12-Step Gaming

GameSpot's customer service liaison Cliff Hicks drafts red, white, and green in Ravnica and may never conquer Blackwing Lair. Sign up for his 12-step program at cliffh@gamespot.com.

Maybe you wouldn't pay for a "classics compilation" of these games on a modern console, but what if you could carry them around in your pocket? The thought of arming oneself with an array of proven hits that can be played anywhere at any time is a potently attractive one. I certainly don't mean to stifle creativity and originality in handheld development by calling for more ports and remakes of great old games--but I don't think we need to worry about that one bit. Gaming hardware is getting smaller and faster all the time, and that means the great games that used to sit under our televisions can now fit right in our pockets. That can't be a bad thing...can it?

After all, who wouldn't want to relive that same great game experience over and over again? Considering that another Rocky film and another Rambo film are in development, we as people seem to enjoy treading the same ground over again. We're almost compelled to do it. Take, by way of example, World of Warcraft.

I am not going to blindly bash this game, friends, so take heart. I have a level 60 dwarf paladin with an epic mount, and I've been doing Molten Core raids for a while. I'm in charge of my guild. I'm looking forward to the expansion as much as anyone. I am, you could say, a fan of the game. That said, I typically play only one or two nights a week. And there's a good reason for this: I refuse to let it become my life.

We all have our addiction stories, though not all of us are willing to admit to them. Sure, your addictive behavior might just be the inability to resist Krispy Kreme donuts in the morning or some bizarre masochistic streak that forces you to go see every film with John Travolta in it (and to anyone other than me who actually saw Battlefield: Earth, I feel your pain. No, I mean, I really feel your pain...a lot of pain). They're addictions nonetheless. So, I offer you three tales of addiction in the modern gaming world.

I offer myself up first, because as far as I can tell, I was the first among my friends to get seriously hooked on something. My addiction, it turned out, was Magic: The Gathering Online. This may sound strange, but I had never played Magic until a friend of mine got me into the online beta several years back. Once I started playing, I was hooked. It took me a while to break out of the cycle--go home, play a few games, eat something, watch a little TV, go to bed. After a while, though, I felt the burnout start to set in, and I started finding other things to do. I changed jobs, moved back up to the San Francisco Bay Area, reestablished some friendships, made some new ones, and carried on about my day, scaling back my play sessions. I still play pretty regularly, but I find that my interest tends to cluster around new expansion packs (so you can imagine Ravnica's taking up a chunk of my time). In some months, I play only one or two matches, tops.

"All things in moderation" is the lesson hardest to learn in life. We, as a modern social collective, have a tendency to run with something as far as we can. My friend, whom we'll call "Phil," also went through a bout with online addiction, but his particular vice was Final Fantasy XI. Phil got into the game around the same time as a few other mutual friends and I did. But while we were putzing around with characters of level 30 or 40 or so, he'd worked his way all the way to the level cap and was insistently trying to steer the conversation that way at every social occasion.

I don't mind talking about games. Hell, I've pretty much made a living out of it, one way or another, but Phil was taking it too far. Guild politics, linkshell events, set pieces, fighting Maat, BCNMs--we heard it over and over again, and people began tuning him out, as we all moved on to different games. My crew is like that as a group, really--drifters between game experiences. But he held on longer than we did, much longer. But eventually, he'd seen all the content he wanted, and then he broke ties with the game. I heard recently that he was spotted at Square Enix's "anniversary" event, but he won't stay.

Which brings us full circle back to World of Warcraft. Now remember, with all I've told you, I'm only in the game about two nights a week, generally for regular events, and even those I bail on sometimes when the real world takes precedence. However, another friend of mine has been getting a little too wrapped up in the game, and we're starting to see the signs: conversations always steering toward talking about the game, avoiding encounters with real-life people in favor of in-game raids... Personally, I'm hoping he'll burn out and back away. It seems to be par for the course.

If he doesn't, he'll notice that some people will start shying away from these conversations, and other people will get angry every time the subject comes up. It's not an all-or-nothing equation by any means. Friends of mine have noticed that I'm typically the first one leaving the World of Warcraft conversations, because, frankly, there's only so much I want to talk about it before I'm bored out of my skull. I still play, but I refuse to let it consume my waking life. Talking about it sometimes is fine. All the time is not. If I wanted to be playing that game, guess what: I'd be playing that game. Of course, I've also beaten these addictions before.

I experienced a bit of a relapse with World of Warcraft when it launched, but you have to learn to steer yourself out of these things. The jokes and the jeers from your friends are usually intended to point out that you're spending too much time with the game, but they can often hurt more than help, since they can make addicts simply feel misunderstood and ultimately drive them closer to the thing they're already hooked on. If you're trying to draw your addicted friends away, you have to use other things that appeal to them. It's a lure system--you must peel them away with things they want to do, people they want to see, conversations they want to have. Because when you get down to it, all addicts know in their hearts that they are, in fact, addicts.

This addictive behavior isn't associated with just online games either. Here's another example: A friend of mine I wasn't seeing often enough invited me to join in his regular Wednesday-night Magic group. After these sessions, we typically go and hit Carl's Jr. (also known as Hardee's in the American Midwest and on the East Coast). During these late-night dinner runs, our conversations run the gamut of gaming, but this past week, the friend who invited me could not put down his DS. He was latched to Advance Wars: Dual Strike as if his life depended on it. Out of one corner of my mouth I remarked, "Addict." With that, he bowed his head, closed his eyes in acceptance, saved his game, closed up the DS, and rejoined the group conversation. All it took was someone to politely call him on it. I didn't belabor the point. I didn't linger on the issue. After all, a sniper is more effective at instigating change than an army, and don't ask me how I know that.

Games can hold sway over us, but this isn't any different from any other form of entertainment. As technology evolves, we must evolve with it. It's part of modern life. Games with a social aspect can be particularly influential, because they give us common ground when we get together in real life and let us continue talking even in the virtual world, which can be helpful when you're located too far from your friends to stop by for a visit. Still, you always have to make sure these games won't consume you.

There are always new games waiting for you, new ways to step away from one heavy addiction and move on to something--for lack of a better term--lighter. You can back away from the heroin of World of Warcraft to the methadone of Burnout: Revenge or We Love Katamari. (Then again, considering Katamari's trippy-colors art style, maybe that game is an acid trip? Same difference.) These games are a start. But ultimately, you have to want to change. You have to be willing to say, "Maybe I've been neglecting the things that are important to me."

I love games. I always have, and I always will. But I refuse to place games before people. I've dropped from matches in Magic Online because some of my buddies have shown up unexpectedly. I've bailed early on raids because I wanted to get dinner at a restaurant with a friend. And you know what? Not a pang of guilt. I enjoy hanging out with all the virtual friends I've made, but if it comes down to playing a game online and seeing real people, real people are always going to win out.

If you think you might be a little too hooked on your favorite games, you don't have to quit cold turkey. You don't have to walk away from it all. But you do need to learn how to get it under control. Set a schedule where you have specific nights to be out of the house, away from games, or, if you can't do that, invite a bunch of friends to your house and play a social game. Games like Halo 2 and Mario Party are great for that kind of thing. At the end of the day, look yourself in the mirror and ask yourself this one fundamental question: Are you playing the game, or is it playing you?

Next Up: Beating People Is Easy by Greg Kasavin