Stupefied 2008-06-06 21:06:55

Yeah... Im kind of an addict there. I was Addicted to NewGrounds for a long time. Then I discovered Kongregate. I was addicted to that untill I was banned. During that week, I was sort of cold turkey, and I now control myself better. I think the main solution to dealing with this kinda stuff is to shut off the source. If you want to stop, (not like that guy who re-bought everthingy), then get rid of your source. Now, I do other things. I work out more, I study more, play more (and I have rebuilt a sort-of life from the shattered remains of a 2 year internet binge, ever since I got a laptop). Anyways, I think this important. Thanks for bringin the topic up, it made me think.

gankro 2008-06-06 21:26:13

oh wi-woogi world... man... I wish I was as good a coder as I am now when I entered the competition... not only would I not cry when I look at it but I'd also be a REALLY great coder now.... ah well... luck is the convergence of opportunity and preparation... guess I just flunked out on the whole preparation part...

sharkwiz 2008-06-06 21:37:41

Yup you are right more young kids are being addicted.I can finish the halo3 game in say a week, my 7 yr old sister finished it in 4 hrs. Please note when i say a week i had intervals went to school etc. She could actully win me! a 7YR OLD COME ON! I could not even play mario properly at that age.

YouWillSuffer 2008-06-06 22:25:29

It's always good to have some people shedding the light on internet addiction. I'm not very proud to say that I myself am one of those addicts. I play World of warcraft at least 12 hours a day. I've gone through several clean phases without WoW but have always lapsed back into it. School, work and social life have suffered extremely. I have absolutely no social life, I actually haven't left my house in a month. You could say i'm an extreme case.

Starblinky 2008-06-06 22:40:52

I think if you wait until the kids get older to determine if it's safe or not, it won't even make a difference since all the older kids are addicted to it any ways.

I think it would be better if you get to them while their young. Teach them that games are good, but too much of them is bad. Although parents should be monitoring their kids, it's still not enough to stop addiction.

Hmm. This must be tough for you. It will be a hard but very rewarding journey for you to make a MMO that teaches kids these things.

GOOD LUCK AND GOD SPEED
-lindsay

2ndRanger 2008-06-07 00:50:47

this reminds me of "The more you know

MMO's have never caught my eye. They just seem to be too slow and too boring but hey here is a interesting fact. Your life and literally your dreams will become what you frequently do. For example I used to play garry's mod 10 non stop and I actually dreamed about it. Seriously man I dreamed the same procedure every day.
Games should be limited BY parents but they often give into their demands quite easily. A kid cries his mother gets him the toy. A teenager asks for extra money to by a new game and he/she will almost always get it.
quite a few parents are weak willed so is it the child's fault for what they do...or should you blame the parents for letting it happen in the first place.

Famorge 2008-06-07 03:57:33

I stay away from MMOs and such just because I rather not risk getting obsessed with it. I am for sure semi addicted to gaming in general though, but I wouldn't skip out on work or sleeping for it. It seems stupid to me to skip out on something that affects your life and your physical & financial well-being to play some game or even be on the internet. Maybe people just don't have that sense or just don't care about any of that.

To me when addiction becomes obsession is when it can lead to destructive behavior.

Kde777 2008-06-07 04:08:15

I think you gotta be a dumbass by dying in your computer.. I mean, take a break man.. don't you go to the bathroom or something? no you just die by playing the stupid counter strike or whatever

ma-d 2008-06-07 08:12:44

I remember when i used to spend ages infront of mmo's. I used to play runescape for about that long when i was younger, but I dont any more as when you get older you realise it isnt actually doing anything for you. There is no skill to mmo's its just how long you spend playing it. Mainly now i just spend a lot of time mucking around on flash, and on newgrounds. I do occasionally play CSS but i havnt even played that in a few days, at least games like CSS is down to pure skill. Basically i have gone through phrases of having hours of playing mmo's but i would never skip sleep over it.

Anyway good luck on your kids, educational MMO game. My only problem, is that dont you need to be 13 or over to play MMO's legaly? or are you going to make it somehow that people will be able to play before this age?

Wolfears2 2008-06-14 03:56:16

Semi-reminescent of my little brother. He's addicted to the Xbox 360. CoD4, Halo 3, rock band, the works. He's pretty good at singing Hier Kommt Alex though =P And yeah, good luck with your MMO. You're inspirational, Bom.

lolibus 2008-06-18 20:59:09

i dont know, but somehow i think if the games wouldnt be endless or shorter people would care more for there lives. actually i remember the time when i got in touch with games quite well. i had a pc with sam & max and later rayman and stuff.

but later i got a mega drive with sonic and phantasy star 4 and some other
games. the point is, actually i enjoyed these games as much as i enjoyed counter strike, final fantasy and some other titles everyone knows off. i know i cant compare final fantasy 9 or 7 with some old sonic games, but iam trying to say that one reason why people cant stop playing is because games from today never end.

i mean they get longer and longer, some games like wow or everquest are real poisen because they have no goal at all. i think you should stay away from games that are endless or have no goal. the reason why people play more and more is because they need to invest more time to get the same fun when they started playing it.

actually some dude that played maple story and some other mmorpg´s said that it is really hard work to level up youre character and not fun at all. i dont know what it is that makes you wanna slap 100 monsters to receive a quest prize or to slap even more to get a level up.

most online mmo´s are like poisen and grinders, for example like i already said maple story. its ok if you play a few hours a day, but the big problem is that the game is made so that you dont make any progress at all when you play 1 or 2 hours a day. its kinda like a trap and not like, "look iam freeware and fun to play".
the only ascpect that makes these games fun is when youre new to it or when you play it with friends.

dont get me wrong, i dont want to blame the games nor the addicted people.
actually there are some decent mmorpgs out there better than wow, because this one doesnt suck up youre time.

guild wars was pretty the only online game i ever played that didnt focus on grinding/leveling or stuff that steals youre time.
i didnt have monthly cost, only the game costed once. the best about it was that the level cap was 20 in the first installment and that you never had to worry about to get to lvl 20, because you got to lvl 20 automaticly after beating all the mission (following the storyline). the almost ultimative best aspect of the game was that you had to do the mission in groups and the mission even followed a decent storyline, unlike in every other mmorpg where you hunt down monsters alone or in a group without any meaning to do this.

i dont know how wow is, i never played it, only once on a ripped server and didnt like it at all lol. but its not good when you need 5 hours to make these so called
instance dungeons.

well im trying to say, games just get to complex and people who can get or are addicted are most likely helpless and cant stop untile they experienced everything in the game.

i dont know but it kinda feels like that kids totally forget about books if they didnt have them in school to learn from. actually i never read any books on my own, only one, but i failed to read to the end. iam not a fan of books because i cant imagine and read at the same time. its kinda like blank letters and nothing else, only sometimes there are pictures and people in my head.

i guess thats the main reason why i sticked to computer games in the first place, because i needed input, and visual stuff and i was fascinated to all this kind of stuff games would offer.

watching animes was or lets say it still is, also one of my favorite time killers.
but at least they have an end and are more fun than slashing monsters all day.

i guess the best thing you can do if you think or other people thing that youre addicted to computer games, is to stop playing mmorpgs at first. really, trust me you dont need these kind of games to have fun. actually there is so much stuff in the world out there that is equal as fun or more than sitting in front of a pc and playing wow straught 5 hours. but the problem is that people dont even realize that they are addicted nor do they want to change it until its to late.

let me state that people slowly awake and accept addiction to online games or internet/media as a real disease and threat it as one. i mean its a real serious problem that needs medical attention. people just take it to lightly, one doctor said it is like abusing drugs and i think basicly hes right.

people need to play more and more and cant stop, yet they play for the sake to play and not actually to have fun.

well let me add that you have to get youre live into a pattern and to have work, friends, a girlfriend/boyfriend and all the stuff normaly teenagers would experience. its ok if you play alot if you have at least the terms i said, because a game wont go anywere but youre lifetime is limited and so is social life, because people wont wait for you all day till you finish the damn game...

i guess iam one of the worser cases, because all began when i dropped my education...
i guess its to personal to say this, but its anonymous so i go for it to prevent people from doing the same fault as me.

i dont know why but iam really a lazy bum and that was from the beginning of my life and it didnt change. there was only one time when i really learned for school
and work payed of. i guess the main reason why people dont learn is because they arent interessted in the subject. at least learn for youre graduation to be able to have a job later, i dont know how it is elsewere, but it is kinda hard to get a job you will like, in germany, if you have bad marks.

i dont even know what to learn, the only thing iam interessted in is computers and a lot more stuff, but you cant make money with interesst in watching animes :/

at least iam lucky that i left the school with a education, because you have 3 possible chances to get an education in germany, at class 9, 10 and 12.
the problem is that you wont get any jobs with the one from class 9, because everyone gets this one. this one is kinda for people that have problems in learning and math and are kinda like handicapped. class 10 and 12 is the ones you want to aim for, i got class 10, because youre are forced to do all the 3 if you visit the school that goes to class 12.

there are 3 kind schools you can select from, when you leave the elementary school that goes from class 1 to 4 in germany (age 7 to 10 i guess). the problem is that german schools are the "worst" and you have to make a hard decision.

from class 5 on you either join one of the schools called haupt, real or gym.

haupt = till class 9 and thats it.
you wont get a decent job and only receive dirt work for this education.

real = till class 10 and is harder than haupt-school. also you have to do kind of a exam at end of class 10.

the one i was on was the "gymnasium" and it is indeed the hardest one, this one goes till class 12. you receive on youre way to class 12 the eduaction for haupt and real, because you are forced to do the exam for class 10. class 9 exam for haupt is only on a hauptschool and you get it for "free" if you pass from class 9 to 10 on gym.

well now that all this is explained i gonna come to myself, i got as far as class 11 on gym, after that i had to reapet cause of bad notes and i left after the reapeting attempt. so i got a education from class 10 on a gym, which is higher than one of real school from class 10.

yeah whatever, iam running out of space to write, so basicly i tried to find a job and got one, but i left this one after 2 months because i was really depressed, i dont know but i kinda got somehow a depression and until now i didnt meet a doctor for this case. the reason why iam so sure that it is a depression is because i took pills after i left the job to...you know what for. but iam glad that iam alive and iam 20 as of today.

i kinda had a hard time, because i was scared of other people and groups, so i fleed into games...i dont know but somehow i got more self confident, when i was in school i was kinda a whimp.

addicition to video games has more deeper reasons than anyone would think.
make sure to take care of youre real problems instead of hiding in front of youre pc.

lolibus 2008-06-19 11:47:12

"I think you're addicted to rambling."

i dont want to spam you´re comment box, but what you mean by that?

...and yeah thanks that you read the whole thing, iam kinda sorry for the bad english and grammar, iam not really good at this word order thingy also :S

and i lost my ability to tell when to write words in lowercase or in uppercase, all thanks to the chat in games were people dont care about uppercase letters.

at last i might add that there is always hope, it may sound strange, but i guess i was never really hardcore addicted to games, because i never played or would even be able to play a single game 10 hours straight without a break. lets say it is kinda funny in the first place if you have no job and so much time on you´re hands, but it gets boring so fast that i want to have a job no matter what.

everything is ok, if you still have a life but dont play 10 hours straight. i dont know how i got depressions, but the reason i didnt want to go out and face life was not because i wanted to play games.

i chatted with some kid in an online game and he said that he skipped school sometimes, he also had depressions and played lots of WoW and other online games. he got from his doctor anti-depressants....i guess he will get a grip in his life.

almost everyone that is "addicted" to games, has had depressions. at least with all the people i spoke about it or people i saw on the internet in videos or forums.

this one guy that played everquest 2 and shot himself in front of his pc some day had a clinical depression. i saw that on youtube, but the reason why he played games all day is not because of his addiction, it was because he was afraid of facing the reality. i remember when i was depressive and played a lot, but after some time the depression was gone and for some reason the same games i played all day became boring and timekillers for me.

this is the last thing i add, maybe to help understanding things a little, i dont know how you get depressive or if you can get it from playing games, but i guess this is also one of the reasons people stay in there rooms and play all day.

kra-zgangsta 2008-06-19 21:49:41

I was addicted to WoW until I got to level 41 and got my mount. And then I thought, "Now what?", I mean, I could've gotten up to 70 and gotten Tier 7 gear or whatever. But what would be the point? And then I thought about how long it would take. I tried playing on private servers. And that was okay. But truthfully, most MMOs are pointless. Unless you have social gatherings on there with your friends. I thought this was a really insightful article on MMOing. Hope you write more. :)
-Kra