When I was young, I enjoyed playing video games. I enjoyed games like call of duty, madden, and various other Xbox games. I felt that as long as I was playing with friends, that it was social, and thus was not a negative impact on my life.
As I got older, the gaming stalled a bit. As college took over my life, I felt that I could use the games as a way to relax after long days. It seemed to work out as long as I maintained my course work, and was still being social.
Once I graduated from college, my stance on video games seemed to shift. I was working my first full-time job, and I felt I needed more relaxation time, and thus, more video games. As I played more and more, I began to feel a need to play for hours looking to accomplish that next feat or continue my win streaks. It grew to a point where I would play games every day after work, often until 2 or 3 AM.
Over the course of the past few months, I fell deep into video game addiction. I started to focus all of my time and energy on getting better at League of Legends and accomplishing my goals of climbing the ranked ladder. With all of this time spent, I was able to really assess what feelings I experienced and what kept me glued to the screen.
Excitement
As is true for many gamers, the first emotion that I experience when beginning my gaming binges is always excited. On Sunday mornings, I would grab my coffee, turn my phone to mute, and would get my favorite snack in preparation for a long day of games. I remember feeling my heart race as I logged in and queued up for the first game of the day. The excitement mounted after my first win, or maybe after a couple wins when I was at my peak performance.
The key to many games is to trigger a rush of dopamine as you begin to play and begin to excel. Once you get a win, they reward you with “first win bonuses” which incentivize you to get that first win every day. For me, the first win of the day was an awesome feeling because it was the start of a streak. Unfortunately, these win streaks didn’t last, and neither did my excitement.
Diminishing Joy
The feel of your first couple of wins is always exhilarating. Your blood starts flowing and your mood is lifted as you work to get more and more wins. As you play for 3 hours, and 4 hours, this excitement starts to dwindle. You start to get sloppy with your play or maybe your teammates aren’t playing their positions right. You start to get a little annoyed and lose the positive mindset that you started out in.
As you continue to play, game after game, you realize that you’re not winning as much as you want to be. It is true that no win-streak is long enough, and nobody wants to end on a loss. As you continue to play, your joy per win is diminished as the return you get from those games is no longer as powerful.
Tilt
Sure enough, around hour 6-7 of your binge you may start to feel rage. Maybe around hour 8-9 you start to flame your teammates. Whether we like it or not, we inevitably tilt. For those of you who may not know what tilt is, tilting is when you die so many times because the game is imperfect or because your teammates are so bad so you have to let everyone know that this game is trash and that if it worked correctly you wouldn’t be losing.
We all have been here. I for one find myself yelling at my teammates in the least toxic manner while telling everyone in my discord channel that the yasuo top lane is the worst player that’s ever graced league of legends. It happens, and we must learn that this is not healthy.
This tilt is a matter of spending an entire day behind a screen with your eyes glued to the monitor. You simply do not have the focus to perform the tasks as well as you did in hours 1-5. You need to stop playing and do something else. But the binge doesn’t end there.
Despair/Hope
I put despair and hope in the same category for one simple reason: you may start to lose and get down, but there is always the next game. We start to lose or maybe we win a couple more and we get up, but the tilt is just around the corner rearing its ugly head. It may seem like you are going to get through the end of this binge alright and that there won’t be a downfall, but it is coming as soon as you stop.
It is hour 10-12 now you are drained mentally and you are almost ready to call it quits. The fact of the matter is though, you don’t want to admit the game beat you. You don’t want to admit that you can’t do it for this prolonged amount of time. So, you continue playing, until eventually around hour 12-15, you inevitably have to stop.
Regret
Your binge has ended. You are lying in bed. You feel the shame and regret of another day wasted by the grind of this game. You want to change, you want your life to be different, but you feel as though if you just study more, or watch more youtube videos, you might improve or discover something new. You just need to invest more into it to get as much as others get out of it.
The regret sinks in as you stop gaming as quickly as the excitement sunk in as you began. You know that what you have done is unhealthy, and you know you want to change, but you don’t know how. This is where Healthy Gamer comes in.
Healthy Gamer and Propositivity
I am an avid gamer, and I have played games my whole life. After my most recent binge period, I realized what I was missing out on. I was missing out on helping others through my organization Propositivity. Propositivity is an organization whose purpose and mission is to spread mental health awareness and get people in touch with the resources they need to get better.
Healthy Gamer directly aligns with our mission as they try to help gamers maintain a healthy level of gaming while they achieve more than they thought they could prior. They help through coaching, discord conversations, and direct courses that aim to turn the binge-gamer into a healthy gamer, capable of achieving their life goals. I personally believe this organization is fulfilling a great cause and feel that, with their help, an addicted gamer may be able to find some joy in moderation.
If you are interested in more information about mental health and Propositivity, read my article about video game addiction: http://propositivity.com/2019/07/07/video-game-addiction/
And if you are interested in treating your video game addiction, I encourage you to continue researching Healthy Gamer and continue pursuing your dreams.