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Got A Video Game Addiction?
So c|net's news.com has a brief article updating the status of the ongoing debate on whether "gaming-addiction" gets to be upgraded from social-conservative-talking-point-of-the-moment to full-blown medical condition. This time c|net is looking at blogger opinion, 'cause what do medical professionals know? The article can be found here. And another article on the same topic.
Hm... Gaming addiction. It's an odd topic. Can you really become addicted-- medically addicted-- to a video game? Or any activity that isn't drug-related? I gotta admit, I'm a bit of a fence-sitter on this topic.
On the one hand, there is no chemical reliance involved in gaming. And cessation of the activity does not cause severe trauma, which is normally a critical element in recognizing a psychologically or physically habit-forming activity.... I've never heard of someone suffering from withdrawal because they stopped playing a game.
I know what physical addiction is like: I'm a smoker. I hate cigarettes. I hate how they smell, I hate how they taste (I smoke menthol to help with the taste thing, but it's still bad). I hate that I have to spend 7-10 minutes every few hours getting my fix. And I absolutely hate that non-smokers ostracize me for my smoking. But I still smoke.
I have never enjoyed smoking. The first time I properly smoked a whole cigarette I was 16, it was the middle of the night during the summer, and I stole one of my dad's cheap no-brand cigarettes to try it out. I had tried smoking with friends before when I was around 10 years old, but I never properly inhaled. My goal was to prove the "first cigarette makes you cough like crazy" TV and movie-myth wrong. I completed the cigarette probably a little faster than would be considered comfortable, but I inhaled with each puff and didn't cough at all. Not even a little bit.
Almost immediately after I put out the butt and thought to myself "that wasn't so bad..." I experienced the harshest buzz I'd ever had up to that point (eventually I experienced a bad-trip from some mushrooms that eclipsed the first cig experience, but that's another story), and I had to lay down to keep from passing out. I continued to lay down for 15 minutes as I recovered, and during this time, as a cold sweat moistened my brow, my constant mantra was "never again."
But of course, I would do it again. And again, and again. I was a closet-smoker.
I didn't want anyone to know that I smoked, and so I only allowed myself 3 cigarettes a day until I graduated from high school. I smoked one in the morning, one after school, and one before going to bed. And until I was 19 and in my second year at college, only girlfriends had figured out that I smoked. So you couldn't really say there was any peer pressure informing my urge to smoke. I did it because I was addicted. And when I've tried to quit, I barely last 10 hours before I start feeling some serious withdrawal.
Gaming doesn't even come close to comparing with that.
On the other hand, gaming has been a big part of my life. It's the 25th of June and I've played 67 games of Broodwar so far this month accumulating into a little over 15 hours of play. And I spend more time chatting in channels on b.net and watching progames I find on this site, etc. At my age (28) that can't be perfectly normal.
Something that I know should concern me, but it doesn't: I haven't had a date in a little over a year, and I don't really miss the company. Before you all take this opportunity to slam me.... I dated in high school and college, lived with a fiancee shortly after college and dated regularly after I broke up with the fiancee, so I know how to date. I just don't have the desire to make the effort anymore. Not when I can get my game on!
And, at least for me, it's not just video games. When I was in high school, I played basketball every day and that's no exaggeration. One summer, I played basketball 10 hours per day at the local court, only taking breaks to drink some water in between each game.
For about a year after I got out of college, I played online poker. I wasn't horrible, but I didn't make any money, either, but I still played despite the complete lack of any significant progress. For a while there I was obsessed with getting better. Going to websites that helped you analyze hands and develop strategies, etc. It worried me a bit. (BTW, I think I'm doing the same thing with BW now, hehe.)
I don't watch TV anymore and, like romance, I don't miss it... so I doubt I'm addicted to the entertainment of games. The only thing I can point to as a linked characteristic between basketball and online video games and online poker is the safe competition. Maybe that's what people get addicted to?
In the US-- in real life-- if you want to compete and you're not blessed with fantastic athletic skill, you compete with money. You invest in stocks or take out a loan for a business, or buy a franchise store, or speculate on real estate, etc, and then you try and turn a profit. If you fuck up, you're in debt up to your eyebrows and must figure out some way to avoid dying in poverty. Real life can be a massive risk (unless your parents are rich or something).
I'm starting to think that's the reason I play games... I think I have a compulsion to compete, but knowing the odds against winning big in real-life, I concentrate on the fake success that can be found in games. Maybe that's why I get so angry when I lose, too... its silly, but games are where I get to feel good about myself.
That's kinda sad, actually.... lol.
Anyone else feel this way about games? Think you're addicted? Think its impossible to be addicted to a game? Got stories to tell? Leave a comment. ^^
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I'm glad to hear that there's someone else on this site who's 28. I thought I was the oldest person here! I know what you're talking about with the addiction. I started seeing this girl a few months ago after a 6 year relationship finished last year and even though I really like this girl and lookswise she's better than I could have hoped for, I kind of sometimes feel myself resenting some of the time I'm with her because I want to be watching or playing starcraft. I guess that indicates addiction to an extent.
Although its nothing compared to my workmate who never leaves his house on the weekend because he's constantly playing MMOs like WOW and Vanguard. A few weeks ago he told me he hadn't washed the dishes in his sink since a thanksgiving dinner we had there last November! If Starcraft is the equivalent of cigarettes then these games must be crack cocaine.
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sad and clever post indeed...
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Its not that sad at all really. Theres tons of "successful" people that do shit like antiquing to feel good about themselves. Or they take care of like 67 cats. Now THATS sad. And I agree with you about the competition thing. I'm the same way. Except apparently winning is more important to me cause I play a lot more
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I used to think that I was addicted to Starcraft, progaming, and TeamLiquid.
I would log on Starcraft every single day, and whenever i opened Firefox, 'teamliquid.net' would instantly fly in the address bar. However, I found a cure for this addiction: Another addiction unfortunately. I'm 13
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Broodwar may or may not be an addiction for me. At least I'm always having fun while I play it. I remember about 6 or so years ago I was playing this MMO all the time that gave me no joy, only sorrow. And I still don't understand why I kept going online to play that garbage.
It all started with a friend. He constantly badgered me to start playing that game. He was selling me a drug, and in exchange the game developer would give him a month of the game time free of charge for recruiting me. So I walked around in this virtual world, said hi to whoever I met, teamed up and killed these squirrel-like creatures. The experience was easy. I got easy money. I went into a shop and upgraded my gear. On display there was gear with insane price tags. I assumed this would be the ultimate gear in the game and set myself a goal to get this gear. It soon became clear that this gear was not really all that special. It was outright crap compared to the gear you could get later. But gear seemed to matter less after a while. All I needed was to level more so I could get some more spells. I became quite popular as a party member because I played a class of character that few other people did. He was the ultimate support character, but pretty much crap at everything else. Still it made continued levelling and getting money easy, while a lot of other people were struggling to do the same. With my character, being skilled meant not attacking anything so you didn't die. The others could do all the killing and fighting. To keep me a loyal helper to their group, I would be one of the first people to get loot when making big kills. I usually just ended up handing it down to the others, because like I had discovered, gear didn't make my character any better as a support character. I would never be able to make him into a good player vs player character anyway. I eventually quit after I successfully sabotaged my character by giving away all his stuff and putting skill points on useless skills such as swimming and jumping.
From that point on, I deduced that all MMOs are really just a skill-less rat race to get max level first and get the best gear. And later the developers will add more levels and more gear to make the race go on. Even with my slow sausage fingers, I was pretty decent.
So in conclussion, game addiction is real and MMOs are a waste of time.
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Yes, game addiction is there...but I think it depends on what games...like the guy above me said, I believe that MMO's are the truest source of game addicition. To make it short and simple, IMO, I'm addicted to SC in the sense that I want to get better; it's kind of weird, because even though I enjoy the game (every second of it), I don't play for fun as much as I do to become better...
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United States24676 Posts
I'm not sure how to interpret game addiction. I go through stages where I'm showing signs of being totally addicted to sc and stages where it's quite the opposite and I barely play. Although something that has been a constant all through my life is that I've just about always been involved in some kind of game, whether it be online, console, or what have you.
Tadzio00, what else do you play besides starcraft? The amount you played this month doesn't imply an addiction unless it's in addition to a lot of other stuff. Oh yeah, stop smoking. You have a responsibility to your lungs, and to all the other people who are weaker than you that get overpowered by an industry that you are feeding money into every day/week. Eh on second thought, it's Darwinism. I take back what I said.
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If cigarettes killed immediately or rendered people sterile, it'd be Darwinism. No, smoking kills much slower than that. My grandfather, for example, smoked since he was 14 and died of a stroke at the ripe age of 72. He also fathered 8 children which in turn spawned 20 grandchildren and unknown numbers of great-grandchildren. That's not Darwinism. But micronesia's high-horse sure is attractive and I've been making several attempts to quit lately that've resulted in failure, although the rate at which I smoke has reduced measurably.
Seriously, if it was easy I would've quit shortly after my first cigarette. I have no idea whether cigarettes will cause me cancer-- the smokers in my family seem immune to it-- but I do know that cigarettes impact my health negatively (heart disease, weaker immune system, shortness of breath, etc) and the increased potential for cancer is just one more thing to worry over. Anyway, I was going to dedicate next weekend to another one of my lame attempts to quit and I think I will still make that effort. This time I think I'll try using a crutch (nicotine gum) and see if that makes it any easier. I'll update in the blog to report how it goes.
I do play games other than Starcraft. I play internet spades and internet reversi when I want to win something quickly and anonymously. I used to play Final Fantasy XI for a while before I got back into Starcraft, but I quit that a while ago. In FFXI I would compete for raw materials and market-share (I focused on crafting), but there was no way I could dedicate even a fraction of the time gilsellers were able to spend on dominating the imaginary economy. Currently I have close to 10 games installed on my computer, but I don't play them very often because they don't fill the same need as Broodwar. I play the singleplayer games I have installed even less frequently. I probably play 2-3 hours a month with the other games I have installed. Spades and reversi probably add up to 4 or 5 hours a month, but it's hard to tell since I play them very sporadically (usually when I can't sleep).
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United States24676 Posts
On June 25 2007 17:31 Tadzio00 wrote:
If cigarettes killed immediately or rendered people sterile, it'd be Darwinism. No, smoking kills much slower than that.
It's true that smoking doesn't usually render someone unable to reproduce. However, that isn't a requirement for Darwinism to occur (in the long run). I, along with many other people, am very turned off by smokers and probably wouldn't date one. If you look at this statistically, the non-smokers have a larger gene pool to access than the smokers  . Of course that's a simplification, but the effect is somewhat true in the long run and is just one of several relevant explanations.
Then again, modern society totally screws with Darwinism, to a point that worries me greatly.
Anyway, your gaming addiction doesn't seem terribly noteworthy, which I suppose is a good thing. But I've also seen those people who have it really bad and whether or not we call it an addiction or a condition or what... it's still a problem.
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EPT![[image loading]](http://uk.gizmodo.com/gameaddict.jpg)
