14 ms·

Digital drug dealers let you have the first one free. That's how they get you hooked! I can't play Starcraft (or chess, poker) for fear of being sucked into th

Digital drug dealers let you have the first one free. That's how they get you hooked! I can't play Starcraft (or chess, poker) for fear of being sucked into the competition and waking up years later. Gone down that rabbit hole enough to know I'd regret it.

darethas 9y ago
I know many scoff at this (because I have this same opinion and get scoffed at) but this is so true. Video game addiction is very real. Very, very real. Just as debilitating as any other addiction. The only "advantage" I would say is you don't get as much physiological damage as you do with substance abuse, but even that can be debated: bad posture, bad blood circulation, carpel tunnel, eye strain and migraines, sleep deprivation, etc. Obligatory Don't be afraid to ask for help! Many counselors are now specifically trained for dealing with video game addiction now! Especially if you are college it's probably free!
- derefr 9y ago
  I don’t know about video game addiction; I interpreted the parent as simply talking about how—if you have the right kind of brain—it can be relatively easy to end up as a professional {e-sport, poker, chess} player and devote your entire life to high-level competitive play, making money from tournaments, studying or practicing whenever you’re not playing, etc. This is a fine life for some people, but if you want to do something else with your life, the knowledge that you’d do well in these competitive-play pursuits can feel like a black hole always pulling at you. It’s easy to lose passion for “real work”—doing good in the world, creating stuff, entertaining people; these are all pursuits that have their high points, but aren’t fundamentally structured to match the human reward system. They have moments where you have to struggle through to regain your desire to do them. Competitive gameplay—probably a lot like competitive athletics—is very “natural” to the human brain. If you’re good at it, it’s hard to resist letting that be your life—and people encourage you to let it! Imagine being 7’1” and enjoying basketball, but having other passions that are stronger (academic economics, let’s say.) If there’s ever a lull in your love of academia, you’d be tempted to just quit and play basketball, right? That’s not an addiction, per se. But you have to repress it like one all the same.
- iopq 9y ago
  You forgot DVT
- jeffshek 9y ago
  Video game addiction is a hard thing to admit. Society also mocks you. For this reason, I've never touched World of Warcraft (WoW). I knew that once I started ... I could easily see myself playing for stretches of eighteen hours a day. YouTube showed a clip about someone who had played about 14,000 hours. Granted, it's his life and he can spend it however he wants ... but jesus, 14k hours?! I'm not sure what it is - certain personalities are just so easily addicted to video games. I'm one of them, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. I find myself so easily addicted that I'm sometimes worried that I'll fall back into a video gaming binge. Every now and then, I'll mentally trick myself into thinking I have enough willpower to play just "one" game and I'll get the craving out. Nope. It's always six hours later and I'm late for whatever I had planned for the rest of the day. More frequently than not, the next day I'll trick myself again into one "last" game. I'll blow through another six-eight hours that'll feel like minutes. Day 2 is normally when I have enough angst to uninstall and purge the game. I'm older now (29) so I'm better at realizing the mental tricks of the "one" game fallacy, but even this weekend I played six-seven hours straight of Starcraft 2. (The mental justification was I was "thinking" about AI/ML strategies to play SC2, sigh.) I'm averaging about six-seven months between each relapse, so it's not like I have some absurd problem - but back in college, I could easily spend a week of non-stop playing some forgettable RTS, sleep, drink and then repeat. There's some pang of sadness as I wish I had done something a little more useful, but in hindsight a lot of those failures made me realize how bad video games were to my personality.
  - darethas 9y ago
    > I'm not sure what it is Video games are perfect, especially for people who like to tinker and are curious, which to me has been every hacker ever. That's what it is. They literally are just really damn good at what they do. What online video games (and here I am making sure to distinguish between online, competitive type video games, versus offline because in my experience offline video games hardly ever come up in counseling, it's always your CODs, CSes, LoL and WoW's of the world) do psychologically is they provide a structure, a way to advance and progress -- with a tight feedback loop of your progress and a way to socialize with other people. Ultimately these 3 things lead to a huge sense of accomplishment and dopamine rush. Your attention is kept because you have these short spurts of quests, or "you just gotta kill 3 more mobs to get that next level and unlock your new spell tree" or you got to check your auction to get that gold to buy the new gear to do the new raid with your clan next week because you really don't want to let those guys down, etc. The problem is, outside that virtual reality, you see depression, lack of ability to focus at work, not getting work done on time, lack of interest in tasks considered "boring". The way to success is to create these same structures in your life, but for the goals you want to accomplish. Much easier said than done, but at a high level, that's what it is all about. We escape to our virtual reality to get our virtual high and virtual feeling of belonging and virtual progress because we lack any or all of these areas in our real lives and it pains us too much to be able to face that disappointment. And for some of us, that mountain of unfinished tasks, or incomplete projects because of our thousands of hours racked up on Steam seems insurmountable, so that even when we do have free time and no games, we procrastinate -- "it's too much, I'll never get it done anyways" (Procrastination -- especially habitual procrastination is almost always a defense mechanism, and not a moral/character flaw such as "I am just lazy") Now why we escape to the video games? Any number of factors, be it depression, ADHD, or simply never having a good role model or someone to teach you structure and discipline in your life (the latter is usually the case), but that's besides the point. The point is to recognize it, realize you will never be happy unless you achieve what you want from your life. (Why every time I have a couple hours free, I can't work on my side project as intently as I play 3 ranked matches in League of Legends?) I could probably fill up a book with information I learned about it, but everyone is unique. I want to help, if this resonates true in your life -- reach out to me. If you just want someone to email back and forth or talk to, it's my user name at google's mail service.
specialist 9y ago
I love the grind, the flawless victory. I went cold turkey after WarCraft 2 and Diablo 2. Won’t even look at EverQuest, RuneQuest, Eve Online, Diablo 3, etc. I’ll probably resume online games next time I need chemo. For me, it’s a better pain mgmt regiment than pills.
colechristensen 9y ago
I have great respect for people who understand their limitations and design their lives around them. Studying and educating people about the fine details of motivation is going to be a big thing this century. From ADD people having trouble motivating themselves to do what they want to addicts unable to quash an unwanted motivation, it's becoming an ever bigger problem. Our brains evolved in a much different environment and we have to do much better to understand and control the "motivation" aspect of ourselves to better survive the world we're creating.
- Raidion 9y ago
  I've run into this before too. As someone who is rather competitive, it's easy to get pretty deep into almost anything that's competition based: Poker, chess, video games, athletics, sports, etc. You have to really make sure you like the activity itself instead of just the competition. It's not worth spending 10k hours on a video game just to be #1 and have that sense of accomplishment, you're going to have to really make sure you enjoy the ride and come out with something valuable instead of just a 10k hour hole in your life. Life has to be based on creating value, and not just competition as a way to pass the time. At least that's the way I'm trying to live my life.
  - giblaz 9y ago
    Playing a videogame competitively to be #1 is well an good. Playing a sport to be #1 is well and good. But it can't be the only thing you do. Tom Brady has 5 Superbowl rings but he's involved with so many other pursuits that he has a full, rich life. He dedicates himself to educating people about what works for him as far as physical and mental preparation in the most grueling and damaging sport around. Frankly, everyone should try and model their approach to life like his. He has always had to work hard to achieve everything he does. He comes in before everyone, everyday, and leaves last. He's always the most prepared, at anything he does. I'm sure a lot more people would feel fulfilled if they put their efforts into many pursuits like he did. Unfortunately, society doesn't really allow for everyone to live like this. Financially, we become stuck trying to make ends meet rather than producing what we want to. I'd love to put my time into many other activities other than just "work" and then go home, perform maintenance on my life/home, and then get a small portion of time to game/work on personal projects. Gaming is a positive life enriching activity if used correctly. It's easy to blow it off because one has an addictive personality, but the advantages are real when approached with the right mindset.
5ilv3r 9y ago
Personally I just stay away from virtual online economies. Fun with an RTS here and there is fine, but if I'm going to sink my life into getting rich, it better be real.
taejavu 9y ago
I've been playing Starcraft 2 casually since launch and I'm confident that the crack-dealer model isn't applicable here, at least for the game's core 1v1 mode (which is what's being made free), due to the brutality of the ranked multiplayer ladder. Skilled matchmaking ensures you lose 50% of the matches you play, and you have no one to blame for your failures but yourself. You can improve 100x and still feel like you suck at the game. Addictive free to play games are easy by design, appeal to the broadest possible demographics and boost your ego by congratulating you for trivial accomplishments. Starcraft 2, by contrast, is arguably the hardest multiplayer video game in existence, and is far too challenging for casual addiction to become a problem.
- stonewhite 9y ago
  That was my experience for 1v1 as well and one day it was just too much for me. It is not a game where you sit down and enjoy, it is about getting intense and putting in the hours without instant gratification. Many of those nights ended with horrible defeats compelling me to force-shutdown the computer. It definitely is not a game for everyone (again 1v1) Also, your name rings a bell about my favorite terran.
  - zouhair 9y ago
    Yup, people who think playing that game 1v1 is about having fun are sorely mistaken.

darethas 9y ago

I know many scoff at this (because I have this same opinion and get scoffed at) but this is so true. Video game addiction is very real. Very, very real. Just as debilitating as any other addiction. The only "advantage" I would say is you don't get as much physiological damage as you do with substance abuse, but even that can be debated: bad posture, bad blood circulation, carpel tunnel, eye strain and migraines, sleep deprivation, etc. Obligatory Don't be afraid to ask for help! Many counselors are now specifically trained for dealing with video game addiction now! Especially if you are college it's probably free!

derefr 9y ago
I don’t know about video game addiction; I interpreted the parent as simply talking about how—if you have the right kind of brain—it can be relatively easy to end up as a professional {e-sport, poker, chess} player and devote your entire life to high-level competitive play, making money from tournaments, studying or practicing whenever you’re not playing, etc. This is a fine life for some people, but if you want to do something else with your life, the knowledge that you’d do well in these competitive-play pursuits can feel like a black hole always pulling at you. It’s easy to lose passion for “real work”—doing good in the world, creating stuff, entertaining people; these are all pursuits that have their high points, but aren’t fundamentally structured to match the human reward system. They have moments where you have to struggle through to regain your desire to do them. Competitive gameplay—probably a lot like competitive athletics—is very “natural” to the human brain. If you’re good at it, it’s hard to resist letting that be your life—and people encourage you to let it! Imagine being 7’1” and enjoying basketball, but having other passions that are stronger (academic economics, let’s say.) If there’s ever a lull in your love of academia, you’d be tempted to just quit and play basketball, right? That’s not an addiction, per se. But you have to repress it like one all the same.
iopq 9y ago
You forgot DVT
jeffshek 9y ago
Video game addiction is a hard thing to admit. Society also mocks you. For this reason, I've never touched World of Warcraft (WoW). I knew that once I started ... I could easily see myself playing for stretches of eighteen hours a day. YouTube showed a clip about someone who had played about 14,000 hours. Granted, it's his life and he can spend it however he wants ... but jesus, 14k hours?! I'm not sure what it is - certain personalities are just so easily addicted to video games. I'm one of them, so I try to avoid them as much as possible. I find myself so easily addicted that I'm sometimes worried that I'll fall back into a video gaming binge. Every now and then, I'll mentally trick myself into thinking I have enough willpower to play just "one" game and I'll get the craving out. Nope. It's always six hours later and I'm late for whatever I had planned for the rest of the day. More frequently than not, the next day I'll trick myself again into one "last" game. I'll blow through another six-eight hours that'll feel like minutes. Day 2 is normally when I have enough angst to uninstall and purge the game. I'm older now (29) so I'm better at realizing the mental tricks of the "one" game fallacy, but even this weekend I played six-seven hours straight of Starcraft 2. (The mental justification was I was "thinking" about AI/ML strategies to play SC2, sigh.) I'm averaging about six-seven months between each relapse, so it's not like I have some absurd problem - but back in college, I could easily spend a week of non-stop playing some forgettable RTS, sleep, drink and then repeat. There's some pang of sadness as I wish I had done something a little more useful, but in hindsight a lot of those failures made me realize how bad video games were to my personality.
- darethas 9y ago
  > I'm not sure what it is Video games are perfect, especially for people who like to tinker and are curious, which to me has been every hacker ever. That's what it is. They literally are just really damn good at what they do. What online video games (and here I am making sure to distinguish between online, competitive type video games, versus offline because in my experience offline video games hardly ever come up in counseling, it's always your CODs, CSes, LoL and WoW's of the world) do psychologically is they provide a structure, a way to advance and progress -- with a tight feedback loop of your progress and a way to socialize with other people. Ultimately these 3 things lead to a huge sense of accomplishment and dopamine rush. Your attention is kept because you have these short spurts of quests, or "you just gotta kill 3 more mobs to get that next level and unlock your new spell tree" or you got to check your auction to get that gold to buy the new gear to do the new raid with your clan next week because you really don't want to let those guys down, etc. The problem is, outside that virtual reality, you see depression, lack of ability to focus at work, not getting work done on time, lack of interest in tasks considered "boring". The way to success is to create these same structures in your life, but for the goals you want to accomplish. Much easier said than done, but at a high level, that's what it is all about. We escape to our virtual reality to get our virtual high and virtual feeling of belonging and virtual progress because we lack any or all of these areas in our real lives and it pains us too much to be able to face that disappointment. And for some of us, that mountain of unfinished tasks, or incomplete projects because of our thousands of hours racked up on Steam seems insurmountable, so that even when we do have free time and no games, we procrastinate -- "it's too much, I'll never get it done anyways" (Procrastination -- especially habitual procrastination is almost always a defense mechanism, and not a moral/character flaw such as "I am just lazy") Now why we escape to the video games? Any number of factors, be it depression, ADHD, or simply never having a good role model or someone to teach you structure and discipline in your life (the latter is usually the case), but that's besides the point. The point is to recognize it, realize you will never be happy unless you achieve what you want from your life. (Why every time I have a couple hours free, I can't work on my side project as intently as I play 3 ranked matches in League of Legends?) I could probably fill up a book with information I learned about it, but everyone is unique. I want to help, if this resonates true in your life -- reach out to me. If you just want someone to email back and forth or talk to, it's my user name at google's mail service.

specialist 9y ago

I love the grind, the flawless victory. I went cold turkey after WarCraft 2 and Diablo 2. Won’t even look at EverQuest, RuneQuest, Eve Online, Diablo 3, etc. I’ll probably resume online games next time I need chemo. For me, it’s a better pain mgmt regiment than pills.

colechristensen 9y ago

I have great respect for people who understand their limitations and design their lives around them. Studying and educating people about the fine details of motivation is going to be a big thing this century. From ADD people having trouble motivating themselves to do what they want to addicts unable to quash an unwanted motivation, it's becoming an ever bigger problem. Our brains evolved in a much different environment and we have to do much better to understand and control the "motivation" aspect of ourselves to better survive the world we're creating.

Raidion 9y ago
I've run into this before too. As someone who is rather competitive, it's easy to get pretty deep into almost anything that's competition based: Poker, chess, video games, athletics, sports, etc. You have to really make sure you like the activity itself instead of just the competition. It's not worth spending 10k hours on a video game just to be #1 and have that sense of accomplishment, you're going to have to really make sure you enjoy the ride and come out with something valuable instead of just a 10k hour hole in your life. Life has to be based on creating value, and not just competition as a way to pass the time. At least that's the way I'm trying to live my life.
- giblaz 9y ago
  Playing a videogame competitively to be #1 is well an good. Playing a sport to be #1 is well and good. But it can't be the only thing you do. Tom Brady has 5 Superbowl rings but he's involved with so many other pursuits that he has a full, rich life. He dedicates himself to educating people about what works for him as far as physical and mental preparation in the most grueling and damaging sport around. Frankly, everyone should try and model their approach to life like his. He has always had to work hard to achieve everything he does. He comes in before everyone, everyday, and leaves last. He's always the most prepared, at anything he does. I'm sure a lot more people would feel fulfilled if they put their efforts into many pursuits like he did. Unfortunately, society doesn't really allow for everyone to live like this. Financially, we become stuck trying to make ends meet rather than producing what we want to. I'd love to put my time into many other activities other than just "work" and then go home, perform maintenance on my life/home, and then get a small portion of time to game/work on personal projects. Gaming is a positive life enriching activity if used correctly. It's easy to blow it off because one has an addictive personality, but the advantages are real when approached with the right mindset.

5ilv3r 9y ago

Personally I just stay away from virtual online economies. Fun with an RTS here and there is fine, but if I'm going to sink my life into getting rich, it better be real.

taejavu 9y ago

I've been playing Starcraft 2 casually since launch and I'm confident that the crack-dealer model isn't applicable here, at least for the game's core 1v1 mode (which is what's being made free), due to the brutality of the ranked multiplayer ladder. Skilled matchmaking ensures you lose 50% of the matches you play, and you have no one to blame for your failures but yourself. You can improve 100x and still feel like you suck at the game. Addictive free to play games are easy by design, appeal to the broadest possible demographics and boost your ego by congratulating you for trivial accomplishments. Starcraft 2, by contrast, is arguably the hardest multiplayer video game in existence, and is far too challenging for casual addiction to become a problem.

stonewhite 9y ago
That was my experience for 1v1 as well and one day it was just too much for me. It is not a game where you sit down and enjoy, it is about getting intense and putting in the hours without instant gratification. Many of those nights ended with horrible defeats compelling me to force-shutdown the computer. It definitely is not a game for everyone (again 1v1) Also, your name rings a bell about my favorite terran.
- zouhair 9y ago
  Yup, people who think playing that game 1v1 is about having fun are sorely mistaken.