Game addiction

[l0ckp1ck]

Was reading an article on game addiction, and i must say i have been down that road many times. I saw a news report that some teenage kid killed his brother over a video game, now i haven't gone that far but my question is are you addicted to any games? And if so which ones? Quake2 has always been an addiction for me, when i played when it first came out online i was so bad i would miss days off school and stopped going into work just to play quake2 all day, i was severely addicted, probably not just to the game but to my computer aswell, and i must say after comming back to quake after years and years of not even having a computer i find myself getting addicted again, there have already been days i have taken off work just to play online. Just lucky i have a flexable job. Anyone else ever been addicted to a game? and i don't mean just playing it all the time but when it starts interferring in your daily life?

[fdrjk]

Addiction? No.

Obsession? Yes.

By Calvin Klein

[erik]

Absolutely, yes.  The only games I have ever been addicted to are Q2 and Diablo 2.  For an entire summer, my day consisted of waking up at 2-3 PM, and playing either/or until 6 AM.  I have never missed school or work just to play the game, but it had a dramatic effect on my grades in school.  It was so bad that my parents put a BIOS lock on the computer so that I could only use the computer when they were home, and only for school work.  When my PC died, so did my addiction.  I have spent some time playing GTA: SA all day, but I would never have called myself an addict.

Since I reinstalled quake2 in October, I play just about as much as I can.  I go to work, I handle stuff at home, I go golfing, I run, I bowl, whatever.  I do stuff in my free time, but any other free time I have I find myself back on q2.  If I wake up in the morning and I have 2 hours before I have to go to work, I play q2.  If I get home from work and I want to kill an hour before I go to bed, I play q2.  If I have an entire day to myself at home, I will sometimes sit for hours just playing TDM non-stop. 

I figure I should live it up now, because there won't always be a community that plays this game. 

[[BTF]adam]

I would wager you are wrong there erik mate, as long as tastyspleen lives I think there will always be people playing this game, not many but it keeps on kicking for sure.

anyway, I am no longer addicted to World of Warcraft but I was, seriously bad. I quit quake for it and it took around 4 years of playing it farrrr too much and even then the addiction only broke because I got burnt the fuck out on it and was at my wits end with the developers. I still play, but nowhere near as much as I used to and I don't ever feel a need to play, like a physical need to get on the pc and log on like before.

I wouldnt call my experience a bad one necessarily, I have met a lot of people, learnt a lot and gained my best friend from it (its a very social game if you want it to be) as well as being very happy (even if it was just a game) when I was playing it, you cant call that a waste of time especially if you enjoy it as much as I did at the time, I do however regret passing up a lot of oppurtunities socially and it affected my family a little, I was rarely down for dinner and shit.

My grades suffered but not to the point where I am concerned, I passed everything and just merited 2 years of a degree, one of those years I was still addicted. I know was capable of more at the time but I did well enough. All in all I would never reccomend to people to start playing the game these days if I knew they were the type of person to throw themselves into things or have an addictive personality, because it is simply an addictive game, the drive to better your character or do well is insatiable if you are of a competetive nature, but its not all doom and gloom and people I find overdramatize how wow players are hopelessly lost in addiction, most of them just fuckin enjoy it and have no reason to stop playing, that was the case for me while I was indeed enthralled by it for awhile but despite this I did maintain a degree of self control throughout the whole thing, I would not miss days of school and stuff, I didnt let myself fester indoors 24/7, if there was work to be done it got done.

tldr: wow is addictive, dont play if you have addiction tendencies.

[VaeVictis]

i refuse to play any more mmorpg's because of my addictive personality, a few hours of q2 here and there is a much better solution than 14 hours a day doing pvp in mmo's

though i did just put like 20+ hours into magicka in one weekend.... lol cant see myself putting a few thousand hours into it overall though

and thank you adam for proving my theory that wow consumes your soul :p i have a friend that is the nicest guy youll ever meet, and he will literally play wow for hours on end, and if you disturb him you get mouse pads and shit thrown at you... its hard to tear him away from wow to do shit, but its always fun to get him to a lan party for some l4d or warcraft3 stuff... personally i wont even consider wow, i know its an awesome mmo and i just do NOT want to get sucked into it for 15$ a month

and to alpha, there is some news stories of people killing themselves over everquest and shit like that, it happens...

[[BTF]adam]

it consumes weak peoples souls with incompatible-to-mmo personalities, if you can't exercise a degree of control and make sure it does not mess with really important things, then you would need to reconsider playing for sure. I am thankful I did not permanently mess anything up, burn bridges with RL friends and family and kept my education at a decent grade.

I have never raged at anyone who disturbed me playing wow, I will tell someone to hold on or give short answers to get them dealt with in a hurry but throwing shit at people? that is retarded and a sure sign of not only game addiction but severe twat disorder.

It is not an awesome mmo anymore either, the development team have completely lost touch with the pvp community, the entire last expansion was a joke and they are already ruining this one. WoW is whack as fuck these days, if I hadn't of already put so much work into my main character and account (it is probably worth £400-500, £800-1000 dollars I would estimate) then I would have quit by now permanently.

[l0ckp1ck]

yeah. I know alot of people who are addicted to WOW, personally i have never played it but i have seen clips of it and from what i see it doesn't really interest me, although could be a different story if i played it. i remember when i got rid of my computer think it was 2001 after my addiction became too much, and i actually went through withdrwal symptoms for weeks before they went away. So i was offline from 2001 until almost a year ago. the net had changed a bit since then not too much i don't think, but i am happy to be back playing q2. i play it at every chance i get, i even set my alarm early so i can play for a bit before i have to leave for work, i plkay it when i get home, even when i am out with my girl or whatever i am always keen to get home to play again. I am never ever gonna leave this game again. Even if tastyspleen ceased to exist i would still play against eraser bots

[soh]

Quake II has an always will be my addiction. I thought it was fun to play online for once when I was 18 on the TS servers, because I have been playing the single player game since I was 9 or 10. There is nothing like the multiplayer experience for me though. And then, I said over a year ago that I wouldn't play anymore because I didn't like the trash talk ... but just like a sex addict ... I needed my fix again. I am truly addicted to this Multiplayer part of Quake II. I find myself playing a lot more than I should. Quake II is better than watching a new movie sometimes . Anyway, thought I should share that. I have found myself leaving work a little early last summer to play some q2 as well . It hasn't interfered with my life though. I still go running and hang out with people . Anyway, gotta go back on the DM server for some

...

Oh, by the way, I also should add that I have gone dehydrated and hospitalized back in 2008, even gotten headaches, because I played on Quake II(TS Servers) too much a long time ago. Stupid thing to do. But I never gamed online like this before. Which is why I wasn't used to it. I always have water bottles and drinks on my desk now like so ...



Quake II is always going to be my favorite game. I also should thank Quadz for making this possible

[|iR|Focalor]

  Motherfuck Quake2. Get you some black tar heroin and then come back and call something as stupid as a video game "an addiction". Addiction my ass. Is the world run by a bunch of fucking women who need to over-dramatize everything now or what? The whole world is turning pussy.

[fdrjk]

Addiction? No.

Obsession? Yes.

[soh]

Motherfuck Quake2. Get you some black tar heroin and then come back and call something as stupid as a video game "an addiction". Addiction my ass. Is the world run by a bunch of fucking women who need to over-dramatize everything now or what? The whole world is turning pussy.

addiction

obsession

[|iR|Focalor]

To clarify, I wasn't specifically directing my comments at anyone in this thread, but mainly at the idiot psychologist who probably wrote whatever article Alpha read. Everything is a fucking disorder these days. Everyone is sick. And how convenient that is, it just works out that they have the cure to sell you.

[[BTF]adam]

I would definitely agree with you focalor, it drives me nuts as well. I was not using the term addiction in the same sense as a drug, alcohol or substance addiction, they are not even close. there really should be a different name for it but I can't think of one myself.

[[BTF] Reflex]

Is 15 hours a day addicted?   That's what I managed,  for about 4 years.  Maybe as little as 10 here and there,  and a little more on weekends.

Up at 2-3, play quake till I worked at 5.  Home by 11 and quake till 11,  sleep till 2-3.
mon-friday,  then saturday I caught up on sleep.  Woke up and slid right back into computer chair.

Things are under control now,   15 hours is now about my max for an entire week.

and...   I could quit whenever I wanted to.   



This thread makes me think back to this...   not too far from my town.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/4239624/Teenager-shot-parents-for-confiscating-Xbox-game.html

Prosecutors had argued that Petric planned to kill his parents because he was angry that his father would not allow him to play the video game, in which players shoot alien monsters that have taken over the Earth.

On the night of the shooting, Petric used his father's key to open a cabinet and remove a 9mm handgun and the confiscated game.

Mr Petric testified that his son came into the room and asked: "Would you guys close your eyes? I have a surprise for you."

He said that he had expected a pleasant surprise. But then his son opened fire and his head felt numb.

Anthony Cillo, the deputy prosecuting attorney, argued during the trial that the teenager had planned to make it appear to be a murder-suicide by putting the gun in his father's hand.

James Kersey, defending, said that when the teenager fled the scene he only took one item with him:

the Halo 3 game

[soh]

I saw that story somewhere on TV not that long ago. That kid's father was a reverend