Advice: stop the video games and choose useful obssessions

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My brain doesn't do numbers.

In any case, why do some people have such a bug up their butt about video games? They're no more a waste of time than watching TV, socializing at parties, or the dozen other things that folks do that I don't enjoy and personally consider a "waste of time."

Mine either. That's why I let my computer do the numbers for me.

i have obsessed with several different video games in the past, sometimes for months at a time. Knowing its pointless, these days I try hard to avoid games and look for things i can read about instead. I know it is impossible to control the obesssions when they start but i find if i dont put myself in front of things then they cant trigger an event.

I have to absolutely disagree with this one.

A few reasons:

First of all, gaming actually does have it's uses... depending on the player, and the context. Me, I've always been a gamer. Always. My parents, for reasons absolutely unknown to me, got me started on it at like, age 3 (my mother says age 1, but this makes no sense to me, so 3 it is). This despite that they dont play games themselves... but I digress. I've ALWAYS been into them, and they've always been my core passion.

However, my interest in them is very.... broad. I'm not what most would consider to be a "typical" gamer. Alot of people just take to mindlessly shooting things in CoD, and that's that. Me? Hah, no. That's not good enough. I need complexity, I need depth, and I need CHALLENGE. I need things that keep my mind engaged and hold my extremely limited attention. And here we get to the part that, for me, proves it all to not be at all useless, or "a waste".

First of all, there's my reaction speed. I am fast. A common phrase is "cat-like reflexes", but at the point I'm at, I just say I'm "faster than cats". Not just that though, but also processing speed. Which means I can not just react to things extremely fast, but I have enough time to choose the CORRECT response to it, which includes responses that are more complicated than something like a simple instinctual movement. This is all very useful to me. An example is driving. I drive alot. I drive at night, and this area tends to be filled with people who are absolute morons. They're not paying attention because maybe they are talking to someone in the car, they might be talking on their phone, they might also be drunk, or they might just be bloody stupid. Either way though, when a hazardous situation occurs... and they will... this reaction and processing speed allows me to make the correct movements to avoid a crash or impact extremely quickly, and in a coordinated and non-panicked way.

It goes further than that though. I also have the ability to track and process a huge number of things at once. This has developed to the point where it's nigh impossible for me to focus on JUST one thing, because no one thing can take up my entire focus. As an example: There was one time when I had my cousin and a friend both over to my house, and we sat down for some gaming, which is typically fighting games for us. Of the extremely fast type, this being Guilty Gear in this example. I'm playing the game with my friend while my cousin watches, and of course the whole time, my friend never shuts up (because he never does), and of course to avoid offending, I need to be paying attention to the conversation and responding, which I did. In addition to this, my cousin started randomly reading my Garfield comic books, and knowing I'm a huge fan of Garfield, would randomly interrupt the conversation, reading the first 2 panels of a particular strip out loud (most Garfield comic strips are 3 panels long), and ask me to recite whatever was said in the third panel. I did this, without slowing down in-game, and without losing track of the conversation. AND, the dog was in my room, so during all of this, I'm listening carefully to where she's moving and her current position in the room, keeping track of how close she was to certain objects that I didnt want her messing with. This all going on all at the same time, with me expected to not lose momentum in-game AT ALL, and considering that I play at an extremely high level, there's a seriously stupid amount of complex stuff going on in the game. But I can do all of that anyway. All at once.


And where do these abilities come from? Well, I can say, I wouldnt be able to do these things if I wasnt into gaming so much. These skills have been finely honed by my "useless" obsession, to the point where they're a little absurd. And it shouldnt be hard to think of potential practical uses for skills like these in the real world.

It goes further than that even though. As I said, I dont like simple or easy games. I like games with depth and complexity. And depth and complexity often means brain-melting puzzles, and a gazillion numbers, or alot of very complicated logic. Games are NOT all as mindless as stuff like Call of Duty or Halo or whatever. Lots of number-crunching, high level logic, and management skills are required, all at once, in many games, sometimes going along with the speed & coordination requirements as well. And I mean WAY more than mainstream RPGs or strategy games use. Since I play ALOT of non-mainstream games (I'm mostly a PC gamer, I like indie games in addition to the full-price games, and there's enough money for me to just buy whatever I happen to feel like at the time, as game purchasing goes), I run into interesting and creative titles that can be REALLY complicated. I'm really used to this sort of thing, and because of it, many things in real life just.... arent that complex by comparison. I'm good at logic, I'm good at figuring out what needs to be done based on available data... again, useful skills.

This gaming obsession ALSO lead to a very strong interest in computers. I started learning programming at age 7 or 8; GW-Basic, naturally, as this was during the wonderful DOS era of PCs (no, seriously, I really liked DOS alot). And I learned the heck outta the computers I was constantly using. As anyone that's used DOS knows, it's.... not exactly user friendly. I learned it anyway, on my own. I mastered it well enough that the family computer... and for the most part, every family computer after that... became mostly mine. And of course later on I had machines that were entirely mine. Alot of them. I've got a closet full of the things, and of course the giant blocky overpowered rig that I am using right now. And as you likely know, computer knowledge is USEFUL knowledge in THIS era. I dont need to be taught how to learn new software or new features or deeper parts of the Windows OS or whatever; give me a few minutes to poke at it, and I'll learn enough to do whatever I need to do. And again, the analytical and processing skills that I improve on mostly via gaming just takes all of this even further.

There are alot more examples of skills I've gained via this sort of thing.

But some people still think otherwise. They think that school is so important to learn these things! That's the REAL way to learn! I say.... no. For me, that was a load of crap. I learned little in school... so little... yet currently, I know *alot* of things. School tended to attempt to teach small (often very small) blobs of disjointed subjects to students, usually in exceedingly uninteresting ways. And I knew full well that alot of it was stuff I would NOT need later in life... and in that, I was entirely correct. I'm not interested in world history, for example. I dont need to know who killed who in the Battle of Place Town, or whatever. Unnecessary. And that was the same as so many other classes.

MOST of what I know now, I learned ON MY OWN. School was that damn useless to me. All it gave me was boredom, bullying, and torment. And even more boredom. Gaming had helped me get used to learning things on my own, as that typically is required of me. It's how I always do things now... I never rely on others to teach me, and I dont need to. I'll figure it out on my own, thanks. Probably quickly.

Now that's not to say that I'm always the most PRODUCTIVE person though. But that's more due to my situation than anything else. I havent worked a job in.... freaking forever. I dont even know how long it's been anymore. This being because it's been a long time since I've NEEDED one. At some point, wealth happened in the family, and my way-too-generous father constantly supports me in basically everything, so I do not work a job, and likely never will do so again. But I can still do things when I want to, or when I see a real reason to. That programming and stuff, for instance. I recently completed contracted work for one of the indie developers that I like the most; I've done ALOT of testing for them (which I suppose IS work, when I think about it, since it's *real* testing, not the "mmo beta" type) and they knew me pretty well, so I was offered the chance to assist on part of an upcoming game, specifically a part that wasnt really their forte, but that they knew that *I* knew alot about it. So I did this. My part was finished in about half the estimated time, and it couldnt have gone better. I was paid about $1200 for this and am going to be doing a similar but longer thing with them in April as a result. That's work that I knew how to do, that I COULD do, entirely because of everything I've gained from my "useless" obsession. If I didnt have the ever-present money (and thus, free time...), I could pursue a career in computers of some sort, thanks to everything I've gained from this oh-so-silly hobby of mine.

So yeah.... to me, there's nothing useless about it. And no, I'm not some big overweight basement dweller sort or anything. No side effects of that sort. It doesnt wreck me in a physical sense, and I DO have other interests, and other things I do.


I could also go into things on the anime side.... as I dont think THAT is useless either. Hell, THAT one changed my life in.... unexpected ways, but.... that's a whole other story.


Something to keep in mind... just because you yourself may have found it to be unhelpful or whatever, doesnt mean that's going to be the case for everyone... so it's silly to make that assumption, when you meet someone that has an obsession such as this, because you just may be dead wrong.



....sorry for the horrible text blob here, but I figure if I'm going to answer and explain something, I should do it in detail.

Not bad advice, but also a word of caution: The online culture surrounding programming is a bit dysfunctional. If you have as a goal to learn life skills, to get along with people, and be employable, they aren't the best role models. Finding people online with similar interests can make you feel good about yourself and give you confidence, but if you find yourself thinking the world is full of morons, and that the measure of human intelligence is programming skill, then you've put a barrier between you and the rest of the world rather than building bridges and making connections. The online programmer culture is kinda like anti-networking, and even anti-socialization.

And if you're into gaming, and talk about it online, you're probably already immersed in programmer culture, so you're not going to learn new people skills finding where they talk about programming. It's pretty much the same crowd.

I think this is a good point. It depends a lot on what you put in yourself. It is my personal experience that open source projects in particular require a surprising amount of "soft skills" like project management, collaboration, written and verbal communication and dealing with criticism. For gamers that would like to try their hands at programming, I'd recommend that after learning the foundations they find a nice project to join where they can learn these skills as well while at the same time improving their technical abilities by working on small subtasks.

I will agree with the OP. I had potential to be much more than a mid-30's has-been. I have to live paycheck-to-paycheck to try to put food on the table and keep a roof over our heads, while working bad job after bad job. If I only would have applied my focus towards anything besides video games, I'm smart enough to be successful. Instead of college, I played video games. Instead of learning useful skills, I played video games. Instead of paying enough attention to my girlfriends, I played video games.

Obsessions are obsessions, but I think laziness plays a pretty big role. Having fun instead of doing something difficult like studying, learning or working is laziness. Laziness will always catch up with you. I've learned the hard way.

I don't think it is true that one can't step away from a special interest to do something else that one has to do, like homework that needs to be turned in or job tasks. With a special interest, I know that it is always there, waiting for me to pursue it when I am free from current demands, and I will block out times to focus on it for hours or days in a row. I think that it is more the nature of eggscapism from the real world and its demands that one has to pursue something like video games with little pause to avoid what one needs to do in real life. I do this too, when I want to avoid something else, and there is a clear difference in how I feel between the eggscapism and special interest. For some people, video games may be special interest, and I think some of these people may turn it into a career in computer or art area, while for others, it may be eggscapism instead, as some people have told me that it is for them.

I have rarely seen such an honest response.

That being said, maybe it's time to turn things around and do what you passed on doing a decade ago. I know it's probably not my place to say this, but you are too young to be defeated.

I agree with what you wrote.

In my opinion, there is no problem with frequent bouts of eggscapsim to destress for awhile from demands of life.
It only becomes a problem when it is long-term and cuts out all other activities or opportunities that a person could pursue, leaving a person aimless and getting up each day just to eggscape in this one activity for another day, and each day going on like this for months or years.

Thankfully, some of us can manage to do both.

I really hate people like you. I do not care about this society nor value it, thus, why should I slave away to sustain it. What is the difference between doing something you love or doing your "useful" activities? They both lack inherent meaning and only get meaning by you placing value to it. Many people living in their mom's basement seem much more happier then someone slaving away for a wage.

For example, you would hate people like Isaac Newton as he did none of your useful activities and spent days figuring out the mathematics behind things. However, to you these mathematics are useless as he could do more useful thing such as playing the social game. His mathematics was not used until much later, thus, only found valuable to society when it was useful to actually apply them which came much later after his death.

It's better to be decent at many things than to be great at only one thing. One wants to aspire to be more than "a jack of all trades, master of none," though.

However, people who were great at one thing frequently were poised to make many of the discoveries which are part and parcel of our modern world.

We should not deride Newton--but I'm sure many of his contemporaries did.

Last edited by kraftiekortie on 24 Dec 2014, 6:53 pm, edited 2 times in total.

I would love to obsess over coding. Instead it's World of Warcraft. Yes, my life revolves around my obsession. I would also like step by step instruction on becoming obsessed with something useful. I'd pay gooooood money for that.

Sorry but I love video games. In fact I have had some of the best times in my life with guildies in online video games, my first one being Everquest (which I played for years), and then Everquest 2, and a few other ones. I have also learned quite a few things there, and met many great people as well (some of them even helped me get through rough times), whom I never would have heard of if it hadn't been of my favorite games. I haven't played online for a while now because I was offline for a few months, but I will eventually get into it again because I miss it a whole lot. And right now I also miss all the Christmas special stuff in EQ1 and EQ2 (among other things, if anyone here has played the original Everquest, maybe they remember Santa Claug lol).