You know the moment. You have been holding the controller for four hours. Maybe longer. Your thumbs are moving, your eyes are tracking the screen, but somewhere in the last hour or so, you left the building. You are not really playing anymore. You are just… continuing. The victory screen flashes, or the defeat screen fades in, and you feel nothing. Not joy. Not frustration. Just a hollow, distant awareness that you have been sitting here for a very long time, and you are not entirely sure why. This is what I call Autopilot Gaming. It is the state where your physical inputs continue while your emotional presence drops to zero. You are not playing a game. You are operating a machine. And the machine is operating you. I have spent a lot of time in this state. I have looked up from a screen at 2 AM and realized I could not tell you a single meaningful thing that happened in the last three hours of gameplay. I have opened a game I did not even like because the alternative—sitting with my ow...
A place for Mental Health and Gaming.