Over at West Karana, Tipa wrote a brief but insightful post about what MMORPGs leave us, in the end, when we leave them. She includes this haunting comment about an ultra-hardcore WoW player:
He’ll look back on his life up to where he started playing WoW, and then see where it continues after he stopped, and it will be as if those days spent playing that game were as if he’d been in a coma for several years.
That’s how I feel about my years in EverQuest. Like I was in a coma.
And here, I can relate. Before I got married, and even a bit afterward, my life was wildly unbalanced when I looked at gaming in relation to everything else. I got up in the morning, went to my job, then came home and did nothing but game and watch movies until bedtime. Rinse and repeat. We’re talking a bulk of 2000-2005 here, where I reveled in the uncomplicated nature of a bachelor with a fun passion. And yet I couldn’t delude myself that the sheer amount of time I was plugging into these games was “healthy”, especially when I hit burnout.
Burnout on a MMO used to scare the living crap out of me. It really did. One day I would log on and realize that I didn’t want to play anymore, that it all felt like work — and I got freaked out because I suddenly was without this dependable entertainment-slash-lifestyle upon which I “needed”. I’d get depressed, I’d fish around for another fix, and I hated thinking about how many hours, how many days I put into a game for… what?
The first year of my marriage was a tough transition from this bachelor lifestyle to something approaching balance. Even then, I would game too much and neglect together time too often. My wife would note that my mood was often impacted by the game I was playing — a stressful dungeon dive would make me cranky, and late nights would leave me sleepy and grumpy. When Big Red Kitty did his farewell post, touching on how he suddenly realized just how much he’d unbalanced his priorities in life because of gaming, it hit home with me. That isn’t something I ever wanted for myself.
I can’t pinpoint the moment in my life when I started getting a fix on my priorities and striking something close to a balance between work, family, God and play, but it happened, and it’s still in the process of being ironed out. Playing MMOs, like any hobby, has a lot of positive benefits — it’s stress reducing (usually), relaxing, enjoyable, interactive, social and competitive. I always point to the very real relationships and friendships that have formed over my years of gaming as one of the things I cherish the most. Since becoming a blogger, I’ve loved writing (as the sixteen posts a day attest) and enjoy the conversations that we have between bloggers and readers and developers on this shared interest. There are great things about gaming, and I feel better about engaging in them now that I’ve stepped back from investing so much of my life into them.
But the pull is there. I actually had a heart-to-heart with my wife yesterday about writing about games, in which she engaged with a straight face, that I sometimes struggle with the worry that I am putting too much of myself in just this one area of my life when I could be using my time to better effect elsewhere. I need to constantly challenge myself about that, to be willing to make changes if necessary. My wife knows that I rely on her to be the objective observer of my level of involvement — she won’t hesitate to let me know if I’m spending too much time away from the family or work because gaming and blogging about gaming is sometimes less complicated. I don’t get the stereotyped “wife aggro” from her because she’s seen me drop everything to give her or my son more time, and because I ask her at least once a week if I’m falling back into my old ways or not.
I guess I’m just trying to share, in a clumsy way, a short testimony about how I’ve learned that it’s better to engage in MMOs, like any hobby, in moderation and with variety. I’m okay if burnout happens with a title, because even if there’s not another game on deck to try out, I always have so much else to do at home, from reading to working on the house, that my hours are filled just fine. I am no longer a slave to my habit, but have put it under my thumb.
Great post, Syp.
I don’t think that I ever got into MMOs as hardcore as you describe, but even the level of play that I engaged in (1-4 hours per day, religiously) was way too much, and I robbed myself of a good chunk of my life, IMO.
As Tipa says – never again will I play a game that forces me to submit to giving up that much of myself. If I find myself falling into that trap again, I’ll drop the game.
I think I’m in your 2000-05 stage.
It’s awesome.
I’ve never burnt out on a game, I just kind of loose steam and drift on to something else. As well as gaming my other passions are music and art so I’ve always got things here and there that are grabbing my attention and preventing me from falling into the gaming abyss.
Having myriad things that interest you is something I think everyone needs. Why have one thing you love to dedicate yourself to when you can have many things you love to dedicate smaller chunks of your to?
Then why have a happy balanced life when you can have unobstructed PURPLE VISION!?
Nice insightful post, Syp.
RL changes everything, eh Syp?
Let me know if you figure out a way to play (beyond hanging out in town) with the baby on one arm.
I haven’t, but I’ve heard some do that.
The moderation is a worthy hinge point.
I think a lot of MMO players treat their connection to the games as if they were a personal relationship, rather than a form of entertainment or a hobby. Then when they break up with the game, they feel hollow inside as if the time was wasted, much like breaking up with a girlfriend / boyfriend.
It’s interesting to note that you’ve mapped this out, not as a relationship, but how it relates to your relationship. Sounds like double-speak, lol but I think you may know the difference that I mean.
The same is true as a writer. You can become married to your written word. =)
Being a single guy, maybe we have too much time on our hands. I don’t know but I feel you.
I think it was the bible that said, all things must be done in moderation. If not some other ancient writing or proverb did.
I really don’t know what to say other then I feel ya. Great post.
Im working on that myself. I finally quit wow a few months back. I play Warhammer about an hour a day and longer on weekends, if something comes up in RL I go and do that now. I hope in Champions; I can do the same thing, nothing serious, just have fun. For awhile there, wow was running my life, gotta grind this to get this kinda thing. I just do not want to get in that hole again.
@ Sleepy – I usually play when he’s down for a nap or at night, after he and my wife are asleep. If they’re awake, it’s family time, plain and simple.
I have to be honest and say I really know the feeling. When I was in college I played EQ2 a lot. If I wasn’t in class or at work I was in game. I had to be given my position.
After two years I started to get really tired of it. The guild wasn’t performing well so my attitude darkened. When as my mood declined performance declined and the cycled repeated. I needed to get out. At the time, so did my other officers. We called it a day and retired on top.
I use the term retired a lot to remind myself that what happened before can’t happen again. I spend a lot of time on MMOs and writing about them but I do other things. My priorities have really changed.
We get older and we just want different things. I’m currently in that stage of looking for a little balance via marriage. Finding a nice girl these days can be tough though!
Just to be devil’s advocate:
How much of is it spending too much time on gaming in general, and how much of it is spending too much time on one particular game? At the very least, there is something extra pernicious about pouring all your time into one particular game.
Furthermore, how much of the problem is a disconnect between reality and expectations. That is, some mmo’s project a sense of building something lasting and persistent. But this is an illusion, and when it is eventually shattered, there is resentment. If you had understood and embraced the transitory nature of your relationship of an mmo, would the inevitable end be less crushing? Of course, without this illusion, would some types of mmos become unplayable, or least unplayable for more than a month or two?
I think the real “problem” with gaming compared to other hobbies, activities, or relationships is that when the relationship with a game (inevitably) breaks down, you are left with no booby prize. If you were obsessed with building a garage, when the obsession abides you are still left with a garage. If your love of learning compels you to go to college, when the love fades you still have the credential. If a marriage loses some of it’s luster, you still perhaps have kids, a friendship, a house, something (hopefully). When a game relationship dies, the most you can hope for is to sell off your characters.
@cybmab
What about memories? Not that I want to be on the side of MMOs on this one (I think they can be life-swallowing pits of despair just as much as anyone else, and see a friend or two really toss away their lives on WoW), but I think you’d be short changing MMOs if you didn’t say they at least left you with memories.
Vacations are similar in my mind – especially “real” vacations where you have to do your research and plan your travel route as opposed to just sitting at an all-inclusive beach resort and being served margaritas all day. At the end of that “real” vacation you don’t really have anything to show for all the time and money you invested (sometimes not even pictures if your damn camera gets stolen or the memory card goes on the fritz), but you have the experience and you as a person hopefully have learned from it.
Speaking of pictures, I’m pretty sure I have a crapload of screenshots from Anarchy Online and WAR hidden somewhere on my computer… I should dig them up and take a walk down memory lane sometime…