It’s time to finally come clean: I may be addicted to a game for the first time ever

This one’s tough for me to write. I’ve always felt like I would never be susceptible to forming a habit with a video game, but it’s been a couple of years now, and I need to face this harsh truth.

I am a habitual Marvel Snap player. I can’t call myself an “addict” because I feel as though that word comes with a heavy weight, and that diagnosis may have to come from a medical professional. But I think that I’m showing many signs when it comes to the card-battling game.

Marvel Snap has hooked me, there’s no arguing about that. I’ve been playing it ever since it came out almost three years ago. It’s a live-service title with new cards added every week and new seasons every month. It has become a part of my daily routine.

When I wake up in the morning, I pedal on my exercise bike at my desk and play Conquest mode to finish challenges so that I can earn currencies. Then I dabble in the ladder until I inevitably get very annoyed with other players and their tech card-heavy decks or toxic emotes, and I quit the game. But, inevitably, I’m back.

Every day at 2pm CT, the store updates, so I have to check it to see if any new variants warrant any Gold I’ve saved up (or bought). I don’t spend a lot of real money outside of the season passes, but those have stacked up quite quickly over time. For myself and others, the game has become basically a monthly $15 or $20 subscription, like many other live service titles.

I often find myself annoyed with the meta, bored with the current decks, or frustrated when trying to play off-meta cards and decks for fun, only to be met with sweaty gamers climbing the ladder (as is their prerogative). But I keep playing.

And by now, I’ve spent enough money and time on the game that I feel like I can’t drop it. That’s called sunk-cost fallacy, but I can’t stop. I do still tend to get joy out of it, but some days the annoyance or money spent outweighs it, and that’s what makes my inability to fully quit the game so problematic.

What may be the worst part about Snap is that it’s also on mobile, so I find myself opening the game on my phone even when I don’t mean to do so. Deleting it feels like a simple solution, but it’s become such a part of my routine that I still find some semblance of excitement in that I don’t know if I will stick to it. I still enjoy new seasonal drops, I love Marvel and its characters, and the thrill of winning a match is still enough to keep me coming back.

I’m curious if anyone else out there has had a similar realization. I think of other games and players of those games who’ve spoken out about similar experiences, with a game like Destiny 2 coming to mind. Have you ever felt “addicted” to a game or realized it had become a habit? How did you deal with that?

I feel like this may be part of my personality, because I tend to obsess over new things that bring me joy, but never for this long. I’m still trying to figure out how I feel about my own habit and what, if anything, I can do about it, so I’m open to kind advice.

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