Quote:
Originally Posted by DayInTheLife  Quit completely. Let the gaming world go on without you.
I did, and now I realize how much time I spent building up characters and achieving goals that did not really exist. Amounted to absolutely nothing; it was just a way of escaping life for the time I was playing.
Life is a much better game.  |
The reason I don't is I ask myself if I do this here and now with games (i.e. let them play me instead of me playing them) what else in life will be the same type of problem? I find that most of my actions and habits accurately mirror my life in more ways than one. So if I have a habit of doing a partial job on one type of task chances are I do it in others. So if I cannot play video games without them mastering me what other area of my life am I being the slave to? What future things or devices will I be a slave to? So I am chosing to attempt to master it.
To me a good analogy would be a person who overeats by 2-3x the appropriate ammount any time he/she eats good food or goes to an all you can eat restaurant. A solution might be to stop eating all good food or not visiting all you can eat restaurants but what happens when he/she does eat something tasty? or goes to an all you can eat food place? I think that those bad habits will creep back into his/her life.
Let me ask you this DayInTheLife. What do you do for fun? When video games are simply a way to have fun then there is no difference between them, TV, movies, books, football, or any other form of fun. Even those things can control our lives.
@imbalance I would also challenge you to think about the reasons why you play video games. Do you play them to avoid something? Is it a way of escape? Is there a deeper reason that you are driven to video games?
The reason I mention this is that for the longest while (my first 3-4 years of college) I played video games as a way to escape responsibility and life. I was powerful in the game. In life I was a failure and yet in the game I was a master at my class. No one knew that I was a flawed hurting guy. They just knew me as my avatar Andruil. I could have a mask on in there and no one would ever be the wiser. Not to mention I didn't have to take the mask off for any reason whatsoever. I was more relaxed around my online game friends because I had something in common with them.
Well thats how my bad habit got started. Sadly it didn't quite break when I got over the lack of confidence and self defeating tapes that I played in my head. It was just too familiar and had become a part of my comfort zone to not do it.