[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.