As I have said in my previous two posts that I have encountered some shocking and horrible things in my time playing games. These things mostly root from misplaced priorities. The things that people would sacrafice to continue playing the game were truly astounding to me. I dont want to give any wrong impressions here though. Atleast 95% of the people who play these games dont act nearly as crazy as some of the people I will be describing in the next paragraphs. They make up a small portion, a portion that I feel need help.
The two people I am going to describe I have never met in person. All of the information I have learned about them and anything they have told me was ethier through in game chat or through a program called Ventrillo (vent) which allows people to join a server and communicate with eachother via voice chat. I will also be using fake names as not anger anyone, this is really just a precaution as I have no way to verify that the names they gave me were even their real ones in the first place.
I will start with a couple. I will call the jane and jim. I was in a WoW guild with jane and jim for about 5 months. I talked to them extensively in the game and on voice chat and some of the things I learned about them and their family saddend and depressed me. Jane and Jim have 3 small children together 4, 5, and 7 the oldest. Jane stayed home with the kids every day while jim went off to work as a electrical engineer. While jane was supposidly watching her two youngest children she was also on WoW nearly the entire day, she would get off around lunch time if she wasn't too busy to do so around 12:30, but there were days when she would play solid from 10:00 am to 3:00 pm so I have no idea what her children were doing or eating. She would always get off at 3:00 pm to pick up her oldest from school. When Jim came home around 6:00 pm she would get off and make dinner and eat I suppose. Right after that though no later than 7:00 both her and jim would be on to atleast 12:00 pm if not later. I would hear all kinds of things through their microphones. One of the most memorable times was when we were in a raid and everytime ethier jane or jim talked (In ventrillo you hold a button down which opens your mic so people hear what you're saying) we heared screaming and crying in the background for 2 hours. It got to the point of where our guild leader asked jane or jim to go and tend to their children while we waited. Shortly after the crying stopped. I had originally thought it might have just been their children being difficult, but the more I paid attention I realized these people spent little to no time with their children and it took someone in the game to order them to do it. This happend several more times throughout the following weeks and it eventually came down to our guild leader removing them from the guild and telling them that they needed to take care of their children before they worried about WoW. Sadly this failed, they joined a different guild and from what I know still play the same amount as they did then today.
I really believe that people like this need help balancing the priorities in life. If their children rank below a computer game then I dont think they should have had any. This sadly though is only one example of people neglecting something in their life that should clearly be higher ranked than a computer game. Hopefully there will eventually be a good way for people like this to get help.
Tuesday, March 25, 2008
Saturday, March 22, 2008
The general idea
I would consider myself to have a addictive personality. I get hooked on things very easily. I become obsessed, thoughts of whatever the newest thing is cloud my mind. To lose interest in one thing I become obsessed with another. It has never been anything illegal for me, such as drugs or alcohol, but games and more recently poker have been the subjects of my infatuation. I play tons of computer games, video games, online poker. It keeps me entertained. They're relatively cheap and online poker even provides me with some extra cash. I at this point have no probelm stopping at anytime. I have total control over myself, mostly because in the past year I have built willpower. Willpower is the main thing that decides wether you are in control or the addiction is in control.
A computer game addition is not only devistating to your life, but extremely embarrasing. If you are addicted to meth or alcohol you can tell your family and friends and they will get you help. If you are addicted to computer games they will laugh and just brush it off. People dont take gaming addiction seriously, even though people have died from sitting at the computer for too long. If your friends call you up and ask you to go somewhere and you turn them down because you have a raid in a few hours you sound ridiculous. But if you tell them your parents need help with something its perfectly accepatable, so you lie. All sorts of games have held me back from positive experiences I could have and should have had. WoW (World of Warcraft) which I mostly discussed in my first post was the biggest problem for me. Of course I never reached the extremes of peeing in bottles so that I dont miss a second of play time or drinking energy drinks so that I can play for 72 hours nonstop. I have though spent upwards of 12 hours playing with minor breaks in between, steup manitory play time schedules which I at the time believed to overrided all other responsibilities in my life.
The main goal in all of these MMORPG or any multiplayer game is to become that best that you can be. Wether that means collecting all of the best possible armor and weapons in mmorpg's or being unkillable in a first person shooter (FPS). One of the main hazards with the mmorpg is raiding. Raiding is a forming a large group of people anywhere from 10 to 40 people and trying to complete a dungeon together. The encounters in these dungeons are complex, they require coordination and practice before they can be mastered. A large dungeon will consist of 5-10 bosses which drop very disirable items when they die. To master one of these dungeons guilds (groups of people who form together that share a common goal) take on average a few weeks to master the fights and be able to complete all of the bosses. To do this schedules are setup. Often times a schedule will look like this -
Tuesday - 7:00pm - 12:00pm server time
Thursday - 7:00pm - 12:00pm server time
Saturday- 4:00pm - 12:00pm server time
Sunday- 1:00pm - 7:00pm server time
Good members of the guild make the times 95% of time, Casual members 80% of the time and below that you are kicked from the guild and deemed worthless. On top of this members are expected to "farm" materials to make potions for these runs. Farming consists if killing easy soloable monsters many times until the desired drop comes in a large enough quanity to create the potions required. Once a guild has learned all of the fights and has finished the dungeon (killing the final boss) the dungeon is then completed every week so that all of the members of the guild can gain all of the items that they desire from the dungeon. Players are also encouraged to PvP (Player versus player) Which allows the benfit of items and prestige. Prestige is the main goal in these games. People want to be the best they can be, and to do that more and more time playing is required. To be the best you can be you need to play more and more often, creating an addiction that wont let go. In one of these major raiding guild it is more or less required to play 30+ hours a week and if you are in any sort of leader position in your guild there are loads more responsiblities. WoW creates a unending cycle by creating better and better items that players must play more and more to get, which keeps players coming.
A computer game addition is not only devistating to your life, but extremely embarrasing. If you are addicted to meth or alcohol you can tell your family and friends and they will get you help. If you are addicted to computer games they will laugh and just brush it off. People dont take gaming addiction seriously, even though people have died from sitting at the computer for too long. If your friends call you up and ask you to go somewhere and you turn them down because you have a raid in a few hours you sound ridiculous. But if you tell them your parents need help with something its perfectly accepatable, so you lie. All sorts of games have held me back from positive experiences I could have and should have had. WoW (World of Warcraft) which I mostly discussed in my first post was the biggest problem for me. Of course I never reached the extremes of peeing in bottles so that I dont miss a second of play time or drinking energy drinks so that I can play for 72 hours nonstop. I have though spent upwards of 12 hours playing with minor breaks in between, steup manitory play time schedules which I at the time believed to overrided all other responsibilities in my life.
The main goal in all of these MMORPG or any multiplayer game is to become that best that you can be. Wether that means collecting all of the best possible armor and weapons in mmorpg's or being unkillable in a first person shooter (FPS). One of the main hazards with the mmorpg is raiding. Raiding is a forming a large group of people anywhere from 10 to 40 people and trying to complete a dungeon together. The encounters in these dungeons are complex, they require coordination and practice before they can be mastered. A large dungeon will consist of 5-10 bosses which drop very disirable items when they die. To master one of these dungeons guilds (groups of people who form together that share a common goal) take on average a few weeks to master the fights and be able to complete all of the bosses. To do this schedules are setup. Often times a schedule will look like this -
Tuesday - 7:00pm - 12:00pm server time
Thursday - 7:00pm - 12:00pm server time
Saturday- 4:00pm - 12:00pm server time
Sunday- 1:00pm - 7:00pm server time
Good members of the guild make the times 95% of time, Casual members 80% of the time and below that you are kicked from the guild and deemed worthless. On top of this members are expected to "farm" materials to make potions for these runs. Farming consists if killing easy soloable monsters many times until the desired drop comes in a large enough quanity to create the potions required. Once a guild has learned all of the fights and has finished the dungeon (killing the final boss) the dungeon is then completed every week so that all of the members of the guild can gain all of the items that they desire from the dungeon. Players are also encouraged to PvP (Player versus player) Which allows the benfit of items and prestige. Prestige is the main goal in these games. People want to be the best they can be, and to do that more and more time playing is required. To be the best you can be you need to play more and more often, creating an addiction that wont let go. In one of these major raiding guild it is more or less required to play 30+ hours a week and if you are in any sort of leader position in your guild there are loads more responsiblities. WoW creates a unending cycle by creating better and better items that players must play more and more to get, which keeps players coming.
Tuesday, March 11, 2008
Gaming Addiction Is For Real.
In this blog I will attempt to explore the world of electronic gaming and my experiences with it. I have been playing video games and computer games alike for well over thirteen years of my life at this point. Everything from Atari to Xbox 360. All types of games, from Pong that consists of a black screen with a score board, pixle ball and two vertical moving paddles to Crysis which has so much detail and action with in it, the top computer technology of today can barely run it at full force. The name of the blog is "Gaming Addictions" and this will be the main thing I will be discussing here. I have seen many friends ruin their lives by devoting too much of their time to games and I as well have struggled with the addiction. Computer games and video games can be amazingly addictive. Of all the types of games that are out today, by the most addictive breed has to be the MMORPG "Massively Mutiplayer Online Role Playing Game." MMO's are essentially whole entire virtual worlds, where players can become a hero, villan or whatever they want to be. They are the ultimate for of expression, players can do pretty much whatever they want to do with very little real world repercussions. I have personally tried many of these and know all to well of their siren calls. Some of the biggest are Everquest, Everquest 2, Runescape, and the king World Of Warcraft. I will primarily be focusing on WoW (World of Warcraft) throughout this blog. WoW is one of the most popular games of all time. It is in fact so popular that there are currently over ten million paying subscribers. This means that ontop of purchasing the game which now costs $20 (originally $50) the subcriber pays roughly $15 a month to play, slightly cheaper if they buy 3-months or 6-months at time. Blizzard Entertainment, owned by Vivendi games also relased a expansion pack to WoW called The Burning Crusade (BC), which costs $30 and is fairly essential to playing the game at this stage in it's developement. Most people that dont play games look at those numbers and are shocked. Why would someone pay $50-$80 to buy a game and on top of that pay $15 every month to play it? Why would someone play the same game that only adds moderate changes every few months via patches (free updates that add things and eliminate bugs) for three years? Why do so many people play WoW? What makes WoW so great? Having played this game for roughly two years, with many breaks in between my own experience tells me that people pay so much and keep coming back because the game is so addictive. I myself was a WoW addict. I would sometimes play the game 40 hours a week, as though it were a full time job. Sadly though this pales in comparison to some of the people I came across. The real life events that these "addicts" neglected were astonishing to me. One of the more extreme examples that comes to mind is when a man in my guild(In game large scale groups of people that you work with to accomplish goals with in the game world) missed his daughters wedding to play the game. I have known people who consistenly play WoW for 80 hours a week, making it their number one priority and essentially their life. The main goal of this blog is to open some eyes and hopefully enlighten some people.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)