Current Events > Were you ever addicted to video games growing up?

(+) Yeah! (+)

I Was seriously addicted to them as a teenager/early 20s as a coping mechanism to escape from my traumatized life. 10+ hour a day wow sessions. Everyday. Barely any sleep. Barely eating and neglecting hygiene. Never saw myself as an addict even when i smelled like dogshit for days from not showering and neglected all of my responsibilities.

Now I just play them before/after work/gym to destress. They are fine in moderation. But they can be like hardcore drugs to some people.

You couldn't find time to eat/sleep/shower in the other 14 hours of the day?

Dakimakura posted...

You couldn't find time to eat/sleep/shower in the other 14 hours of the day?

Na. Didn't give a shit. Was seriously depressed.

Sounds like you were suffering from depression not video game addiction.

Yeah I was addicted to runescape at some points of my life

https://gamefaqs.gamespot.com/a/forum/9/9932f23e.jpg

I guess an example. This is 1 month of my osrs progress from a few years ago. 272 hours efficiently played in that month.

But I wasn't 100% efficient since I was averaging like 60-70k fish xp an hour (100% efficient is like 110k to 120k xp an hour). So likely played 400-500 hours that month. Srs.

I kept up a pace similar to this for basically 10 months total (4 months initial, year and half break, another 6 months).
And before that for about another 12 months I did play a lot tho toned down. Maybe like 200 hour to 300 hour months. This was while I was working like 50-60 hours a week tho. At this time I was very sleep deprived.

I wouldnt say addicted but it was pretty much my only hobby until I was like 15.

Not really.

I played video games growing up but it was mostly something I did when I didn't have anything better to do. I'd drop whatever game I was playing immediately if a friend called and wanted to do something.

It wasn't until my 30s that video games became my primary interest and something I do pretty much every day.

Nope. I played a ton of GTA VC & Skyrim, but not addicted like I needed a fix.

No. I think I only had one embarrassing moment where I raged over the mic in CS:S - it woke my mom up and she let me have it.

I mostly sat at the computer and played bass while posting here in my teens. I'd play some TF2 or Counterstrike and then noodle on the guitar after dying/before respawning.

No, I actually was less of a gamer I think when I was younger.

I still am.

Also I was hardcore addicted to Runescape and several FPS games back in the day. Still revisit Runescape a few times a month tbh, but I am woefully behind on everything (still even doing the 5th Age quests...).

Still am

I was addicted to owning noobs on halo 2 for a long time. Now I hardly play

Nah. Now my step-brother...he played WoW from the time we got home from school until bedtime every day for YEARS.

For a while around 12-14

not really. I liked playing them, but even if I was playing for hours at a time I wouldn't really care if my mom said to do something else, or if we had to go somewhere and I couldn't bring/play games.

that was until my cousin gave me his dreamcast and jet set radio and tony hawk's pro skater 2. Those games were like crack to my 8 year old brain. If I wasn't playing them, I was skateboarding pretending I was.
Completely relived that addiction when bomb rush cyberfunk got released last summer. great game, I probably put 100+ hours into it.

Video games are my main hobby now but they were my second or third hobby when I was a teen. In middle school they were my main hobby as well. I kind of regressed in that sense but it's more like I am mentally ill now so I just isolate.

In 8th grade my mom took away my video games for a good reason and I felt a purely psychological withdrawal. It didn't help that she thought it would make me focus on school at a time when I was being bullied terribly and was done with the entire middle school system and how it ganged up on students and was too lenient on repeat offenders and too harsh on people like me who just wanted to be left alone from the other kids bullying them.

Video games werent as good as they are now when I was growing up. I played Super Mario bros 1, 2 and 3 a lot when I was in high school.

I became more addicted in college when games got better. Seems like every week I was going to GameStop to buy a ps1 or computer game.

Hexenherz posted...

I still am.

Also I was hardcore addicted to Runescape and several FPS games back in the day. Still revisit Runescape a few times a month tbh, but I am woefully behind on everything (still even doing the 5th Age quests...).

Definitely. I decided not to play RuneScape again but it's a fantastic game. Back in around 2006-2010 most of the guys at school were all playing it. So many good memories of Pest Control, Castle Wars, Clan Wars.

my grades kinda tanked in the 8th-9th grade. then again my learning handicap didn't help things either.

gaming kinda did some damage to it too.

KanWan posted...

Lol

I was completely addicted to RuneScape to the point I had to come up with all these weird ways to quit. Tbf I did have many friends I met through the years playing the game that I didnt want to lose.

but yeah, that game robbed me of so many hours of my life

i just get hyperfocused for a certain amount of time and once that wears off i can quit

Phantasy star online was the only single game that I got genuinely addicted to. Like, literally the only single thing I wanted to do 24/7 and caused me not to give a single shit about college later in the year.

Back when the original and version 2 released on the dreamcast our household still had 56K dial-up internet at that point, and because I used to play it so much I would tie up the phone like. It wasn't a problem for my older brother since he paid for his own phoneline in our room, but for the rest of the house it was the line the internet was tied to. My mom's friends used to page her complaining they could never get through when I was online, and since they were calling constantly that would knock me offline and have me heated as hell.

I used to get into shouting matches about that damn game and the internet, and my dad would step in and shut me down quick lol. I was 18 and about the graduate highschool when that game dropped but I didn't even want to go to school in the last like 3 and a half months/from february to may.

It got to the point where to teach me a lesson they didn't even bother like say taking away the PS1, older consoles, or even the dreamcast itself......they just took that one single game from me and it was enough to have me mad as fuck and eventually apologizing.

I calmed down by the time episode 1 and 2 released on the gamecube and then eventually on the og xbox, but for that first year on the dreamcast with the original release and then version 2?....man I had it real bad.

I like to think that it was because PSO was my first actual online game I ever played, and with RPGs being my favorite genre I didn't know how to act lol. There was other video games where I did play them way more than normal...maple story for a short period of time (a period I regret to this day), city of heroes/villains, phantasy star universe on the xbox 360 and world of warcraft from the base game up to wrath of the lich king, but they weren't as bad as what PSO was for me.

I loved PSO but couldn't connect to the internet so always just played solo :(

I got addicted to GTA 3 in 2002.

First year I had the game I just used cheats and stayed on the first island. Glitches ruined my save and no cars or people spawned on the island other than taxi cabs and police cars.

I didn't actually beat the game until 2004, I think. After playing Vice City

My player mode in NBA 2k11 got me too. I was in the playoffs and did not care about anything else.

Addicted? Maybe I was at some points

Addicted?no , but obsessed with a particular game at a give point?yes.

I'd say I was heavily involved in games at one point in the early 90s, but by mid 90s I was over it, and started only caring about 1 or 2 games at a time, but not to the same degree as before

I got kind of addicted to Football Manager at one point.

In a 'shit, it's 3AM! Oh well, just one more match' kind of way.

Dakimakura posted...

Sounds like you were suffering from depression not video game addiction.

This.

Can't say I've ever been "addicted" but I have been hyper-focused on certain games before.

ai123 posted...

I got kind of addicted to Football Manager at one point.

In a 'shit, it's 3AM! Oh well, just one more match' kind of way.

Then you lose a match and have to play another one because who goes to sleep after a loss?

I had many periods with spending every second of free time gaming, but it never impacted anything else. As in I never had bad grades because of gaming and I never missed work. I also never stayed at home to play when I could've gone outside to do something interesting.

But yeah, still way too many periods where steam account was showing over 100h played in last two weeks.

There was a point where I would wake up at 3 am so I could game before school. Not sure how long I did that for.

I don't know if it could be called an addiction but I certainly would obsess over a game whenever I got one new to me.

But they can be like hardcore drugs to some people.

that's by design, and they're only getting better at it.