194: The Five Habits of Highly Addicted Gamers

[layzeedave]

Good lord, what a terrible article - worst I've ever read on this site. You can include me in the growing list of readers who think this guy doesn't know what he's talking about. The list would be accurately titled, "5 things that some people do, some times, that can be associated with gaming, but maybe not."

Dean, do you even play games? That was my first thought while reading this. Generally the only time I see people twitch uncontrollably is when they're INEXPERIENCED at a game (i.e., my parents, or little kids).

I doubt you'll even come back to read this, and I would be very surprised if you even post anything - aside from just writing up another article.

Posted by Dean Sherwin on February 28, 2009 at 5:59pm
Hey guys, I'm working on an article for the Escapist and would love it if you guys could throw me a couple of ideas. I have over half of it done at this stage. Its about weird gaming. For example, people who turn the controler when they turn the racing car in a game or people who have odd habits such as unloading a clip of bullets into their defeated enemies corpse. If anyone has any other weird antics please let me know!!!

What really kills me is that you had trouble coming up with just FIVE habits. So much trouble coming up with them that you had to ASK ON ANOTHER FORUM FOR SOME INPUT!

At 5:56pm on March 8, 2009, Dean Sherwin said
Cool
I'm starting to branch more into the area of games journalisim...and just gettong the writing more on track to make a decent living out of it..like building a home office (nearly done!!) ... DO you write in any other genres??

You MIGHT be hanging out with a few hardcore gamers on the site which you posted these things (not that you're ever going to come back and read this, right?), but you really need to find other places if you want to discuss things about games with GAMERS.

Look, I don't mind if you want to get into journalism and you think gaming is a good area to jump into. Before you go throwing up your 2 cents on a subject just to create an article, perhaps you should hang out with more gamers. If you do play, you are OBVIOUSLY not a hardcore gamer. I would've had more respect for you if you had created a topic in the forums and then just based the article off of that input - then at least you would have listed some of the things that hardcore gamers actually do.

WOW! Bravo SmugFrog! Great find! I can't believe it, but this confirms my suspicions. Look at this link where he asks for help writing it: http://videogamesjournos.ning.com/forum/topics/article-help-weird-gaming

The second post: "What about the suicide gamer? The guy who plays one too many deathmatch rounds and starts looking for creative ways for his character to die?"

He actually got that from a random guy on the forums! AMAZING! Your first article for a magazine and you don't even bother to do your own research? FAIL!

You can't help wonder if they were just dicking with him feeding him false info for a laugh. Who here wouldn't do that?

 

[rvdm88]

i dont really see those 5 points,

though i've been playing for quite a while (and even working on getting into the game industry itself) there are some other symptoms i could describe than those:


1. Recognising certain gaming elements in the real world, like visualising a parcour over some small buildings and a drainpipe (after playing a lot of mirrors edge)

2. Getting into the lore of the game, reading about it, talking about it and just discovering more and more things that are not so obviously stated in the game but are actually part of the story. Portal has a lot of this.

3. seeing your free time as "time spent in game X" or "time not spent in game X"

4. getting so immersed into a game that after playing a (story heavy) game for a day, you continue to play the game in your dreams (only becomming aware of it after waking up)

5. Trying to live more "efficient" in order to maximize the amount of free time

 

[MSfire012]

When I play a game with a mute protagonist I talk to the other characters like I am him

 

[oneeyemug]

How are these points supposed to determine someone's addiction to games? These points demonstrate a lot of dedication and immersion in a game, but I thought gaming addiction was about all the responsibilities one fails to perform because he/she is too busy playing games.

 

[Fanta Grape]

Make sure you have the style of writing very clear to the reader early on so they don't mistake a joke for a serious statement. If this is a serious article though ...

 

[Mayhaps]

I always had a hard time defining addictive playing.
I mean a few years ago I spent almost all of my awake hours playing the same game. I went to school, I had my three or for meals of food a day. But I lost interest in other things. That's not to say I had a hard time stopping myself. I always went to sleep at reasonable hours, never skipped class or anything else of real importance.

Unlike people who are addicted to nicotine or something else I could just decide not to turn on my computer for a week or two and not feel any anxiety. Still after the break I'd be back gaming full time.

Was I an addict or not? I don't know.

I can't check any of the article boxes for addictive behavior.
And I can only check the first box in Ultras list, but to be honest I've always had a hard time valuing things in life.