Gaming addiction

[Shabbaman]

EA is bringing new content to the sims at a regular basis. I guess that'll feed the need of the players. The same goes for WoW I think.

[Aggie]

In 2004 I had a burn-out. I told you back then that this had to do with my stressful work after we got outsourced.

I know now that this is part of the story. I did too many things back then. A stressful job, running twice a week, playing squash once a week, climbing once a week. 90% of the rest of my time went into Civ (playing the game or hosting succession games). I only slept 6 hours a night and when games got exciting even less. Now I know that I need at least 8 hours of sleep per day.

Before I bought Civ3 I played Sid Meier’s Alpha Centauri (SMAC). I made a habit of playing a SMAC game from start to end without interruption (just one more turn syndrome). This sometimes meant that I didn’t sleep at all, even during normal working weeks. When at work I constantly thought about the things that I had learned and that I wanted to try out within SMAC. I didn’t have a challenging job back then, making it even easier to neglect it a bit.

This way of life eventually was too much for me to take. It is not very clever to play 10 war-time turns at deity level in modern times just before going to bed. Much too intense. That’s why I got burned-out. Lucky for me this had no impact on my career or private life.

I recovered from my burn-out. This took more than a year. The biggest luck I had was meeting my wife. This changed my life drastically. Otherwise I think that I would still be playing Civ. And probably I would again be close to a burn-out. Now I can say that I never played even one turn of the game Civ 4. I have two great sons. Spending time with them outweighs playing games a thousandfold.

My wife hates computer games. She also dislikes the fact that I’m playing Hattrick, while this is a game you can play without spending too much time. That’s the reason why I am taking a break on that game as well. I think that my wife is the person that I really need to have by my side. Someone to warn me when I am nearing the boundaries of reasonability. She never knew how addicted I was…

[akots]

Indeed, back then you were really an addict. There were always new and more challenging games started in SG forum. I've been also suffering at that time but set to play no more than in two SGs at a time. I guess the rule was broken due to SGOTM for a total of 3 games at once but these SGOTMs were not very time consuming. I've been also a regular GOTM player for a couple of years and at some time point was quite good at that.

PBEMs and PitBoss are actually a blessing. You can still play but it takes very little time.

[Socrates]

Originally Posted by Matrix

Come to think of it: I have been addicted to The Sims as well, for about two/three weeks. Then I had the perfect house, with all the stuff I wanted. Never played it since.

Haha, brilliant !!

Is this the Videogame Addicted Anonymous ?

I was pretty addicted to Sim City a looong time ago, as soon as I got a computer (Atari ST), during 2 years.

Then in 1994 I discovered Civ ! I played all versions up to Civ4 vanilla until I had enough playing, when I started to work actually. The game I played most was Civ3, including solo, PBEM here, SG and GOTM at CFC, Epics at RBCiv... As I said back then, I experienced all the drugs. I would sometimes be overwhelmed by all the different Civ games I wanted to complete in time, but this was too much to cope with. In the end I had enough and got back to PBEM, but I think I was saturated with Civ so I stopped.

Civ certainly is the game that defines me best, but I also had some short addicted periods of time on HOMM3, Railroad Tycoon 2, etc...

Now all of this is over. For long, for real ? Dunno. My PC also is too old (7 years !) to cope with Civ4 and beyond, and I don't plan to change it soon.

In general, I often fall in addiction with something exciting that I discover. That's not very good. It's better to engage oneself in many things at a time without any of them getting most of your time.

[Matrix]

Pretty serious stuff you wrote there, Aggie. But good to read, cos now I understand you have (unfortunately for us) refrained yourself from playing Civ.

[Aggie]

Having said everything I said, I never got to a point as written above in the article. I had a social life and also did my job well, most of the times...

[Stapel]

Originally Posted by Aggie

Having said everything I said, I never got to a point as written above in the article. I had a social life and also did my job well, most of the times...

Heavy crap Aggie! I still have fond memories of out saturday morning PBEM habits.

Your pull back from civIII and your 'failure' to return at CiV (which you did promiss us ), made it pretty obvious that a bit more was going on. However, I am still a bit surprised about your story.

I myself have had my own addicting experiences with CivI, Col, CivII and CivIII. With CiV only in the pitboss form. And that's not that time consuming.

I wouldn't want to drag you back into problems, but I think you should realise that there is a way to play CiV on a normal level. You're missing out on a great game!

[Shabbaman]

Originally Posted by Aggie

Having said everything I said, I never got to a point as written above in the article. I had a social life and also did my job well, most of the times...

That's a good thing

Originally Posted by akots

PBEMs and PitBoss are actually a blessing. You can still play but it takes very little time.

Agreed. But you can still put a lot of effort in it. For me (and the people around me) the stress of having to play that turn on time is a lot worse than simply playing for hours. That's why I don't play pitboss (not actively a full game, that is).

That's also what I dislike in what I'm playing now: these competitive matches take about my whole evening (even though the matches are only two games of half an hour). Because it requires a lot of planning it's not so easy to reschedule if I'm busy or tired. It's rather obligatory than addictive. Unfortunately...

[Aggie]

I never saw myself as extremely addicted, except for about a period of a month during the SMAC days. After I beat the highest level with all factions my addiction was over.

I do fully recognize what Shabba says, PBEM's and for me also Succession Games being obligatory rahter than addicitive. Maybe the most 'addictive' part was the sharing of the experiences with my CFC and CDZ friends. Also akots has a good point that within the SG forum we constantly tried to find and beat more and more difficult concepts. This also was 'addictive'.

The fact that I played so much and organized so much during those days was very unwise. I should have taken my rest from the stressful working days. Instead I played Civ.

[Socrates]

Yes the addiction turning pleasure into obligation was part of my experience too. And you find yourself very stupid in such a situation, if you take time to think about it. It just became work (mostly SG, GOTM and Epics).

Also I came to really dislike games where you have to play within a short period of time (PitBoss, Travian, Hattrick) : that would drive much of my attention all the time, it became unbearable... and also it felt like work in the end as well.

Now I know the only way I could go back to playing is settling for slow-paced games, with people I know (basically, PBEM with you guys). No more persistent environment or competition. But I find the Civ formula not very attractive these days... Kinda saturated with the same gameplay.