Alright... a step back.

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shiva
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Joined: 12/13/2006 - 11:33am
Alright... a step back.

After shifting through multiple topics, creating 2 inflammatory ones, and basically over all thinking and such I have come to realise that game "addiction" can happen. I notice that a majority of people get what they will say a "euphoric" like sense when playing videogames, and when they totally own other people at those games.

I would be conisdered by this site as a game addict. I've been playing games since before I can remember. Games taught me how to read, I think the first game I remember was Zelda: A Link to the Past, back when I was 3 (I'm 17 now) on the old Super Ninetendo console. I also played games like Kyrandia and such for DOS.

I of course slowly moved up on the laters and got hooked to the Warcraft series. I played a demo of Warcraft 2, and I was able to convince my parents to go out and by me the battle chest which had the first, second, and expansion pack for the second game on CD. I promptly "owned" them and was left wanting more... I read the instruction manuels from back to front, and I realised that I wasn't playing these games... for the games but for the Lore.

I kept moving up and played Starcraft at the age of 9. Fell in love with the game and played it constantly with a real life friend from down the street. Now... I didn't play just "one" game I played many games mostly RPGS and RTS. So I was playing these games and I went to a friends house, his older sister who was in college brought a friend of hers over and he mentioned a game called Ragnarok Online, he promptly downloaded it for us and me and my friend stayed up all night playing it. After all it was our first MMO.

That was when the game was in open beta, so it was free, of course it eventually shifted over to its live state which costed 10 dollars a month, I was able to raise the money to pay for it. So... I spent every day playing this game, and Ragnarok Online had no lore... it was just a grind fest, no quests, etc. etc.

But it gave me something to do, sports weren't my thing and I got to play it with my real life friend. I did still take the time to, brush my teeth, sleep, shower (every day) go to school, get good grades, acted in school plays, was in Choir (now I'm in Bel Canto a more elite singing group) went to New York and sang in Carnegie Hall, research things that interested me (Like Ebola, I am the MASTER OF EBOLA!!! I was considering becoming a Virologist when I grew up)

^*I'm telling you people what I do, and still do, because I had some one in one of my troll make a list of things.*^

Then I moved onto WoW... I have a raid schedule... but I choose when I want to go or not, I get a choice and my guild doesn't hate me for it. I know I am "addicted" but I still put real life before it. I go to music concerts (Nine Inch Nails ^_^) I am still in Bel Canto, I pased my Junior year of Highschool, whilst on this raiding schedule and day to day playing of WoW.

I... guess since I didn't play sports, I figured TV wasn't my thing, so I gamed. And hell I even read books... 500+ page novels. The books I read last year were Dune (FRANK HERBET OH YA!!!), Velocity (Dean Koontz), Cold Fire (Dean Koontz) and I read a Stephen King book that I can't remember... oh ya and Child Hood's End.

I don't know how... I do it... since I've been addicted to gaming since I was a child. So, I was still thinking about it and I thought to my self... do I -really- like to game? And as I got to thinking about it, it became clear that I am just playing it as filler, I am insanly bored when I play WoW sometimes, but it is just because I have nothing else to do.

Someone else said that since I am on summer break and a kid and what not gaming is much easier, but when I make the transition to adult hood will I be able to go around my schedule of gaming. And my answer is... YES. Just like I made my own decisions not to smoke, do drugs, drink, or have sex before marriage, I can make the same decision to pay my bills, go to work (and if work conflicts with my raid schedule then I will just tell my guild mates I can't go on the days I am working. We still have weekend raids anyways I can attend.)

I'm not trying to brag, or flame, or troll or anything I was telling you my addict story, because I have to admit I am... yet I'm not... it's weird. Post away, I'd like to hear your comments for real.

anonymous (not verified)
Re: Alright... a step back.

Quote:I would be conisdered by this site as a game addict. I've been playing games since before I can remember.
ItA's not that this site considers people to be addicts, and by the standards we usually judge by you are not an addict. An addict needs to be powerless when facing his own addiction, you are obviously not.

Quote:Games taught me how to read, I think the first game I remember was Zelda: A Link to the Past, back when I was 3 (I'm 17 now) on the old Super Ninetendo console. I also played games like Kyrandia and such for DOS.
Well ... games taught me my english - at least partially. If I would not have read the majourity of the stuff I read in English since when I was about 17, I doubt it would be as good, as there are not many games that can also be exalted language tutors - Planescape Torment is the best one that comes to my mind, and I played it in Spanish and French. Spanish was hard but ok, my French was not yet up to the challenge. The game is more like a novel than a game. ...Still, eventually I stopped playing it even in Spanish, as I have some spanish books lying around that I wanted to read anyway (Harry Potter for example) and a game is still a game, it is only part language, and it caused me to stay up late, which does not happen so easily with a book.

Adventures are nice for this too, I have all Lucasarts Adventures in French here, usually the talkie versions, but again, I seem to gain more from trying to read Herberts Dune - which I also have here, bought it years ago in Paris I think.(again, my French is not up to the task yet )

Well, why was I dwelling so long on a simple fact?

The thing is, if I am totally honest with myself, all the time I have invested in games so far in my life has not given me much of a dividend. ItA's sad but true.

On the other hand, many of my best friends now, I know through gaming - P&P RPGs (Shadowrun, MERP, Dark Eye) were the staple of our spare time when back in high school. We had a small trailer back in the garden and it was out gaming den, we organized some of the first LANs on out isle, back in the days of Doom, Heretic and Duke Nukem. We vanquished the first Diablo with a group, we played Warcraft 2 and C&C endlessly. We stomped on each other with giant mechs in MW2.

And I am not even talking about the times in elementary school when we used to play either at my place with the Amiga500, or at a friends place with his Atari, or at another friends place with the C64. Consoles were not my thing back then - too expensive. Almost all of my games had been pirated as my parents did not want (and did not have) much money to spend.

My gaming had not been any kind of problem till I went to college. I had chosen business administration for myself, as I was rather savvy about economics and politics in school and my dad is a successful business man.

So I figured I would go for a fast and good bachelor degree, work some of my time at Sony or Nike or Siemens or whatever comes up and would then do my Master at Harvard or some other fancy school. Fate chose differently and on a visit to Mexico to learn spanish and get some work experience after the second semester. That was in 2000/2001. I met an interesting girl who grew up in the Phillipines and India, picked up yoga somehow, instantly understood on a subconscious level that it was what I was looking for in my life, and found that my desire to become famous and rich, or rather very rich and very famous had disappeared. Instantly and miraculously.

Problem is that my father did not let me change neither the subject nor the school - I had chosen a posh private school in a remote place.

Now that I wanted to change, it turned against me. We are not poor, so I was not applicable for government aid, so I was dependant on my family - and my father threatened me with "family expulsion", you know the drill from the movies, only I had it happen to me for real.

So there I was in a fancy business school, studying a fancy thingie in which I did not believe anymore, studying together with people who - like I did before - believed in money and fame and power.

When all I wanted, was to learn psychology, sociology and philosophy and to understand existance in itA's fullness.

Shortly after, came the breakup with my years-long girlfriend, which was partially because I went into a big depression and turned to gaming as my only friend - had no real friends at my school, my real friends were all some several hundred kilometers away.

To make a long story short, I am still suffering from all the wasted time over the past 4 years. Unfortunately I cannot play games anymore without neglecting my real life - just a little bit.

I could go on gaming and live a reasonable existance, like you said "balance" gaming and life.

But what kind of balance would it be... I would be able to get by with my business diploma (which I had to finish in the end, the final paper is due on tuesday ), but I want to study psychology and that is what I will do from the autumn on. I know I can help people to find themselfes, like that girl in Mexico somehow helped me - unwittingly but never the less effectively.

Also, knowing how the economy REALLY works makes me want to campaign against globalization and big corporatism and all the other crap that people today are fed as being good for them, maybe I will become politically active some day. And I want to go back reading SciFi and Fantasy novels...after I am through with studying Yoga and Ayurveda throughly... and I still want to get my French up to acceptable level. And afterwards Italian.

And I know that gaming gets in my way.

I cannot do anything for the worldA's poor, when I sit at home in front of my laptop and am playing . Nor it is what my soul yearns for. I rather give girls a fine full body massage, have fun doing yoga at the beach in the morning, the waves gently caressing my feet.

I want my life to be like one morning that I had on Teneriffe (Canary Islands). It was very very windy and I was running my usual treck up on a small but steep hill called "punta roja". After standing at the top, bracing myself against a metal tube to not be blown away, I began my descent against the wind and realized I could almost fly.

The wind was so strong and continuous that I could literally throw myself forward and down with arms wide open, and it would hold my weight up in the air and carry me down down. My feet barely touched the ground as I was running/flying/jumping downhill in giant 3 meter leaps.

Or like one of the other mornings, where I spent 4 hours doing yoga at a beach in Las Palmas and afterwards swam out to the riffs and lay there like a lizard, tired but exalted in the mid-day heat.

Or like that day when I fell in love with a girl because of the way we were moving together hand in hand. I fell in love with that feeling of our two bodies moving through the crowd in the theater in gentle unison. Or like that day when I saw my first big love cycling away into the sunset, her long brown hair blown by the wind. (not speaking of all the other things we had done together later - as germans say: a gentlemen ejoys his delights in silence )

Or teaching stuff to a group of people, and them being all happy and thankfull afterwards. Or singing and playing music with friends - or alone. Or learning how to ride, enjoying the musky smell of horses, and finding out that itA's not that easy as I thought it would be )
(scroll down here p198.ezboard.com/folgafrm...=15.topic)

One does not get this stuff in computer games. And hopefully humanity will not - ever - or the whole world will go down the drain while people dwell away in their virtual lala-land. In a way this is already happening today, with TV and computer having taken over our lifes (though I aint got no TV, no mam)

Sometimes I forget all this, and go for that quick easy rush of hormones by playing a game. But increasingly I realize that I want "the real thing"(tm)
That is my choice and I would not want to press it on anyone.

We are not here to judge if you are an addict or not, and we do not judge games to be bad, I think I have made that clear. Games can be wonderfull and can be detrimental to ones goals. Everything depends on what you want to do with your life. To me, they are detrimental, as I have an obsessive personality and if I do things I "go the whole way", which unfortunately means addiction for me, even though I can game "responsibly" for some time.

I can play games for a while, but when I do, I feel my chances of doing something useful in this world slipping away, I feel like I am missing out on "the real thing"(tm) and I have 2 choices to deal with it:

1. go deeper into the games, forget my dreams and live a carefree life of as little work as necessary and as much gaming as possible

2. Live up to my potential and fullfill my duty to the world - as every talent bears the responsibility to use it for the common good - at least in my worldview and in the worldview of all romantics and idealists of this world

So summarizing: As long as you yourself do not think you have a problem, and your relatives/friends do not either, you are not addicted. If you some day want to quite playing games and find out you CANT - like I did, we will be here for you...

...If we do not get tired of dealing with trolls and quit (just joking)

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What you think, you create. What you say, you produce. What you do, you call forth more of.

anonymous (not verified)
Re: Alright... a step back.

=D I liked your post Calm Force, and in the back of my mind I always think of a place. I often tell my real life friends that I'm going to get away from it all, go and live out in the mountains, build my self a nice big log cabin, no computer, no TV, just me and nature... oh and my girl... if that works out.

Your experiences are really great, and I wish I could experience them, and I know that right now I can not, since I am not even an adult... but when I get there I know I will make the choices, save up the money, etc. to go and travel.

Some things I already want to do are as follows, move to Japan for the 3 month limit they have XD unless I have a real reason to live there (like a job or something) this means learning Japanese, not an easy task.

I'm going to visit Canada, or pay for a plane ticket for the girl whom I'm madly in love with to come down for my senior prom. That is... if I get a job. I realize that I am completly and utterly afraid of the real world, and I need to buckle down and get a job now even if it would be during school, especially if I want to secure this realtionship.

Thanks for your post Calm Force it made me smile while reading it. Hmm I'd like to hang around this board more often if that is alright with you, and the rest of the crew, and maybe even help out. I myself am interested in sociology, physchology, etc. took a semester of Sociology just last year (****s only made it a semester class!).

BY GOD I WILL SEE A RADIOHEAD CONCERT! Before I die... whether I have to pay them millions of American dollars or not!

Anyways I'm very tired 4:09 AM here. The reason I'm up so late... I was talking with MSN friends XD

Ciao~

anonymous (not verified)
Re: Alright... a step back.

I like to make people smile

Japan is an interest of mine too, did not know only a three month stay is possible, though it would probably be plenty for me. Will visit it too some day.

Getting a job is a cool idea. I worked in the holidays at a boat lending service and washed the dishes in a restaurant when I was in 8th/9th/10th grade, then in 11th/12th grade worked at my fathers business till college started.

Being madly in love with a girl in another country .... a familiar experience, have had it twice, with a mexican and a russian. I still kinda love the russian girl (the one I fell in love with my holding her hand) and maybe it still has a chance to work out. Might visit her in August or September.

You are welcome to stay around and contribute. People here are by far not the "dysfunctional" crowd that would be maybe expected from addicts. All are in their own way very resourcefull people, and while not many stay around - from my short experience most come and go - those that do are nice to communicate with.

I myself have been here since February, not counting a short visit and my first dead serious trial to stop gaming in march 05.

Wish you well

Maxim

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What you think, you create. What you say, you produce. What you do, you call forth more of.

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