I consider myself a gamer because I enjoy video gaming. A lot. So much that I have a hard time thinking of any other activity that gives me more joy. I have all three current-generation consoles, and have owned all the major ones starting from the NES, which I got as a Christmas present in 1989 when I was 5.
The problem is, once I get into gaming, I have a hard time focusing on anything else because I love it so much. I can play for hours without getting tired or bored, and this is about the only activity I can think of that I can say this about. I realized at about the start of my freshman year of high school that my studies would suffer if I kept playing games the way I did when I was in junior high. So I stopped, for years. I picked it up again in 2003 or so, during my undergraduate degree. But I limited my playing time to summer and winter breaks, because I knew that I would spend too much time on them and neglect my studies otherwise. This has been my scheme ever since, through the rest of my undergrad, throughout my masters, up to this point in my PhD program. I play extensively during break times and not at all during the semester.
Now I’m working on finishing this degree. There is more stress in my life now. I exercise and try to eat right, but neither of these things makes me feel better in the slightest. Rather, I’m starting to get that itch again to play video games (I haven’t played since January) because I think that could make me feel better. But I’m afraid that if I start, I’ll become so wrapped up in the plots and fun of these games that I’ll not get any work done.
Does this scenario sound familiar to anyone? I can’t be the only one who loves games this much. I have wondered often whether I have a gaming addiction, but then I think: Can addicts just suddenly stop and do without for months, and then start again? If I were truly an addict, could I even control myself?
Disclaimer: I have diagnosed depression and anxiety, and I am seeing a therapist and a psychiatrist
First of all, “game addiction” is a myth. People with addictive personalities can get addicted to gaming (or more likely, a specific game), but “game addiction” is definitely a myth.
As for how you play, no, I can’t say I’ve ever done that. I will occasionally be late for work if I can’t find a save point when I’m playing in the morning, but I have no problems limiting my gaming to an hour or two a day and cutting it out completely for a day or week or what if I’ve got some big project.
Yeah, maybe once every six months I get really into some video game. Like, where I’ll go home for lunch to play it. The last time was, heh, Lego Indiana Jones.
Your pattern matches my son (going into high school). If I let him, he will play non-stop and to the detriment of sleep and school. We have slowly worked out rules where he only plays on weekends and I am allowed to interrupt him for a review of his current schoolwork.
This is after the draconian cancellation of cable, plus changing the password to World of Warcraft.
It seems to have helped him get his schedule - so now he is either hard core, or not at all.
My desire to play games was only matched by the sense of overwhelming guilt that I knew I would feel if I didn’t do schoolwork. That’s what made giving up the games so damn difficult; on the one hand, I knew that if I kept playing, my grades would suffer, and I’d feel bad about myself. On the other hand, giving up the games often made me feel the same as if a good friend were moving away. Honestly, that is how I used to feel. Hell, I still feel that way. At the end of this past winter break, I became deeply depressed as I packed up Modern Warfare II and Assassin’s Creed II in preparation for the start of the semester. It took me a few weeks to get past it. Now “that old feeling” is coming back, just when I don’t have time.
I think there’s definitely some addictive personality or lack of self control issues going on in your situation or others like it.
I’ve been a pretty hard-core gamer most of my life. We had an Atari 2600 back in the day, like 1980, and after that, I was a computer gamer for the most part, because in the roughly 1985-1990 era, the best games were on the Commodore 64, and then the PC. I recently got an Xbox 360, but I’ve remained a PC gamer, and if I had to guess, I’d estimate that I’ve probably spent upwards of $7000 on games and game hardware since about 1985, between the games, computer upgrades to play games, etc…
I never missed or skipped class in college to play video games. I haven’t called in sick to work to play games. About the worst I’ve done is stay up later than I should a few nights playing.
Hell, now that I’m 37 and a homeowner, the issue isn’t playing too much, it’s finding the time to play at all!
I haven’t skipped class for games either, but, as I said, I don’t play games during the school semesters. Before I went off to grad school, I worked part time at a radio station to help pay for undergrad. The job requirements didn’t stop with the school semester, obviously, but I never skipped work even when I was enthralled with a game. I take that as a positive sign that maybe I can somehow learn to balance my appetite for gaming.
It’s a bit surprising to me that this problem isn’t more common, given that Everquest used to be called “EverCrack” and multiplayer online games still occasionally attract the attention of the media with stories of marriages torn apart and lives ruined, all due to a game.
Not true. The DSM-IV shows that a hallmark of “pathological gambling” is gambling with increasing amounts of money to get the same high and stealing to support this habit (easily paralleling drug addiction). Those two things are most definitely not present in “game addiction.”
I have my obsessive periods with games, but luckily they only really apply to single-player story-based ones. It may take 100 hours to complete a mammoth RPG like Baldur’s Gate 2, and I may have to play it as soon as I get home and may even think about it at work, but once it’s over, it’s over. I treat a good book or TV series the same way. The Wire had me once trying to finish its 60 hour run-time in about a week.
I’ve never played a MMORPG and I don’t think I ever want to.
I’m usually a single-player game person myself. The universe, the characters, and the gameplay all have to come together for me to get into a game. Lots of games out there really don’t hold much interest for me because one or more of these three elements is lacking. Sports games and car racing games are a couple of examples.
When I first got my 360 some years back, I started playing Oblivion. The last time I played, which was quite a long time ago, I had logged 260 hours and hadn’t even finished the main quest.