I can write two books in Sims 4 in a single day—a Sim day, not a human day. I can probably finish a library of books in a human day as a Sim. And I can just keep on writing and writing. Sure you have to empty your Sim’s bladder now and then, eat, shower and sleep. But mostly, as a Sim, I can just keep on writing. No thought given to physical aches and pains, doubts, or creative capacity. Never mind the time it actually takes to finish a book. Hint: Not one day. Socialising as a Sim? Only once or twice a week if you take the loner trait. Writers are loners after all. Sure, you get some writer’s block now and then. This lasts a few Sim hours, but you can just fast forward past it. Like Adam Sandler in Click.
In Mass Effect (the Original Trilogy, not Andromeda), you put your life on the line mission after mission to either help crew members or to save the galaxy. You never feel the real fear of dying because if the screen flashes critical mission failure, you can just re-load and try again. You feel some tension as you try to kill all your enemies before they kill you, but for the most part, there’s no real fear there. The fate of the galaxy is ultimately in your hands, Commander Shepard—but the weight of that never reaches your human shoulders.
In Fallout 4 (and all the other Fallouts for that matter), you encounter numerous NPCs (non-player characters) that are very rarely friendly or helpful. Most of them will want something from you or ask for favours. Some of them will scam you. Some will try to use you for their own gain. Some will just hate you for no reason. But some might actually start to like you after you’ve gone above and beyond to help them. Not unlike life, I guess. But the sting of betrayal and the anger of unfairness doesn’t reach beyond the world of the game. And if it does, like it has done for me with Knight Rhys a few times, you can just face punch the character.
Doing hard things in games are easier than real life because it is severed from the difficult physical toil of moving through the world, fighting gravity with every step. We can run miles in games by the push of a button. But more than this, games are free from the emotionally charged interactions we encounter as humans moving through the world. Emotional difficulty is always met with resistance. This is why I can sometimes spend hours playing games instead of doing real writing.