I’ve seen other players talk about how zombie survival games changed their lives, so here’s my story. About two years back I discovered this zombie game and got completely hooked. Spent hundreds of hours playing it and even started using tons of mods to add more content.
I’m the kind of player who always does the same thing in games. In this zombie game, I always ended up creating massive gardens and growing every possible crop. The problem was that preparing the soil took forever and was super boring. Even with tractor mods it was still a pain.
I basically turned the game into a farming simulator with every plant mod I could find. But it always frustrated me how slow everything grew. Plus I kept dying before I could harvest anything, which meant all that work was wasted.
After spending so much time virtually growing plants that I’d never actually see grow, I had a realization. The game had also made me curious about growing tobacco and other plants in real life. I figured if I’m spending all this time farming in a game, why not try growing actual food I can eat?
So I started gardening for real. I learned about different plants and growing techniques. Eventually I bought some seeds and had to figure out how to actually grow them. Now two years later, I barely play games anymore. I’d rather spend time on activities that give me real results instead of virtual ones.
I ended up replacing most of my lawn with vegetables and flowers, just like how you can plant anywhere in the game. It’s funny how the same mechanics work in real life - you do work now for benefits later. The delayed gratification is the same, except now I actually get to enjoy the harvest.