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

I used to think the machine was listening.

Every spin felt like a drumbeat in a rain-soaked Rio street—bright colors, pulsing bass, the scent of something sacred. I told myself: this is fun. A game designed for joy.

But joy isn’t owned by algorithms.

I played for months—daily deposits, bonus cards, linear patterns—until one night, the screen flickered and the lights went out. No jackpot came. No ‘trend’ appeared. Just static noise in a dark server room.

They call it RNG—random number generator—as if randomness were fair.

It’s not fair.

It’s silent.

I’m not broken.

I’m awake.

My first win wasn’t in the reels—it was in the pause between them. When nothing happened… that’s when I felt it most.

You don’t play to win. You play to remember what you lost before you knew how to stop.

The system doesn’t care if you’re lonely—it just counts your clicks as data points on a spreadsheet named ‘engagement.’

I stopped playing when my avatar became more real than my reflection in the screen.

Now I write this—not for you—but for whoever still hears the drums at 3am, code glowing faintly under deep indigo, a VR headset still warm from last night’s session, a single soul asking: ‘What did you lose when you stopped playing?’

Have you ever felt emotionally drained by a game? The answer isn’t in the payout. The answer is in the silence.