Something I think everyone should know is that I love Video Games. I can master almost any game as long as you give me a couple hours (or less) alone with it. I have owned some form of video game system since i was 10. But something has changed.
I have recently given up owning an Xbox, and somehow developed vary real withdraw symptoms. (You know it's bad when you breakdown and cry as your packing it up) So I decided to take a look back at my past experiences with my addiction of video games.
(Withdraw Symptoms Include but are not limited to: cold sweat, anger, depression, insomnia, obsessive thoughts, a sense of confusion in regards to where all this free time came from, plans for my next fix, and friends.)
Someone once told me I care more about my Xbox than I did her. This may have been true at the time; but in my defense she should have provided better conversation than my pet rock. (I don’t really have a pet rock but if I did we would talk often) When she said this I started wondering why this is affecting me so much. So now I am taking a look back at my gaming lifestyle.
Every year I spend about $250 on games and related services. Some years i spend more than that all in the pursuit to complete a digital challenge. The Xbox 360 is my drug of choice and there are a few things about it that inexplicably pull me in.
The first thing that lures me in is the achievement system that Microsoft has devised to give people, with no lives the chance to brag about something. For every achievement you receive you gain points, which are added up to form your "gamer score". So right out of the box, there is the challenge to not only complete the game but now there is the challenge to do the tasks within a game to gain an achievement. One game that has recently come out that takes advantage of this system is Gears of War 2. One of the achievements is to get 100,000 kills. On an average playthrough of the entire game you get about 1000 kills, and takes about 12 hours. Since most people don’t play through games 100 times, they will be playing online for a really long time to gain that achievement.
The next hook is the "multiplayer experience". You can go online via Xbox Live (or Playstion network for PS3 owners) and test you skills against other people all over the world. If you are not familiar with online video game play, it is a place you can go not only to play a game against other people but also a place to be ridiculed, cursed at, put down, and harassed by I'll tempered children and adults who are not content with what real life holds. But for a gamer none of this matters. Of course it is also a good place to hang out with distant friends and chat about life while running around in a digital environment. As sad as it may sound, I have a couple prominent memories with friends that involve hanging out in a game.
Now some game developers have taken the idea of online play to the next level by creating the Genre known as an MMO or Massive Multiplayer online. That means Hundreds of thousands of people are playing in the same game at once. The developers of MMO’s have created entire worlds for people to wander and meet people instead of living their lives here with the rest of us. Things like this like this have successfully created a class of people who live in front of a computer. The first time I sat down to check out an MMO I was sucked in. Since first tried this type of game I have literally spent months of my life in this game and I still have yet to see everything. The MMO pulls me in through the never ending stories that are in this game and the challenge to level up and see the sights of the “world”.
The last thing that pulls me in is the chance to experience a compelling story by not just watching it, but playing through it. It takes the idea that movies bring us, to a whole new level. Not only are you watching those giant aliens getting shot: but you are pulling the trigger. You’re not watching that detective follow the trail of a killer; you are picking up the clues and looking at them.
So all because of a love struck plumber, a paper boy, a hedgehog, and a disfigured yellow head that eats dots I have spent a couple grand and wasted many months of my life due to addiction. I now have the ability to talk and write about videos for hours if given the chance; and that is the intellectual equivalent of going to college for four years to study the cultural significance of lamps.
After making all that a part of my life for 10 years, I expected it to be difficult to give it all up, but not this difficult. In the mean time I plan to play a game once or twice a week at someone else’s house until I am cut off and forced out of this 100%.
So in closing I must inform parents to limit the time they let their kids play video games and I encourage you to not allow a video game console in your house unless you kid has friends and is involved in a sport. If anyone hears of a job that pays to talk about games and game related topics please let me know. And don't ever forget, the noob combo should not be used by noobs.
I am now 1 month clean of owning a video game console, and 2 weeks clean of any form of game playing. The latter has an 83% chance of changing.
