The Game Dame

On Saturday my desktop’s monitor died. It went kablooey in the morning so I had to stare the rest of the day in the face without the prospect of WoW. I pouted until mid-afternoon.

By dinner time, I had come to the tough realization that I had been very addicted to WoW. I kept wandering around the apartment looking for… what? I don’t know. I was restless. I walked from the bedroom to the living room, into the office — and then made the entire circuit again and again. I petted the cats. One appreciated it, the other asked me, uncivilly, to shove off. I took two naps. My husband did his usual Saturday stuff, keeping an eye on me and wondering what he could do to cheer me up. My primary emotion was sadness. I missed my friends. I missed the automatic mindlessness of cranking up WoW when I didn’t know what else to do. Or, more often, when I didn’t want to face something else I had to do or think about. I felt lonely, having been jerked away from a social circle without my consent. I also felt unexplicably guilt-ridden, like I was letting someone down, but I didn’t know who it was.

Sunday was even harder. The entire day drew out before me like a long shadow at sunset — and felt just as cold. I dusted off Elder Scrolls: Oblivion for the Xbox 360. I hated it. I started a new class 4 or 5 different times. I couldn’t get the hang of the controls. There were too many spells for the D-pad hotkeys (it’s probably a MUCH better game on the PC). The hint book I had bought last year is HORRIBLY written and I wasn’t finding it helpful at all. I kept wondering, “Why am I banging my head against this game??!?” And yet I continued to try. I felt compelled to fill up the brain-space.

Sunday is the one night a week we allow ourselves to splurge on a restaurant for dinner. We went to Panera. I tried making conversation with my husband about truly bizarre topics, mostly centered around facing one’s own limitations. Afterwards we browsed Barnes & Noble, a free pastime we both enjoy. There’s a Best Buy in the same shopping center and I begged for us to window-shop the monitors. “Oooo, pretty.” In the bookstore, I couldn’t get myself interested in anything I touched, fiction or nonfiction. I noted the horribly sad state of the SciFi/Fantasy genre (more on that in a future post). The predominating emotion was loss.

This morning I woke up cranky and resentful. Nothing pleased me. The weather was bleak, yet the holiday filled the parks and beaches too much for me to enjoy them. Again I tried playing Oblivion, this time finding a bit of enjoyment in it as I solved some of the frustrations (turning up the brightness so I didn’t get lost in caves, pausing the action a lot to switch spells, etc.). At some point in mid-afternoon I started to achieve a little peace. I cleaned off the top of my dresser. I sorted some clothes to take to Goodwill. I came up with the idea for this post and some others. I realized there are a lot of things I want to do around  the house on my I’ve-been-meaning-to list. I even started thinking that losing WoW might turn out to be a good thing for me in the long run.

By the way, thank you all for the kind comments and emails you’ve sent. They have definitely helped take some of the sting out of this whole situation.

Date of goodbye post: March 30, 2009.

Date of “official” last post: April 8, 2009.

Now, look at BRK’s Achievements listed in the armory. The date of his most recent achievement is April 18, 2009. Also note that Argent Aspiration and Dual Talent Specialization could only be accomplished after the release of 3.1 which came out on April 14, 2009.

I say all this not to be critical; BRK’s life is his own and he owes us nothing by way of explanation. (One obvious explanation is that he gave his account to someone else, like one of his kids or a friend.) However, if it really is BRK himself, I bring it up to ask this question:

How addictive really is WoW?

It’s one thing to become bored with the game or to discover a new hobby to replace it (another game, a different activity, etc.). In those cases, I think addiction to the specific game of WoW is not very difficult to overcome. There are plenty of cases of people transferring their addictions (e.g., smokers or drinkers become overeaters).

However, it’s a completely different ballgame to quit something addictive when you have nothing to replace it. Now, I’m not saying that BRK or anyone else who quits WoW to spend time with their families doesn’t really love their families. Of course they do. And 99.99999% of the time, they love their families WAY more than they love WoW or even their WoW friends. But desire is not enough to overcome addiction, is it? It’s like saying in a marriage “all you need is love” when we know that’s a huge oversimplification and marriage really takes a lot of work and effort on top of the love. Plenty of people desire to quit smoking, narcotics, and alcohol, but cannot do it by willpower alone. Sometimes they can never do it at all, even with help. 

So my big questions are:

1. 1. Is WoW an addiction like the ones used in examples above? 
2. 2. Is gaming itself an addiction? 
3. 3. If no, then why is it so hard to quit, no matter what’s at stake (e.g., your marriage, your job)? 
4. 4. If yes, then how do we address this as gamers (whether we are at risk or our friends are) and as a community of concerned humans?