Dylan swore and hurled his laptop across the room, where it slammed harmlessly into the back of the laptop-catching couch and plopped onto the seat. “I hate this game!” Jeb looked up from his phone with a raised eyebrow. “Still playing that MMO? Legends of… whatever it was.” “Legends of Alithoria, yes. And it’s such bullshit! I missed the timing on a daily quest, and now I can’t get any more faction points until tomorrow, and that means it’ll take me even longer to get the Ferromancer’s Goggles!” “The Ferromancer’s Goggles being?” “This neat cosmetic item that would look great with my vanity equipment.” “So it doesn’t even do anything in game?” “No, but I need it to complete my look! All the other pieces I wanted were pretty easy to get, but this one thing is locked behind so much bullshit!” “Is this the same game where you spent like 12 hours gathering resources to make a single weapon upgrade?” “Yeah.” “The game where you keep complaining the raid system is broken and the dungeons are boring?” “Yeah.” “And you keep having to spend money for drop rate boosters because you’d have to farm for materials all day every day to get the limited time craftables before they rotate out of stock?” “What’s your point, Jeb?” “Dylan, why do you even play this game?” “Well, the core combat system is actually really well designed, and the primary gameplay loop is really compelling…” “Compelling, huh? Is it fun?” “Not really. It’s usually really frustrating, honestly, but something about it just makes you want to keep playing, you know…” “…Dylan, I think you might be addicted to this game.” “What? No, of course not. Don’t be stupid, I can quit any time I want.” “Oh really? So when you threw the laptop just now, that didn’t make you want to quit?” “I mean, I guess, for a moment, but that doesn’t count.” “And the time before that?” “Hey, you know I get emotional sometimes. That’s why we have the laptop-catching couch.” “Dylan, you’ve been throwing that laptop once or twice a day for like a week now. I haven’t seen that thing go hurtling this much since the programming job you did for that sparkling water company.” “THEY MAKE SPARKLING WATER! WHAT THE HELL DO THEY NEED AI INTEGRATION FOR?” “Right. And after that, you decided to never ever accept a job from them again.” “Of course I did! It was making me miserable.” “And this game isn’t?” Dylan went very silent for a moment. When he spoke again, his voice was a lot smaller. “But I really want to play more, though.” “And when you know something is bad for you and will just make you miserable, but you really want to keep doing it anyway, we call that…?” “…I should probably uninstall that game.” “Tell you what, I’ll do it for you.” “Yeah, thanks. And… You better delete my account, too. It would be too easy to just reinstall it and log back in otherwise.” Jeb smiled. “Good idea. I’m just gonna do that for you now, OK?” And with that, Jeb wandered over to the laptop-catching couch and grabbed the device. Hopefully, this would mean less laptop-hurling in the future. Which was a good thing, because the upholstery was starting to tear a little.