[Editor's note: StumpFreak tells us a very personal story of how gaming addiction has affected his life for his Monthly Musing piece. -- CTZ]
As a young man of twenty-seven years, a new father and a loving partner, I find myself looking back to the past more often than before. I reflect on how much my tastes and abilities as a gamer have grown or deteriorated over time. I still love this hobby I've been practicing since the age of two, and will until I leave this Earth, I'm sure.
But how much will I still love it a year from now? Two years? Ten years? How big a part of my life is gaming going to be as I continue to grow as a person?
These are the fears I've decided to talk about today. The fear of letting go of some parts of my past, of things I've loved in exchange for better things to come. About fear of the side effects of our hobby when taken to excess and what we can do to move past these things and still enjoy ourselves.
Many gamers come to this point, eventually. If you're anything like me, you spent your childhood playing any number of games on any number of platforms with your siblings or friends to wile away an afternoon (or, hell, a summer). For me, this continued on through middle and high school, to the point where I was skipping school just to play Chrono Trigger or whatever else was on my plate at the time. Admittedly stupid and irresponsible in hindsight (it was at the time, too, but teenage apathy ruled all for me, it seemed).
The pattern repeated from there with games like Asheron's Call and WoW taking over my life and, sadly, causing me to divorce my first wife when she refused to give up her WoW addiction instead of working out our marital issues. The mother of my child and I met in WoW shortly after that, and although we're happy overall, we've had our share of issues caused by her need to seek what she was looking for in the game instead of our partnership. We've since left the game and have no plans whatsoever to go back. I'm by no means saying I'm blameless in said issues, only that I still have a fear of losing her due to problems caused by gaming addiction.
So to counteract that fear, I've pulled myself as far away from gaming as I can. I've spent the past few months away from my child and her mother, rebuilding a life for myself and for us back home in Tennessee. In the past three months, I might have only spent a total of eight to ten hours on gaming. I'm scared to get back into my old habits. I try to maintain a focus on my family, friends and work. But at what point do I move past this and try to start enjoying the gaming lifestyle I once thrived upon? Is that point ever going to come, and if so, will I have the strength and responsibility to keep it in check?
It's paralyzing at times, the fear of loss due to something I've loved so dearly in the past. I've no doubt it's made up for by the love of my family and pride in a hard day's work ... but sometimes I just miss fragging with my buddies. I'd love to jump into a TF2 or CoD4 match and just have fun again. But the fear keeps me away.
On the flip side of the coin, I do find myself enjoying more of the shorter, sweeter single-player fare that I can squeeze into my schedule. Games like Portal and Telltale's Sam & Max and Strong Bad episodic titles are wonderfully delightful bite-sized chunks of gaming that fit with my current playstyle very well. I absolutely can't wait to play Mega Man 9 once my daughter's mother and I are back together and the Wii is around again. A retro gamer at heart, it kills me to see all this great retro fare headed to the consoles and only having my gaming PC around.
So is it a matter of scale? Of tuning back my play time and finding more appropriate titles? Or can I go back to the great multiplayer games I've enjoyed in years past and walk the line between responsibility and excess?
I figure that will come in time. Fear never goes away, not completely. Even facing the fears won't erase them. It's a matter of staring it in the face and working out a compromise, if possible. I love this hobby. I was born a gamer. I plan to die a gamer. I just don't want to be scared that it will overtake my life or the lives of the people I care about.
Contest:
1:11 PM on 10.11.2008
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It can be hard to seek moderation in things, especially for people like myself and I'm guessing, many of the people on this site. There are times when, as a married guy with a daughter, I know I need to stay away from games for awhile, but it can be hard! I think that gaming has that potential to become an unhealthy habit, as Tristero put it, for whatever reason. Great write-up, though, and good luck with trying to keep your gaming to a moderate amount!
The closet I think I have ever come to something like this was a week many years ago when I would wake up at about 5 in the morning to get in a few hours of 'Runescape' (think 'MyFirst MMO')before school. But it quickly grew old. As do all MMOs...
Here are some pointers that have been helping me out.
Set a routine, try setting a strict limit on what you play and how long. It's usually easier to do this with retro games... speaking of which.
Play retro games. They're easier to pick up quickly and then put back down without wasting your whole day. Play Chrono Trigger until you get to the next save point and then just stop playing or play half an hour of Mario and then go to bed.
Try playing more games that you can play right in your living room with your family, especially co-op ones that reach a broad audience like Mario or something.
Don't think of gaming as something you have to do, but as something you get to do. Let it be your chill-out time and it'll make those few times when you do get to sit down and play so much more meaningful.
Change your priorities and you won't miss gaming! This has been a big one for me. When I became more focused and interested in other things, I didn't miss gaming. I don't play games as much as in high school and that's ok, there's other stuff that I love more now. For you this would be things like your career and your family. Put them before everything and let gaming take a backseat.
The best way I found to stay away from addictions is just keep yourself busy with other things. A social life is the achilles heel to MMOs.
jackal27: The priorities have definitely shifted, heh. It's been that way for a while, and a lot of the problems that my fiancee and I have(had?) stemmed from when I started moving towards those priorities instead of constantly occupying myself with WoW.
The time that I did spend gaming from that point was, for the most part, in the living room while taking care of our then newborn daughter. Super Mario Galaxy and SSBB were great time wasters with my fiancee and our family, and I had finally picked up RE4 the week our daughter was born. She loves Halloween masks and scary things now, btw. :D
But follow your heart. Ignore the MMORPGs (which divert too much time from other games anyway), and focus on the brief, rewarding chapter-oriented structure of single player gaming.
Would you read a book that never ended? I don't think I would. I like to play stuff with a beginning, middle, and end.
Good luck.
I broke the cycle when warhammer came out though.. lately i just stick to games that seem genuinely interesting to me. I play them and reflect on them.. paying attention to what i enjoy about them as well as their shortcomings.
I just wanted to comment and say thanks for being real, dude!
That was great a great blog, very real and very touching.
I just graduated from college and I'm having a hard time finding a job. I was given a free trial to WoW this past wednesday but I'm afraid of it. I'm afraid I might get caught in a false sense of accomplishment and forget what's truly important in life.
I sounds like your have your head in the right place, at least you realized you had a problem or people around you did. There are plenty of others out there that have similar issues who choose to ignore them as their lives crumble around them.
Where will we all be 10 years from now? Hard to say. Will I/we still be gaming like now? Maybe, maybe not. I don't think I'll completly outgrow it, but my play times and habits will probably shift.
I played runescape for over two years. I remember I'd be in class, daydreaming about playing instead of actually doing my work. I'd be thinking of the best tactics for a raid or what my new character should be called. It almost makes me sick looking back on it now.
I dont play any MmoRpgs now, but im still a heavy gamer. I cant tell you how many times I have chosen gaming over homework or any other of my responsibilities.
But, would I ever stop gaming? Nope. Its my one relaxing thing of the day. Nothings better than forgetting everything, sitting down and getting lost in an old favourite or a new adventure.
Good read, anyway.
A firend of mine said something wise the other day. He told me that for him, WoW does not give you anything. It doesn't really put you in a really good mood or a bad one at that, it just keeps your problems and your state of mind in a stasis, it postpones your emotion, because it's so all-encompassing. And I suppose this holds true for other equally addictive games as well, and also: heroin.
but anyway, I'm ranting. Thanks for sharing this with us :)
Do you ever do that?
I watch more anime or movies than I play games. I don't play online anymore. I usually go the linear story driven games or a sandbox game like Far Cry 2 - technically linear with a lot of missions.
I can't devote my time to WRPGs anymore, or any other long investment game.
That being said, I've got to wonder if people who read all the time or watch tons of TV ask themselves the same thing?
Console gaming offline = cigarettes
Console gaming online = weed
MMORPG = meth
Or something like that? Nice write-up.
As a fairly newbie gamer in the big scheme of things (I mostly started in college), once I got into WoW I was enveloped by it almost immediately, and it only got worse from there ... and then when I met StumpFreak it got better and throughout my pregnancy we were on long-term WoW hiatus and it was probably the best time of our relationship. Then shortly after our daughter was born and I was on maternity leave, I convinced him that we should go back to the game and he agreed. Everything worked out for a few months and we actually had a great time and found a fairly reasonable balance between playing too much and having a real life for our new family. But once StumpFreak decided to quit the game for good, I didn't want to leave, and that was fine until I was consumed into the addiction again heavily after I lost my job and the results of which ripped our relationship to shreds.
I thought that I was justified. After all, we MET in WoW and as weird as that was for me it made me feel like it was okay for WoW to be a huge part of my and his life, because that's where it all started.
But consuming ourselves in games along with working together (at the time) was just too much.
Since deciding to reconcile with one another, I have let my account expire and will only go back if Stump goes back... which is unlikely. I'll always enjoy games, but at this point in my life I appreciate them more now as a hobby than as a lifestyle. Part of me still has urges to get back into WoW and go back to the way things were a LONG time ago when we were both playing the game, but those days are long since passed (pre-TBC was the best time, imo) and that's something I take into consideration when these urges come forward.
For now, I will stick to games like Portal, Dawn of War, ... even Bejeweled to satiate my gaming needs. And the only MMO I'll touch is Albatross18, because Lord knows I can only golf so much before I want to stab myself in the face.
Fortunately for both of us, my commitment to my relationship and my family is stronger than my urge to play any game--which very pathetically was not the case a few months ago. (Ugh, I can't believe I was ever "that" guy)
You live, you learn. All that matters to me now is where we go from here and learning from past mistakes. We're better off now for the lessons that we both have learned than we were before, and for that I am grateful.
I think it's best to keep it simple, such as no more than 2 hours of games-related time per day. That's what I'm gonna try...hope it works.
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williamgeorge
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