COLUMN: 'The Aberrant Gamer': Abstinence Makes The Heart Grow Fonder
January 11, 2008 8:00 AM | Leigh Alexander
[The Aberrant Gamer is a weekly, somewhat NSFW column by Leigh Alexander, dedicated to the kinks and quirks we gamers tend to keep under our hats – those predilections and peccadilloes less commonly discussed in conventional media.]
Last week, the Aberrant Gamer was forced to acknowledge spending an alarmingly significant number of hours on games. And not just playing – thinking about them, writing about them, chatting about them and making amateurish game-related craft projects. In and of itself, it wasn’t so alarming.
What gave me pause was how nervous the idea of stopping made me.
To that end, the Aberrant Gamer declared a week-long moratorium on gaming of any kind, in the hopes of learning something about a chronic, habitual game user’s relationship with the behavior, the nature of gaming, and the abiding nature of the soul, or something. In other words, I wanted to see what would happen. And I invited readers, both in the original column and in a challenge extended to the readers of my workblog, Sexy Videogameland.
So how’d we do?
You Mean All Games?
Some of the questions and early feedback I received from participants about my experiment were rather telling. There were a few people who wanted to know exactly what I meant by “gaming.” One email respondent wondered if tabletop RPGs count, and a commenter wondered if he’d have to give up chess and monopoly. “Is Brain Training really a game?” He asked. “Is My French Coach a game? Is it because it’s electronic?” Chess and monopoly are not video games; Nintendo DS cartridges are. Semantics were still the order of the day, however – numerous respondents said they’d love to try the experiment, but they couldn’t, because they just bought an anticipated title, or because they’re halfway through another right now. They were apologetic, but the message was clear – they couldn’t give up video games, because they were too busy playing video games.
I’d soothed my anxiety ahead of the experiment by ordering myself, online, a copy of Sega Genesis Collection for PSP. Scanning and sharing the pictorial evidence of my juvenile enthusiasm for Phantasy Star II made me rather urgently desirous of playing it again, and I figured the shrink-wrapped game would arrive as a tidy reward for an abstinence experiment dutifully conducted. Defying my expectations, it arrived the following afternoon, wrenching my plans by sitting there shiny and plastic-scented on my coffee table, promising me hours of handheld zone-outs if only I’d rescind my commitment.
I almost broke. In fact, weakly deciding that a column wherein I failed to make it seven days might be more interesting than one where I succeeded, I slit open the packaging, put in the UMD and turned it on. Just as the splash screen appeared, the doorbell rang. Dinner. If not for serendipitous timing, I would not have made it 24 hours.
Just Something I Do Automatically
One respondent, with the best of intentions, found himself breaking his vow entirely on accident and habit. “It turns out that picking up a gamepad and switching on the console is something I do automatically,” he wrote, ruefully. “It's strange that I hadn't made any conscious decision to play a game - I just did it, unthinkingly. It's just What I Do at the weekend, these days.”
I was not immune to force of habit, either. On my second successful day of abstinence – it had already begun to feel like an eternity, by the way – I, with equal thoughtlessness, reached out my hand to demand a turn at Umbrella Chronicles. Fortunately, my friend was aware of my efforts and refused to yield me the Wii remote. I was surprised, a bit, at the level of frustration I felt at being denied. Watching him play had created a certain investment in me, a certain bundling of my nerves in preparation for a fight. I would describe it as primal, like how domesticated animals might feel at the scent of blood, but it was less physical than it was a humming at the nape of my neck, a gathering of intangibles in the tendons between the bones of my hands, something agitated stirring a little under my sternum, demanding resolution.
This is the frustratingly tough-to-identify sensation that characterized my go at gamelessness. Like the respondent who emailed me, gaming is What I Do on the weekend. I began the experiment on Thursday, and by the time Saturday morning came around, I had begun to feel preoccupied. I felt the palpable urge to reach for my DS after breakfast as if it were a cigarette, laying on the couch in front of morning cartoons that presented the same absurd, eagerly sincere characters that populate some of my favorite titles.
The Fallen Hero
Instead, I went for a long run, hoping to exert away the restlessness through exercise, thinking as I went that When I Quit Gaming, I Exercised More would make a sparkling takeaway. Instead, my iPod decided to play all of my Guitar Hero music. With rhythm titles, eventually you develop a relationship with a song proportionate to your level of challenge or success at the level in which it features. Playing music from rhythm games when I exercise never fails to give me an adrenaline rush that no other psyche-up tactic can approach. This time, though, it just made me want to play Guitar Hero. Badly.
And I started becoming aware of another kind of building pressure. Not the sort of constant preoccupation, restlessness of the hands that had taken up residence in my body, but an awareness of the gaming community around me. Many of these things take skill. And skills lose their luster with time. What if, the next time I played Guitar Hero, I was rusted? My friend and I had been eagerly planning some online co-op, and I’d even fantasized numerous times at getting good enough to enter local competitions – how embarrassing would it be to fail horribly in public, online, in front of people? I became painfully aware of all the games I had not yet completed. Games that came out in December, and this is January, and how can I be a writer if I don’t stay on top of things? What am I going to do at the end of this week, I wondered? Go back to blogging about BioShock?
I also began to wonder what, exactly, I would have to tell people about how it felt to stop playing. What if I suffered very badly? Could I admit that? Could I admit that it seemed I’d lost my ability to sit still long enough to watch a TV show? Confess that I found movies a slack-mouthed, lackluster, unrewarding waste of time, now that I bothered trying to watch some? How would I describe the creeping unrest in my heart that I began to become just slightly aware of – and more with time – that surfaced slow and sinister now that my hands and mind were not engaged in constant activity and obedience to the laws of a digital world? Things I avoided began to push up against my awareness like water swelling behind a dam. Sometimes it was good to stop avoiding those things – like laundry, or dishes, or phone calls to family members. Other times, it was things I would decidedly prefer to avoid. The experiment was evolving into something uncomfortably personal, and I wondered about my duty to explain it.
Ladies and gentlemen, I could not endure seven days without video games. All right, all right. I made it to the end of three days. That’s it.
And in the end, it wasn’t the infuriating psychosomatic humming in my ribcage, the restless urge to translate kinetic energy onto a screen for relief. It wasn’t envy, or the feeling of exclusion from my friends or my community, and it wasn’t fear of falling behind, nor was it fear of what I might have to share if I pressed on.
Homesickness
It was a simple need for comfort. I had an upset stomach Saturday night, and there was nothing to be done for it. There was nothing on television, pain distracted me from reading, I’d already called everyone there was to talk to, I was too uncomfortable to go out and not tired enough to sleep. I remembered being nine, and home sick from school, playing Phantasy Star II in the quiet of the empty house.
I’d put the Sega Genesis Collection on a low shelf under my coffee table, but it was still within arm’s reach of where I lay, under a blanket, with no idea of what to do with myself. Feeling guilty, apologizing internally to the loyal readers more stalwart than I who’d been emailing me dutifully on their successful progress, I put it on. And amid the simplistic chiming music and the soothingly repetitive grind, the feeling of illness did not subside, but a mantle of quietude, of contentment, settled on me.
I played the damn thing for what might have been ten straight hours on Sunday, as if all the more fixated for having been deprived. And, pointedly refusing to consider the ramifications, I’ve played it every night since then. I’ve avoided playing anything else, as if that’s worth anything given that my fixation seems to be singular right now, experiment or not.
So what was it all for? Have I answered the question as to whether or not gaming is an addiction? Or, further, whether it’s a harmful one? To the first, yes, and to the second, probably not – but in all fairness, I chickened out just as my life in the absence of a retreat route into games began to frighten me. Who knows whether I was really sick at all, or whether my temperamental digestion was really a psychosomatic manifestation, just like the tension in my shoulders and the urge in my fingertips.
The World Opens Up
What I did learn – and this was the primary aim – was just a little bit more about why I play, and what gaming means to me, does for me. I thought that without games, the world might open up just a little; that I’d divert that gaming energy into learning new things, visiting new places, developing more relationships. But, even given only a few days to experiment, I realized I felt then, at least for that moment, content with the size of my world and the people in it as they are.
On the other hand, the absence of games left a distinct sense of feeling stranded, as if bridges I had made from my imagination into worlds made by others had been closed for repairs. I didn’t have a bad couple of days; more ordinary than I would have expected, and neither more nor less fulfilling.
But it did feel like my world was a bit smaller; there were emotions, impulses and dreams that had nowhere to travel to, that languished amid the everyday. It’s true that I learned perhaps gaming has cultivated in me a lack of long-term patience, a need for more regular stimulation, a poorer attention span. It’s also very possible that I zone out with games to avoid dealing directly with things that cause me frustration or sadness. But I’m now certain there is a singular fashion in which games engage both mind and emotion – not only for the purpose of play, but for personal reasons both creative and therapeutic – that no other form of media approaches. It’s a quality unique to gaming, it speaks to the power and responsibility game developers have assumed, and it makes sense out of the intense, often perplexing personalization we feel toward the games they make.
Perhaps those that have been thoroughly introduced to gaming in a way that builds that connection really can’t do without it thereafter. And probably, it doesn’t make sense to ask them to. I’ll never ask that of anyone again, and nor will I ever make a similar endeavor myself.
[Leigh Alexander is the editor of Worlds in Motion and writes for Gamasutra, freelances intermittently for a variety of outlets, and maintains her gaming blog, Sexy Videogameland. She can be reached at leigh_alexander1 AT yahoo DOT com.]
Categories: Column: The Aberrant Gamer
14 Comments
So, any feedback from people like me, for whom getting a chance to play for a few hours every three days is an awesome best-case scenario? I haven't been able to game for several days now because of work and because my wife keeps setting up other social commitments-- people coming over for Settlers of Catan, or going out to a movie instead, or whatever. I *wish* quitting for a week was an "experiment," not something that occasionally just happens!
Also, you write: Who knows whether I was really sick at all, or whether my temperamental digestion was really a psychosomatic manifestation
About a year ago, I noticed this, and started paying attention. When I have to do something I don't want to do (usually because I'd rather be playing video games) I get a stomach ache. Even though I am now *consciously aware* of this psychosomatic phenomenon, it still happens, and doesn't hurt any less.
So you aren't alone on that one!
brian j. parker | January 11, 2008 10:29 AM
I find it funny that you didn't allow yourself to PLAY games, but sitting on the couch watching a friend play Umbrella Chronicles was just fine :P
Steve gaynor | January 11, 2008 10:37 AM
I think I've unintentially abstained from gaming this week as a result of exams (UK A levels) : it's telling that I can't remember whether or not I've played anything. I don't think I could "give up" games, but to transfer onto something else isn't difficult at all- whether this is by necessity or not I don't know.
john glanville | January 11, 2008 1:27 PM
I feel a strange compulsion to point and laugh. This is going to sound awfully cruel, not to mention trollish, but your life seems to be so empty that removing games means that there's nothing left in it?
Wait. Let me rescue this comment from the depths of NeoGAF here. People need hobbies, I'm fairly sure - I think we're all familiar with the picture of the desperately unhappy office worker whose life is consumed by work. Possibly part of the reason why you didn't make it is your call was to 'give up gaming' as if gaming was just something that you do when the rest of your life is not going on (like going to the pub with workmates or something). For most of us, it's at least a hobby, and if you take that part of your life away you really need something to replace it, and as far as I can see that didn't happen much.
Although I'm personally fairly concerned about the potential of addictive games - I mean, MMOs are basically slot machines as it is. The same sort of psychological processes apply, and I don't think there's as much recognition in the industry as there probably could be about what sorts of mechanics are likely to be psychologically harmful to the players.
Merus | January 11, 2008 10:14 PM
I game. And I have a day job. You, Aberrant Gamer, have it easy. You are among the happy ones that can quench their thirsts, that can satiate their senses and minds to the fullest extent of pleasure. I cannot. I have a day job. I am forced to work for my supper. And my hardware and my games and software and my bedding.
And I kid you not it is not easy work. For one it has nothing to do with games. I work in public communications. Sometimes it is interesting. Mostly boring. It involves a lot of writing. It does rarely involve fun.
So, after a usually 10 hour work day and eating and washing and doing a bit of work around my place I get to play. Not for long, maybe 6 hours at a time, usually less. I enjoy and thrive on my addiction. I wait for weekends like the junkie waits for his fix. Yet I am happy. I smile at work. I talk to my friends and they don't think of me as an addict.
I envy you because you can thoroughly be addicted and can afford to even break you addiction. Don't ever try and stop again...
moromete | January 12, 2008 3:14 AM
There is a shallowness that I feel while reading this article. When I was 16 I might have read this shit and said "Fuck yeah, gaming forever!"
I could have never imagined a time where I wouldn't be all about gaming 24-7. But now I find myself unable to really anticipate more of the same in the ever-revolving gaming landscape.
Your addiction seems more about a lack of depth in your life than anything else to me.
It feels like I want to say "Get a life." But I remember how stupid that sounded when I was younger. However like many gamers you define yourself by this hobby. The people you relate with also do it, it makes sort of a support group for perpetuating the gaming lifestyle. Spend 8 hours on some game, wasting the day then hop on a message board and post about it ironically. I mean look at the post above mine, a guy saying to never stop gaming. Why not? What is gaming really accomplishing for you except providing unlimited electronic stimulus.
If I watch television for 12 hours a day people would think there is something seriously wrong with me. The way I see it there isn't really more depth to a video game except that it is not completely passive physically. The mediums are not completely comparable but now the majority of games seem to go more towards filling the same role film does. A passive activity that leaves most users with the same or a similar experience. It's not about sport(high score) or versus play anymore.
On a personal note: I just find gaming to be generally insipid at this point. I feel pains for all the hours I wasted looking at previews of games and reading news about games when 10-20 years later it is meaningless. The industry retreads the same "templates" even now.
Sure maybe I went overboard with my addiction, when I was a child I ran to my room to play Super Mario Brothers every day after school. I would throw a violent temper tantrum if I didn't get my fix. I wasn't interested in dinner or schoolwork. Gaming had me transfixed for a very long time. I've never thought about it before but I guess I was an addict. But I just didn't know what else to do with myself, it was an easy out. Same as someone who comes home after work and watches tv in the evening every day for their entire life.
Don't let gaming rob you of your good years just because you have made it your comfort zone. : ]
Red_venom | January 12, 2008 5:00 PM
Well now, I certainly don't spend eight hours a day. It's generally an hour, maybe two, and I didn't intend to give the impression I don't have other hobbies and interests. And my day job is writing about game stuff, but I have the same working hours as most people generally do, and don't play then, because I'm busy!
But that hour or two (and, okay, occasional Saturday marathons) are important to me.
Leigh | January 12, 2008 8:03 PM
Interesting experiment. The comments are even more interesting, of course.
Not gaming at all for any extended period would be fairly harmful to me. While I'm quite happy to spend my hours reading or writing about non-games stuff, the fact is that I play games every week for money. I sell my descriptions of games to magazines and websites, and that's how I pay for food and shelter. A week without gaming of any kind would also likely be a week with a reduced income.
I've ended up building a gaming "addiction" into my professional life, and, well, it's basically a positive thing. I wrote a book about games last year, I started up a new blog, I sold dozens of reviews and features... I turned the hours I sank into games into something else. Sure, I spent a whole lot of time dodging my responsibilities and wasting valuable time too, but it worked out in the end.
It's interesting that Red_Venom says "If I watch television for 12 hours a day people would think there is something seriously wrong with me," because he's dead right: there's a whole bunch of stuff about modern media facilitating slacking, idleness or general responsibility-dodging that is incredibly negative. But if I had spent 12 hours a day watching television and then spent a couple of hours writing about what I'd seen in a startling, insightful fashion then suddenly it's okay. Editors buy the material, people see the value in what I do
But I guess people like that are a special case...
But if the professionals can justify their addictions, where does that leave the average obsessed gamer? Out in the cold, most of the time. But, as quite a few people have said to me over the years, there's a value in goofing off with our friends, or just escaping for a few hours, to whatever it might be. The “hobby” status of gaming (or anything else) for most people can have different degrees of importance, and I think society is still struggling with the fact that most people have a load of leisure time to fill. That whole attitude of “if you take away X then your life is empty” seems pretty harmful to me when we're faced with that conundrum. Our lives ending up being filled with what we fill them with. Most of us would find it pretty difficult to fill them with saving the world, or doing great philanthropic things, and so we settle for being entertained. (There's something else here too: something about playing our roles in the world successfully. I learned to be a gaming expert because it made me a successful teenager. For many people gaming provides that access to the here and now, that commonality with friends and even some strangers. It's culture, like or not.)
Or maybe there are other reasons. I spend too much time thinking about this stuff: http://www.gamasutra.com/php-bin/column_index.php?story=8353
Jim Rossignol | January 13, 2008 11:54 AM
I'm glad you've responded to this article too Jim.
Actually, I started writing about games as a way to directly defy my father's constant hassling that "games will never get you anywhere". That began at University, when I felt that playing games really did need to be justified so I worked it into my course, into a column at the University paper, into a radio program and then eventually into a job.
Actually, I'm disappointed that I didn't get to join you on your quest Leigh. If it wasn't for some preoviews that needed writing, reviews that needed to be written and et al. I'd have loved to not game for a week.
Personally, I think it'd be easier for me than you it seems though. I enjoy getting outside for parkour, weather allowing, I enjoy spray painting (in my back yard on scrap), I enjoy screwing with my PC, I enjoy the beach and I love watching DVDs.
A good read as usual Leigh, it's just bad luck you got "sick" in your absence.
Daniel Purvis | January 13, 2008 7:25 PM
Since Jim's given a proper answer, I'd add that red_venom sounds like a fun time.
KG
Kieron Gillen | January 14, 2008 4:47 AM
The heart grows fonder indeed. I actually gave up video games for lent last year. I've been an avid gamer since I was six years old. At twenty-four, it was the first real time in my life that I've been gameless. Amidst finals and term papers, I'd still find time to game.
It was a difficult thing at first. Even so, it got easier as it went on. I was able to make it the full span mostly because I had a purpose for it, a driving force. Because lent is supposed to be about making a personal sacrifice, I was able to see video games as the luxury that they are--they they are something that I can live without.
The best part of my non-gaming period was the rediscovery of other pastimes that I loved. I was able to get back into my writing (both fiction and academic) as well as read a few of the novels I had been neglecting. Crossword puzzles and Sudoku kept my mind busy. Still, as soon as I could play again, I did. I actually purchased a few games during lent so I would have them readily available when I was able to play again.
The matter of temptation was always present, though. My circle of friends certainly didn't try and make it easy. They're hopelessly addicted to WoW and would only turn off their PCs for sessions of Guitar Hero (I had just bought a wireless guitar that I hadn't tried out yet). I'm fairly certain that had not had a purpose behind my abstaining from gaming, I would not have made it. Even so, I think I will have to try it for myself sometime soon.
Vidal | January 14, 2008 8:35 AM
iv had to reduce my play time due to A level exams too.i dont know though. i think i have a couple of addicted tendencies, i do plan out what i want to play or achieve over the next few days but if im busy or going down for a drink with my mates it doesnt even occur to me too play. i may play a lot less than my brother! XD) but i reckon if you werent taunting yourself with a 'I MUST NOT' situation youd be able to stop without any problem. gamings just a fun and relaxing way to chat too some friends and unwind after a long day of work =]
Panser Dragoon | January 17, 2008 12:50 AM
An interesting article... though your conclusion is partially incorrect in my opinion.
Surviving for three days without playing games (though arguably watching another person play could constitute playing in a reduced form such as nicotine patches :)) after being a 'heavy' user has you still within the withdrawal stage - meaning that you never really 'gave up' in the first place so writing conclusions as you did that reflect the tumultuous emotions that exist in a person going through withdrawal might not accurately reflect your feelings after a longer period of time being abstinant.
I went through a tough period during the first few months of dating a girl in the last couple of years. Due to us living decently far apart (and both of us having to rely on public transport and living in shared accommodation) my gaming time was reduced to virtually nothing and for a long (perhaps somewhat shallow) time i did feel that i resented the relationship a little because of it.
Obviously, after that period i grew out of needing to game so much and my emotions became more balanced.
I also nowadays no longer watch much TV... but the period immediately after stopping myself from watching a great deal of (admittedly crappy) shows i really felt a gulf in my life.
Of course, being in the profession that you are, taking a long period of time off would be disasterous but it also precludes you from being able to write about being 'off the hook' of our pastime.
Kind regards,
Duoae
Duoae | January 20, 2008 10:42 AM
This article is interesting and I appreciate the fact that so many people are willing to accept the fact that they really love video games. Some people do it without realizing what they said. It seems like many people were alarmed by the decision to give up video games for a week, probably because they thought it’d be difficult. It also seems like people would try to find a way around the rules of the week long gaming abstinence so they could still get their gaming fix. You decided to make the article more interesting by not succeeding, which was making an excuse to comfort yourself and allowing yourself to play the game without feeling guilty. I don’t think this is such a bad thing, people playing video games and thinking about video games all of the time. It’s part of their personality and it’s just how things are.
A Burson | September 15, 2008 7:43 AM