Meditation Is Not a Game but I'll Play

I have meditated many times before as a part of multiple exercise regiments, but I have never considered making it a habit... Until now! What is meditation, exactly? No, it doesn't involve communing with the devil or being transported to a different dimension. Well, the latter is close enough I suppose. It's basically taking the time to just sit and breathe deeply for a while, pulling yourself away from the everything else around you. So how did I get myself sucked into this vortex? It's all thanks to a game called Playne: The Meditation Game on Steam.

Save the fox, save the world? Something like that.

Let's discuss the "game" aspect of Playne: Basically, you start off with an empty plane and as you continue to meditate, more and more features are unlocked to add life into the world. You can also experience visible, albeit unnatural, plant growth around you as you go. This is a good way to encourage players to keep coming back to the game and in that sense, Playne is a success. The truth of the matter of course is that you don't need a game or alternatively, an online video to meditate. It's always nice of course to get some kind of reward for doing anything and everything because sometimes, life is not rewarding enough.

A fox that's based on a dog, said the developer. So why not a dog then?

The thing is, since meditation is a practice that lavish in its almost deceitful simplicity, using Playne sometimes feels like work. I feel like I'm coming back because of the meaningless benefits it blatantly offers, like the visual growth and the story elements locked behind progress, told here by a talking fox. The narrative has some real philosophical bite to it but the developer, Krish Shrikumar, is apparently more than happy to step back into comedic territory to not deter perhaps what he perceived to be the typically shallow audience. A commitment to a deeper understanding of the self and this temporary lives of ours could have been a welcomed complimentary blessing on top of the actual practice. I understand that you don't want people to run away screaming but how the heck are they going to learn if the game itself is afraid to put players in that uncomfortable but opportunistic position?

I don't know why Inward, which is basically the same game, can't just be a mode in Playne.

However artificial the drive may be, I am currently 40 consecutive days deep into Playne and I am thankful I am that it has reinforced my interest in meditation. I just wish that the Playne would present itself as a tool versus a game, you know, like Yourself!Fitness for example. Why do we meditate? Why should we continue meditating? These questions should be repeatedly answered in Playne versus presenting meditation as some sort of virtual currency. To add salt into wounds, the game also wants you to press a button whenever a thought emerges during your meditation. This doesn't seem natural at all because one isn't supposed to encourage or discourage thoughts during meditation per the game's instruction at the beginning of a meditation session and it's obviously the developer's way to quantify progress. I know that I can pretty much just ignore this requirement, even though it wasn't even something presented as "optional", but then, what's the point of using Playne if I don't abide by its rules? Still, I can already feel changes in my psyche not long after I started practicing meditation daily. Times have been somewhat difficult these days for me and being able to build up my inner strength to live through these tumultuous moments is helpful. By hook or by crook, I will continue to meditate, with or without committing to this game.