First-Person Account Of Video Game Addiction 473
The Evil Couch writes "Jive Magazine, an entertainment magazine based in Atlanta, has just released a feature article that the editor has spent over a year investigating on gaming addiction. Starting from being on the outside of the gaming community, she has gone from being a somewhat normal person, to being one of the higher level characters in Anarchy Online. 'People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.' Sounds like a happy ending to me."
Sounds like rationalization to me... (Score:4, Insightful)
I once had the Everquest on my back, but I kicked. Believe me, these addictions do screw up real lives...
Similaraties (Score:2, Insightful)
Drug addicts, can eventually become wrapped up enough in the life style, that they can become dealers, or sometimes get freebees.
Play Everquest long enough, eventually you can sell your character for megabucks on Ebay.
More proof, that evil begets evil.
Or... (Score:2, Insightful)
Gaming addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
Having all my money going into arcade games was morale destroying. I believe that there is no difference between being addicted to video games and VLT's (slot machines).
It's not whether you win or lose, it's just that you have to keep playing. It's a vaguely sexual feeling -- that you might be found out, that you'll be "in trouble."
Profoundly depressing, actually. After a couple of years I managed to stop, but there was no self help groups back then, nobody to talk to (and who takes a 12 year old that's spending $50 a day on video games seriously anyway??)
If you're addicted, step back, do whatever, throw out the computer. Quit two, three, four times or as many as it takes to get it out of your life. And don't go back.
Re:Sounds like rationalization to me... (Score:3, Insightful)
Horse shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Lucky for her (Score:3, Insightful)
NEWSFLASH! (Score:2, Insightful)
Film at eleven.
The difference... (Score:5, Insightful)
If I compare my Everquest addiction (which is over) to my Counter-Strike addiction (which is being revived) I'd say that I can pop in for a quick game of CS, but just as quickly log out again and go off to some social activity, whereas EQ would keep me tied to the screen.
The problem with EQ (and AO, DAoC, whatever) is that you need on average around an hour just to get going in the game. You need to get to some place where you can kill something, find a group, wait for friends, etc etc...
Once you enter the high level game in any online RPG you will have to sacrifice even more time. 24-hour non-stop playing sessions of a 50+ member guild for some rare item are not uncommon in the very high end game.
THAT's when your life starts going down the drain...
Re:Sounds like the husband that... (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Evercrack (Score:2, Insightful)
So really, I don't consider there to be any difference between traditional addictions like nicotine and less conventional ones like Everquest (which btw, I DON'T play)
Re:Horse shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
Without compassion, these people may never come out of their addiction. It's easy to have zero tolerance for others' mistakes, but remember that someday you may need help. Maybe you already do and you just don't know it. Maybe we all need a little help sometimes... let's be there for each other.
Re:What weak-minded nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
That'd be never I'm guessing.
When was the last time your father had too much EQ and beat the crap out of your mother on a family vacation?
Again I'm guessing never.
When was the last time one of your family members had too much EQ and beat one of their kids with a golf club?
Again, I'm guessing never.
Don't compare the horror of alcohol addiction to a video game until you've lived through it. The entire notion that they're even remotely as damaging is insane.
Re:Horse shit. (Score:1, Insightful)
If your only criteria for determining an addiction is the end result of the addiction, that's pretty poor analysis.
Re:Sounds like rationalization to me... (Score:5, Insightful)
And addictions always have a way of being justified as many people are trying to do here.
Anyone who has ever smoked cigarettes and quit successfully can tell you that it plays games with your mind when you try and quit. It can even make you feel crazy. The addiction intermingles with your whole being. Without it, you are not the same person everybody loves. You aren't happy. You're stressed out. Unless your craving is satisfied.
And when the addiction is well on its way to leaving your body and mind, you start to think in new ways. You think "what the fuck was I thinking all those years?" You might even cry about the days of your life that were wasted.
So do yourself a favour: take one addiction, and stop it. Fill your time with something else. Dwell on helping others instead.
Re:Horse shit. (Score:5, Insightful)
These "people" are pathetic. They are simply people with zero self-esteem, zero drive, and who are intrinsically lazy.
I can remember when I played MUD 15 hours a day, fanatically, to protect my position on the toplist and my position in the guild. I thought I was very important, and with that devotion, drive and laziness were not the problem at all. I wouldn't wake up at 7.30 to be at the uni computer rooms at 8.00 then (note: all of this is years ago). Self-esteem, perhaps. The other two are horse-shit.
In my opinion there are three big factors that make online roleplaying addictive:
And for some people, social contacts I suppose. But I was thinking of xp/hour, and finding exploits (always a fun race between players and coders).
In short, the human brain wasn't built to make a difference between real life and virtual life. And the importance people want to have in RL is sometimes easier to get online.
Comment removed (Score:2, Insightful)
Levels of Addiction (Score:5, Insightful)
You have an excellent point that there are three different forms of addiction which should be regarded as very different:
Combined and Physical addictions tend to be narcotics-related and tend to be understood in a simplistic way by non-addicts. But the war on drugs hasn't had a new twist since the rise of ecstacy in North America; fighting drug addiction cannot hope to attract the funding or media attention it once did. So now purely psychological addictions are en vogue.
I'm not suggesting that some addictions should be left untreated, but it is important to keep their power in mind when making judgements about the sufferers. Right now the hot addiction in Canada is gambling. Should I feel as sorry for someone who goes through mood swings when they stop gambling as someone whose heart stops when they go off heroin? Should I wish the government to devote equally proportional tax dollars to each? Should I spend as much of my time worrying and learning about each?
Re:Horse shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
What ever happened to people helping themselves, anyway? Why is everything always someone else's fault, no matter what?
"He ignored me because of a video game." Sorry, lady, he ignored you because he's an insensitive asshole. It's not that hard to turn off the damn computer once in a while, and pay attention to those you supposedly care about. If you don't, that shows more about how much you care than it does about some sort of 'addiction'.
Social Interaction (Score:2, Insightful)
I think the social interaction is very much undervalued here. When I was in college, I worked two jobs to pay my way, so "free time" was rare. However, from both of my jobs I could get on the internet, and I wound up spending entire days playing MUDs and chatting on IRC. Thanks to the wonders of screen, I could go from home to class to my jobs, and simply reattach to my running IRC session. Sure, I had no girlfriend, but then again, none of the girls I knew would have enjoyed being taken on a date involving a 3AM moonlit stroll through the campus, since I got off work after the bars and resturaunts and such closed. Chatting online gave me a chance to talk to people instead of staring at a terminal in an empty server room late at night. I even picked up speed typing skills to boot. I greatly valued my social interaction with these "virtual" people.
Only, these people are no more "virtual" than I am! I have known some of them for almost a decade. Some I have visited in person, and had a blast getting to see the so-called "virtual" person. Others are in other countries, places I'll never get to go but love to hear about. Calling these people "virtual" is an insult to their real world counterparts.
I now work 9-to-5 as a software developer, and I don't get to IRC from work. I don't have time at home on the evenings to play games much, but I still chat with my friends on evenings. Perhaps people might call me an "addict" still, but I don't let it interfere with other things I want to do.
If you lost it in all that rambling, the point here is twofold:
1) social interaction is social interaction. Ask yourself what benefits do you gain from constraining people to be in the same place at the same time (aside from the possibility of sex)?
2) The internet provides a useful source of social interaction. Turning it off (regulating it, in other words) because some people can't handle their addiction won't help anyone.
Interesting... but senseless (Score:2, Insightful)
In other words playing video games does not automatically make you an addict if you practice control and don't use them to fill an emotional void of some sort. Just like having a few drinks at a bar with your buddies doesn't make you an alcoholic.
Is the phrase "Moderation in all things." really so hard for the modern world to understand?
On a side note, if a severe beating is the penalty for cold blooded PK'ing in South Korea I wonder what they do to cheaters? And is there any chance we could adopt it here? :)
Re:Horse shit. (Score:4, Insightful)
answers to complex questions.
Re:This is nothing to laugh at (Score:3, Insightful)
is it really so bad? (Score:2, Insightful)
Anyway reading this, there seems to be a lot of holier-than-thou comments, about the weak wills of people etc. But who is it hurting really?
Lets see, the economy? it is unproductive in that sense true, but people aren't cogs in a machine.
Their loved ones? well they may be ignoring them, but it's a free choice, if you'd rather play a game all night (after night) than play with your spouse, something isn't right with the relationship. Maybe in their game they meet people they would never talk to in regular everyday life.
Themselves? well, perhaps, in YOUR opinion, but quality of life is a relative and subjective thing, at the end of the day they are free to choose what makes them happy (see mr goatse.cx for proof that people enjoy many alternative recreational activities to extremely painful looking extremes).
It seems to me people are too quick to condemn others choices, we're all addicted to something, even if its just our/your way of life in general. i especially enjoyed the post further up putting down the gameaholic way of life that ended with a sig linking to free porn. Games may damage your eyesight eventually, but that bloke will go blind a lot sooner.
btw i quite intensely dislike rpg's myself, massively multiplayer or otherwise, all the trolls and goblins i need are right here on
Re:Horse shit. (Score:3, Insightful)
Congratulations. You aren't addicted to video games at all. It's not hard for me to keep from gambling either. I guess gambling addicts are just being little babies about it, too. (Who knows, you might actually think that...)
It's an addiciton! If it was a matter of caring more about one or another it would be called a passion.
Who says that just because it is an addiction that the addict doesn't need to help him/herself, first and foremost? The reason for noticing the addiciton trends is so that you can maybe take measures to keep other people from falling into the same trap in the future.
Real addiction. (Score:5, Insightful)
There's a tendency in talking about this to either a. defend the substance ("it's not the game's fault! It's the personality of the person/their lack of willpower/etc! Anything can be addictive!") or b. attack the substance ("won't someone think of the children..." etc.). Both are somewhat wrong-headed. It's naive to think that the game/whatever has nothing to do with it - some things are intrinsically more likely to be part of addictive behaviour than others. Some games are more addictive than others, and MMPORG's seem to lead the pack (there's a lot of possible reasons - their open structure, the psuedo-social aspect and the sense of competition and fear of getting "left behind", the enormity of the game-zone, etc.) MUDs and MOOs used to be the culprit, probably for similar reasons. (The whole "endorphins" explanation that gets tossed around, like the article has it, is really overextended. There are limbic systems far more extensive than that one at play, and it doesn't explain the nature of addiction any more than talking about the digestive system explains world hunger. And other, more 'neuroactive' games, don't show the same addictive effects as the frankly slower Everquest and company.
Even though many people play FPS's a lot, I haven't seen the sort of destructive fall-out from them that I've seen with other games - I don't know of anyone who failed out of school or became an antisocial shut-in because of Quake or Counterstrike.
In a sense, people who really like video games but would never let them interfere with the normal functioning of their lives (personal and professional) abuse the term "addiction" when they describe themselves as addicted to the games. I found the article underinformed and somewhat irresponsible - the realities of addiction are far more complex than a little controlled "experiment" will illuminate.
Game Developers = Double Jeopardy (Score:1, Insightful)
It sucks. I did it for about 7 years and then just got burnt out (as did a number of my colleagues). There is so much more to life than games. I feel sorry for the up-and-coming developers who want to prove to the world how badass they are. They pour their heart and soul into lifestyle which ultimately benefits a publisher that couldn't give two shits about you.
Now that I'm older and wiser I've learned to not take my job home with me. Sure I'm not as caught up on what happens at the end of the fifth level of TimeSplitters 2, but I'm a whole lot happier for it.
Re:Real addiction. (Score:1, Insightful)
You raise a good point here. I think the reason why you don't see a lot of this addiction happening among FPS players is that the games they play typically have little social value. I used to be big into Quake 1 and while I do remember hitting 'T' occasionally to mock someone for fragging themselves, I spent the other 99% of my time actually playing the game (ie. fragging and getting fragged). Even when team-oriented gameplay came along very little changed. My clan and I would occasionally sit in our base and quickly talk to coordinate a basic attack, but that was it. The game is so fast paced that you just don't have time to sit around and chat like you do in Everquest, where you have plenty of time to just sit around and shoot the breeze. This gives rise to 'socializing' (if you can even call it that) with other players.
Re:Video game and technology addiction hurt[my sto (Score:1, Insightful)
Dude, if you're paid money for this advertising shit, game addiction is the least of your worries.
why online games are addictive (Score:2, Insightful)
and you can learn how to 'beat the game'.
When you've done it enough, you move on.
Multiplayer games add another dimension:
you have to compete with other people,
but there's usually just one objective,
so everyone involved gets bored eventually.
However, persistent online games never end,
and there are literally hundreds or thousands
of ways to compete against the other players.
You could spend your entire life trying to be
the best at everything. (Note: some people try,
and we call them addicts.)
But think about this: There is no real winner
in a MMORPG
(Maybe that's why they're so compelling.)
The nature of the addiction... (Score:1, Insightful)