1. I will never be able to play enough to satisfy the urge to game.
2. I will never be the best, no matter how much time I spend playing.
3. There is always someone out there that does 1 and is 2.

These conclusions are not the summation of my doctorate thesis, and I am not a licensed psychotherapist, but I think gaming, like any other reinforcing stimulus, has the dangerous potential to be deeply addicting. The immediate response to such a statement from most of you is something along the lines of “duh”. But stick with me here, I think there is more to it than that. We have all heard the stories of those people out there that are so buried in games like World of Warcraft or EverQuest, that they have pretty much forsaken everything else in their lives… family, friends, education, work, food, and often sleep. They live to game and game to live (they think).

However, I think the addiction is far more widespread than those statistical outliers that have sacrificed themselves to the game, to the promise of escape. I think it affects a number, if not all, online gamers to some extent. We all want the thrill, the interaction, the satisfaction of a great online experience. If we didn’t, then we wouldn’t game.

So in a sense, we are all addicts.

We all want our next fix. And like any abuser, we go through cyclical addictions. We wane and wax through the fixes, swearing it off, hitting it again, then inevitably swearing if off again.

I started playing CounterStrike when it was an early beta mod for the original Half Life (around the summer of 1999). I was hooked. I played about 40 hours a week, while going to school full time, while working and supporting myself. I spent about 2 years of my life playing so much CS that my brain actually started to wire itself to serve the game. I would wake up with new strats in mind, or I would dream about CS. I was a fierce competitor, and I thought I could go pro. I even won a local tourney (bought my first DVD player with the winnings).

But then I became disillusioned. I realized I could not keep it up, the strains of school, work, and life started to conflict. So I went cold turkey and it hurt. I played some other online games to try to offset the loss, like Unreal Tournament, Quake 3 Arena, and Tribes. I enjoyed them all to an extent, I was proficient, relatively skilled, but then I started to realize that they were not same. I was just not going to be able to enjoy them as much. I could feel the itch. Every time I saw something online about CS, I wanted to jump right back in.

Unreal Tournament 2004 changed all that. I think it was the vehicles did it. I am not sure, but the same thing happened. Or at least it could have happened. Surprisingly, CS taught me to recognize the signs of addiction. I knew deep down that I did not want to be addicted again. I did not want to be the best. I just wanted to play to have fun. CS had taught me what the ugly side of gaming was, and it had made me realize that although I was getting the adrenaline rush from winning, I was not having fun anymore.

That is where the breakthrough came in. I realized that I was mistaking the rush for fun. And in reality, it wasn’t even close. If I was looking for fun from the online experience, why was I beating myself up, hurting myself in so many ways, just to play a game? A game, that in reality, gives nothing back? It’s not like you can turn off your computer and have something to show for the 4 hours you just spent shooting at things.

I found that the rewards to gaming have to be intrinsic. You have to realize that the game is for fun. It is not for the rush, it is not to be the best. It is for the moment. And those moments are fleeting, and brief, and easily recreatable if you just give it a little time. It is easy to fall into the trap, to justify it, to dump so much of your life into it. But the result will still be the same. You turn off your computer or console, and your life is still your life. I happened to figure that out before it hurt me, but I see and hear of fellow gamers still struggling to find the balance.

I think you all can. If you just ask yourself, are you having fun? Because if you aren’t, you probably need to go take a walk, or read a book, or meet a girl, or go to class, or work, and live your life. Don’t worry, we will all still be here waiting for you when you get back.

Having fun.

And I haven’t. In fact, I only have one console. And it hasn’t been turned on since May.

My gaming bliss is all delivered through my PC. Yes, my PC. I know, that makes me seem so old, since evidently, PC gaming is dead. That is the word on the street. Homes.

But the Game of the Year is not Halo 3. Nor is it any other shitacular “AAA” title.

It is Portal. Without a single doubt.

Not the whole Orange Box that it comes as a part of, mind you, but the middle child of the Orange Box (which is also totally awesome in its own right). Portal is one of those games that you can play more than once (and I have), and it is one of those games the literally kicks the shit out of any game out there. Team Fortress is also uber-awesome and pretty much the only game I play right now, but Portal keeps invading my mind. Like an escaped test participant.

I walked by one of the conference rooms at work today and saw some food sitting out on a table for the meeting participants. The dessert was cake.

And I could only think one thing. Only one thing.

The cake is a lie.

Name any other game this year that has invaded your thoughts after playing it like that. You play Portal, you are changed. You look for places to put entry and exit portals. You think about your weighted companion cube and how well it burns.

And the ending song is first time I have EVER sat through game credits. It is sublime in its perfection. Masterful in its wit. And completely borderline batshit awesome in its coolness.

Here is an amazing article on it (scans from GameInformer mag), too.

Jack Black and crap load of big Heavy Metal names from classic groups are involved with music and voice talent for the game. Motorhead! Judas Priest! Kiss! Dio! And plenty of new groups… like Wolfmother. (All on the last page of the article.)

Looks kick ass.

Overall, Bioshock was a good game. I liked the decision making aspect of the combat system – using weapons vs using powers on different types of baddies. The storyline was entertaining too. Although I wish there was more free will and choice built into it.

The game was touted has having deep morale decisions driving gameplay. As I count it, there was only 1 decision at the very beginning of the game. One. Not the “deep” morale discussion everyone was touting before the game release.

To kill or not to kill, is the question. I chose not to kill, and I got the “happy” ending. I suspect the “not-so-happy” ending is on youtube somewhere. I suppose I will go watch it as I get time.

The ending felt a little abrupt. Like the fourth act was cut a tad short.

I understand it takes a lot of money to make a game, and it takes a lot of money to make a good game longer without making it tedious or boring, but still… just a bit short.

I would have liked a world to backtrack through after the main conclusion. But since I pretty much aced it through the first time, I didn’t need to go look for anything that I may have missed. I would have liked to go back through the world of Rapture and bust a few more heads for some side quests or right-the-wrongs of the world.

Oh well. I spent the remainder of my time playing Team Fortress Beta. That is still very enjoyable.

The gameplay itself really is not all that different than the previous version (I played that what? about 8 -10 years ago?), although the analogues of the previous maps feel clunky almost. Too big in places, like my muscle memory for certain maps made me shoot walls far too often to blame my mouse or the fact that I haven’t played Team Fortress of any flavor for many years now.

The cartoon feel to it is spot on, and way more effective than the realism bent that they were headed so many years ago. I think games like CS and DoD have their place, and TF has it’s own now. I am missing some of the tips and tricks to take my playing to the “next” level so-to-speak, but I think I will be able to catch on. Hopefully game play won’t skew horribly like previous online games have. I know deep down that it will eventually skew towards the players that play 30+ hours a week (the losers still living in their parent’s basements or the no lifers that spend every non-work moment on the game).

I used to be one of those lifers. I used to play a lot.

But it is nice not to be that way anymore (honestly it is). It would be nice to have a “casual shooter” around, but that may be the stuff of dreams.

Pipe bomb dreams perhaps.

Ha.

Battle With ‘Gamer Regret’ Never Ceases
By Clive Thompson Email 09.10.07 | 2:00 AM

In retrospect, maybe I shouldn’t have looked.

I was 10 days into playing Dungeon Maker: Hunting Ground — a little RPG I reviewed here last month — and I was poking around the “settings” menu. I noticed that it had a “time played” option, which shows you how long you’ve been toiling away at the game. Curious, I clicked it.

Thirty-six hours.

Upon which my heart sank into a fathomless pit. Thirty-six hours? How in god’s name had I managed to spend almost four hours a day inside this game? I should point out that this was not the only game I’d been playing during that time. I’d also been hip-deep in BioShock and Space Giraffe, so I’d been planted like a weed in front of my consoles for hours more.

This is a missing-time experience so vast one would normally require a UFO abduction to achieve it.

So the question of the column, and possibly the question of my eternal soul, is: Is this good thing? How much does it change the architecture of your life to spend that much time playing games?

The dirty secret of gamers is that we wrestle with this dilemma all the time. We’re often gripped by what I call “gamer regret” — a sudden, horrifying sense of emptiness when we muse on all the other things we could have done with our game time.

Frequently, it’s precipitated by those ghastly “time played” counters. The “played” command in World of Warcraft is the worst. I’ve known gamers who nearly went into shock after discovering they’d spent an entire month in-game each year. (According to Nick Yee’s research, amazingly, this is the average — 20 hours a week of play.)

My gamer regret usually takes the form of drawing up a humiliating list of other, potential activities I’ve forgone. I could have … volunteered at a local hospital! Learned a language! Cleaned up my rats’ nest of an office! Gotten a head start on a new writing project! Hell, I could have just, you know, played the guitar or something. Wouldn’t that have been a less howling waste of my precious time on Earth?

Sometimes I think the inky depths of gamer regret are linked, in a fiendish calculus, to how totally awesome the game is. The higher you rise, the lower you fall. A really superb game sweeps you into its embrace because it offers a seductively controllable alternative to life. You’re wrestling to master a system — a war, a puzzle, a mystery — that is enormously complex but, unlike the rest of our lives, actually masterable.