Comments on: When games stop being fun

Long a subject of half-serious jokes among devotees of computer and video games, game addiction is receiving serious attention lately as fantasy games such as "EverQuest" proliferate.

[clrbnnt]

Parents neglecting their children IN ANY WAY because of games (or any other leisure activity) is disgusting. If you are literally saying "I spend less time with my children than I should" and not actively involved in treatment, you are an unfit parent.

[BethieP]

Well, how about trying to play with your kids or with your fiance? Spend some time together instead of complaining about them all the time. Don't you make them go places they would rather not go, only to find out they did enjoy themselves? I used to hate online games, but I decided to see what my fiance and my daughter saw what was so great about it. Now, we all play together, and have alot of fun. Yes, we still work, and go places, like the movies or a museum or the beach, but instead of staring mindlessly together on the couch at some stupid tv sitcom on nights we do nothing, (we do watch history shows together) we opt to play World of Warcraft. Oh and for the girl whose fiance made a girl chick, probably because he wanted to look at a girl character and not stare at a male while he plays, or to be bothered by a girl hitting on him online. It's a common thing to do, I wouldn't be weirded out. Some girls make guy characters for the same reason. My daughter is a student and plays responsibly, as does my fiance and myself. So parents, don't let your kids play this game if they lack willpower, self control, or maturity. Or you just can't control them. Some parents can and some kids actually respect their parents. Not anyone's fault but yours if you can't command respect. Oh and for all of you who didn't know: Tuesdays are maintenance day, WoW is offline. It starts at like 6 am EST and lasts until like 3 pm EST, so make your kids do their chores on that day if they won't do them any other day. Most people who play WoW aren't doing drugs, drinking and driving or committing crimes, so think about that. And they aren't out running the streets to get hit by the drunk driver or robbed or having drug pushers try to make them buy drugs.They are home staying out of trouble. Come to think of it, more people should play WoW, maybe we'd have a crime free society.

[Lucint]

World of Warcraft's impact on society is truly amazing, considering this thread has been going on for what, over 4 years now?

I am a WoW player, but I would hardly call myself an addict. Yes, I have been playing since original release way back when. Yes I have many different characters of many different levels. Do I sometimes get caught up in the game, lose track of time, and spend too much time playing? Of course. But honestly, has anyone not done the same with any other hobby or social function? Anyone gotten caught up in working on an old car, restoring a house, building something, doing work in their garden, taken the kids to the beach and later realized, "Oh my, where did the time go?"

I take issue with some of the historical posts in this thread stating "World of Warcraft ruined my life". In my opinion, it all comes down to choices. We all can choose to play (or not play) a game. True, I know first-hand the addictive nature of a game like WoW, but that's where willpower has to come into play. A better person would realize they've played the game too long in one sitting, or neglected their friends or family, and a better person realizes they need help. So to the addicts above who have realized they have a problem and have broken their addiction, kudos to them. To the posts that sternly implore people to stop playing games because other gamers somehow enable your addiction, I say to you take a good hard look in the mirror. Are other gamers forcing you to play? Is someone holding a gun to your head telling you to log in to your WoW account or else...? Its all about personal choices, balancing life, and enjoying life.

I am a WoW player, but not an addict. I have a wife, and she plays WoW, too. But we also have two wonderful children. I have a fruitful, challenging, satisfying career. We take care of the house, we spend time with our children, we spend time with friends and are active in social groups and active with our church. We play WoW, and yet we find time to live full, rich lives. It's all about balance. It's not about other gamers somehow forcing us to play. If you feel that way, then I say Blizzard's marketing department did its job to the fullest. That's the idea, right? To get you to play, and pay every month? That's the goal of every salesperson, whether its an online game, a new car, or heck even the brand of breakfast cereal you pull out every morning. I don't hear anyone shouting "The other car drivers made me buy this car! Stop buying cars!" That's a silly argument in that situation, and in my opinion, that's a silly argument for gaming addictions.

Now, I'm not trying to bash gaming addictions. I fully believe it is possible to become addicted to gaming the same way people become addicted to drugs or alcohol or other behaviors. Whether or not its officially recognized, I'm sure gaming addiction is some form of OCD or other mental imbalance. People who have addictions need help, whether or not they realize it. So if you know someone who's addicted, get them some help. Hold an intervention, cut their computer cables, do SOMEthing. But please don't bash the rest of us who can responsibly play the game. Don't try to make us feel guilty for being able to enjoy some of our leisure time in a manner that we choose. I don't often see recovering alcoholics running into bars telling everyone there to stop drinking. The same should apply to online gamers. Let those of us who can responsibly enjoy ourselves in a gaming world do so.

[d2addict]

Since this is the 340th comment, I'm not sure if anyone is going to read this, but this is my story of Diablo II and as such, the story of my development. Diablo II was and is both a gift and a curse. I hope someone out there will find something in this post that will help them.

I was not allowed a gaming console until the 5th grade, when I received my first PlayStation and Final Fantasy 8. I quickly took advantage of my new toys and found FF8 to be a blast; in fact, I completely dominated the game leveling up all characters to 100 and literally beating every little part to the game. It was very fun, but I wasn't addicted. School proceeded as normal, as far as I can remember..., and I played about 1-2 hours a day for a year.

In 6th grade, a friend introduced me to Diablo II. This might sound like death was approaching but that wasn't the case at all. At the very least, my case with Diablo II is bittersweet. From the very beginning of middle school, Diablo II was my education. Literally. I learned nothing from my middle school teachers (to give you an example, my health teacher was 350 pounds and admitted to "trying" annorexia to lose weight--this was an extreme case but gives you a sense of the credibility of teachers at my school). So be it and Diablo went on to teach me what I needed to know. It taught me how to type--I had to type fast enough to chat with my friends who played; after all, I wasn't well-trained in the ways of instant messaging yet. Now I can type 120 wpm, which, granted isn't really the greatest skill set to have these days but still a skillset I attribute to my early days of Diablo II.

Was such a minor skill you can learn from a keyboarding program or classes really worth all that time? Of course not. But Diablo II, with its vast network of people from around the globe, taught me how to trade. A little background.. if you've ever played Diablo II intensely you know there are huge trading channels and forums all over battle net and the web, where players can trade items they've found. These trades often require calculated negotiation and the ability to SELL something, to persuade the person across the computer screen to trade. This is just like real life sales. I created a sale pitch and don't forget the formatting and wording needs to be catchy, it has to look good so that people will notice it in the barrage of other trade offers, and most importantly--you MUST know the value of the item you are trading or else you'll be on the wrong end of the deal. This, for me, was one of the most exciting parts of Diablo II. The trading. I guess this might have been the smallest little bud of interest I had in Economics, which I am now majoring in. Except now the stakes are real.

Even then my Diablo II addiction didn't just teach me how to trade; it gave me the confidence to succeed. As people have said many times above me, Diablo II requires you to build your character with experience, items, and skills. It requires dedication, commitment, strategy, skill, and luck.. just like a regular, nonvirtual life. I spent hours strategizing away from the computer, at school, in the car, any where I could, I thought about Diablo II. This sounds like a terrible addiction, but, I know it's going to sound crazy, it taught me what it meant to be committed to something you loved and had fun doing. Best of all, my commitment paid off, I gained prestige among my friends who played Diablo II, I mentored people who wanted to start playing, and most importantly my character could PK among the best of them. (PK means player kill.. in D2 you can fight against other players to see who was stronger).

But before all the gamers start referencing me justifying their all-nighters and LAN parties playing games, let me be the first one to tell you that they should probably quit.

Thankfully, I quit early on in high school. I started finding prestige on my debate team and in the classroom by applying the skills I learned in Diablo II. Ridiculous, I know. I thought about myself, what skillset I wanted, how I was to allocate my time, just like I allocated my accumulated skills and items in Diablo II. D2 taught me the most important skill in high school--time management.

Sure I could see the benefits that came out of my past in gaming. But I'm cursed. It really is a drug and like all drugs there are, to borrow a term, diminishing returns to scale-- the more you do it the less "high" you get. Even these past few months, I had my flirtations with the Big D. . I didn't enjoy it but I still get an itch to play as I write this post. I'm doing my best to quit. Thank you all and here's to it for gaming addict rehab.

[douche23]

You people are a bunch of ********** who have nothing better to do than to go online and write a dumb comment on a dumb website like I'am doing right now.


P.S. You suck!

[350am]

I have many of the symptoms others users have posted about this topic. I am 21 years old and have been suffering from video game addiction for the past 5 years. I was a normal kid, played sports, was in honors classes, got good grades. I always liked video games as a kid, but was never addicted to them. The addiction happened when my friend introduced me to a MMO. MMO's are different from other video games like Mario or other childish games because there really is no end to them, you can always progress your character further, and you don't have to play alone. I immediately got hooked and asked my parents to buy me a computer, to which I played the game non-stop. In high school, my usual day was that I woke up for school, but right after school, I would play from 3 pm to 1-3 am without studying for school or leaving the house. Sometimes I would play through dinner and would ignore my mother completely. I somehow graduated high school and ended up going to a nearby community college. I felt like I had a fresh start but when I figured out that attendance wasn't mandatory, I started skipping most of my classes to play the game all day. The game became my life. I no longer talked to the friends I had known since I had been 5 years old. I no longer played sports and went from the kid that everyone liked to the kid who no longer had a life. I would say I'm a smart guy, but if you're reading this post, you're probably thinking the contrary. After I realized what was happening, I gave my character and all gold to a friend and removed the game from my computer. I came in contact with some of my friends again but it was hard to get away from the gaming world since they all played video games also. I lasted about 6 months before I started talking to old friends I used to play this game with. They convinced me to come back to the game and I started all over again. Did not talk to friends and still did not go to school. I played as hardcore as ever until I had an epiphany like I am again having now. Whatever you do in this video game, it doesn't mean ****. You can be the highest level or the richest, but what happens when the game ends? Where do your online friends go after the game is over? You just spend years of your life literally staring at a computer screen instead of experiencing new, REAL things or making REAL friends who actually care about your actual life, not your virtual life. I finally came out of my hole, and became myself again. I passed all my classes in school, had all my old friends plus new ones, messed around with girls, played sports, ect. The feeling of these things alone are better than anything the video game could ever give me. They may be harder than moving your mouse and clicking a couple of keys, but they were way more satisfying. I lasted around 1 year before I realized I thought I had a void missing. I ended up playing the same game again, but this time I did not play nearly as hardcore. I still play sports, go out with girls, hang out with friends, and go to school. But during the day, when I don't really have much to do, I will log in to the game and play for a couple hours. I feel like I have a life with an extracurricular activity that no one really knows about. That is until today when I realized I won't be passing one of my classes because of the game. I am already so behind from my friends because I didn't go to any college classes for about 2 years. So this time, I am done forever. Deleting anything on my computer that has to do with the game and vowing never to play an MMO again even if I have all day free. People who are addicted to these games, please know that you are not only hurting yourself by not doing your responsibilities or neglecting others because of the addiction, but others also. The worst thing about my situation is that no one knows about it, and that's what kills me the most. My mother, who has been the best person to me my entire life, thinks that I have been going to school and am just about to transfer to a 4 year university. It would break her heart if she ever found out and I couldn't live with myself knowing I had been such a disappointment because of a ******* video game. I feel awful for wasting 2 1/2 years of my college life, but hurting the person I care about most in life would be the worst thing I have ever done. So please, if this story relates to you or someone you are close with, please either regulate harshly the amount of time you or your loved one plays video games, or stop them playing all together. Remember, it is a video game, and will end eventually, and nothing you ever do will change that. It may be hard to get back into the real world, but trust me, its worth every second.

[TheOutlier]

Interesting to see so many comments on a story from 2002. I was an EQ addict and used it as an escape at a point in my life where i was not too happy with myself. Quitting the game and saving my marriage was a matter of changing my life focus and building the desire to be a better person.

I did it cold turkey years ago but now you don;t have to be alone in the quest out of the game. There are groups for people who still have this problem. If you are reading this deep into an article this old, then you should look into one of these other respources.

Start with Online Gamers Anonymous: olganon.org

[mibrze]

I am the father of a 20 year old gaming addict. Things came to a terrible head this past holiday weekend when I found out my son flunked his two community college classes from the fall semester. This is after being put on probation for failing all 4 of his classes in the spring semester. Promises at that time to reduce his gaming and to attend classes in the fall were obviously broken. He has admitted as much. He can't tear himself away from games. I know this is something I should have stopped years ago. He became obsessed with gaming in his sophomore year of high school. Buying him a computer for his room and allowing him to play in there for endless hours while his high school grades dropped....my fault. Conflicts, discussions, promises would occur every few months. He managed to barely graduate from high school. We discussed how community college was a new chance to turn things around. His first semester was completed with a 2.0 average. He had a part time job. I believed he was at least controlling his addiction and continued to allow him to play. Now he has failed all 6 courses he took in 2009. He has no plan. He has no real friends. I know the games became an escape and then the escape became his obsession and his reality. Our discussion on Saturday was all one sided...just me talking..he had nothing to say. I took his laptop, I took all his playstation 3 games(had just bought him 3 new ones for Christmas). He cannot control himself. I've told him when he gets his life back together, we can discuss allowing gameplay in my house again. However, I strongely doubt I can ever let him start again. He has reacted with calm acceptance. All he has now is his part time job. The college will not allow him back for the spring semester nor would I want to pay for anymore wasted tuition. I don't know what the next days, weeks, months will bring. I worry for his future. I worry for him. I find myself crying a lot. He is lost. I am lost. I don't know what to do.