Video Game Addiction

[Pirian]

Do I qualify?

Does CS shit in the back yard?


I probably was for a good amount of time, but it's hard to say because I had quit smoking weed and the vast majority of my friends smoked and that's all they wanted to do. I ended up playing ffxi a ton more as a consequence of not hanging out with stoner friends, lol. Still did fine in school and went to college and continued to do fine for a year and then quit ffxi all together.

I would say ffxi was my anti-drug, but I still drank with friends. I quit ffxi because I finally reached the point to where the time I needed to devote to school was greater than the time I wanted to devote to ffxi, and I didn't have the self-control to just play for a few hours and then turn it off. If I don't turn it on then I don't feel the need to play, but if I start playing then it's tough to put down especially with a ls that had something going on pretty much 24/7 with en/eu/jp players.

[Francisco]

Thanks for the replies. I don't deny addiction at all, and there is no answer I "wanted" to hear... But I'm not sure if it qualifies as a true addiction if you can walk away without some sort of treatment or help. Maybe years of bad content qualify? Could be...

I started back up in school last June, right around the time I stopped playing FFXI... Which has kept me busy, and basically out of FFXI entirely. Could be that school just replaced FFXI in my mind...

[archibaldcrane]

If you quit cigarettes cold turkey, it doesn't mean you aren't addicted to nicotine.

Also, rationalizing your addiction by saying "well my life sucks, FFXI is the only thing that makes me happy, playing it is logical" doesn't mean you aren't addicted. You're playing it instead of working to make your life not suck, a common problem with addicts.

[thetruepandagod]

Would i call me playing ffxi an addiction?

Dropped out of school.
Quit my job when i missed a tiamat.
Ignored friends to the point they thought i died.
Did not eat and became so unhealthy that my body would have begun to fail soon.
Slept in 15min intervals for a whopping total of 6hrs for an entire week at points.
Turned down sex.
There was nothing physically or mentally healthy with me during ffxi and i would still fucking play it circa 04-07 again if offered a time machine. Only reason i don't play anymore is because it's so stupidly different.

So yea i was addicted im pretty sure.

[Darkmagi]

Yeah I'm addicted completely. 12+hour game days, feeling more natural on game than not, social/school/job failings due to neglect and general apathy. It provides an easy escape from the harshness of reality, I definitely have times where I feel compelled be playing the game despite knowing logically that I don't or shouldn't. I would log in just for the sake of logging in, even with no plans to actually do anything. I'm sure many people have just logged in and sat in town for hours on end, then realizing later that they just spent all day doing nothing.

[Sepukku]

I wouldn't say I was addicted to FFXI for a very long period of time. In HS I was rolling FFXI and Socom-2 (and 3 once it came out) interchangably, usually doing FFXI from getting home from school til 7-8pm then Socom 2 the rest of the night and I had RL friends playing both. Even met a girl through FFXI that was a HS student at a nearby HS 30 min away and we dated IRL for 3-4 months.

When I moved to college I was doing pretty well and kept a social life, but I tried doing social life AND lots of gaming and got all kinds of fucked up - I remember going to a final on no sleep for 36+ hours and trying a redbull for the first time. Second semester freshman year / summer after freshman year were probably the worst simply cause I was trying to always be up at 4am for Ballista with the JP and was also static'ing COP twice a week for 4 hours a night shortly after it released. Second year rolled around and me and all my friends lived in 2 adjacent apartment buildings off campus and FFXI/gaming went out the window - it was too much fun and too time consuming always being at the other apartment or them being at mine to do FFXI and I rarely logged in for a couple years.

Did I and do I still do have less than ideal gear in FFXI? Yeah, its not terrible, but I had to fore-go Kings/HNMs stuff in order to try and finish a happy medium. I still lack Nyzul Isle Floor 100 so I have none of those WSs. I don't really regret my sub-par FFXI character.

I do regret in HS not committing more time to working, making more friends, trying to learn how to flirt with girls sooner, going to more parties, and being more social in general outside of the context of games, but at least I was being social to some extent. I don't think I was ever addicted, but I still look back and think about how I only went to about 5 friends' graduation parties in the summer after graduating HS and I can't help but think maybe I could've done HS a little differently.

[Cream Soda]

Would i call me playing ffxi an addiction?

Dropped out of school.
Quit my job when i missed a tiamat.
Ignored friends to the point they thought i died.
Did not eat and became so unhealthy that my body would have begun to fail soon.
Slept in 15min intervals for a whopping total of 6hrs for an entire week at points.
Turned down sex.
There was nothing physically or mentally healthy with me during ffxi and i would still fucking play it circa 04-07 again if offered a time machine. Only reason i don't play anymore is because it's so stupidly different.

So yea i was addicted im pretty sure.

and this is why I respect you so, Master Panda

[archibaldcrane]

Only reason i don't play anymore is because it's so stupidly different.

And that's the thing - this is why many people quit FFXI - it wasn't giving them their "fix" anymore. We like to think, once the buzz has worn off, that we "walked away" on our own - but usually it just wasn't doing it for us anymore and that's why it was easier to walk away. Peak-era FFXI was a hell of a drug, man.

[Lucavi]

^ Yeah, I was probably addicted back from 04-06, but my "high" changed from PVE content to PVP after becoming disillusioned with the reality that end-game PVE was all about cheating and not personal ability. I switched to helping friends in PVE and spending the rest of my time spamming Ballista on a regular schedule; I remember calling into work late, feigning illness, if the 60 or uncapped ballista start-time overlapped with my scheduled work time.

Once ballista started dying off, population-wise, after the second server transfers and the launch of WotG, my personal fix wasn't there anymore, so I quickly lost interest in the game, and left without a second notice. I jumped to WoW about 3 weeks later after quickly catching the bug during one of the free trial weekends, got lost in the PVP scene until I found a good raiding guild, and that was that for a few more years.

Probably was addicted, but I've been a gamer my entire life. Pussy came second to my personal enjoyment, because I know that while there was a chance I'd have fun rolling out to the bar with some friends in search of vagina or the like, there was guaranteed fun logging into XI or WoW and PVPing or rolling around with friends. I still don't think the decision was right or wrong; it was what it was, and I never lost RL friends because of it. The only reason I don't game as hard as I used to is because my tastes have shifted so much back to old-school NES/SNES and modern-age quick-fixes that there's been nothing to sink in a substantial amount of time into. The addiction probably won't go away until I'm married and have enough other things being tossed onto my plate, that I just won't have the time to invest into games. Its starting to happen already with work, gym, and weekend hobbies; once a wife is in the mix, that'll probably be that.

[Anoat]

Somewhere this thread became about FFXI/MMO addiction and not video game addiction in general. Not sure which responses the OP is looking for because both answers can be totally different.

[archibaldcrane]

I don't think that video games in general provide the type of stimulus necessary to form an addiction in most people. MMOs are different.

inb4 you can get addicted to anything

[Kipling]

Somewhere this thread became about FFXI/MMO addiction and not video game addiction in general. Not sure which responses the OP is looking for because both answers can be totally different.

Well, considering this is an old FFXI board and many of the multi-year users were all end gamers and that FFXI is a video game... I think it's hard to expect it not to go down this road. MMO's breed addiction unlike any other game because of how they are (were these days I guess) designed.

[hey]

Somewhere this thread became about FFXI/MMO addiction and not video game addiction in general.

Yes, that happened in the first post.

[Darkmagi]

I don't think that video games in general provide the type of stimulus necessary to form an addiction in most people. MMOs are different.

inb4 you can get addicted to anything

Gonna have to agree with this, the whole "endless" progression of an MMO and the community aspects are what I would think keeps people addicted.

[Yugl]

Fighting games say otherwise.

[Aevis]

Yes and no to me. Yes because from '04 to '06, I was playing hardcore 12hrs + a day. When I first quit, I was depressed and deeply sad. So sad, like I just lost an important part of my life. No because those 12hrs a day were from monday to friday and during most of those 2 years, I didn't have a job. Everyone was at work or school and I simply had nothing else to do. Still went out on weekends and managed to pay for food, rent etc. Also no, because that sadness from /quit lasted one day and it wasn't about the game itself, but the people I met and the daily interaction with them.

Since then, I came back and quit a couple times before I finally decided to leave FFXI in '10. However, less dedicated and nowadays (playing GW2) an intense week is 3-4 evening of 2-3 hours and the weekend. Usually, it's 2 evenings and unscheduled hours during the weekend. There's no way I could endure that "hc" playstyle nowadays, nor that it would be possible at all. Still, given the choice, I wouldn't trade those days for anything because of the memories made.

IMO, once you have to adept your life to continue to play game X, some kind of addiction is present. How far you go down the rabbit hole depends entirely on you tho and that has nothing to do with any specific addiction.

[Silenka]

Fighting games say otherwise.

Fighting games sort of offer the same kind of reward system though, only it's about your own personal skill improving instead of the gear you get, achievements you collect or the online social life you have. Plus most fighting games have their own insanely-developed communities, so you get the social aspect there too. But it's harder for the average joe to get addicted to fighting games vs MMOs, because fighting games take a measure of skill to be good at in the first place and if you don't have that/aren't interested in developing it and getting into the 'scene' then it's not gonna hook you.

Honestly the only non MMO games I can think of that I ever got close to addicted to are Skyrim (because of its near-endless content, over 100 hours logged and I still haven't done all the damn quests) and games like Diablo. A lot of times, I can play Diablo and many of its clones for hours and hours and hours and not get bored. Skyrim gave me an initial "omg can't put it down" rush but after that the novelty sort of wore off. Still enough to put over 100 hours of my life into it in a short period of time though XD

[Yugl]

I was disagreeing with the idea that non-MMOs don't have what's needed to create addiction.

[Bregor]

Gonna have to agree with this, the whole "endless" progression of an MMO and the community aspects are what I would think keeps people addicted.

This. There's always that next drop, that next achievement, that next boss, etc. that eludes you. There's also the element of guilds/linkshells/whatever that have event schedules, which gives an addict a firm excuse to avoid making other commitments in advance. Also, even after people have essentially maxed out their character they may still feel compelled to help others, something that doesn't exist in any single-player game.

I've put in as many hours on other games in the FF series, as well as Zelda, Civilization, HoMM, NHL/NCAA Football/Madden, etc. but I would never say I was addicted to those. They never (well, almost never) interfered with my school/work or relationships. But I was definitely addicted to XI.

I was disagreeing with the idea that non-MMOs don't have what's needed to create addiction.

I agree they do, but I think it's a lot more rare to find an individual who is vulnerable to that kind of addiction.

[Ashmada]

Everyone gets addicted to something. Most people just call it a 'hobby'. Like any addiction really, if it doesn't control your life, it generally isn't a problem. All things in moderation, self control, etc.

This, basically. All this hubbub on "video game addiction" reeks of "new media are evil", sad to see some people buying into it.