Achievement Addiction and Online Connection in Gaming

In my inaugural post about entertainment and gaming, I thought I would write about something near and dear to my heart: video gaming. Those that know me know that I have been a gamer for as long as I can remember. It's a fact about myself that I've tried to hide to varying degrees from various people at times in my life. As I've gotten older and married, I now officially don't give a fuck, and have become a proselytizer: an evangelist for the notion that you can be normal and play a shit-ton of video games. I'm continuously surprised at how surprised people are.

Recently, my habits have changed significantly with regard to my gaming. I got married, moved to San Francisco, and got a puppy. Those are very important things, obviously. But, just as importantly for my gaming habits, in August of 2016, just when I was reaching the horizon of my time to unapologetically play hours on end of games, with a new life, and a new, more demanding, job, staring me in the face, I reached platinum in League of Legends. For the uninitiated, that means that I'd reached the top 8% of players in a game that has 100 million monthly (and 27 million daily) players worldwide. Granted, that was on the North America server, so bump those numbers way down, and consider the fact that I was playing against what was, at the time I quit, the second or third best server in the world. But either way, after four or so years of playing, I had reached the top 8% of players on a server of, what, at least 5 million daily players?

I felt really good about myself and, luckily, since then, have had absolutely 0 desire to play that fucking game. As much fun as the game is, it is, as its community is often called, toxic. It was toxic to my ability to enjoy things that were not League of Legends. It was toxic to my relationships with my friends, and even my wife. I would get grumpy around the house after three-game losing streaks. I would resent having to go out to dinner after a two game winning streak where I felt I was really in my groove. Those that play such games know the feeling.

I transitioned to Overwatch, which, to me, was and is way less addictive. I just didn't feel the constant need to gain league points that drew me into higher and higher tiers. I'd finish a game, and, yeah, someone on my team would be a jerk, or bad, or drunk, or useless, and I wouldn't really care. 

Some of you may be reading this (this is assuming that people are reading this) and thinking that I had or have an addiction. Perhaps that's true. But I think that online gaming addictions are a new brand of addiction. It's not like drugs or alcohol. I was not physiologically addicted to the point where I literally needed the games to feel normal. The online gaming addiction was a combination of addictions that created more of a burning desire than a true need. It combined the need for social contact and validation with the need to achieve. 

We are social creatures. We crave attention; we crave contact; we crave dialogue. It turns out that we crave it even when that dialogue is a 13-year-old controlling a furry humanoid rabbit thing shooting blowdarts at people calling you a faggot. And you need to react. And you need to beat that little shit. And you need to gloat about it, and revel in your 12 league points drawing you ever closer toward the 100 you need to play qualifying matches to advance a league. And there's the second addiction: achievement. This is a well-documented phenomenon in the gaming world, and one that all games have seized upon: freemium phone games that let you play for free, but not if you want sweet content, or want to advance faster; console games that used to be a refuge from the rest of the world now give you meaningless points and a pop-up saying "good job" for simply saving your game the first time, or getting into a car in a game that requires significant amounts of driving to do, well, anything.

But here is where the similarities to drug addictions stop. I didn't need help to stop. I just did. I still play games, but nowhere near as much as I used to, and now I tend to opt for offline games with minimal achievement interruptions. And it feels great. I now feel so much more joy at exploring and climbing in Uncharted 4 than I ever did before. Because I'm not achieving, and not sharing my achievements. It's taken me back to the days when I played games for, wait for it, fun. There's no longer this deep, insidious urge to achieve that often was the only reason I played a game like LoL. And I feel all the freer for it.

So, to those playing online games full of league points you don't need: I urge you to take it offline for a while. Your friends will understand. Pick up those console games you've been meaning to get around to. Particularly anything with an engrossing story line or exploration that will remind you what it's like not to focus on mechanics, or the drive to win. Just focus on fun, and exploring. Ideally, play a Naughty Dog game to remind you what it feels like to actually emotionally connect with a game. Have you played The Last of Us yet? That's a game that will help you remember what playing a game and feeling like a normal fucking human being with emotions other than pure rage and the drive to win is like. And it still has zombies and guns, so that's cool.

These days, I have time for hobbies that aren't games, and I don't feel like I'm missing something when I do them. This is one of those hobbies. So, to anyone wanting to unplug from the need to gain a tier, or a league, or whatever your achievement-based online game is: step away. Lie on your couch and watch a show you've been meaning to catch up on. Or ween yourself off it with other games. I promise that you'll feel much more of a sense of achievement for having done so than you ever will by getting to Gold in LoL.