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How Warcraft Really Does Wreck Lives
An anonymous reader writes "There's a great blog post about how World of Warcraft can ruin lives, it's written by a person that was for a long time a member of the largest council on what is now one of the oldest guilds in the world." This is a story that is very familiar to a lot of folks. I know people who are actively wrecking their lives and risking their jobs by playing too much of a video game.
He played for 70 days out of a year. That's "only" 19.something percent. If you're the sort to only need 4 or 5 hours sleep a night you could easily fit that in beside a pretty normal life (9 - 5 job, a light social life, chores, etc). If giving 1/5th of your day over to a hobby is a sign that your life has been devoured then you need to sort out your priorities. Everyone should dedicate that much time at least to stuff they enjoy. Perhaps it's a bit narrowminded to concentrate on a single activity, but it's better than spending all that time at the office or wasted in a bar*.
* Ok, maybe the bar is ok..
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I have had several friends turn to World of Warcraft, and their subsequent addictions might, of course, have been considered unhealthy. However, their overall living situations were equally unhealthy, and World of Warcraft was merely serving as an escape from conditions they felt could not be changed.
When people who are obsessed with absolute personal accountability realize that not everything is a conscious decision, then the world will be a better place overall. True addiction, meanwhile, knows no boundaries.
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Wow, like IRC (and a lot of the rest of the internet) is not just destructive. It *can* be a handy sandbox that prepares people for real life.
I played WoW for about a year, running a major guild. What did I learn?
That I'm good at self depreciating humour.
That I can get people to follow me by being the first one to stand up and provide direction.
That leading people is more about knowing where you are going than how you are going to get there.
How to negotiate peace between two people who have genuinely lost sight of what's important.
Which of those skills have turned out to be useful in my current career? 100% of them. I stand up every day knowing that basically the people I work with are no different to the people I played with, that saying something is better than saying nothing, and that if I get fired hell at least I can enjoy my unemployment hunting for epics with some old friends. It's the same confidence that people who lead sports teams at school get... and now it's available to geeks.
I might point out that being acclimatised to 70 hour working weeks and doing the same boring crap over and over also helps in the real world. Being able to have two priorities and still getting everything done with really limited time isn't exactly bad practice either.
Would I hire ex gamers? Probably. It depends if they have used their time to do something valuable, like learning how to build their confidence, lead, motivate and get along with others - and that's hard to demonstrate.
Like everything else - knowing when you have learned as much as you can and it's time to move on is a big part of determining if online games will be a constructive or destructive thing for you.
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I concur. 30 epics...yawn, yay 2 alts with full tier2 and misc ZG,MC,Ony items...um yea.
The MOMENT my GF said "You should spend more time with me and less with WoW" (cliche'd but true), I dropped WoW. Didn't take me a moment.
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Excellent reply as well. I remember playing Asheron's Call (Turbine Games) for about a year. I was addicted, but I was also unemployed at the time. I played 16-20 hours a day. I only slept when I was going to pass out, and I literally did pass out at the keyboard a few times. I was trying to be like the higher level guys I saw. Those guys everyone aspires to be. What else is there to look forward to in a game nobody can win? You just want to be at the top.
When I started, I had a serious girlfriend. She kept asking me to get a job, but I was content to sit at home and play a video game. I would ignore her calls so I could keep playing, because I knew I couldn't do anything while we talked. She, rightly so, left me a little while later. Losing my girlfriend put me even deeper into the game. I didn't care about anything else, because I hadn't realized how much she mattered until she was gone. The game let me numb my senses to the real world, it became the only reason I kept going.
Eventually, I got a job. I tried to keep playing, but I couldn't keep up with the "hardcore" guys I used to play with. I had turned into one of the guys we made fun of, because they never equalled our stature. They kept going, and I stopped playing. My passing was not missed. The world kept chugging on, and I was aware of the world for the first time after a long period of doing nothing.
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People with very little to do and have addictive personalities are prone to get addicted to anything -- WoW or otherwise. For every major addict that ruins his life, there are dozens that enjoy it responsibly. If WoW weren't around, they'd be addicted to something else -- another game, collecting stamps, stalking people, etc. Addictive personalities have existed for a long, long time.
For my boyfriend & I, we use it as an inexpensive form of entertainment. We raid, but nothing insanely hardcore. 2 nights a week, usually. Other couples watch TV, we play WoW. You can't really beat $15/month ($30 for two) for some quality entertainment.
Whichever way you look at it, people have a choice.
"What the science shows, he says, is that the brain of an addict is fundamentally different from that of a non-addict. Initially, when a person uses hard drugs like heroin or cocaine, the chemistry of the brain is not much affected, and the decision to take the drugs remains voluntary. But at a certain point, he says, a "metaphorical switch in the brain" gets thrown, and the individual moves into a state of addiction characterized by compulsive drug use."
Some drugs--tabacco and meth, for example--are far more aggressive than others in altering brain chemistry in ways that make the choice to quit harder. And some people are far more susceptible than others. But there is no doubt whatsoever that addiction is a perfectly ordinary physiological phenomenon, no different from any other crippling physical disorder, and it affects some people severely enough that they no more have a choice to quit and than a parapelegic has a choice to walk. They literally lack the physiological capacity to do so.
This does not mean that all people are so affected--like any other disease, additions have different effects on different people. Some people get smallpox and live. Others die. No one thinks that anyone has a choice about it.
In the case of addiction, some people's capacity to choose is physiologically limited to the point where they lack the ability to quit on their own, just like some polio patients lack the ability to breathe on their own. I don't see anyone saying, "Whichever way you look at it, polio patients have a choice."
The article I've linked above includes disenting voices, but no one is saying that the brains of addicts aren't fundamentally altered by drug use. They are arguing over what the policy implications of that are, based on some pretty clearly delineated, and extremely stupid, ideological biases on both sides. And non-drug-related things, like compulsive game-playing and compulsive gambling may or may not involve similar physiological changes, but there is no doubt that sometimes people do not have a choice, however much you might want to believe otherwise.
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Maybe you can get in a game of speed chess, but how much fun is it to drop in for 5 to 15 minutes of Monopoly? Or Scrabble? Do you get the guys together for 15 minutes of football? If there's no line at the lift, maybe you can get in a short ski run.
I think your assertion is not only false, but irrelevant. Now it's video games or the internet, before that it was golf and television, and before that it was radio.
There are many activities that can take up large chunks of time. And there are many people who engage in those activities without farking up the other aspects of their lives. Conversely, I can smoke some crack for 5 to 15 minutes. Does that mean crack is likely to be less harmful to my relationships than WoW?
Ok, maybe that's a bad example ;) Point is, what's wrong with taking responsibility for own life rather than blaming a game?
If people do not have a choice, then I am unsympathetic. Automatons are tools, not peers.
I suspect it CAN be a real addiction like meth or heroin. I've known many meth and heroin addicts (my father included).
Psychological addictions are no less addictive, yet their consequenses are minute compared with drug addiction. Hell, I know people (myself included) who can be addicted to anger and malice. I find myself looking for reasons to be angry some days. Just like those kids you knew in high school who would do anything for attention (either addicted or have been neglected at home, I've seen both). But like I said, I'd rather be addicted to emotion or WoW than meth any day. I only play an average of 4 hours a week, depending on what else is going on in my life.
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Over twenty years ago, when I was in college, I was introduced to a group called the SCA, "a medieval history re-enactment group," that had, at the time, been around about twenty years. Over several years of various levels of involvement with the group, I watched many of the same impacts described in TFA happen to people's "real" lives. Tens of thousands of dollars were spent on gear for tournaments over some people's lives; there were affairs and break-ups, alcoholism and job loss. I remember people going off to events without their spouses, having a weekend fling while they were there, and writing it off to an excuse of "being in character" for their chosen persona. In the worst cases, I've witnessed people draw "live steel" against one another, meaning real, sharpened blades came out and challenges were made over some perceived insult to a made-up character.
The SCA isn't the only group that this sort of involvement happens in, though. People in our society want, in the worst way, an escape from mundane reality; they want some sort of control over their environment, and want to be appreciated for the things they do. Take any area of interest (Civil War, Star Wars, News for Nerds, etc.), and somewhere there is some sort of group dedicated to its advancement. Get enough people doing it, you have a society. Concentrate hard enough, you have an alternate reality.
Chances are that we're never going to be able to create a real-world society where everyone is happy with their lot in life and how they integrate with the world around them. Until then, we're going to come up with more and better ways to escape the reality we're in, and those escapes are going to have their addicts. It's kind of unfortunate, and, as TFA points out, can be destructive. I've identified my addictive side, and deal with it as best I can. Through force of will, I only delve into addictive things to a certain degree and get out before I get really hooked (though I've recently discovered that my internal clock, otherwise very accurate, stops working when Civ IV is running; I need mechanical assistance). For those that can do the same, or don't have such addictive behaviors, great. For the others, those who pour their lives into something that doesn't add value in the outside world, well, Darwin calls.
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Updated 6/28/2011