Tell someone, a skeptic, that video game addiction is real, and they'll look at you like you're crazy. Tell someone who's experienced an addiction such as nicotine, alcohol or drugs, and they'll be insulted. Yes, video game addiction is not the same as the aforementioned addictions, but it's an addiction nonetheless. You don't need to be physically addicted to something for it to still be addictive. You just need to lack the willpower to stay away from it. If anything, you can argue that video game addiction is real because by playing games, your brain enters a state of euphoria. You escape to another world, and when things are going great in this virtual world, you experience happiness in the form of endorphin and serotonin. When you return to your real world and things aren't as fulfilling, you return to the virtual world.
For me, I'm not really addicted to video games. I maintain some semblance of balance in my life. I spend the majority of my recreational time playing video games, but I also read and watch movies. I will say I can become addicted to certain video games, and those are the mmorpg variety, of which I've only played a few. It all started with Phantasy Star Online for the Dreamcast, and I played so much of that game, I stopped playing other games. I even made four other characters and started to level those. Later, it was Final Fantasy XI, a game that consumed me so entirely that I turned off my phone when I got home from work, and immediately signed on so that no one could call me at home (dial up at the time). Almost a year this went on before my friends showed up at the door worried about me. It was an intervention, and I quit that night.... only to start up again a few months later. It took about six more times of quitting before I kicked it for good.
I was doing fine since then, still playing games, but enjoying variety. Enjoying productivity as a result of writing reviews, and blogging about video games. Working on attempting to breaking into video game journalism (which petered out due to no fault of my own; the website just up and ended). Even going through a rough patch with a break up, a couple of times being unemployed, things were still relatively fine. But in 2013, Square Enix announced that a beta of Final Fantasy XIV would be released for the PS3, and every single red flag was raised in my head. Half of my brain told me to stay away from the game because of my vulnerability to Final Fantasy XI, but the other side of brain implanted the idea that I NEEDED to try this beta. So, I downloaded the beta, and then here's when you know that you have an addiction. You try to rationalize it.
I told myself I wouldn't get the game, that I'd give up when the beta ended. Didn't happen. I got the game, played it rigorously and told myself I'd move on when I beat the game. Didn't happen. Tried to tell myself I'll only play it when watching movies or Netflix. Didn't happen. Instead, I began to watch shit on Netflix I wasn't even interested in, just so I could feel better by lying to myself, "I'll only play it while watching Netflix." The thing about FFXIV, though, is that its end game became incredibly repetitive. Run this many dungeons a week for this much currency per week and do it again when the cap expires. As soon as you get the best gear, be prepared to do it all over again because we'll release a patch with just enough content to keep you playing until the next patch comes out. It was this kind of monotony that helped me eventually break free.
I quit the first time around January of 14, maybe later, and deleted my character thinking I'd never come back. Patch 3.0, Heavensward, didn't even tempt me to return. But, never say never. The itch returned, and that's another sign of an addiction. When you know something is bad for you, you quit but it keeps calling to you. I tried to resist, but the beginning of this year, I found myself downloading FFXIV again and its expansion Heavensward, and I fell right into the same rut. I hit the game hard, blowing through the original story content, skipping cutscenes that I already saw, and a month in, I was into Heavensward content. I mained a ninja, and eventually beat Heavensward, and that's where I told myself that I would stop.
But it didn't. I started rationalizing again. "I'll get myself up back up to where I was when I first quit, and then I'll take a break and play other games until the next patch comes." So before I know it, I was leveling up every single job and doing not just one relic weapon quest, but two. On top of my daily grinding requirements, leveling the rest of my jobs to 60 and the newly introduced Palace of the Dead, the game consumed me yet again. Nothing else was being played. My reading was put on hiatus and all I could think about was, "Soon as I get my jobs to 60, I'll take a break." But before that even happened, I was planning on other things to do in the game. I was going to get recipe books and try raiding and try primal battles I never did before.
Sometimes, though, to break an addiction, something really bad has to happen to get you to look at yourself and see what you've become. This day was about 10 days ago. I was playing Palace of the Dead (which is a deep dungeon, a dungeon consisting of many floors) trying to finish farming weapons for my other jobs when they become 60, and I had a series of bad runs. Every time a run would fail, I viewed it as a huge waste of time, because I was so close to my goal, and then after another failed run because of immense stupidity by a couple of party members, I had a fit of rage. I took my controller and hammered the closest thing to me, which was my Monster Hunter edition of my New 3DS. I turned the PS4 off and went to bed.
When I woke up and grabbed my New 3DS to go to work, I decided for whatever reason to turn it on, and then that's when I knew I couldn't play this game anymore. Both screens wouldn't turn on and no sound emitted from the speakers. I closed the 3DS and looked it over to see where the damage was, and there was only a slight blemish on the cover. Somehow, though, I hit the New 3DS with my controller just right to affect something on the inside. Great... I have a dead system now because I refused to listen to the sensible side of me that said never try this game.
So, later that night, I logged on for the last time, deposited over 26 million gil into my free company's chest, said goodbye to whoever was on at the time and logged out. I deleted my character, again, and deleted the game, again. Right now, I'm taking a break to write this blog. What I did just before this blog was finally beat Dark Souls 3, after buying it in April. April. Five whole months after buying it. You see, I used to be in a pretty good habit of playing my games relatively soon after I buy them and beating them subsequently later. Fall is coming, and we all know the onslaught of games is almost upon us, and to think that I'd still be playing Final Fantasy XIV and missing on all of those games.....
The worst part of an addiction is knowing that you won't have it entirely shook. I never went through a "real" addiction before, but I can only imagine there's a voice that continues to beckon these people back to their vices. People who have quit alcohol and drugs and cigarettes. These people with their varying degrees of chips walking down the street and smelling cigarette smoke, or passing a bar, or unfortunately going to a party where there's someone doing cocaine on the coffee table. Every day they have to ward off the temptation. Every day now, I will have to ward off temptation. I cannot say for certain that I'll never go back to FFXIV, because I thought I was certain I would never go back to it when I quit a couple years ago. I came back because of an expansion. Will I come back when 4.0 releases? I hope to God that I don't...
I think the reason why I'm so vulnerable to these games is because they simply don't end. There's always something to do, some quest line to explore, some grinding to get your weapon ready for the next grinding step. These are destructive kinds of games if you ask me, because they're time sinks. Dark Souls, Oblivion, Grand Theft Auto. These are games that can be considered time sinks as well, but you eventually come to an end, even with the occasional expansions. Those expansions end and they don't task you with daily grinding, being pressured by a competition to stay current so that you don't feel like you're the one holding the group back because everyone else's gear is only slightly better.
It was so hard for me to pull myself away from it because of that compulsory feeling of progression. What also made it hard to quit was that I was rationalizing by deleting my character, I would only have thrown that time away. I had to become more logical and view the game as more time being wasted if I really didn't want to play it anymore. Now that I'm free of it for now, if I need to do something, I pause, get up and do it, instead of not wanting to do it because I needed two hours to grind dungeons. I can pause and go on the net to look things up instead crafting item number 2387 out of 3000. I don't feel pressured to make every single second in my gaming count anymore. I feel like I can breathe again, and when I returned to Dark Souls III, it was such a breathe of fresh air... until I realized it wasn't really fresh air and killed me. That's Dark Souls for you...
I suppose anything can be addictive. People are fat because they can't stop eating junk food. People read too much and don't get their work done. People can't pay their bills because they're obsessed with shopping. But there are reasons these things become addictive. It makes them feel good. If anything can be addictive, then why not video games? Again, it's not the same kind of addiction as alcohol or drugs, but it can still mess with people who don't have the willpower to resist. I don't think I need to cite any articles of people who have killed themselves from exhaustion or neglected their babies because they were too busy playing World of WarCraft. The industry recognizes that certain games are addictive in nature, which is why we get those disclaimers telling us to take breaks.
So if someone tells you they're addicted to video games, don't automatically become skeptical of them, or feel insulted because you experienced a real addiction. Instead, be open to the fact that they are actually addicted to games and there's a reason for that. There might be something going on in their personal lives that's making them turn to video games to escape to, and those virtual worlds provide better experiences for them than what they have now. Don't become dismissive of them. Talk to them. Support them. If you really went through a real addiction, then it would be that much easier for you to help someone going through a lesser addiction.
Thanks for reading.
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