The Game That Made Me Cry Was Not the One I Played

I used to think winning was the point.

Every night, I’d open my VR headset and watch the reels spin—same patterns, same chimes, same glowing symbols lighting up like carnival drums in a digital Rio. The system promised me joy: bonus cards, doubled lines, jackpot pools. But joy isn’t real when it’s generated by RNG code with no soul.

I played for months. Logged in daily. Set my budget to Rs. 800. Used free spins like rituals—because someone told me if you wait long enough, luck finds you.

It didn’t.

The algorithms don’t care if you cry.

They just count how often you click.

I stopped playing when I realized: this wasn’t entertainment—it was surveillance disguised as play.

The ‘Samba Night’ theme? Beautiful. The animations? Cinematic. The sound design? Hauntingly perfect—like a lullaby sung through broken code.

But every win felt borrowed. Every bonus felt tracked. Every ‘loyalty reward’ felt like metadata stitched into my habits.

I used to believe in trends—the machine whispered them to me in slow fade transitions between sessions.

Turns out: there were no patterns. Only noise dressed as meaning.

I don’t play anymore.

Not because I lost control— but because I finally remembered what it meant to be human in a world built to make you forget it.