As a former smoker, I'm asking gamedevs to please make an 'arachnophobia mode' but for cigarettes because I am barely hanging on here

A guy smoking a cigarette — (Image credit: Nuggets Entertainment)

According to an app I downloaded 2 years, 11 months, 25 days, and 3 hours ago, I quit nicotine 2 years, 11 months, 25 days, and 2.9 hours ago. This was after smoking a pack a day from 1991 to 2016 and then vaping god knows how much from 2016 until almost three years ago.

But I quit, and I've stayed quit, and I feel great! I feel really, really… I feel…

I won't lie: I feel like absolute garbage and I'm barely hanging on these days. Resisting the urge to smoke has not gotten particularly easier over the past almost-three years, and I still absolutely want to smoke on a near-daily basis. Don't get me wrong, I'm glad I quit and I do feel proud of myself for staying quit, as it's one of the few positive changes I've made in my life over the past decade that I haven't immediately undone by backsliding after a couple weeks. But there are days, a lot of days, where I really feel like I'm clinging to my convictions by mere fingernails.

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Context doesn't matter. Once upon a time there was a scare ad of a woman smoking through a hole in her neck after she'd had her larynx removed due to cigarette-related health problems (warning, this is the ad) and it's horrible to say, but seeing that lady smoke through her stoma always made me want to have a cigarette. The sight of any cigarette, anywhere, makes me want to smoke. If someone was torturing me with a lit cigarette I'd say "Hey, when you're done painfully searing my flesh and scarring me for life, could I get a quick hit off that?"

Two gnomes smoking cigarettes — (Image credit: Fobri)

And yeah, even cigarettes in games make me want to smoke. Maybe it's just my endless cravings talking, but there seems to be more smoking in games now than there has been in the past. Just a few recent examples: RV There Yet? is full of cute cig-puffing travelers. The mischievous gnomes in the trailer for Burglin' Gnomes take a moment to smoke some butts under a bed. In Gamble With Your Friends, smoking is an emote.

Wait a minute. Those are all friendslop games. Is friendslop trying to peer pressure me into smoking? This is high school all over again!

Point is, even as they're chased from most of mainstream society, cigarettes are still incredibly common in games from Cyberpunk 2077 to Disco Elysium. And as I pause in typing this to unwrap another piece of gum so I have something to do with my mouth, I think it's time for me to ask for a little help from gamedevs.

A guy at a computer smoking a cigarette — (Image credit: Tenstack)

Please, gamedecs. Just give me something like arachnophobia mode, but for cigarettes. A toggle in the settings, an arac-no-smoke-ia mode, that replaces those delicious cigs with something else. Lollipops, maybe (a good crutch if you've recently quit, by the way). Or a kazoo. A pretzel rod, a drinking straw, a toothpick, a slide-whistle. Anything that won't instantly trigger my addiction would be appreciated.

And instead of that beautiful plume of smoke, maybe an effect that is less appealing. Bubbles, perhaps. Feathers. Dandelion seeds. Or how about nothing? Nothing is an option. Whatever helps me stop remembering that life used to be enjoyable 20 times a day.

That's my little request. Thank you! And for any impressionable nonsmokers reading this: don't smoke. Don't ever start. Don't ever even try it. Yes, it's incredibly cool and it's supremely satisfying but it will destroy your lungs, your teeth, and your bank account, and you'll eventually have to quit, and quitting will suck, and you'll wind up being a miserable shell of a human who can't rewatch Mad Men or Midnight Run.

Also: don't vape. not because it's just as expensive and just as bad for your health, but because it doesn't even look cool.

Chris started playing PC games in the 1980s, started writing about them in the early 2000s, and (finally) started getting paid to write about them in the late 2000s. Following a few years as a regular freelancer, PC Gamer hired him in 2014, probably so he'd stop emailing them asking for more work. Chris has a love-hate relationship with survival games and an unhealthy fascination with the inner lives of NPCs. He's also a fan of offbeat simulation games, mods, and ignoring storylines in RPGs so he can make up his own.