When it's not a game

Today's post is about taking video games too seriously, and how to avoid it. It happens to us all, except for the few that recognize it in advance and steer clear. This post may help you identify and highlight habits that you have, and it is very personal to me.

To start, we have to get over the hurdle of what addiction is. When anyone does anything to excess, it is an addiction. Habits performed to extremes can become addictions. My father is a survivor of alcohol addiction of 25 years, he chronically suffered from alcohol use for over 30 years of his life. He taught me at a very early age the danger of substance abuse, and warned me against it. When I drink a beer, regardless of it's taste, it is forcefully distasteful and difficult to drink. I have a mental block when it comes to it, and it prevents me from ever consuming it and becoming addicted.

But Addiction is only half parts chemical. When your body becomes adjusted to these chemicals in it's system, it will incorporate and demand a steady supply of it to maintain balance and mood, pain, and health. This is the most critical aspect of addiction. It is literally mind over body to overcome chemical addictions. And this is why non-chemical addictions are so horrifically dangerous. If it is your mind that becomes addicted, your body likely will not object to it.

Now to apply this to the online world. For years during college, I forsook social activities or personal growth for exploring data and individually generated content for my enjoyment. Video games, Wikipedia posts, News articles and Blogs online engrossed my time. I hardly remembered to bathe or eat or sleep. There is no doubt in my mind that I suffered an addiction, but what level of addiction could it be quantified as? I overcame it by substituting women for my computers, and met similarly low success. Then I lost myself in work for 3 years and attempted to find 'purpose' over my hobbies and addictions. I found none. My hobbies became attractive again.

I have quit 'WoW' at least 5 times. Each time I left behind a well played and worn account, littered with online acquaintances and /played days and months online. The last time I broke away from it, I sold my account for over $700 USD and promised not to return, to find purpose for my life outside of LCD screens and websites.

You may have noticed you are reading a blog that I am writing, about my experiences playing video games. The success of my efforts is clearly shown. I make no excuses. This is dangerous addiction, and if I was smart or cared about my own health and success in career or real life 'end game content' I would stop because I have proven in the past that I cannot meter my own involvement with the fantasy world.

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This blog, though, is my limiting factor. When I log in, I keep my play time, my sessions, my 'dead to the world' amount of time limited to a strict purpose of 'make gold, be social for 5 minutes, and leave'. When I say farming Herbs is a profit-negative activity in my other blog posts, I also mean to say 'It is a horribly destructive waste of real time". I could make excuses for myself to become involved deeper, oh I want to kill Arthas, or I've spent so much time, I am obligated to spend more, or "I want to have my character in the best gear" but all of this...All Of These Reasons are Garbage. Blizzard succeeds as an entertainment company by keeping you entertained. One of my favorite items in WoW is the Carrot on a Stick, because the original quest for it took perhaps a week or two to complete this one quest, which rewarded a trivial and ultimately useless prize. It is a metaphor for Online persistent user worlds in general.

So the purpose of todays post is to set goals for yourself while playing, be online only to meet those goals, and cut yourself off sharply when they are met; or determine they cannot be met in a reasonable amount of time and re-address your goals. If nothing else, I have written in my posts about the futility of the average player mindset of 'being the best' because out of 11 million players, everyone thinks they are. This is the goal Blizzard wants you to have, because it means you keep paying them real money for fake gold. This is the goal you must train yourself not to want, instead, make smaller goals that will satisfy your need to spend leisure time in front of your computer. Goals that you can achieve in single sessions, or will promote healthy and responsible play time management.

For me, everytime I log into Azeroth, it would be so easy to forget my own name, to forget that I have rent bills and work tomorrow and clothes in the laundry and just be 'Basis of the Horde' and kill all of the evil monsters for Gold. Not for the gold or because I don't like folding clothes, rather because without goals, when are you done playing?