BTW, John, I don’t know if that’s such a good idea. Imagine if Lezlers got addicted too… 
As I’ve said, I have no experience with online games. The thought that the games themselves are designed to drag things out as long as possible didn’t occur to me at all, even though it is a reasonable conclusion given their revenue model. Thanks for the insight, Demosthenesian.
I still think the social aspect might hold something to it though, but I’m largely basing that on my wife and mines experience - I use the internet to solely cruise a couple of message boards, talking to people. The SDMB and a couple of other forums easily takes up 90% of my net time, and communicating with other is, to me, the primary purpose of the net.
Well, it’d make for a beautiful (but weird) rapprochement, dontcha think? 
The problem with on-line games is that as far as play-style, they’re much more like a group sport than a computer game. Mr. Athena has trouble with me when I play EQ, even though I don’t think I’m nearly as bad as some of the examples on this board. I generally play when he’s doing something like watching sports on TV, or I go through great pains to reserve time - ie, “Honey, my guild is raiding Qeynos on Saturday afternoon. I’d like to do that with them - do we have plans on Saturday? No? OK, can I plan on being not available between noon and 3?”
The problems come when he wants to talk to me. He’ll come in, there’s 5 monsters on our group, and the cleric is almost dead. He’ll start talking about the goal that Roy just blocked. I’ll be franticly trying to multi-task, talk to him, make sure cleric doesn’t die… mez that add… crap, clarity fading… ‘what was that about the home run, honey?’ and he’s stomping off angry because I wasn’t paying attention to him. After all, it’s just a game. People are used to games being able to be paused. On line games are more like if you were out in the backyard playing football with a group of friends. You’re out there, a play has just started, you’re running for the goal line and “Honey! Let me tell you about what I had for lunch!” just doesn’t happen.
That said, I do think it’s rude to invite someone over then ignore her for the whole evening. It’s not specifically the game’s fault - if he had, say, been watching TV and not made any attempt to talk to her, or been playing a board game with another friend it would be the same thing. If he had invited her over, he should have turned the game off, period. On the other hand, if she had invited herself over, well, that’s a different story.
Why is wanting attention being a nag? I don’t understand your reasoning. We see eachother one day a week. Why is it nagging to not want to spend that time staring at the back of his head?
Like I said, we see each other once a week, how is that never going away?
I didn’t invite myself over. He very clearly wanted me to come over. He also just wanted me to sit paitiently until he decided he felt like giving me his attention. That was where the problem laid.
It’s both. He talks about leveling, and about people on the game.
He’s usually not this bad. Compared to how it was a few months ago he’s gotten alot better. I would never actually ask him to give up the game, all that would do would breed resentment. We had a really good talk last night and he was suprisingly open, not uber defensive, how he usually is when I broach the subject. I think cold hearted dumping him would be a little premature, I guess we’ll see how things pan out.
I love athenas posts she is always correct
I don’t know EverQuest. Is there some way that we could stage an online “intervention”?
A bunch of helpful Dopers could seek out his character online, and offer him a new Quest. “Overcome the dark forces of online addiction, and salvage your personal relationship- before it is too late!”
Just a couple points to add:
- It’s not necessarily a question of whether the BF is getting a social benefit or a character-building benefit from EQ. Addiction is addiction, whether its drugs, drink or online gaming, and he’s showing the signs (constant use, work troubles, relationship troubles).
It’s possible to be addicted to the damnest things. Mine used to be computer solitaire on the Commodore 64. I’d play at work, which didn’t help the company any, nor my career. No social benefit there. I’d feel afterwards like I was a mouse hitting the bar for a food pellet, yet I’d always go back. I had to erase the program to free myself.
- It’s not necessarily a matter of his playing that’s a problem, but that he’s neglecting other parts of his life to which he’s made a commitment. If you have a GF or wife, you’re expected to spend time with her. That’s part of the deal. If you want her and the game, you negotiate with her so that you have time to play, time to spend with her, and you stick to it. No whining, no sulking.
This is vital for several reasons. First, it makes her feel wanted by someone she loves, which should translate into greater pleasure for you (after all, if she thinks that you love playing a game more than her, there’s less incentive to be pleasant around you). Second, it keeps her from dumping your ass (unless, of course, you don’t mind, in which case you should suck it up, be a man, and dump her first).
Ignoring her even when you invite her over and getting upset because she doesn’t like being treated like shit is immature and wimpy.
BF is being a jerk who needs to get his priorities straight.
There is no defense for his actions.
Good luck lezlers.
Ummm . . . kells? WTF, doll? Bad day?
Nope, just tired of ‘computer anything’ being blamed for all social ills.
If this guy was out playing golf, nobody would suggest an ‘intervention’ of strangers :rolleyes:
Athena explained it better than me, just because his hobby is INDOORS at a desk, doesnt make it any less valid.
And this is nothing new, 25 years ago, my dad played pool… 5 years ago, my co-workers played 12 hours of golf several days a week…
Its a FUN game, it is every bit as social as going out and playing golf or whatever. Certainly no worse than football game fans etc.
I dont see the problem, if she goes over and he plays, just see him somewhere else. He cant take it with him.
At least she knows where he is every night… getting into his hobbies is a nice thing to do too, whether its an online game, or a sport or whatever.
I also hate to see addiction thrown around with such abandon by intellegent people over one persons dedication to a hobby.
Is it time consuming, yes sometimes, perhaps he has come to the grueling epic part of the game, its a challenge for the hard core dedicated gamers.
For petes sake if he was staying up all night reading a thriller novel, you wouldnt call him an addict!
if golf or thriller novels caused my husband to behave in the manner quoted above, i would certainly have a problem with it, kelli.
Agreed, kelli. Just because he’s sitting behind a screen doesn’t mean it’s any more of an “addiction” than any other hobby or game.
Athena, you basically covered it, but I’d like to reiterate it for Lezlers: the problem is that his time is not his own. The structure of the game requires players to be in certain places at certain times for certain periods of time. It doesn’t just require individual players to do so, but groups of players to do so. Before dropping him, you might want to ask some Everquest players what would happen if one of the members of their group dropped out or said “he couldn’t come”. If anything the repercussions are more serious than they would be if he were involved in sports, because his absence could mean that hours, weeks, days, or MONTHS of often-tedious character building and item acquisition could be lost.
I especially loved this point, and will quote it again (and again, if necessary) because it utterly encapsulates the gamer vs. non-gamer relationship problem:
Keep in mind, Lezlee and others that Athena’s distraction here can cost the lives of the characters, their equipment, and (as I said earlier) the equivalent of an unbelievable amount of tedium. I had the same thing happen to me on both ends… when I was playing Asheron’s Call, and when my GF was playing Ragnarok Online. She stopped complaining when she tried it herself, and I never said “boo” to her: you learn pretty quickly that sometimes someone is not to be interrupted. Even if they’re just sitting behind a screen clicking, they’re busy. (They’re also responsible for a bunch of other people, too… an EQ player’s time is not their own, which is one of the reasons I played Asheron’s Call).
I’d say the equivalent would be more like somebody who was critically involved in a political campaign bowing out… not only would it hurt him with that peer group, but could cost everybody else the victory of their candidate or their cause. Or some sort of nightmarish sports scenario where missing a game causes the team not just to lose that game, or that season, but their charter as a team. Everquest is absolutely unforgiving in that respect.
It is not, however, addiction. Addiction is a chemical dependency. It is, at best, a rather nasty psychological habit. It is no more so, however, than someone who is involved in the previous examples that I cited above, except with much more tedium than normal thrown in.
One more point: folks, if you don’t understand what the hell EQ is or how it works, might I kindly suggest doing a bit of research before giving well-meaning but utterly counterproductive advice?
Uh, people generally don’t play golf for 16 hours straight, 7 days a week.
I know from addiction.
I’ve seen addiction up close, both of substances and circumstances. Lost my brother to addiction.
I’ve tried plenty of drugs, but I can honestly say the only two things I have ever been addicted to are coffee and playing Starcraft/Quake II online. It can be bad. I’d play until my right hand siezed up, and then switch from mouse to joystick and play for another four hours, and be good for nothing at work the next day. Interfered with my life far more than anything else.
I played Quake with my friend Joe one night, with the understanding that we’d make a short night of it, because he had a date to meet his girlfriend at the beach the next day. 10:00am rolls around, and we’re still playing, ganging-up on folks-- His GF calls, to find out where the hell he is, and we were both so zoned out that he was asking her what server she was on, so he could hook up with her. He wanted her to say something like **MEL@KITSBEACH, so he could find her via Quakefinger. Total blurring of what’s real and what’s a game. (The hash that we smoked all night probably didn’t help much, either, but nobody stays up all night smoking hash. It was the game that kept us from sleeping.)
When you continue to engage in behavior that you know is destructive to your body, your job, and your personal relationships, it’s a problem. Oh yeah, when you forget that you can connect with people outside of a Quakeserver, that’s generally a bad sign, too.
When your SO is trying to speak to you and you ignore her for hours, you’re fucking up.
And as far as your Golf analogy goes, I’d be out on the green with a tranquilizer gun and a straight-jacket if anyone I cared about started to dedicate most of their time to the game. Video games can be compelling and fun. Golf is just sad.
Abuse angel hit the nail squarely on the head. I could play a game/surf the net/whatever for most of the day, but it would not be an addiction because when something else needs my attention, I can turn it off.
Ignoring is bad enough (after inviting her over, no less), but this:
Is a sign of a real problem. You could subsitute any activity for “GAME” and it would still be a problem.
I think if her boyfriend really wants to be happy, he should be dating another EQ player who will consider time spent playing the game quality time.
It’s about give and take, and you can’t just keep taking and expect things to work out. When relationships and responsibilities are being neglected, there is a problem, no matter what the source is.
Zette
I play eq, with the past year of unemployment I play ALOT.
when my gf shows up/calls/icq’s me eq goes down. end of story. social aspect or not you have a living breathing person standing in the fucking ROOM with you and you wanna sit and crack out?
I see you had a talk with him, my suggestion is that you point him at this thread for a clue or three. if he keeps it up just leave and dont look back.
lezlers: introduce him to kellibelli: maybe she’s less of a nag than you:rolleyes:
Actually, dump him is good advice.
Let us know when you’ve found a nicer one!
Sooooo… if you’ve scheduled out time to play a game of basketball with a group of friends one afternoon, and your girlfriend happens to come along and spends the whole game trying to talk to you about mundane things, you’re fucking up? Sorry, I don’t buy it.
I’m not saying that EQ can’t be addictive and destructive. I heard plenty of tales about people getting too into the game and it causing problems. However, out of the 400,000 or so people who play the game, only a small percent actually have real problems because of it. The rest of us play the game and have a life as well.
I’m all for paying attention to your S.O. However, can you seriously tell me that it’s more important to stop a game at a critical time - a game where you and the people you’re with have put hours and hours into character building, and where if you quit, your character may face death, as will the other people’s character’s because they were counting on you to be there - just so your S.O. can tell you about the amusing commercial they just saw on TV? This is exactly the situation I’ve been in. If Mr. Athena ever came to me while I was playing and said “Hey, I really have to talk to you, this is very important” the game would be off in a second, no matter how critical the situation was. That’s never happened so far.
I just think people like to latch on to computer games as problems because they don’t really understand them and they’re easy targets. Mr. Athena occasionally pulls out the “you play that damn game too much” card when we’re fighting, but invariably when I ask him the next day (when things have calmed down) he says “No, it’s not a problem, I was just in a pissy mood and I knew it would get under your skin.” For what it’s worth, when I was working my “real job” ie, 9 to 5 outside the house, I played EQ two nights a week. Once I started working part-time, at home, I play mostly during the day when I’m here alone. I also play on weekends and nights if there’s a sports game on that Mr. Athena is watching (he’s a sports nut, and watches just about everything), or if he’s off doing astronomy (another of his hobbies). In reality, I think things would be worse between us if I didn’t have a hobby like EQ - I wouldn’t be as tolerant of all the sports he watches, and I’d be WAY more bummed when he took off on Saturday night to the dark sky site. As it is, we spend most nights every week together, and a couple apart, doing our hobbies. Is that really all that bad?
(PS - thanks to everyone who said such nice things about my post! What a nice way to wake up on Monday morning!)
But there comes a point where it does become unhealthy. I don’t care what the structure/nature of the game is, no-one’s gonna convince me that the following is healthy: An aquaintance of mine (NOT a friend) quit a $19.00/hr job and gave up his apartment to honest-to-god move in with his parents and work part-time for Dominos so that he could play Everquest more. He actually told me this. I’m not speculating, I know his stated reasons first-hand and I saw his behavior which matched what he was saying.
This is unhealthy. I’m real comfortable making that jusgment call He was playing for about 12+ hours a day (on weekdays-more on weekends), working for 4/6 hours a day and sleeping for about 6 hours a day. He would eat on-line. He bought a headset so that he could talk to his fellow players (or something) while he was in the bathroom.
If he invited us over, he’d start getting…twitchy…if he couldn’t play for an hour or two.
I understand hobbies and getting hooked for a while. When I get a new video game, or book or whatever I’ll play it for long periods…but I get over it eventually and regain some “balance” in my life. He has been doing this for at least a year and change.
I’m NOT saying that he’s or his behavior is typical of many or most Everquest players, but as far as I’m concerned he is addicted. A psychological addiction, true, but it’s affecting his real life (I’m still stunned that he quit a job he liked and that paid well and that had minimal extra-work demands so that he could pay a game an extra 3 hours a day. )
Fenris
*As an aside, he’s now spending time trying to get a Russian Rent-a-bride (“Pay Us $5000+ dollars and we will get you Russian woman! Da-Nyet?”) because "American women don’t understand him or his “hobbies”, while Russian women “understand that men have hobbies that take up large portions of their time”. When we’ve pointed out to him that even Russian Rent-A-Brides will want some attention (and since they’re strangers in a new country will need MORE attention) he says “The brochure says that they’ll understand MY needs.”) Some Russian Rent-A-Bride is in for a nasty shock when she’s shipped over.
Ok, wow. I’m an everquest player, have been since release…BUT, I have quit several times. Know why? Social reasons! First time I quit, I had a long distance relationship. Our only means of contact were phone or aol imer, and one was much cheaper than the other. So i stopped playing, RL trumps EQ anytime. Second time I quit : New girlfriend! I seem to have a trend… I get addicted to EQ so long as i have not much else to do in my life. And always when my friends would call and ask to hang out, EQ is turned off. I can’t understand how someone would want to avoid their girlfriend / friend / spouse / family for a game. My condolences, ** lezlers **, but he’s really not worthy of your time or effort if he can’t give up a game to pay attention to you.