I admit it.  I play a waifu game.

These are a form of “gacha” games – of which “Raid: Shadow Legends” is perhaps one of the more artificially famous varieties.  Except the characters are all very beautiful women, most of whom have very large breasts.  I mean, very large breasts.  One character has what I not so affectionately call “watermelons”.  Now, the eye candy is not the reason I play it, and I would really like it if, in fact, they made some of the proportions and costumes a little more realistic.  I actually like the gameplay.  Yeah, I know, “I read Playboy for the articles”, but I haven’t lied here yet, and it’s up to you whether or not to believe me.  I don’t care.  I’m not writing this to seek penance or absolution.  I’ll be honest, the eye candy makes the game more pleasant, but when, exactly, do big breasted women make anything less pleasant?

There is a way to play the game in which you can win often at pvp – player vs. player.  That way is to focus hard on one character until she is absurdly powerful, at the expense of all the other characters.  These characters tend to absolutely dominate at pvp.

I don’t play that way.

I take all the characters and “spread” them – meaning that I try to advance all of them in a somewhat equal fashion.  I get destroyed at pvp, but I do okay at pve – player vs. environment.  I have a CR (combat rating) of about 331 million at this time of writing, and I’m okay with that.  I’m not the most powerful but I’m pretty highly ranked on my server.  People tell me I play the game poorly, but I don’t agree.  I play the game how I want, and I don’t really like pvp anyway (I’m a misanthrope and I just don’t like people in general, so why should I like competing with them?).

Or, maybe, that’s what I’m telling myself, and this is where we get to the meat of why I’m writing this post.

I play the game in such a way that I deliberately “lose” – but only as other people see it.  I have redefined the word so that, in my mind, I’m not at all losing, my aims at playing the game are just different.

But is that really what I’m doing?  Or am I just protecting myself psychologically from the the fact that I’m “losing” at the game, and instead, detaching from the expectations of others to avoid pain?

The honest answer is, I’m not sure.  I think it’s the former, but I don’t know.  It could well be the latter.

I do this in many aspects of life.  I rarely, if ever, compete for anything directly, because I fully expect to lose.  Instead, I make my “living” (at whatever it is I’m doing) by nibbling at the edges, by consuming the scraps that other people have discarded.  Don’t get me wrong, that often actually works well for me.  For example, in the game, there’s something called “Clash of Titans”, where you have the chance of winning 3,000 diamonds by beating everyone else.  But, if you just sign up and don’t even open it again, you get 300 diamonds just for participating.  That’s only ten times the reward for quite a bit more effort.  Is that worth it?  Especially considering I don’t have much to spend diamonds on anymore so I have a rather large stash?  And moreso, I know that at some point I’ll catch up with everyone who’s been focusing anyway, it’ll just take a bit longer.

This approach works satisfactorily in life in general as well.  You can make a pretty good living dealing in what the majority of people don’t consider important.  There’s a lot of money or other reward in scraps that everyone else just leaves on the table.

But even though it often works well for me, I’m not sure what it says about me.

Am I happy living life this way?

Does it matter if I am?

Have I just managed to find a way to be content with being a fucking loser?