I know the opposite of Spiro's story... one of my good friends from High School who was otherwise brilliant (Salutatorian, etc), managed to squander a full scholarship thanks to Geometry Wars and now lives in the house next to his parents house, which I guess is an upgrade from a basement. He's slowly sorting his life out now, but he's still stuck in our home town.
But he was on top of the leader boards!!! Whoooo
13 years ago:
Hello.
My name is L. Spiro and I’m a Starsiege: Tribes-aholic.
*audience appalls*
The term “addiction” has many variants and degrees, but mine fits them all to their deepest of meanings. In fact my addiction was such that there was no way to deny it no matter how hard one tried to strictly define it.
I stopped doing my homework. In 11th grade only 50% of my classes were F’s.
I had special privileges that allowed me to advance to 12th grade even despite this but things just got worse. In 12th grade I literally got completely straight F’s in every single class, including art. In fact I literally got a 0% in art ironically due to rules that I had set the previous year as a member of student council (a member of which my grades no longer allowed me to be in 12th grade). 2 years prior I had taken 1st place in an American national chess tournament and was captain of our school’s chess team, yet this year I was not even allowed to play thanks to my grades.
On a Thursday I became sick and decided I didn’t know how soon I would get well so I had better get in as much Starsiege: Tribes time as I could. I was sick Friday and continued playing, knowing that in any case I still had the whole weekend to play. I played Starsiege: Tribes for 52 hours straight, taking breaks only between map loads to answer nature’s call and to get drinks of water (but no food).
I dropped out at the middle of 12th grade.
My addiction…
…was the best thing that ever happened to me.
Starsiege: Tribes had a scripting language and full mod capabilities.
I had already been programming for 3 years prior to that game, but was nowhere near the level I needed to be in order to make 3D results and actually play my own game, let alone to have massive groups of others play them.
I started with just making maps, and when I later ended up playing my own maps with 30 other people it was extremely motivational. If you have ever had that happen you know how it feels. Compare that to doing English homework. I am sorry but there is an obvious difference not only in motivation but in developmental growth. My capacity for English did not need further development back then. My capacity for designing and programming games did.
That game is the single most influential aspect of my current life. It allowed me to explore all of the aspects of game creation that interested me, and at such a young age I learned that breaking away from the mold (ignoring homework in favor of pursuing my motivation, regardless of the consequences of my grades, status as student council, ability to play chess, etc.) actually works out more often than you think.
A perfect analogy is that trying to be a millionaire is difficult because most people are all going through the standard and safe system of self-development, but that is not what you do when you want to become a millionaire. If it was then we would almost all be millionaires. In fact, if you want to be a millionaire, you have to break the mold somewhere. The only hard part is knowing where and how.
So yes, I was addicted to games at some point. And that addiction opened my eyes to my future.
I simply would not be where I am today without having had it. I learned more about game creation from it than I would have at school. I learned practical skills that I employ today.
And I learned to take risks that would later cause me to take a huge risk in leaving America and traveling the world with just a few dimes to my name. That is because I learned, “It always works out.”
L. Spiro
Wow. That was a great read. I hope we see more posts like this haha.
I have to point out also that addiction that is just an addiction is never a good thing.
I was addicted to a game that allowed me to grow in valuable ways which would later end up being applicable to my life as a game programmer.
Another friend of mine had the same special privileges in school as I had had and he even managed to graduate with high marks whereas I had managed only to drop out.
We later worked together at the Wichita Greyhound Park (a dog track) and he was rising in the ranks even faster than I was.
Until EverQuest.
It started with him just calling in sick a few times. Then more.
Then one day he came in to report that he was quitting his job in order to spend more time playing EverQuest. It was the stupidest thing we had ever heard but we couldn’t change his mind.
After 1 month of doing nothing but staying home and playing that game, showing no effort of finding a new job, his parents gave him the ultimatum: 1 week to find a job or get out.
1 week later he was living in his car parked outside my friend’s apartment.
For whatever reason he managed to get luckier than he deserved. Another friend’s parents “adopted” him. Even while living in their basement for the next 4 years he never attempted to find a job and only played that game. Somehow they put up with that.
He currently works at a liquor store in Wichita.
I somehow doubt that as a child he said, “When I grow up, I want to live in this same rotten town and make minimum wage at a liquor store!”
Addictions can go both ways. They aren’t necessarily bad, but choose them wisely.
L. Spiro
For me - some games are really "interesting" for a while, and than become very boring.
Did any one ever read the different stories about Second Life "addicts" that completely shut down their real lives ... just to play ?
Yeah but, you know, it's just a desire to get away from the problems of actual life and go to a world where you have more of a say in the things that matter, like appearance, social standing, and achieving our goals. When people get addicted to games like that, or like L. Spiro's friend, it's really not that the game itself is the problem, or that the person is just making a stupid decision. It's honestly that the person finds so little satisfaction in other things, that once they found this game that lets them forget about all of that, they had no reason to go back to real life. They'd rather milk out as much time as possible playing the game now than force themselves to also live life at the same time.
The same thing was happening to me my freshman year of college, before I started programming. I was an English major who hated English classes. I was a writer who hated his own writing. When Fallout New Vegas came out, I took the 2 hour walk to and from Gamestop to go get it, and then spent the next week devouring that game, spending 8 hours a day every day. I missed midterms, papers, and of course classes. I was not addicted, I just wanted to get away from such a boring, unfulfilling life. Now I'm one of the top two students at my University's CS program. It's not because I'm special. I just happened to find my "real-life" thing, like L. Spiro did. Had I not found programming, I'd be on the streets somewhere, dropped out by now.
Well, I'm the polar opposite then. I used to play lots and lots of video games when I was younger, then when I turned 17, I sort of just grew out of them. I can't really play them anymore for any length of time, they just bore me after a few minutes of playing. But I have lots of problems at the moment, so it might just be a temporary side-effect. That said, I love programming, and I agree too that I don't know where I would be if I hadn't picked up that skill. Probably low-pay cashier in some supermarket, I guess. I'm not good at much else.
I used to play video games a lot before I started programming. Then while playing a game I asked myself "I wonder his this stuff is done! I want to create something that people will talk about like this game!" So I looked up Game Development on the internet and got interested in programming.
Ever since I got serious into programming and decided that's what I wanted to study and do with my life I haven't just sat down to try and finish every game I play. Do I still like games? Yes. Do I still play them? Of course. Do I play them as much as I used to? Nope. Every time I start playing a game I usually get more motivation to program so I can usually only play for a couple minutes. Mostly because I find myself saying "I wonder how they created this" for different aspects of the game.
It's funny actually. Because people who know that I am a game programmer automatically assume that I must be good at video games and play them all the time. It's actually quite the opposite. I'm pretty mediocre at video games now (do have my few select genres that I call my specialty) and my friends play them a lot more than I do. I'd say it'd be the game designers and QA Testers that play the most games. I know that's how it is with the person I'm working with right now to design our game. She's the lead designer and is the one that actually plays more games than I do, plus more genres than I do.
Being addicted to games is completely unrelated to being a good game designer. In fact I would hesitate before hiring an addict for fear of the possibility that said person can’t see the forest for the trees. An addict trying to design a game similar to that of his or her obsession is likely to borrow too many ideas from said game and likely to be unwilling to listen to input from others.
It also suggests a lack of responsibility.
Being an addict does not show devotion. There is no reason to assume if a person is addicted to a playing game then he or she would be just as addicted to actually making a game, and even if said person does want to make games, he or she may be heavily less motivated to make games outside of his or her genre.
As was mentioned many times, there are many forms of addiction and they can have different pros and cons. It sounds as though you are trying to get justification for your own addiction from us, and without knowing anything about your addiction I would follow a rule of thumb: If you have to ask, the answer is No.
People fit for the industry never need to ask if they are fit for the industry. If you are, it is in your blood and you know it. If you have to ask, it is not in your blood, and you would not make a good fit in the industry.
L. Spiro
