As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2 worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft addiction is a good first step, but it won't do him any good if he lapses into addictive behavior in another aspect of his life.
It sounds like the poster is a really motivated guy, and lionhearted is correct in his sibling post here that that can be a strong force for productivity if you can master it. I really hope that Tom manages to do so, because at 21, he's got his whole (non-destroyed) life ahead of him. Losing two years to an addiction is a big deal, but it's something you can overcome and possibly even come out stronger from.
Edit: Since I talked a little bit about my own circumstances in a reply, I might as well go into detail here, particularly since it looks like the actual linked post might be a lie/exaggeration. I played Final Fantasy XI (an MMO, unlike most games in the series) from the fall of 2004 until the fall of 2009, and World of Warcraft from then until January of 2011.
During that time, my life outside of the game basically stopped. I dropped out of college, I moved back in with my parents, I stopped programming and reading, which were my main interests before the MMOs came along. For a few of the years in the middle I didn't work or even really leave the house. Eventually I got pushed out because my parents knew that what I was doing wasn't a healthy lifestyle, but I did just enough to adapt and got a job an an apartment and continued gaming.
What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs. Eventually it hit critical mass and I quit FFXI, thinking that the problem was just that I needed a better game. A year of WoW convinced me otherwise, and I've been putting my life back together since then. I (obviously) don't mind talking about it now, and I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone has them.
This kind of thing is way older than Starcraft, or electronic games for that matter.
One of my physics professors apparently had a similar experience with bridge. If I remember correctly, his bio said that he was a Life Master at age 21. You apparently have to play one hell of a lot of bridge hands to become a Life Master, and keep in mind that this was before the internet. When I asked him, he reported that basically bridge took over his whole life for several years.
And then he recovered and apparently had a pleasant career and got tenure and everything.
And now I must control my essay-writing addiction and go build some software. ;)
The difference between Starcraft and heroin is that the vast majority of Starcraft users do not become addicts. In fact, only a very, very small portion of users do - heroin has no claims to the same.
This also brings social gaming in as a concern - what is the moral stance on games what have been specifically and deliberately engineered with said biological and psychological pathways in mind, with addiction as an intended outcome as opposed to an accidental and marginal one?
It's morally wrong to trick someone biological and psychological in order for them to play games in order to generate income for a game company. But I think there's a way to balance between making users like the game thus generate income for the company and making users biologically and psychologically rely on the game.
In the end, is there really any difference between making a game that is fun and a game that is addicting? I really don't think there is even if they went in with the idea of "lets make this game addicting".
I've never once seen a game that is not fun, but is addicting. Although my friends have said Master of Orion 3 fits that description, but I never actually saw them ever play it so I think it was a joke.
There's a great talk about this from some guy at Digital Illusions. He found some definition of what a "game" is and compared that definition with Farmville, it failed on every single bullet. I can't remember the exact details but it contained things like it has to be challenging, a skilled player should easily beat a newbie, not requiring grinding. What's interesting is that the definitions are not designed with the sole purpose of bashing farmville, all of them really make sense and origin from even before computer era.
If somebody knows where to find the talk please post it, my google-fu is weak today. He also compares the iphone to a swiss army knife and the ipad to a "swiss-army-kitchen-utensil" (i.e too bad to be really useful and too big to fit in your pocket). The talk was just a few weeks after the first ipad release. It also contains alot of other talk about the future of gaming for the general masses, facebook games and gaming anything in life(like shopping), etc. If that's enough to trigger anyones memory.
A very small percentage of people who have ever tried heroin are current users. Of course, it's much, much smaller for everyone who's tried to play Starcraft, but the point remains.
There is a clear difference, though. Heroin and other addicting drugs create a physical addiction. If you are addicted to heroin, nicotine, caffeine, etc., your body really does need the drug to function normally, and you will go through physical withdrawal if you can't get the drug.
Activities that people get addicted to (like gambling or videogames) are only psychologically addicting. Yes, of course psychological addiction does have physical effects (dopamine levels in your brain, for instance), but we can still clearly differentiate addictive drugs from addictive activities.
Before anyone talks about addiction everyone needs to understand what they mean by physical and mental. Most people think they do but don't.
To be addicted simply means one will seek out the thing they are addicted to at great cost. They'll neglect all sorts of important things and put the object of their addiction above all else.
To be dependent means ones body needs a substance to function normal. Usually this means keeping withdrawl at bay.
You can be dependent but not addicted.
The only difference between drug addiction and an addiction to, say, playing games is that you are not dependent upon the games. In reality however the cost of both are just about equal. The one difference being that many substances will cost you your health directly while games will cost you your health indirectly. In both cases however the psychology is the same and so is the neurobiology. But because games don't literally replace already existing neurotransmitters you don't get dependence. But what you do get with games, just like substances, is your reward pathway being excited to the point where you begin seeking out the thing that excited that pathway over and over. Nothing else excites that pathway as much and so you then crave that thing.
People look at gaming and drugs and think its a no-brainer that they're so clearly different but they aren't. Addiction is addiction no matter the object of addiction.
You know what the real difference between gaming addiction and drug addiction is? Stigma. What everyone thinks they know about addicts/addiction.
Sounds right. Note: caffeine physical addiction lasts only a day or so. Similar with nicotine. The psychological addiction is far stronger and longer-lasting.
Depends on how much you're used to (http://www.hopkinsmedicine.org/press_releases/2004/09_29_04....): Typically, onset of symptoms occurred 12 to 24 hours after stopping caffeine, with peak intensity between one and two days, and for a duration of two to nine days.
Anecdotally, I know someone who was on three pots a day, and he had a miserable month when he quit cold-turkey. Some of that was withdrawal, but some of that was also probably him having to adjust to a wake-sleep cycle without the aid of stimulants.
I think it would also be fair to not entirely blame the heroin. I think in any addiction it is important not to fall into the trap of "<x> is addictive" or "<x> is bad" - you need to make sure you don't fall into similar addictions in the future, which means recognising it isn't just that one thing, but also you.
I think that lack of self-control is a critical part in both heroin addicts and game addicts, but the heroin jump-starts the addictive cycle within your brain directly while the gaming takes a slower and more indirect route.
I'll absolutely agree to differences of degree between addictions. I'll also absolutely agree to differences of susceptibility between people.
At the same time, there's a huge, active, and concerted effort in many areas of commerce to leverage dopamine and related pathways to create habitual consumptive patterns. Games, TV shows, junk food, cigarettes, gambling, narcotics, online activities (HN included), and other factors.
Any time you hear about 'gamification', hearing something described as "crack", or other tricks for sites or apps, you're looking about influencing the dopamine system.
It's something which I'm becoming increasingly convinced is a case where commercial/corporate interests and profit seeking are at odds with greater societal well-being.
I've had next to no direct experience with narcotics. I've read some about it, and seen the effects on others (many times tragic). I'm familiar with the Opium Wars and the effects of heroin on China under British rule.
There was a book title some years back which rambled for a long sentence to the effect that the problem with smack was that it was so hard to quit and then once you did the worse thing was that it felt do damned good when you did use it again.
An earlier title pretty much sums it up: "It's so good, don't even try it once".
I was also probably addicted to FFXI (played from the release of CoP til 2009ish), so hey fellow ex-FFXIer. I pulled myself out of it when I realised I wasn't getting any of my PhD done and then went and managed to pull that off with the remaining time I had left. Now I won't play any MMOs because I'm concerned that I might fall back into old habits. I play D3 and other games that I can dip in and out of, but no mass organised stuff like FFXI needed.
The addiction for me was more of the organisation of stuff - I co-ran one of the most successful linkshells (guild) on my server for a while, and was in charge of many raids - I loved it and was good at it. I'd probably make a great middle manager or something, heh. (No thanks.)
Anyway yeah, it's possible to "get out" and still reclaim your life. I have a tenured position at a university now and completed two successful postdocs since I quit. I don't regret having played though - I met some excellent people through FFXI, many of whom are still very close friends today. It's just a matter of having the ability to self assess where you are and the guts to pull yourself out of it if you realise that there's an issue. I know I can do that now, but I also don't want the temptation to fall back in.
It's a small (virtual) world... when I read your username I thought it sounded familiar, and now I'm pretty sure that I've been a jerk to you on IRC before! Congrats on quitting FFXI and finishing your PhD, and greetings from a certain former #BG member with a four letter name starting with z.
/me prepares himself for public humiliation if he's wrong
I was addicted to DOTA just like Tom and wasted 1 whole year on it, and almost dropped out of school(thanks to loose quality control in China's higher education system, but I'm not sure it's a good thing).
I got out -- and I'm the first one out -- my little DOTA addicted circle who did it.
What got me out is programming, I learned PHP/Java/Python/Javascript/Android etc... since I quited playing DOTA all day.
I still play DOTA, but very controllable and sometimes didn't play it in months.
>What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs
Same thing built up with Minecraft for me. What a lost amount of time :/. So fun at the time, but there is only so many Legos I can afford to spend time on.
I stay away from any game with "craft" in the name - knowing that I have a hard time not not playing video games with no end. Then very recently I had my second back surgery. I purchased Minecraft for Xbox 360 as I knew I'd be able to lay in bed and play for hours on end, which is what I'd have to do to recover anyway.
Well, a week and a half later I pretty much mastered it, and purchased the PC version because it had more features.
I've spent A LOT of time playing this game recently. Then I got onto PVP and Faction servers. Playing with others and the thrill it brings to blow up a base with a TNT cannon and steal everyone's shit is very addicting.
I knew I was getting into trouble when I bought the original Xbox version. In a moment of weakness I purchased the PC version and the number of hours I spend playing is not very healthy.
Luckily for me, my wife will kill/leave me before it ever gets really bad, so eventually I'll get pulled away and bored with it. I usually do. I hope. :)
Sounds like an entirely appropriate use of the technology. It also sheds a completely different light on the analogy between addictive games and addictive painkillers. ;)
How in the world, somebody with that kind of martial arts training, got in the best fitness of his life became addict to alcohol and weed and games? Doesn't martial arts requires tons of disciplines?
He was addicted to martial arts. If you think about it for a second it makes sense. The martial arts thing was the same as the starcraft thing, just a different subject. If you consider that he has an obsessive disorder that presents as addiction, you can put those two things under the same umbrella. Obsession can seem like discipline.
I've long suspected they're the same thing - or, at least, on a spectrum together. I know that I just don't "feel right" if I work less than I want to, or if I skip out on a workout session I had planned on. And I know that with myself and other people I train jiu-jitsu with, we will train with injuries that rationally we know we should not. When we talk about it amongst ourselves, we say things like "I just can't sit on the couch doing nothing." I suspect this "discipline" to get back to training is similar to obsession and compulsion.
Martial arts, like most things in life, optimally require two things: talent and discipline. Rarely though, do you find someone with both. Yet with either one, you can get pretty good at something.
It sounds like the poster is a really motivated guy, and lionhearted is correct in his sibling post here that that can be a strong force for productivity if you can master it. I really hope that Tom manages to do so, because at 21, he's got his whole (non-destroyed) life ahead of him. Losing two years to an addiction is a big deal, but it's something you can overcome and possibly even come out stronger from.
Edit: Since I talked a little bit about my own circumstances in a reply, I might as well go into detail here, particularly since it looks like the actual linked post might be a lie/exaggeration. I played Final Fantasy XI (an MMO, unlike most games in the series) from the fall of 2004 until the fall of 2009, and World of Warcraft from then until January of 2011.
During that time, my life outside of the game basically stopped. I dropped out of college, I moved back in with my parents, I stopped programming and reading, which were my main interests before the MMOs came along. For a few of the years in the middle I didn't work or even really leave the house. Eventually I got pushed out because my parents knew that what I was doing wasn't a healthy lifestyle, but I did just enough to adapt and got a job an an apartment and continued gaming.
What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs. Eventually it hit critical mass and I quit FFXI, thinking that the problem was just that I needed a better game. A year of WoW convinced me otherwise, and I've been putting my life back together since then. I (obviously) don't mind talking about it now, and I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone has them.