One gamer's descent into online gaming addiction.

[Akasha]

Some of you might know that I am trying to get back into writing, I mentioned it on a previous post about how I used to write all the time, was really good at in, but just stopped when I left school. Some of you might remember my first article I ever published, The Down Side of Beta, well this is my second attempt heh. So enough blabbering, I give you One gamer's descent into online gaming addiction.

Addictions: The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or involved in something, so says The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language. When people talk about having an addiction, they are usually talking about smoking, drinking, gambling and drugs; all the more ‘normal’ forms of addictions. Very rarely do you see a group of people talking about how their wife isn’t talking them because they stayed up till 6am on a Hate raid in the hopes their Staff of Elemental Mastery might drop. Why? Because to most people, that is just not acceptable behavior. To me though, my first response would be, “So, did it drop?� And depending on a yes or no response I would either congratulate or commiserate, because I too know the pain of staying awake all night thinking ‘this will be my night’ only to find yourself crawling into bed as the sun is rising, knowing that the next weekend will probably be the same.

Ahh gaming addictions, something that most people think only geeks, nerds and that weird boy over there can fall prey too. For most of you reading this, you know that’s not the case, we can be school teachers, administrators, barmen, or in my case a female nanny who chooses to work nights so I can play with Americans during the day. Gamers can be short, tall, black, white, male or female, young or old. To hear a child say he likes video games makes people think “how cute� and “Playstation or Xbox?� To hear that child’s parents say the same thing can result in looks of “are you kidding me?� and “aren’t you a bit old?�

Gaming is something that a lot of people don’t understand if they haven’t tried it themselves. Online gaming is just another notch up on the “I don’t get it� ladder. But Online Gaming Addiction is something that can happen, does happen and is probably happening to you… right now… dun dun duunnnnn. Sadly, if you hear “Online Gaming Addiction� you think of stories about people who never leave their rooms, gain 100 pounds and can’t deal with real life. Stories of people like Shawn Wooley who apparently got so upset by someone in Everquest he took his own life. I say apparently because no one will ever really know the reason why he did that, and if it was over EQ, then there would had to have been some very large underlying problems that contributed it.

Everyone always looks at the bad side to online gaming addictions, how games are blamed for everything from ‘your son kicked my son’ to ‘these four people killed six over an allegedly stolen Xbox.’ Well I’m going to look at the other side, the somewhat amusing REAL side of being addicted to online gaming. I’m a female gamer who was addicted to Everquest for the better part of two years, and I played it for four years in total… I just kind of got over it after a while.

I was first introduced to Everquest by my boyfriend. We were living together and his computer was in one of the back bedrooms which he converted to ‘his room.’ The house wasn’t huge, and although we couldn’t see each other if I was watching TV in the lounge room, I could certainly shout loud enough for him to hear me… of course most of the time he just ignored me anyway. I remember going in to see what he was doing and watching him play this game, I had no idea what it was at the time, all I knew was he could speak to other people… to other people of the female persuasion… aaah he must be cybering!! Now, years later after playing I know that wasn’t the case, but I was a naive little girlfriend that was loosing her boyfriend to that evil game.

After one or two months of my boyfriend constantly putting up with me complaining, “You never spend any time with me….You’re always on that stupid game…. Why don’t you love me enough to watch TV instead of play that game….� He finally cracked it, sat me down at his computer and promptly told me to, “make a character, go on, do it.� Begrudgingly I sat down, being a typical female and making it known I was not happy by grunting and rolling my eyes, but trying to make an effort to at least pretend to be interested. I looked over the different people you could make, you know, what they call “races� until I found a cute little thing I would learn to know as a Wood Elf. A couple past that and I saw a Half Elf who was wearing a G-String and thought, “hey, if I am gonna do this, I am gonna do it looking hot the whole way…�

Next I had to read over classes, and after reading the descriptions of each decided upon a ranger because I love animals. Bimbo me actually thought I would be running around in game protecting the bears and watering the plants etc. Hey, I told you I was female… So I hit enter world and appear in Surefall Glade looking at what I was told was my trainer. The ever so helpful boyfriend assisted me into making it outside where I could see bats flying around and other sorts of creatures. “Kill one� he said…..

Hmm, ok target it, check. Hit this button to start attacking, check. “Aaah it hit me back, half my health is gone, I’m gonna die!� But I didn’t, I lived, and I felt invincible! My boyfriend is one of those, ‘just try and do it yourself and if you can’t then I will help’ kinda guys, and that explains why, when I ran past a hill nearby with 3 skeletons there and died, he didn’t say anything. I ran back to get my corpse, died again, and still not a peep from the loving, caring man standing behind me stifling a giggle. A third and fourth time of doing the same thing and dying still did not make this love of my life utter a word and it took the kind words of a stranger who was watching this very bizarre act of suicide to step in and offer me assistance.

To this day, 5 years later I may not remember his name, but will never forget the first person I met online. This kind gentlemen asked what I was trying to do because it was obvious ( to him not me ) that I was failing miserably at it. After explaining how I had died and was trying to recover my corpse, he asked me to consent him and he would retrieve it for me. A few minutes of chatting and he explained how the game worked, gave me a bronze scimitar and said if ever I needed help to just send him a tell. “Wow honey, this game is great *smile* I can chat to people all the time? *smile* and why *smack* didn’t you tell me *smack* that rangers don’t *smack* look after things *thump thump thump*

I stayed on for a couple more hours and even managed to make it to level 5 or so. Shantasia the ranger was born, and the first claws of addiction had already started creeping towards me.

It was 6am the following morning when I was back on. That’s right, 6am! Never before in my life have I been awake before the birds, but for some reason I rolled over and BAM my brain said, let’s see if you can make it to Qeynos. My boyfriend, who just laughed when he got up to see me playing, made his breakfast, woke up and them promptly booted me off his computer. TV just wasn’t the same that day… no movie could hold my attention, and the ads were driving me insane. That is when the ‘your night, my night’ started. I got to play the following night, and the night after that it was the boyfriend’s turn. This alternating shift worked for about a month before it was declared…. “You are buying a computer!� Ooh my first computer, I was so excited!

Saturday was the day we decided to head down to a computer store to buy the parts to build me my computer, another morning I was up at 6am, but this time for different reasons. I wanted that sucker out of bed and down at that store as soon as the doors opened. The quicker he was down there, the quicker he got home, the quicker I could be playing. I had already bought my brand new desk and leather chair, so now we were just waiting on the third part to complete the trio. My own copy of Everquest was waiting with baited breath to be installed on this new wonderful machine.

There was no hope for me now. I would meet new people, make new friends and survive on as little amount of sleep as I could manage. The plus side that I never saw coming, however, was just how close it made me and my boyfriend. We could now play side by side all day, finally he wasn’t ignoring me! We shared a lot of firsts together… the first time I made it to lake of ill omen and had to run past those wretched spiders, which to this day I am still scared of.

Our first real shared experience was the time I wanted the Testament of Vanear from Dyllan Starshine in High Hold Pass. We shopped during the day for chips and biscuits to keep us going. We took it in turns watching while the other made pizza for dinner, and we stayed up for hours. At around 2am for us the server went down and we felt that ping of frustration. However, when the servers came back up again the adrenaline that pumped through us as we rushed to be the first on, the pulling of characters on at the same time, the exhilaration of seeing him spawned. “Quick, omg he’s up, hurry, ok ready? Ready? Omg hurry up already! Ok, 1…..2…..3 go go go go go! Got it? Loot, run run run!!�

The neighbours must have thought we just won the lottery with the amount of shouts and woot’s that emitted that night, there were hugs, kisses and ogling the book. From that night on the only way was up. I soon made another character, a druid called Tiigger who duo’d with the boyfriend on his enchanter. I made it to max level with this character and joined a guild called Talisman, a raiding guild! At the time they were the best on the server and I worked hard to get into it. With the minimum level requirement being 60, and having already had a taste of what it was like to raid, I made it my duty to get from 58 to 60 as quickly as possible.

One weekend, (two days and 3 nights) I spent living in a zone called Velketor’s getting to level 60. I slept maybe a total of 6 hours that weekend and ate what ever the boyfriend was nice enough to bring me. I’m somewhat ashamed to say I only showered once and didn’t actually change clothes that entire weekend; I was a woman on a mission. Now, those people that blame computer games for so much would probably say how unhealthy it was for me to do that. But the side they don’t hear about, and usually don’t want to hear about, is how many new friends I made that weekend as the entire zone knew of my goal. The excitement when I was on my last yellow to level 60. How happy I was when I finally hit 60, and how great it felt to see an entire zone of around 60 people, that’s 60 people I’d never met before, all cheering and congratulating me. That is a weekend I will never forget!

So now we flash forward a couple of years from that weekend. I have called in sick to work so I can play, have stayed up way too late raiding and explained to work the next day that, “I just couldn’t sleep last night… so weird huh?� I have new life long friends to chat to, ones that I probably talk to more often than my real life friends, and hopefully one day if I ever do fly to America I won’t have to pay for hotels because I can stay with friends. I have learnt new words like woot and train, and no, not the choo choo kind, although if you stand in its path you will get splattered.

Something that a lot of people who play games won’t admit to is that I regard my online friends as closer than my real life ones in a lot of ways. Why? Well for one they understand me a lot better because we have the same thing in common. I have screenshots that I look back on just like photos, I can see myself before I got all that ‘uber’ equipment, my first dragon kill, the box that pops up when someone invites you into a guild. They are memories to me. I can look at a screenshot and usually remember if it was Summer or Winter, if it was a weekend or not. I can remember some of the people there, and generally what happened that day. That is something that all these game haters don’t talk about.

People want to blame games for being bad and causing all these people to do bad things; well what about the good it does for people? What about the new friends people make, the different cultures and ways of life we learn about. The social interaction we learn from being in groups, being part of a team when in a guild, learning leader abilities from running a raid. The excitement you get from your first piece of uber armor, the determination you learn from trying to take a mob down over and over and over again. And what about probably the most important aspect of all? People skills! In a game where other people from all over the world play, you either learn to deal with different types, or you don’t; those that don’t usually find their gaming experience hindered.

I now know when talking to people from Asia that if they don’t seem to get what I am talking about it’s not because they are snobs, it’s just because they don’t understand the phrases or words I am using. I’ve learnt about different senses of humour, some of which I totally don’t understand, and in return I have tried to make people not be so stereotypical when it comes to where people live. I’m from Australia and no we don’t all have pet dingoes and kangaroos; yes koalas are drunk 99% of the time but it’s not from that crap beer Fosters, and yes we do talk like Steve Irwin, but only when we’re making fun of ourselves.

So before anyone goes blaming games for all these problems they create, compare it to the positive side and you will find they are just like anything else in life; they have the good and the bad. There’s the saying that “Cars don’t kill people, that stupid twat that left the bar drunk killed people.� ok, not quite, but you get my point. Games don’t make people bad, underlying psychological problems of people that play games make them bad.

Written by : Akasha

[Salalorn]

/standing appluse

I love it, there were a few typing glitches here and there, but the overall feel and delevery of the topic was excellent and OMG so very true! To this day I still wish that someone near me (in the real world) would have played EQ, when I played NO ONE near me understood or even had the brain capasity to turn their computer on without a sticky note written by me with detailed how to instructions on it.....

I really did enjoy the read, keep it up... you never know, stuff like that is what is going to change the minds of the world around us about gaming...

stay safe everyone,
-Sala

[Kalazor]

A great article - and the reason it is so great is because, as Sala said - it is so true! I think we can all relate to that and being told to, "get a life", because we play too many computer games. People don't understand - like you were when your boyfriend played and you didn't understand. But then again i'm happy alot of people don't like it - it gives us a unique experience in life, and i personally don't want people who are so anti-gaming in a game. Anyway - great article, i will certainly be linking it to other sites =).

[R2D2]

OMG im soo speachless akasha... this actually makes me wanna play eq cause i havent tryed it yet... but then again... i might as well wait for wow now that it isnt so far away... so that I hope to get some of the same unique experiences as you got...

this article is like gold man... pure gold :D

*still speachless*
*walks backwards to cave*
*slips over rock as usual*
*grinns in a dumb way*
*says:"it was just a joke :D "*

[Kalazor]

^^ I think the EQ experience won't be as good anymore anyway. The WoW experience is mostly based off Everquest and previous MMOs - just making them better. I'd wait for WoW too before actually buying another one. It'll be my first MMO too =).

[Frogbunns]

Hello?

/Hummmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm............................... ...................

Frog see Admin Lady did E&B and DAoC

Frog asks if Admin Lady knew XoXo (short, fat, bearded) of the Progen Faction or Northwind of the Eldritch in DAoC?

thank you

[Akasha]

Thanks for the feedback guys! It's given me the confidence to continue writting.. :D Now you've done it.. be prepared for lots more to come haha.

Yup Frog I played E&B and DAoC, but both for not very long, so sadly I don't really remember anyone I met in game. ;)

[boscolio]

Excellent article Akasha. It really was a great read.

the only problem i see with it...

you've set the bar high for anything else you right in the future. ;)

keep 'em coming!

[Magnus]

Very good article, and like the others say very true. I started playing online games..... maybe 3 years ago now. Started with EQ, still play it occasionally, and I have to say most of the people on EQ I talk with more than my real life friends. If I tell that to people most of em just say "what the hell" but it's not surprising really, you can go onto an online game at any time and there are hundreds of people to talk to, plus as you said you're both already playing the game you have a common interest. Also I don't know if it's just me but people seem to be a lot more open and willing to talk on online games but that's getting away from the point.

Excellent article, keep up the writing and I'll keep reading them!

[R2D2]

The article has a certain nerve to it, because you were a noob that fell in love with a game... and progressed to something better....