Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

olganon.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

91–100 of 131 posts

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#91

Post by Tichy »

jseliger wrote: post #8
Tichy wrote: post #3

Videogames are harder to quit than drugs? What has he been smoking?

I lost a lot of seventh and eighth grades to video games, and the final departure from them entailed smashing Starcraft 1 and Brood War CDs in my driveway, in front of my friends, who were telling me "not to waste the CDs." But I needed to do something cathartic, and in my case smashing the discs helped me go cold-turkey. I wrote about it a little bit more here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-depa…

I guess there is still a chance that playing those games gained you some super powers, similar to Karate Kid washing the cars.

There are also a lot of ways to waste time. Few people seem to make good use of it, so perhaps again it is not really Computer Games that are to blame?

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#92

Post by liedra »

tomku wrote: post #88
liedra wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was also probably addicted to FFXI (played from the release of CoP til 2009ish), so hey fellow ex-FFXIer. I pulled myself out of it when I realised I wasn't getting any of my PhD done and then went and managed to pull that off with the remaining time I had left. Now I won't play any MMOs because I'm concerned that I might fall back into old habits. I play D3 and other games that I can dip in and out of, but no mass…

It's a small (virtual) world... when I read your username I thought it sounded familiar, and now I'm pretty sure that I've been a jerk to you on IRC before! Congrats on quitting FFXI and finishing your PhD, and greetings from a certain former #BG member with a four letter name starting with z. /me prepares himself for public humiliation if he's wrong

Yeah, I think you were on multivaders too, right? Heh, small world.

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#93

Post by mariusz331 »

dredmorbius wrote: post #41
tomku wrote: post #12

As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2 worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft addiction is a good first step, but it w…

You could make the same argument that a lack of self-control destroys the lives of heroin addicts. That self-control is based, however, on biological and physiological pathways. Dopamine receptors, and anomalies with the dopamine system, in particular, can leave people vulnerable to various addictive habits: http://www.people.co.uk/lifestyle/real-life/2010/10/03/ms-tu...

Since you brought heroin up, I found this a really interesting read: http://www.quora.com/How-does-it-feel-to-be-high-on-heroin

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#94

Post by Too »

dromidas wrote: post #75
CarlTheAwesome wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's morally wrong to trick someone biological and psychological in order for them to play games in order to generate income for a game company. But I think there's a way to balance between making users like the game thus generate income for the company and making users biologically and psychologically rely on the game.

In the end, is there really any difference between making a game that is fun and a game that is addicting? I really don't think there is even if they went in with the idea of "lets make this game addicting". I've never once seen a game that is not fun, but is addicting. Although my friends have said Master of Orion 3 fits that description, but I never actually saw them ever play it so I think it was a joke.

There's a great talk about this from some guy at Digital Illusions. He found some definition of what a "game" is and compared that definition with Farmville, it failed on every single bullet. I can't remember the exact details but it contained things like it has to be challenging, a skilled player should easily beat a newbie, not requiring grinding. What's interesting is that the definitions are not designed with the sole purpose of bashing farmville, all of them really make sense and origin from even before computer era.

If somebody knows where to find the talk please post it, my google-fu is weak today. He also compares the iphone to a swiss army knife and the ipad to a "swiss-army-kitchen-utensil" (i.e too bad to be really useful and too big to fit in your pocket). The talk was just a few weeks after the first ipad release. It also contains alot of other talk about the future of gaming for the general masses, facebook games and gaming anything in life(like shopping), etc. If that's enough to trigger anyones memory.

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#95

Post by [deleted] »

dredmorbius wrote: post #41
tomku wrote: post #12

As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2 worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft addiction is a good first step, but it w…

You could make the same argument that a lack of self-control destroys the lives of heroin addicts. That self-control is based, however, on biological and physiological pathways. Dopamine receptors, and anomalies with the dopamine system, in particular, can leave people vulnerable to various addictive habits: http://www.people.co.uk/lifestyle/real-life/2010/10/03/ms-tu...

[deleted]

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#96

Post by ericdykstra »

potatolicious wrote: post #49
dredmorbius wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You could make the same argument that a lack of self-control destroys the lives of heroin addicts. That self-control is based, however, on biological and physiological pathways. Dopamine receptors, and anomalies with the dopamine system, in particular, can leave people vulnerable to various addictive habits: http://www.people.co.uk/lifestyle/real-life/2010/10/03/ms-tu...

The difference between Starcraft and heroin is that the vast majority of Starcraft users do not become addicts. In fact, only a very, very small portion of users do - heroin has no claims to the same. This also brings social gaming in as a concern - what is the moral stance on games what have been specifically and deliberately engineered with said biological and psychological pathways in mind, with addiction as an in…

A very small percentage of people who have ever tried heroin are current users. Of course, it's much, much smaller for everyone who's tried to play Starcraft, but the point remains.

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#97

Post by ericdykstra »

Claudus wrote: post #16

It seems like he was already screwing up his life pretty well before SC2 was released: "Fast forward to summer '10. By now I had moved out of three apartments with my friends. I lost three jobs. I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice. In between my friends and I would do odd-jobs that lasted a week at a time then would get paid one large sum, then blow it all on alcohol and marijuana. Living literally off of p…

Agreed. The title should be changed to "How self-indulgence and living in the moment without planning for the future left me an unsatisfying life and, surprise! No future."

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#98

Post by antman »

I totally understand. Totally. This is a dangerous path taken, but it could happen for everyday things. Having the inner pressure to do things when things dont need to be done only to avoid feeling stale.

I was better than anyone I knew in my job and I kept studying edge cases of my profession that I would never need. Soon my job became too easy. I would spend time studying professioms related to mine only in case I come up with something useful. Make no mistake this was not workaholism since it had nothing to do with my day to day work except in very rare circumstances. I also know that this is personally unproductive since I work as a manager and I can tell mismanagement of resources I mile away. I am very strict unfortunately only on everybody else but me. I read issue queues and follow forums for open source projects for thing I will never use. Same thing goes for stackoverflow for a series of languages. I have studied history books, correlating things on various books and sources and historical archives. Attempting to put everything in an elasticsearch cluster for better fulltext search. To what end, I don't know. My spouse has gotten used to this but my friends seem to have changed during the years. I have no long term goals and many things I learned I won't use. Since my addictions are not fun related they just look like hobbies. The problem is they add up to many hours a day.

I would not call it rage to succeed, I would call it inability to stand still mentally.

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#99

Post by otisfunkmeyer »

Too wrote: post #94
dromidas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the end, is there really any difference between making a game that is fun and a game that is addicting? I really don't think there is even if they went in with the idea of "lets make this game addicting". I've never once seen a game that is not fun, but is addicting. Although my friends have said Master of Orion 3 fits that description, but I never actually saw them ever play it so I think it was a joke.

There's a great talk about this from some guy at Digital Illusions. He found some definition of what a "game" is and compared that definition with Farmville, it failed on every single bullet. I can't remember the exact details but it contained things like it has to be challenging, a skilled player should easily beat a newbie, not requiring grinding. What's interesting is that the definitions are not designed with the…

Jesse Schell at DICE. No Google-fu required. I just know that talk inside and out.

Re: Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

#100

Post by onli »

Tichy wrote: post #91
jseliger wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lost a lot of seventh and eighth grades to video games, and the final departure from them entailed smashing Starcraft 1 and Brood War CDs in my driveway, in front of my friends, who were telling me "not to waste the CDs." But I needed to do something cathartic, and in my case smashing the discs helped me go cold-turkey. I wrote about it a little bit more here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-depa…

I guess there is still a chance that playing those games gained you some super powers, similar to Karate Kid washing the cars. There are also a lot of ways to waste time. Few people seem to make good use of it, so perhaps again it is not really Computer Games that are to blame?

Who didn't lose a lot of time on 7th and 8th grade to something? That age is defined by being a lost time for the most of us.
Post reply on HN