Thoughts After Game Addiction

(written: 7/11/19, edited: 11/15/19)

When I was young I was fascinated by video games. Some of my first memories were of when my Uncle showed me the great early NES games like Super Mario, Metroid, Zelda, Skate Or Die, and Castlevania; the newest SNES games like Super Mario World, F-Zero, Star Fox, Super Double Dragon, and of course Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles: Turtles In Time... along with so many more. My youth was spent paging through the issues of Nintendo Power magazine to see the walk-throughs, reviews, and commentary; colorful pictures of all the characters and levels that'd come to fill my imagination for years. At my youngest, my very first friends and I would play imaginary games outside in the neighborhood, pretending to be the different game characters on an adventure. We'd sit around and scribble drawings of them or play with their action figures. Our imaginations set ablaze with the fun of it all.

All the while my Gameboy portable game system provided an easy distraction on all the car trips and various times out with my parents where I'd have to sit around waiting for things. I'd be on my unending quest to catch them all in Pokemon or floating around in dreamland with Kirby; enjoying the kind of mindless handheld alluring distraction that was only eventually widely common some 20+ years later on our modern smartphones.

As I grew up, so did the game systems and their graphics. I was soon playing the Nintendo 64 I won from a raffle contest our local cable TV station put on. Snowboarding down slopes in 1080 or Snowboard Kids, carrying out secret missions as 007 in Goldeneye, flipping race cars doing ridiculous stunts on Rush2, or staying over at my neighbor's house hunting dinosaurs in Turok have become some of my fondest memories. I'd grow up drawing characters in games like these and theorizing on my own, in my own imaginary games that I'd dreamt of being able to produce one day.

Then the internet came and swept me away. Our dial-up 56k-modem's screeching connection sounds ushering in days and nights spent searching out cheat-codes for my favorite video games and random artwork to download, save on a floppy disk and print out at school to try my best to draw or copy it into my sketchbooks. When we got our first modern computer with a graphics processor in it I got to see my first PC games: Civilization, Diablo, and many others. After a few years, there came a new type of game, endless in its proportion and limitless in it's potential. An entire world to explore non-linearly, without bound. The massively multiplayer online role-playing game.

Influenced by my computer programmer brother-in-law, who served as one of my main role models growing up, I installed Everquest on my brand new Emachines T1840 computer sometime near the beginning of 2001. From then on I was engrossed, hooked, and otherwise enraptured. The graphics, although extremely polygonal and crude by any standards, were some of the first fully 3D graphics I'd ever seen. The game was mostly played in the first-person view, giving the experience a very immersive feeling - unlike anything I'd played before.

Up until then I'd only really casually played video games and spent most of my time learning how to skateboard outside with my friends. I'd go on bike rides all day into the desert fields that line my city. I'd been more-or-less against this new internet thing as a new pillar in our society. I'd make fun of the internet kids in chatrooms and the 'nerds' who didn't know or couldn't find the importance of spending most of their time outside in the sun climbing trees and being physically hyper-energetic like I was.

Though soon that began to change. This online video gaming soon consumed my life and many opportunities, potentialities, and relationships I could have had growing up. So, after going back and forth - quitting and relapsing for nearly 20 years, I'm here to share some thoughts and perspectives on the topic.

This year, throughout the first half of 2019, my life had been better than it'd ever been. I got an amazing job in December 2018, the first job I'd ever had that paid above the poverty line. With that, I'd been able to pay off most of the debt I'd accumulated over the last decade of going from one minimum wage dead-end job to the next. I had more liquid money in my bank account than ever before. It felt good.
I'd restarted college classes and I was getting A's in every course, so my GPA was back up to an acceptable level after suffering for so long. I had my sights set at transferring to an online university to complete my Bachelor of Science in Computer Science, something I never thought possible in years past. My girlfriend had been really good to me and tried to spend as much time with me as she could. I had a safe place to sleep and as much food as I could eat. Things were as fantastic as they could realistically be. 

So then, why did I fall back into a video game addiction that'd plagued my life for over a decade?

This was my character's profile: https://raider.io/characters/us/area-52/Moosade#season=season-bfa-2
According to that, during 'Season 2' which stretched between February to June 2019 (~5 months) I completed 123 advanced dungeon groups, which usually take about an hour. This is where you gather 4 of the best players you can find in the game and attempt to finish a series of difficult fights in under a certain amount of time. That's not to mention the 37 failed attempts I had where we took too long to complete the dungeon, and an untold amount of complete failures where everyone simply left the group part-way through, abandoning the mission totally.

That's a lot. If you were to divide the total number of completed groups, 160, by the 21 weeks I played the game during the season: you'd realize that I did, on average, 6 groups per week. If you then consider that I also did 660 easier non-timed dungeons and completed some 1900 quests in the open world within this time; having spent a raw total of 700 hours actively logged into the game itself... you can see that I really played a lot over that 5 months. Not including the time I spent reading about strategies for playing the game, watching videos, or just sitting around chatting with people about it.

If we divide the 700 hours by 21 weeks, I spent just over 32 hours per week playing that game this year.

During that time I got to be ranked #260,836 out of 2,715,116 in the world. That's just under the top 10% of all World of Warcraft players during Season 2.

I don't think they hand out awards for that. I don't think I really achieved anything aside from wasted time.

In World of Warcraft, here are my character's names and the amount of time I spent playing them...
Moosade: 28 days (672 hours)
Schism: 49 days (1176 hours)
Decade: 39 days, 14 hours (950 hours)
Wildz: 37 days, 12 hours (900 hours)
Shredface: 18 days (432 hours)
Interval: 18 days (432 hours)
Willyum: 6 days, 17 hours (161 hours)
Anatomize: 5 days (120 hours)
Hyperbola: 4 days (96 hours)
Spinz 3 days, 21 hours (93 hours)
Spins: 20 hours

All together I've got 5512 verifiable hours playing World of Warcraft since around 2008, including other characters not listed but not including some characters from 2006 I can't access now to check.

All the same, 10 years ago I was in the same boat as I am now with a different game. The one I started this habit with. Everquest. During 2009, I played Everquest for upwards of 10 hours per day. I was relentless. They came out with a new server with new rules, a fresh start to give me the chance to be one of the best in the game. I took it, and I was. I was among the top 20 players on the server, out of many thousands.
It was all for not, though. In the end, I simply have this random profile to show for it. A rare custom title, and some of the best items in the game at the time...
https://eq.magelo.com/profile/1437438

Nothing tangible. Nothing to help me in my life now. Nothing meaningful. Just memories of being attached to the screen like a zombie and everything else in my life fading away into a dissolved nothingness.

Two years before that, I'd played endless hours on a different Everquest character. 
https://eq.magelo.com/profile/1351441
And 2-3 years before that, same story, same game, same character. Which brings us back to 2001, when I was 13 years old sitting with the 3 or 4 Everquest installation discs loading them into my computer's disc drive, not knowing the on and off again love affair I would have with this and other games like it throughout the rest of the first half of my life.

It was on and off like that. A year or two of intense playing followed by a year away from the game. Between 2001-2009 I spent an estimated 300 days (7200 hours) playing Everquest.
Combined with my 2010-2019 time of 230 days (5600 hours) in World of Warcraft, we see that I spent just about 13,000 hours playing online video games. That's just under 542 days... ONE AND A HALF YEARS of time accumulated at the keyboard, farming mobs, grinding experience, and wiping to raid bosses.

I should never stop to wonder why I didn't do well in high school, never making it into or through college in a reasonable time. Not often working for very much pay. Not having much of a social life or consistent friendships. Going through 15 unsuccessful serious relationships of various durations. My life's been spent with one eye on a video game. Ready to escape, under the guise of a fun hobby.

I never sniffed cocaine, smoked meth or shot up heroin. I rarely drank alcohol and I haven't ever gambled. Of all the bad habits and addictions I could have let into my life, gaming is one of the cheapest and least destructive. It's with that sentiment that I could justify continuing on for years, wasting my time.

It's like the 'harmless' candy we eat and the energy drinks we drink. Oily, calorie-packed, carbohydrate laced food topped with cheese and salted into oblivion isn’t a problem until you begin to eat it every day and it becomes your norm. It’s not that this food is THAT immediately unhealthy or destructive. You won’t get cancer, high blood pressure or put on extra weight right away, so it’s easier. The immediate benefits far outweigh the obvious immediate failings. But those ignorable long term negatives are not the worst or most troubling part of the equation. It’s the continued missed opportunity for good.

Not only do unhealthy or bad habits gradually lead to large problems; but they very clearly replace the good habits, and work to nullify their effects if not completely replaced.

How much different of a person would you be if you never drank soda? How more clearly would you be able to think if you'd never felt the extreme highs and lows of the sugar rush cycle? Your moods and depressive states, those anger fits and frustrated moments - all might be chalked up to the bad diet you ignore in blissful unawareness. Just the same as my gaming problem.

If I get home from 8 hours of work and 4 hours of college classes, a full day of doing what I'm supposed to be doing, and I feel like I can justify a few hours of gaming... where is the harm? Two or three hours of video games per night don't seem obviously bad, but they add up to 21 hours for the week. Soon I realize if I spend 6 extra hours per day over the weekend playing instead of 3, I can accomplish more and progress further into the game; soon I'm playing 32 hours per week. Eventually, homework starts to take a back seat, studying for advancement at work isn't even a thought, and months later I am where I was earlier this year. Those 32 hours every week added up to 700 hours over 5 months.

Not only was I not reaching any level of excellence in my current life... I wasn't doing anything to advance to a better one.

In 700 hours I could learn another programming language, develop a new business website and sell it for thousands of dollars on https://www.flippa.com/. I could write thousands of words toward a book or a set of articles that I could publish and begin to build into some sort of career. I could learn the basics and begin to master virtually any REAL life, productive, admirable, and interesting skill. Make real things, in real life, to give or sell to real people and affect the world in real ways.

Instead, I've been in a virtual world, doing virtual things, talking to strangers virtually, with so little to show for it that it's laughable.

Yes, you may say that somewhere in there may be lurking a viable future as a career gamer and internet personality. I might start streaming videos of myself online at https://twitch.tv/ like such famous individuals like these and begin to amass a following. Is it possible? Yes. Is it probable? Absolutely not.

Like the dreams and hopes of the people of the previous generation toward getting into the movies or becoming television stars, celebrity actors, musicians, or famed professional athletes. For every famous streamer/gamer/internet-sensation, there are hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of wannabes. Upcomers destined to never come up. Countless video game dudes like me who want to have their cake and eat it too. Play their favorite online adventure and make money off of it to support whatever average lifestyle they might be able to scrape together form it. A social influencer like the Instagram models you see gathering millions of 'Followers' and the Youtube video megastars with millions of 'Subscribers'... but for what?

How does a life like that teach you anything meaningful or push you to do anything greater? In the blink of an eye, it's all gone and any 15-minute span of fame you'd have had is extinguished faster than the flip of the match that started the blaze. That's worth putting all my energy into working toward?

These online games I played for many years are made so that you'd succeed. No one wants to play a game where you're destined for failure no matter how hard you try. You may need to spend many hours and put in countless tries or attempts to gain success in these games. It may FEEL like work. However, it's all constructed into a virtual world where the main goal is to keep your interest, give you rewards a little bit at a time, and inch you toward an ever-moving goal post. A trophy only ever out of reach. Play more and you'll eventually win it. You must, you're paying a subscription for it. But even if you do win it, what was actually accomplished as a result?

In this life, we are not set up for success the same way. We have every temptation, pitfall, mistake, and bad luck situation swirling around us overhead at all times. Just waiting to swoop down and enact a painful series of unfortunate events that will run it's course, outside of our control and in spite of all our best intentions. Life isn't easy. It's not a game and it's not built to be fair. It doesn't make sense, people aren't rational, and our society isn't a safe place. This is not a game, no matter how much you try to play it like one.

Thus, being lost in the escape of online games feels ever more attractive. The illusion of accomplishment can feel just as temporarily rewarding as the real thing. You spend hours working toward anything and finally accomplishing it will feel good for a time. It doesn't move you forward though. It doesn't bring you any more prosperity or progress in your life than if you'd just sat there in your room counting the dimples on the wall. You might count them faster and faster each day, recognize and categorize every crease and shadow, but soon it's obvious that you're just staring at a wall. You're staring at a screen. It glows and the lights feel good on your brain. Beyond that all meaning and purpose are negligible.

In the time I spent playing video games, as easy to justify as it may have been, as potentially useful as I might be able to spin it or defend it; it was just a waste of time.

In that amount of time, I could have focused intently on school: High School and College. By 23 I could have had my Bachelor's degree. For the last 8 years since then, I could have been working at least semi-regularly in much higher paid jobs than what I've been able to do instead. In 8 years, saving $500-1000 per month I would have $48000-$96000 in the bank or put toward a house, investments, retirement or other ventures which would have actually enriched my life. I would have had the free time, some 32 hours per week for 13 years to consistently keep up the social contacts, friendships, business partners, and lovers to have made real lasting and meaningful memories with people. Memories whose insights, good and bad, might have driven me to a higher state of being. Practice toward habits that contribute to a longer, happier and more interesting life.

If only life was so idyllic.

Instead, I spent my high school years ditching class, rebelling, and encountering countless frustrations at the expectations all the adults in my life had for me. I embraced heavy extreme music and skateboarding, spent all the time I wasn't gaming on learning to play music, hanging out with the bands I was in, and popping around on my skateboard. Going to local shows/concerts, and throwing myself around at the skatepark. I lived the same kind of escapism in my real life as my virtual life re-enforced. As the years went by, everything in my life crumbled to my avoidance. I quit anything when it got to be too difficult or there were no obvious solutions to my problems. Well into my twenties I had issues meeting the challenges of adult life, working with or interacting with people to solve issues, and having patience with the flow of life. Half-way through my twenties I started pushing myself to be better and do greater things, but still, I'd inevitably relapse or fall back while I learned to live through life's lessons.

So I sit now, in my 30's looking at a less-than-idyllic world. Panicked at the thought of a life spent wasted, absent, and avoided. Escape brought me questing for a deeper hole of virtual relief for so long that the world caught up with me and we're all now scrolling on our smartphones endlessly searching the internet for time wasted in temporary entertainment. A generation of people who flake on social plans more readily, binge on Netflix more fervently, and shutter in a terrified stupor over picking up a call and using our voices to speak a conversation. Our interactions are text-based messages of 3 or 4 syllables, only traded enough to meet the minimum requirements for meaning; no nuance or flavor, insight or feeling. Only short abbreviations and single frame memes lined with slang words and terms to turn the phrase enough to chuckle to ourselves as we go about our lives drenched in a veil of uncertainty about everything around us.

Our minds wrapped in depressive, anxious morbidity and suicidal ideations where the attention deficit and hyperactive tendencies only move us enough to show us what we lack or can't have. What we aren't. What we can't easily be. The mental disorders listed as most prevalent among my generation hold us back and typify us. Put us in a box. They limit us to feel like we can't achieve anything better than the minimum viable possibilities in our lives. Minimum wages and self-destructive habits are the invisible prison walls of someone so convinced they've got a Major Depressive Post Traumatic Anxiety of Borderline Schizo-Repressive Syndrome Disorder that they'll never be the impressive successful type of person that they and everyone that's loved them always hoped they'd be. They'll never be a millionaire, hell they may never make enough money to move out of their parent's house. They'll never ever be a stable person with normalized moods and the ability to focus on a topic for long enough to learn something new. This is the new average life. This is what most of us face.

So when life feels impossible because we're too poor, misguided, mentally unable, and stunted; video games and escapist behaviors are the only rational path to walk for many. Our college degrees cost so much and our best-pick dream jobs pay so little. There are dangerous chemicals in everything, the economy is constantly in unpredictable flux and everything is more expensive than it ever was, A house to cover our family with and food to cram into their faces takes multiple jobs from multiple earners and we still probably will need some public assistance. So why then would starting a family be a realistic or humane goal, to begin with?

If the glass looks half empty even when you're pouring all the water you think you'll ever have into it; what's the good in having the glass anyway? If we can't have full glasses we might as well tip them off the table and use the shards of broken pieces to scratch our names into the table so that at least people in the future will know we did something and we were there for a moment.

At the end of our lives, we'll only have an endless list of things we'd wished we'd been able to do if we don't spend all our time forcing ourselves to try.

So it's with that earlier thought of an idyllic life with which I frame my outlook now. How can I catch up to the life I would have if I never slacked off?

If life isn't structured in a way that promises success: I feel like I need to rewrite the definitions for 'Life', 'Success', and 'Promise' for myself; and better refine those definitions with each passing day.

It's the only hope I have because this is the only life I have. There are no re-tries, re-dos, re-sets, or second chances. This is the last 7/11/19 9:54AM I'll ever have. I spent it writing this so that I can use the writing to inspire me to move forward, closer to being who I want to be and not who I've been.