Although developers have asked about pausing a multiplayer game, there is a need for the game engine to provide a dedicated feature which intelligently decides an appropriate time to pause the game, after a certain interval of gaming. This unfortunately, has to be a non-negotiable pause which allows players to close their eyes for a while to rest.
I have suffered chronic eye strain and a major burnout, not entirely due to gaming, but due to a combination of sleep loss and time spent on the computer. I remember my eyes burning and paining due to excessive time spent gaming too, and I believe this was one reason for the progression of myopia. I continued long hours of computer use even after parents and uncles told me not to. What did I know of the consequences? I was just a kid.
I believe it’s high time we did something to help kids and adults prevent damaging their eyesight. Normal vision is too precious a gift to ruin for the sake of a few virtual points and entertainment.
No there isn’t. This is something that should be on the developer to implement because it requires far too much custom implementation per-title.
We’re not the WHO and we’re not even remotely qualified nor interested in making such arbitrary limitations on our players. Pass a law in your home country and everyone will have to obey it.
No. Unity isn’t exclusively a game engine. It’s also used in the automotive and medical sectors and forcing a pause on those apps would be catastrophic.
Teach them and yourself, to sit properly at the desk, in respect to the PC.
Setup right sitting position and hardware setup, so everything is ergonomically at the reach of hands and the body.
Make sure correct rest of feet.
Use backlight, so you don’t sit in the dark. Most common blaming of the software, while lack of awareness that simplest thing to do, is to light up the room and the desk, including wall correctly.
Make sure you got the right contrast in the room.
Look frequently away from the screen and into the window. This way eyes muscles can stretch and rest.
Make sure blinking regularly and hat helps watering eyes.
Don’t blaim the software. Or change it.
There are also plugin.
Or can write own.
Also. Your eyes predispositions may not be comfortable to work for prolong time at the computer desk. And that may be little what you can do about it. But usually an issue comes from bad and incorrect working conditions.
I for example work with PC closely for decades and have no issues PC related. No glasses, nor eye, or back strains.
Firstly, my apologies for a late reply. Unity’s emails (including the password reset email) were ending up in GMail’s spam folder with a warning, which probably means phishers may be trying to hack into Unity accounts.
Murgilod: I understand that it’s tough to implement a pause feature because there are too many game elements to control. This would make it difficult for the developer to implement it too. One alternative is for developers to create games where missions can be completed within 20 minutes, and they can take rest during the next level’s loading screen (although one actually needs around 5 minutes of eye-shut for the strain to subside, so game creators need to account for the need for a long rest break, rather than create a situation where gamers would have to jump into the game immediately after the loading is complete). The actual challenge is in long running strategy games like Age of Empires, where a mid-game pause would really be necessary.
Ryiah: What I’m mentioning isn’t exclusively about games. It’s about the eyes being strained and people not being able to do much about it. If Unity is used in the automotive and medical sectors, it is necessary to see what can be done to allow people to take a break from the screen.
Andrew: Your reply was pretty much what car manufacturers said when there was a proposal to make seat belts and airbags mandatory. I’m quite sure you aren’t fond of wearing spectacles. Think of the possibility of someone having warned/forced you to follow good practices, because of which you’d have normal vision today.
Antypodish: I’ve tried a lot to teach people. I’ve written extensive articles about it, including an article about what parameters researchers are measuring wrongly, and how it can be corrected to help people recover. What you’ve mentioned is true, except for the “look frequently away from the screen” part. That’s the 20-20-20 rule, which the creator of the rule himself debunked. I’ve suffered chronic strain for a decade, and noted that there are only 3 things that work. 1. Getting 8 hours of uninterrupted sleep every night which helps the muscles and tissues heal. 2. Closing the eyes for 5 minutes after every 20 minutes of strain. 3. Proper nutrition (including non vegetarian food which gives the eye muscles strength and resilience). I’m assuming your eyes aren’t affected so badly because you are getting proper sleep and you have a non vegetarian diet and you take periodic breaks. That’s not how it is with many other people. Take a look around you and see how many kids and adults are ending up with spectacles/contacts/lasik. I’m not blaming the software. I’m saying that there are scenarios (like multiplayer games) where it’s difficult to pause, and it would help to introduce a feature that would allow pausing.
This isn’t about Unity or gaming. It’s about our eyes. The pain/burning is our eyes screaming at us begging for rest, and we haven’t really done much to give it rest. Myopia is a sign that the eyes are damaged from duress. The progression of myopia is a sign that the eyes are unable to cope from the torture that we continue to put it through. Unfortunately, it isn’t yet “cool” enough to take rest breaks. People’s enthusiasm and dedication makes them use computers for long hours, and I know exactly what it is like. There was a time when I thought that nothing would happen. I ignored my parents and relatives who told me to rest. Now I’m pretty much crippled from eye strain that got severe due to sleep loss, poor spectacles prescriptions and excess computer use. I wish somebody had yanked me away from the computer when I was a kid, in the same way that Charlie Sheen said about smoking: “If I could go back in time and have NEVER STARTED, I would absolutely do so”. Even today, I hate taking a break mid-game, but I still do it because I know it’s for my own good. This needs to spread as a culture, and it helps if there are features in various software that assists with it. That’s all I’m saying. It’s not a blame-game.
And who’s fault is that?
I don’t think Unity or other game engines should bear the responsibility of people screwing up their own eyesight due to their own habits.
That said, there’s already tools out there to reduce eyestrain. I use f.lux: https://justgetflux.com/
Takes out the blue-light from the screen and makes a world of difference with eye strain. You can get glasses that do this, too.
Honestly, this nonsense starts with apathetic parenting.
If anything this should be integrated into the distribution platform for example Steam. And off course opt in. Its not up to the game developer or unity.
Btw, my tip is to exercise, both strength and endurance. I run 20km a week and it have made a huge difference for me.
Also i got a 10 keyless keyboard which means I can get a fighter fit between keyboard and mouse which optimizes shoulder position.
Making such rather unfair comparison you assume you’re right. My doctor, for example, when asked what is the reason for my progressing myopia answered: “it’s mosty genes”; I share no such conviction since, because of that.
I’ve beed informed, warned, nagged & forced to follow these practives endlessly. To no avail, apparently.
spiney199: I’m not blaming any game engine. I’m saying that it’ll be easier for game designers to build features for pausing, if the game engine offers underlying support for it. In the case of Unity, I understood from an earlier reply, that it’d be difficult to implement. So there’s no point pursuing it. You are interacting with someone who has been through a decade of chronic eye strain. I had to eliminate a lot of the misinformation to recover. Tools like flux are indeed helpful to prevent the intraocular/ciliary muscles from getting strained faster due to the intensity of the light. I use redshift. But the larger problem is when the extraocular muscles are fatigued. That’s when you feel the constant soreness around the eyes, sharp stabbing pains behind the eyes, muscles twitching and tension at the forehead. That can only be cured/prevented by proper sleep and periodic rest. Nothing else works.
Anders: Of course, but it does help if some features are present to assist in making it easier to implement. It also needs to become a culture to take rest periodically. As of today gamers are too enthusiastic and locked into their games to even care. Your suggestion of exercise is valid. It does help a bit. But many people end up losing sleep, and the combination of sleep loss and excess computer use is what drives the strain on the extraocular muscles to reach severe levels. In such a situation, even exercise does not help.
Andrew: I wasn’t criticizing what you said. I merely pointed out that despite various situations requiring individual responsibility, society has done a lot to ensure that a large part of the population remains safe (accidents, cigarettes, alcohol, etc.). China actually has de-addiction centers for internet addicts. There are research papers about the negative effects of gaming for long hours too. Yet, gamers continue gaming for long hours and games don’t really have features that encourage or allow taking rest breaks. I was told that Guild Wars had a prompt asking the player if they’d like to rest. Genetic factors are only a small part of the cause. This paper says “…does not seem to be due to only genetic heritage, being that genes cannot change in such a rapid way”. My assumption about myopia progression is that the eyeball elongates because of the constant cramping and tension of the strained extraocular muscles. The oblique muscles probably create some amount of twisting forces too.
So in summary, thank you all for replying.
- I understood that it’d be difficult to provide a pause feature in Unity, so let’s leave it at that. However, it’d be nice if a plugin was built to make it easier to incorporate pauses in multiplayer games. When players join a game server, they could collectively agree to what periods of gaming and what periods of rest they want. To begin, at least a pause feature could be offered for single player games.
- If possible, please try spreading word to make it “cool” to take rest breaks while gaming. During game conferences/expo’s game programmers and gamers could be asked how they’d develop features to incorporate rest breaks. This would hopefully bring more acceptance to this practice.
- People like me are an example of how much worse and how crippling eye strain can get. Older gamers who have already been through severe strain need to advise others to rest. If there’s anything you’d like to know from me I’d be happy to answer.
Sir, this is a Wendy’s.
Was there a period of public shame that video game players who don’t binge for at least 8 hours were actively frowned upon and marginalized by the society? Did I miss something throughout my entire life?
(The answer is never. )
It has never been a governmental-level policy in China to treat heavy internet users the same as substance abusers. The “de-addiction centers” you somehow heard vaguely about and consequently hallucinated were several unrelated private practices and asylums run by some whacky “doctors” that less than a handful of parents send their kids to because of the cultural stigma around video games (basically blaming every parental care mistakes on their kids addicting to video games). One of the “doctors” was so notorious by prescribing electro-shock treatments for treating “internet addictions” that he ended up becoming a meme for years on the Chinese internet.
This really has a vibe of “needing a special timer app to be reminded of drinking water”. Please use your own senses to practice self care. No timers or reminders will work better than how you actually feel.
All good points, Neonlyte. However, not everyone has the know-how that you do. Many kids and adults will keep gaming even when their eyes are burning and paining. I did. Many people suffer sleep loss (due to noise at night or health issues), which does not allow the eyes to heal, and the strain builds up over the years to very severe levels. Society has an almost non-existent support system for such people, and even many doctors keep advising new spectacles and eye drops instead of advising proper sleep and rest, which delays recovery.
When I was a child I was advised several times to minimise computer use. I didn’t. I actually used to program games at that age, so there was that added interest. Asking gamers to take breaks will obviously fall on deaf ears (for many). Creating rest break timers will annoy them too. This is why it is perhaps a better approach to spread word and invite the participation of various gamers (even influential gamers) to start small discussions every now and then, and give kids and grown up gamers some perspective into the consequences of long hours of gaming (eye strain and repetitive strain injury in general), and also invite everyone’s opinions on how they’d like to take breaks. The idea is to slowly make people more receptive toward the practice of taking breaks on their own, and to encourage game creators to build in some kind of functionality that notifies players. For multiplayer games, the feature could allow groups of people to select and agree to what periods of gaming and rest they want, before starting their game. I know that taking breaks isn’t some new concept. There are plenty of research papers that stress on the negative effects of gaming for long hours. I’ve seen these topics in newspapers too.
I’m mentioning all this for two reasons:
- I’ve never really seen anything actively being done by the gaming community to incorporate rest breaks into the game. It is a necessity. As of today, I’m using an external program that reminds me to take breaks, but if I’m playing a long running strategy game, it’d be difficult to take a break unless the game has a provision to pause the game for all players simultaneously (without bugs).
- People don’t really know how to take breaks. One needs to close their eyes and relax their face muscles, neck muscles and eye muscles and wait until the strain subsides. I’ve learnt this from my experiments after a decade of chronic strain. Nothing else works.
Thanks for the clarification on China’s de-addiction centers.
One little incentive of taking breaks during long running multiplayer games, is that when you sit there with your eyes closed for 5 or 10 minutes, you can think of strategies of defeating the opponent, which would be difficult to think of in the heat of the battle.
No it isn’t. It is not the responsibility of a game to tell you to be responsible.
That’s true Murgilod, but it will help people if the game mentions it. Every such little effort helps. There is a lot of such advice that people give each other, which helps in various ways. Please try encouraging others to think of ways to prevent people from ending up with spectacles and chronic eye strain. Don’t worry about the annoyance, taunts and resistance you’ll encounter. That always happens before positive outcomes show up in due time.
Or I could not do any of that because, frankly, your own irresponsible behaviour has nothing to do with me or my games, or any games.
Yes, not doing anything is what most game creators have done all these decades. As long as there’s no collective conscience, nobody will bother. That’s of course upto them. But among those who do care, please consider it.
Search through gaming forums for posts about eye strain and see how many people are giving misguided advice.
When I first needed spectacles, my dad tried giving me vitamin A tablets, thinking that’d cure me. Doctors happily kept prescribing spectacles and eye drops, like as though that was a solution. I was encouraged to lose sleep to study for exams (messes up the sleep cycle). Nobody told me how poorly cooked food in canteens disrupts sleep. Bosses in various companies and even teachers in college encouraged long hours of computer use to complete assignments. Games did nothing to warn me either. Today I have poor sleep and the strain on my eyes have crippled me to the extent that I can’t do a normal programming job even though I recovered.
I wish I was warned in advance.
I don’t know if you’re a game dev or not, but coming in and telling us what we should do with our games isn’t going to get you a lot of positive responses.
Most of us who aren’t lazy do want to implement pausing, and if we’re progressive thinking enough, might also consider breakpoints that make it easier for players to put down the game after a period of time.
In any case you’re not going to make much change appealing in these forums. If you want to make change, talk to the policymakers.
Nonetheless games aren’t responsible for what happened to your eyes. Sounds like bad parenting. If you want to make change, look for ways to keep parents better educated and less apathetic about these things.
I’ve developed small games as a hobby when I was in school. Professionally, my exposure to shaders etc was when prototyping with some graphics engines, when developing software for the army (a bit like game development, but with a heck of a lot of specifications and documentation). Now that I’m free, I decided to try my hand at building games again, but was quickly overwhelmed by the amount of effort it requires (hard for me to use the computer for long hours). My plan was to make a multiplayer game with a rest timer pause. I narrowed down on Godot and Unity. I saw the lack of a feature that allows pausing. That’s one part of the context.
The other part, is that I’m not only reaching out to you guys. Since 2020, and earlier, I’ve been reaching out to ophthalmology researchers, ophthalmologists, opticians, journalists, my college, strangers who need help recovering from eye strain and people I know, to inform them about the right ways of recovering. I’ve noticed few things:
- People are still stuck with a lot of misconceptions (like they still don’t know that the creator of the 20-20-20 rule himself said there’s no science behind it and the blue light theories were also shown to be wrong by researchers).
- There are some kids whose parents had already ensured that they never compromise on sleep, and youngsters are even actively resisting harsh managers who expect them to work long hours.
- Although some doctors are giving the right advice about proper rest and sleep, many are still adamantly insisting that spectacles of the exact power and eye drops are the solution. It could either be a lack of proper research or a strong incentive to keep selling spectacles and eye drops.
- Newspapers are more frequently publishing articles on getting proper sleep.
Although there are healthy signs of the right knowledge spreading among people, we are still a long way from getting this to policy makers, since they’d need research to corroborate it, and that will take time. One element of research that’s especially lacking, is the knowledge on how the extraocular muscles are affected. My assumption is that the cramping, pull and torsion from those muscles might be the actual reason that the eyeball elongates over time.
I know Games aren’t entirely responsible for what happened to my eyes. I’ve mentioned it already. But I do remember spending entire nights playing games (as an adult). I do remember my eyes burning and paining, and still continuing to play. Even when programming games I used to spend long hours in front of the computer without a break.
I’m not the only one asking. Others have also asked on Unity’s forum about being able to pause, and I see someone created an example.
In the same way that it took time for people to accept:
- Using umbrellas during rain (google for “The Public Shaming of England’s First Umbrella User”),
- The greatest mathematicians in the world considered negative numbers to have no place in mathematics (google for “The History of Negative Numbers”), and
- The medical community thought the lungs (and not the heart) pumped blood (google for “William Harvey and the discovery of the circulation of the blood”)…
…I know it will take time for game creators and gamers to accept rest pauses.
For those of you who aren’t open to implementing pauses, feel free not to. For those of you who do want to do something to bring about a change, please help prevent people’s eyesight from worsening. This isn’t something that I’m initiating. This has been pointed out multiple times by various people, but nothing much was done about it. Someone told me that Guild Wars had a pause break recommendation. It’d be great to see more games have such recommendations for the player to take rest and also if gamers could encourage each other to follow healthy gaming practices. I recently saw a meme on 9gag about healthy gaming. That was encouraging.
Normal vision is too precious a gift to ruin.
ps: Let’s not prolong this discussion. We are repeating ourselves. Please feel free to send me a private message if necessary.