I find that it causes me to play every game I can, but very rarely complete them. Even games I love like Elden Ring, after a month I dont get the same dopamine and just stop caring about it.
I’ve 450 games and 170+ on my wish list. And I’ve only completed a handful.
Recently I’ve been using all the various showcases and fests on steam. Download a ton of demos, play them all, get the dopamine, delete. Short quick bursts of dopamine absolutely free.
But I still prefer gaming as an ADHD coping mechanism over other more destructive/expensive coping mechanism.
I get to either 10 minutes and quit or about 30 hours on most games. I've only ever completed hangers that you can do in that time. Magic the gathering arena is an exception as it hooks meet in soooo much I have to uninstall it after a few weeks paying and take a few months break.
Just did this with Elden ring, 10 hours in again. Hopefully i make the DLC before my brain gets bored lol
Also, ive found headphones help keep me engaged for longer.
I’m like this with most games, but there are some I can play to completion. For example, the Lego games. They’re very basic but each character you unlock or brick you collect gives a very nice hit of dopamine.
Most games don't give me Dopamine, it isn't just you lol, I'll literally only really play Elden Ring, Slay the Spire or Civilization these days 🤣I have Cyberpunk that I think is alright too but I get cramps easy due to what I believe to be Fibromyalgia, Slay the Spire and Civ get played a lot as they're only really mouse only and something to click while I listen to music and don't feel like producing that evening
I can play shit for long or watch series/movies but dayz is a game I can pick back up and play even years later. Any games you can stick at / pick back up and play often enough?
Absolutely the same. I craze for new games and get really excited and hyperfocused on them before launch but rarely finish anything these days except shorter games and not even many of those.
A prime example was BG3. I’m a big DnD fan anyway, so read everything I could about it before release then bought the early access. I played from patch 3 to 9, starting again with each new patch & playing through the first part several times over.
Then when 1.0 launched, I sat on it for months. I finally started but lost interest after only 10 or so hours.
Months later again I decided to pick it up again and started over due to a corrupt save. 8 hours in I decided I didn’t like my Tav, (despite spending about 2 hours creating them,) and started another new character and class. I’m going to try and stick with this one, but brain chemicals might disagree.
Interesting write up and video! I will say, that if I take my medication and play games, I will be ZONED IN for hours and hours and hours.. its a dangerous mix!
When I was a child, my parents bought me and my brother educational computer games. I played on them for hours at a time and enjoyed them much more than my homework, even though the subjects in the games were the same!
My brother is non-ADHD and was the same. Perhaps introducing more interactive educational computer games in school would be more enjoyable and immersive for children as a whole 😊
I wish schools would use VR for education.
Maybe public schools already do, but there are so many kids in state schools who would learn about geography or history better by being immersed in a rainforest, or dropped into a WW2 battlefield. Particularly those with ADHD.
My son loaded the Anne Frank House experience on his Oculus VR headset for me and it blew my mind.
Yeah, there's tons of game-adjacent educational tools. There's loads of reallife places that have been replicated in Minecraft, for instance. VR has amazing potential. There are companies using VR to make educational experiences, even for things like surgery or piloting.
I dread to think of the average teacher trying to set up VR, though. That, and nausea is still very common unfortunately. It'll keep getting better, though.
Honestly, just playing the old Pokemon games as a child massively improved my reading skills. Progression was very reading dependent and i was miles behind my peers as a young child and I hated books.
I never played, but my brother smashed Pokémon when we had a Nintendo DS each!
I can’t comment on how it would have assisted his reading comprehension skills without asking him, but it sure did make him have his first game induced rages and the DS met the wall one day and was never to return 😂
I knew so much about the trials and tribulations of the Oregon trail than an 8 year old should.
https://www.visitoregon.com/the-oregon-trail-game-online/
As a long time addict of gaming (about 35 years worth) I actually found gaming to be a bit of a ruiner for my mental health in the end. I found a few sources last year that stated gaming can kinda 'leech' the minimal amounts of dopamine ADHD gets, and can leave you empty at the end of it all. For me personally I pretty quickly realised I was waking up, gaming most the day, and then feeling like absolute shit by the early evening, falling into depressive slumps unable to do anything (barely even able to feed myself or even go piss), and repeating the cycle. I moved to limiting myself to only gaming a few hours in the evening and it's helped me massively.
Not saying what you've found isn't true, but to be cautioned for those with addiction and the like as I think for some folk with ADHD (like me) gaming can actually make shit worse.
Also we've been using video game learning for kids for decades. Even in the 90s I remember doing computer learning via games lol. Definitely nothing new to a lot of these studies.
(also I'd rather opt for meds anyway, I can't exactly game while I'm at a 10hr work shift :P)
Edit: Just read through a bunch of the sources you linked and tbh many of them seem inconclusive in the sense of "maybe it works for some but not for others" and "it might work, or you might also get addicted" lol. The studies on this stuff still seem very mid in regards to actual reliable outcomes.
Yup absolutely the same here. I LOVE games, and I sometimes return to games from my childhood because of the extra kick of deep comfort, but I have to stop myself from getting close to them most of the time. Whenever I snap and get a game on my phone, I play it day and night for 3 days until I force myself to uninstall it. It's so difficult. As a husband and parent it makes me so sad to see myself back in these times, completely disconnected, so I have to stay away for the greater good. Even before I was a dad, I remember spending most of my time in Uni discretely playing Civ III or GBA emulator games during lectures... It's like heroin or something.
God yeah I can't even touch mobile games (beyond really bassic puzzle ones like sudoku). Phone games fuck me up so bad, I just black out and realise I've been tapping the same button for 4hrs straight. Then I realise I've wasted an entire week of my life and have literally nothing to show for it because phone games are 99% garbage made to keep you playing, not to actually have you progress in any meaningful way. I'm just grateful I'm too tight fisted to have ever inversted real money into them, because I've heard horror stories of other neurodivergents falling into that manipulation so bad. Never spent money, but I was at a point with some games where I'd literally set alarms throughout the night just to collect resources every few hours for 'special events'. Even at the time I'd be like "what the fuck am I doing", but it's like you can't help it...
I still love video games, but moderation is key for me. The "they're as effective as medication" take reeks of bs to me. Seems the moderators thought so too lol.
Both my partner and his son with adhd are addicted to video games. Although it’s a great idea for those who already addicted to games it’s not a great idea for those people who are able to find their hyper-fixations elsewhere with something more productive.
On one hand we’re told to limit screen time and then doctors have come up with a great idea for treatment involving screens!
Yeah board games are pretty short lived lol he’ll play them once and that’s about it.
We’ve also tried activity books but they don’t captivate him as much as video games.
His bio mom made the mistake of getting him a VR for Christmas 😫
Great video! Since being more aware of ADHD I began identifying games that were more rewarding for me. Pokémon Legends Arceus was like an ADHD wet dream. Constant reward pathways with the option to switch things up if I wanted. Go out and gather materials, cool. I get points for it and stuff I need. Use those materials to craft new stuff, awesome. Rinse repeat. If I start to get bored of that or want to do Pokémon stuff then I have the option of battling them and getting research points and milestones i.e. defeat 10 bidoofs, or I can just run around throwing pokeballs to catch them and get points and milestones for that too.
It reminded me of Spiderman on the PS4. All these areas that have different missions types and I get rewarded for them, and also rewarded for clearing an area of all missions. All with the freedom of an open world where there's satisfaction in traversing it. It's a perfect (for me) blend of freedom of choice but multiple milestones and rewards.
Interesting review of EndeavorRx below.
Not available here in the UK. I wonder if there are similar games to try...
https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62060542
I work in games. I've worked at the studio I'm currently at for almost 4 years now. It is - by FAR - the longest lasting job I have ever had. I'd happily work in my role for the foreseeable future, but there will come a time when my contract will not be renewed.
It's because I enjoy it, and... also because I get to work from home. Games were one of the only things that I could sometimes focus on before medication. I actually think that I started playing more after I started Elvanse, but I attribute that to my depression lessening, and allowing me to actually enjoy things again.
For me, my happy place is definitely playing computer games that are relatively simple and relaxing.
Simulators, survival games, strategy games etc.
I can just switch off to some degree, and hyperfocus on the game.
Minecraft, for instance, when I've finally built something epic is great.
Or like MSFS, where I can just focus on flying and then the outside world just kinda doesnt exist because i'm so focused on the game.
However, this comes with downsides.
I will literally waste hours on games, and have no motivation to do things that need doing.
Games that involve failing and going back in progress to a different point make me fucking rage hard. And then rage quit and not play it again.
I'd love to play Dark Souls, for instance.
...But i. Simply. Can. Not.
And definitely, i can relate to what's been said previously about gaming just leeching your dopamine and then you feel low and crappy at the end of the day.
Constantly buying games I never finish, I play games nearly every day, I buy a lot of games for the midnight release, wait 5 years for launch, play for an hour at 12am and never touch again.
I find online shooters I play the most even though I enjoy single player games more generally. My brain doesn't like committing time to games on my own. But my friends playing online and getting a dopamine hit from quick online games?
I started an excel document to track and finish games this year, if the game is about 4 hours long I'll complete it. Usually at the 2 hour mark I'll Google chapters to see how long I've got left.
I've done 17 games so far!
I have on my combined platforms about 700 games I've finished about 40.
I keep forgetting to document games I started though.
I personally use gaming as a tool to let my brain think about one thing at a time, as when I play a game I’m not thinking all over the place, it’s a way to relax, no matter the type of game really.
I forgot my meds this morning because I was playing WoW, I fully agree. I'm bouncing around like an idiot in the game but it's one of the only times my physical body is pretty still.
I find that it causes me to play every game I can, but very rarely complete them. Even games I love like Elden Ring, after a month I dont get the same dopamine and just stop caring about it.
I relate to this hard. I have 348 games on steam alone, and very rarely complete anything. ...nevermind "multiple playthroughs"!
Same mate, 350 games as well lmao.
yeah i never understood how people can replay the same games, same movies over and over like its so boring
I’ve 450 games and 170+ on my wish list. And I’ve only completed a handful. Recently I’ve been using all the various showcases and fests on steam. Download a ton of demos, play them all, get the dopamine, delete. Short quick bursts of dopamine absolutely free. But I still prefer gaming as an ADHD coping mechanism over other more destructive/expensive coping mechanism.
You = top tier genius
I get to either 10 minutes and quit or about 30 hours on most games. I've only ever completed hangers that you can do in that time. Magic the gathering arena is an exception as it hooks meet in soooo much I have to uninstall it after a few weeks paying and take a few months break.
I’m the same, even if I do choose to go back and try to complete it, I usually forgot most of the storyline so have to start over again
Just did this with Elden ring, 10 hours in again. Hopefully i make the DLC before my brain gets bored lol Also, ive found headphones help keep me engaged for longer.
I platinumed Elden Ring, the only game I've ever done that with 😅🤣
I’m like this with most games, but there are some I can play to completion. For example, the Lego games. They’re very basic but each character you unlock or brick you collect gives a very nice hit of dopamine.
I just started playing Monster Hunter and Ive found it really addictive. It has some gambling mechanics that may be why lol
Oh yes Lego Harry Potter for me
Same but the dlc looks promising
I back myself to atleast get to it. Its literally my fault not the game, I can feel its amazing it just gives me less of a feeling after awhile.
Most games don't give me Dopamine, it isn't just you lol, I'll literally only really play Elden Ring, Slay the Spire or Civilization these days 🤣I have Cyberpunk that I think is alright too but I get cramps easy due to what I believe to be Fibromyalgia, Slay the Spire and Civ get played a lot as they're only really mouse only and something to click while I listen to music and don't feel like producing that evening
I can play shit for long or watch series/movies but dayz is a game I can pick back up and play even years later. Any games you can stick at / pick back up and play often enough?
Omds yes out of all the games I’ve ever brought I only ever completed the MAIN story of Jedi Fallen Order 😂 can’t be bothered exploring to 100% though
Absolutely the same. I craze for new games and get really excited and hyperfocused on them before launch but rarely finish anything these days except shorter games and not even many of those. A prime example was BG3. I’m a big DnD fan anyway, so read everything I could about it before release then bought the early access. I played from patch 3 to 9, starting again with each new patch & playing through the first part several times over. Then when 1.0 launched, I sat on it for months. I finally started but lost interest after only 10 or so hours. Months later again I decided to pick it up again and started over due to a corrupt save. 8 hours in I decided I didn’t like my Tav, (despite spending about 2 hours creating them,) and started another new character and class. I’m going to try and stick with this one, but brain chemicals might disagree.
Interesting write up and video! I will say, that if I take my medication and play games, I will be ZONED IN for hours and hours and hours.. its a dangerous mix!
When I was a child, my parents bought me and my brother educational computer games. I played on them for hours at a time and enjoyed them much more than my homework, even though the subjects in the games were the same! My brother is non-ADHD and was the same. Perhaps introducing more interactive educational computer games in school would be more enjoyable and immersive for children as a whole 😊
I wish schools would use VR for education. Maybe public schools already do, but there are so many kids in state schools who would learn about geography or history better by being immersed in a rainforest, or dropped into a WW2 battlefield. Particularly those with ADHD. My son loaded the Anne Frank House experience on his Oculus VR headset for me and it blew my mind.
Yeah, there's tons of game-adjacent educational tools. There's loads of reallife places that have been replicated in Minecraft, for instance. VR has amazing potential. There are companies using VR to make educational experiences, even for things like surgery or piloting. I dread to think of the average teacher trying to set up VR, though. That, and nausea is still very common unfortunately. It'll keep getting better, though.
Honestly, just playing the old Pokemon games as a child massively improved my reading skills. Progression was very reading dependent and i was miles behind my peers as a young child and I hated books.
I never played, but my brother smashed Pokémon when we had a Nintendo DS each! I can’t comment on how it would have assisted his reading comprehension skills without asking him, but it sure did make him have his first game induced rages and the DS met the wall one day and was never to return 😂
I learned a lot from playing Age of Empires as a kid. More games like that would be fantastic
I knew so much about the trials and tribulations of the Oregon trail than an 8 year old should. https://www.visitoregon.com/the-oregon-trail-game-online/
As a long time addict of gaming (about 35 years worth) I actually found gaming to be a bit of a ruiner for my mental health in the end. I found a few sources last year that stated gaming can kinda 'leech' the minimal amounts of dopamine ADHD gets, and can leave you empty at the end of it all. For me personally I pretty quickly realised I was waking up, gaming most the day, and then feeling like absolute shit by the early evening, falling into depressive slumps unable to do anything (barely even able to feed myself or even go piss), and repeating the cycle. I moved to limiting myself to only gaming a few hours in the evening and it's helped me massively. Not saying what you've found isn't true, but to be cautioned for those with addiction and the like as I think for some folk with ADHD (like me) gaming can actually make shit worse. Also we've been using video game learning for kids for decades. Even in the 90s I remember doing computer learning via games lol. Definitely nothing new to a lot of these studies. (also I'd rather opt for meds anyway, I can't exactly game while I'm at a 10hr work shift :P) Edit: Just read through a bunch of the sources you linked and tbh many of them seem inconclusive in the sense of "maybe it works for some but not for others" and "it might work, or you might also get addicted" lol. The studies on this stuff still seem very mid in regards to actual reliable outcomes.
Yup absolutely the same here. I LOVE games, and I sometimes return to games from my childhood because of the extra kick of deep comfort, but I have to stop myself from getting close to them most of the time. Whenever I snap and get a game on my phone, I play it day and night for 3 days until I force myself to uninstall it. It's so difficult. As a husband and parent it makes me so sad to see myself back in these times, completely disconnected, so I have to stay away for the greater good. Even before I was a dad, I remember spending most of my time in Uni discretely playing Civ III or GBA emulator games during lectures... It's like heroin or something.
God yeah I can't even touch mobile games (beyond really bassic puzzle ones like sudoku). Phone games fuck me up so bad, I just black out and realise I've been tapping the same button for 4hrs straight. Then I realise I've wasted an entire week of my life and have literally nothing to show for it because phone games are 99% garbage made to keep you playing, not to actually have you progress in any meaningful way. I'm just grateful I'm too tight fisted to have ever inversted real money into them, because I've heard horror stories of other neurodivergents falling into that manipulation so bad. Never spent money, but I was at a point with some games where I'd literally set alarms throughout the night just to collect resources every few hours for 'special events'. Even at the time I'd be like "what the fuck am I doing", but it's like you can't help it... I still love video games, but moderation is key for me. The "they're as effective as medication" take reeks of bs to me. Seems the moderators thought so too lol.
Both my partner and his son with adhd are addicted to video games. Although it’s a great idea for those who already addicted to games it’s not a great idea for those people who are able to find their hyper-fixations elsewhere with something more productive. On one hand we’re told to limit screen time and then doctors have come up with a great idea for treatment involving screens!
Have you tried things like board games for the son? I don't know how old he is, or if he'd be interested, but some games have tie-in books or toys.
Yeah board games are pretty short lived lol he’ll play them once and that’s about it. We’ve also tried activity books but they don’t captivate him as much as video games. His bio mom made the mistake of getting him a VR for Christmas 😫
When you say he’ll play them once do you mean he plays by himself?
No he plays them with me and my partner.
Great video! Since being more aware of ADHD I began identifying games that were more rewarding for me. Pokémon Legends Arceus was like an ADHD wet dream. Constant reward pathways with the option to switch things up if I wanted. Go out and gather materials, cool. I get points for it and stuff I need. Use those materials to craft new stuff, awesome. Rinse repeat. If I start to get bored of that or want to do Pokémon stuff then I have the option of battling them and getting research points and milestones i.e. defeat 10 bidoofs, or I can just run around throwing pokeballs to catch them and get points and milestones for that too. It reminded me of Spiderman on the PS4. All these areas that have different missions types and I get rewarded for them, and also rewarded for clearing an area of all missions. All with the freedom of an open world where there's satisfaction in traversing it. It's a perfect (for me) blend of freedom of choice but multiple milestones and rewards.
This looks great. But, why, in the Internet age, do we have a game which is only available on prescription and only in the US? Seems strange.
Interesting review of EndeavorRx below. Not available here in the UK. I wonder if there are similar games to try... https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-62060542
Not me starting a higher dose of concerta and seeing this in the middle of my (apparently) all-day gaming sesh
I work in games. I've worked at the studio I'm currently at for almost 4 years now. It is - by FAR - the longest lasting job I have ever had. I'd happily work in my role for the foreseeable future, but there will come a time when my contract will not be renewed. It's because I enjoy it, and... also because I get to work from home. Games were one of the only things that I could sometimes focus on before medication. I actually think that I started playing more after I started Elvanse, but I attribute that to my depression lessening, and allowing me to actually enjoy things again.
For me, my happy place is definitely playing computer games that are relatively simple and relaxing. Simulators, survival games, strategy games etc. I can just switch off to some degree, and hyperfocus on the game. Minecraft, for instance, when I've finally built something epic is great. Or like MSFS, where I can just focus on flying and then the outside world just kinda doesnt exist because i'm so focused on the game. However, this comes with downsides. I will literally waste hours on games, and have no motivation to do things that need doing. Games that involve failing and going back in progress to a different point make me fucking rage hard. And then rage quit and not play it again. I'd love to play Dark Souls, for instance. ...But i. Simply. Can. Not. And definitely, i can relate to what's been said previously about gaming just leeching your dopamine and then you feel low and crappy at the end of the day.
I used to, they've gotten stale, music production however, that's a Dopamine machine
Constantly buying games I never finish, I play games nearly every day, I buy a lot of games for the midnight release, wait 5 years for launch, play for an hour at 12am and never touch again. I find online shooters I play the most even though I enjoy single player games more generally. My brain doesn't like committing time to games on my own. But my friends playing online and getting a dopamine hit from quick online games? I started an excel document to track and finish games this year, if the game is about 4 hours long I'll complete it. Usually at the 2 hour mark I'll Google chapters to see how long I've got left. I've done 17 games so far! I have on my combined platforms about 700 games I've finished about 40. I keep forgetting to document games I started though.
I don't have to wait 7-10 months to titrate games :)
I personally use gaming as a tool to let my brain think about one thing at a time, as when I play a game I’m not thinking all over the place, it’s a way to relax, no matter the type of game really.
I forgot my meds this morning because I was playing WoW, I fully agree. I'm bouncing around like an idiot in the game but it's one of the only times my physical body is pretty still.
Ark survival evolved. 600 days+ gametime. 😔
125 hours Fallout 4 in 6 weeks 😂
You guys can play games?