brillat-Savarin

This is really true. If we eat unhealthy food, surely we will be unhealthy. If we eat healthy food, surely we will be healthy. When we eat, we digest the food, and the nutrients become part of our body. That is why we are growing when we eat. How wonderful is our body.

What a priest told us also corresponding to this quote. He said something like this: “What we eat becomes part of our body. We have the power to make the food become our body. Can’t God with the almighty power, make the bread become the Body of Christ?”

Recycle your phone, adopt a tree

I read newspaper, in Malaysia, there are Nokia Kiosks, which you can recycle your unwanted mobile phones, any mobile phones, not only Nokia. Doing this, you can adopt a tree in Indonesia, and you no need to plant the tree by yourself. And, you can see your tree through Google Earth. What a great idea!

You can find the kiosks in several locations only. Click the link above to read more.

Website colour hurting your eyes?

Do you find that some websites background colour is hurting your eyes?

You can solve this problem by installing Greasemonkey or Stylish if you are using Firefox. If you are using IE, then you need to install Trixie. I personally do not install Trixie.

Then, install the “user styles”:
Black text on white background or Light text on black background

If you are using Maxthon instead of IE, MyStyle is the solution.

流水不腐 Flowing water does not rot

I like this chinese idiom: 流水不腐, which means “flowing water does not rot”.

This is a basic phenomenon. If the water can flow, the water sure be clean. This idiom can be applied to many circumstances.

The drain need to be unobstructed, so that the water can flow, and the drain will be clean.
We need to allow the air of the room circulate so that we have enough oxygen.
We need to go to toilet, so that the our organs will be clean, and we will not sick.

For me, this idiom also points out that I need to practice my skills always, so that my skills will not be dull. Just like an old man need to use his brain otherwise he will become dull. We often said that, if we don’t use our brain, our brain will get rusty.

Right, if a machine we don’t use it, it will get rusty. You might also say, the machine will have longer life span if we seldom use it. Since you have the machine, why don’t just use the machine so that the machine becomes useful? Since you have the skill, why you want to waste it?

Besides that, in the spiritual perspective, we need to do spiritual practice frequently so that our spiritual life will not be rotten.