Since you're conscientious enough to recognize the special fruitlessness of whoring achievements, I would love to pick your brain a little.
Ahahahah, sure, I'll bite.
Are there other things outside of gaming you find yourself obsessing over? Do you have any other hobbies where you have mastered some achievement? Perhaps you're Magic: The Gathering
World Champion or have won money playing competitive Starcraft or CounterStrike? A stamp collection that rivals museums?
I was diagnosed with OCD a long time ago, but these days I try not to waste time organizing things past the point of expected returns on time saved. That said, when I choose to do things, I often wind up taking them to the extreme.
For instance, when I'm studying for school or (rarely) reading for enjoyment, I often find myself reading
everywhere. Once I start, I'll keep right on reading that sucker out the door and across the street. (With the occasional upward glance to avoid getting run over by traffic)
When I got into biking last year I stuck to my routine, even when it meant riding through the snow and getting icicles stuck to my beard:
When I was doing the online dating thing I'd spend as much time on OKCupid as I've been spending on Civ5 lately. It became a very serious obsession where I'd pull out my phone and check the website during every idle moment of my daily routine to check my messages.
I like math, so I took calculus 3 for fun (not needed for degree), and statistics twice, just to get the concepts down better. (Even though I got a 4.0 the first time.) I work as a math tutor now. Most people seem to hate math, so clearly there's something comparatively nuts going on upstairs, lol...
My newest obsession is rock-climbing. I haven't "mastered" it yet (very few people have), but I'm already hitting up Vertical World 3-4 times a week, bouldering v5, and have a morning pull-up routine when I get to the bus-stop. People like to honk at me and give me funny looks, but *shrug*
If you can imagine the life you lived prior to 1000 hours of Civ5, would you say you would have enjoyed 1000 hours of Civ5 without the achievement system motivating you?
Would you describe the hold achievements have on your psyche as a curse? Or would you say it's the game development version of getting people hooked on crack? Do you feel preyed upon or exploited in any way?
I would still have enjoyed Civ5, but the achievements really gave me some direction in the game as to what to accomplish next. I have a hard time functioning without that. In most games you beat the single player, then you beat it on the hardest difficulty, and then you try to beat everybody else online. Civ 5 isn't like that, so the achievements work well I think.
Clearly not everybody goes insane though (many of the achievements are still rounding down to 0% of the playerbase having done then), so I only have myself to blame for letting it go this far. Now I must find the strength to avoid purchasing the next DLC and borking up the rest of my schedule. Heh.
If you had a cybernetic servant at you disposal who could do any physical or mental task on your behalf for 1000 hours, what would you assign it to do? It could go to work and do your job, learn how to play the piano for your brain, fold your laundry, learn Chinese, whatever. It's a genie that grants a wish in the form of 1000 hours. In other words, what tasks would you like to avoid 1000 hours worth of, or what activities do you wish you could invest 1000 hours into?
Could I get it to eat for me? Better yet, could I
be the cybernetic servant so I don't have to? I hate having to stop and fuel myself 3-5 times per day. It's such an inconvenience!
