Nerdloops
I’ve been reveling in repetition lately. I'm a professional accountant now, which means my days are already very cyclical. Daily checklist, weekly checklist, monthly cycle, annual cycle. “Washing the dishes” is what my cost accounting prof at PSU called it.
Funny thing is, pretty often I’m neglecting to wash my actual dishes. But lately, I’m finding that it helps to lean into that same kind of checklist-y process at home. Does that make my life feel pretty mechanistic at times? Honestly yes. The alternative is to have a tidy and efficient worklife but a cluttered life at home, though, and that sucks in its own way.
So, now my home life is loops within loops too. Laundry, cleaning, grooming... cooking simply, then doing the literal dishes... all things that fall under the category of “maintaining minimalism” in my headspace. Once that’s done, my typical week-night unwind is listening to an album on Spotify and/or flipping on my PS4 to play a video game before bed.
Even the games I’ve been into lately tend to be very circular. In general, big budget game design in 2019 tends toward live services built around endlessly repeatable loops. This makes me think that folks in the mainstream find that appealing too. That it’s normal, actually, to find joy in playing at a thing within a tightly defined cycle, getting a little better each time.
Most obvious example: a new season of Apex Legends just started this week, and I’ve decided I’m going to spend the next few months trying to get good at a battle royale game for once. “Battle royale” means that the gameplay loop of Apex-- very much like Fortnight, the current most-popular video game on Earth-- is that you start every game by skydiving into the same big arena, then compete with your team to be the last trio standing in a winner-take-all round of laser tag. Live, die, repeat. It’s “violent” in the sense that it’s fast-paced and you’re shooting guns at each other, but in truth the game’s cheerful tone & art style clearly communicates that when you “kill” someone you’re only saying “thanks, see you again next round”.
The real joy of the game is that, even on the rounds when I get absolutely clobbered (which is virtually all of them), a new drop is just a minute away. In my working life, I would love to be able to fail over and over again until I got something just right; in play, where the stakes are nothing, we get the chance to indulge in that fantasy.
Look at it one way, it’s an endless treadmill, but look from the other angle and it’s a safe expanse of infinite do-overs. Who wouldn’t want a healthy dose of that in their life?
