Can’t Stop

I get bored. That’s the thing about me—I get bored with pretty much everything after two and a half hours. Movies, games, projects, girls, doesn’t matter. Video games especially. I never finished Skyrim, quit Dead Space in the second room, and EVE Online is a conversation we don’t need to have.

The only exception was Mass Effect. That game grabbed me so hard I couldn’t sleep, couldn’t stop thinking about it, couldn’t do anything but push forward to save the universe or whatever. That’s what I’ve been looking for ever since—something that lands like that.

Instead I found League of Legends, which is possibly the stupidest game ever made. Diablo 3, Call of Duty, yeah, sure, but League might actually win. Ten people bash each other in teams of five in the same map, same forest, same objectives, over and over and over and over. It’s the same game every time. Nothing changes except the names and the ranks.

And I can’t fucking stop.

I’ve been playing all night with Riven, trashing Spanish and Italian kids, and I’m good at it. Really good. A few beers and the Rocket Beans podcast crew in my ear to keep me sane, and I’m sharp, I’m reading the map, I’m making the calls. I scream when I get run down in a chase. I genuinely lose my mind when the Victory screen pops up. I’m not performing anything—it’s real.

I’ve written about League before. That’s what I do with things that get under my skin: I write them out, vomit them onto the page, and suddenly there’s space in my head for something else. Clean slate. But this time it’s not working. Either I’ve finally found the thing I didn’t know I was missing, or I just hate high school kids that much.

It’s four in the morning. The orange button asks if I want to queue again. I think about it for maybe half a second. A sip from the bottle. Yeah, okay. I click in and the map loads and suddenly I’m not thinking about any of this anymore. I’m just there, in the forest, waiting for the next fight.