wlj

I have been gaming for 3 decades and I absolutely love it. It has always been my #1 hobby all of my life. As the years go by, I have less and less time to play them due to family and job responsibilities. There has been a change in gaming habits since 2011. I used to buy tons of new games. I would finish one, sell it, and get more. However, now, I game pretty much the same amount of time, I just play fewer games. Over the past couple of years, my gaming has consisted of three games -- Dark Souls, Diablo 3, and Marvel Heroes. I have played a handful of other games, but I would say 90% of my playtime has been with those 3 games and 10% other games.

Have I been addicted to any or all of those 3 games? Quite possibly. I haven't developed an extremely unhealthy addiction like some WoW addicts out there. I haven't destroyed my life. Luckily i have a wonderful family that keeps me grounded. I do fear that if I was single that I would be in danger of a toxic addiction.

Have you ever been addicted to a game?

cleaver

Tetris, Madden 97, Final Fantasys 3 and 7, and Arkham City. All of those I had to ween myself off of, and when applicable kept playing long after I beat them.

Moopher

Call of Duty since 4...up until this last Spring.
Bomberman Live
Pokemon Blue
Monster Rancher 2

davidh777

Civilization for Windows--just couldn't stop playing.

redbill

in sequential order:

Hardball
Phantasy Star 2
Jezzball
Tetris
Tony Hawk 3
Rockband 1,2,3

Noonan

All entries to the Elder Scroll series
Most entries to the Final Fantasy series; mostly 12 and now 14 (my current addiction)
Civilization
Demon Souls

mhg83

Skyrim: I put close to 120 hrs and still have a ton of quests left. If I start back up all my other games get pushed aside.

Audio surf: not much addicted but like to put an hour or two a week. Steam says 60 hrs but with the other computers I have it re-installed it's probably 200 hrs

wlj

Do any of you feel your addiction to 1 or more of those games was very unhealthy? In what ways?

Kedrix

Yah, sure...I've gotten better with age, but I was terrible when I was a kid and young adult.

Recent stuff...Skyrim, Peggle, Puzzle Quests, those kinda games. Honestly, even though I loved it, that's why I stopped playing WoW after only a couple of years. I didn't play anything else...and I hated myself for it. I'm concerned if I ever get Diablo 3 that it will play out the same way. At least with Skyrim, I learned my lesson enough to ween myself off of it and then go back in a week here and a week there.

wlj

i am "flirting" with giving WoW a shot. I know that is like playing with fire, but I am curious what the fuss is all about. I played a little bit of the starter edition, but i was addicted to Diablo 3 and didn't really play it more than maybe 2 hours. I have read WoW is more geared to the casual crowd now, so I don't think the need to play all of the time to advance is still as strong as it was.

Obi-Wanma

For the most part, I really only play one game at a time. I guess you could say I'm addicted in that way, but once I'm done I generally move on to the next one and don't go back. I like my games to end, which is why I don't get involved in an MMO (that and the monthly fees).

majorjoe23

Whenever I have a free minute I pull out Tapped Out. But I can stop whenever. I'm not an addict. It's just recreational.

james2025a

Well i have been gaming for around 36 years now and will continue to do so until the day i die. In that time there have been too many games that i have lost countless hours to. In recent memory Oblivion and Skyrim really had me addicted. Tetris as someone mentioned has also taken much of my time. The GTA games since III have also done a good job at stealing my life. I have pumped probably 300 hours into Just Cause 2 as well.

davidh777

I know Civ cost me a lot of sleep. I would boot up the game, load up my five-CD carousel (yes, this was a while back), and play. Then every time the fifth CD finished and the music stopped, I would curse myself because I knew I had blown around five hours.

superdeluxe

I was pretty addicted to Diablo.

Supermallet

Oblivion. On my days off, I would wake up, boot up the 360 in my bedroom, and play for about 8 hours straight. After 8 hours, I would have a meal, then play for another 8 hours before passing out. I did this for months. Luckily, once I beat the main storyline, I was able to drop it and go back to normal. I've never had that kind of experience with another game.

taffer

Yes most definitely.

I was very much addicted to gaming back in the 90s and early 2000s. I was a freshman in college in 1997 when Final Fantasy VII was released. When I first bought that game, I literally sat down and played it for over 30 hours straight. I didn't so much as get up to go to the bathroom or get something to eat. No joke. I quite literally sat in the same chair for over 30 hours without getting up.

Gaming "marathons" like that were a very frequent occurrence with me. It was no problem at all for me to sit on my ass playing games all day long and doing absolutely nothing else. Needless to say I ended up flunking out of college because I never went to class.

I was big into gaming like that until the mid 2000s and then for whatever reason I just got tired of gaming. I don't really know what happened. The modern consoles just don't appeal to me very much. I've probably only played maybe 10-12 different games this whole generation, and none of them were as addictive to me as older games were. At this point I have no plans at all to buy a PS4 or X1. I think I am pretty much done with gaming completely.

I don't know if my hobby interests just changed as I got older or what. I've also always been a hardcore comic book guy, and that has never changed, so I don't know why my interests in video games has changed.

Also regarding college, I did decide to go back four years ago, and this time I actually took my studies seriously. I will be graduating in May 2014.

davidh777

TimeandTide

Same here.

Most recently, COD:MW3 MP.

Only other console game I put near as many hours into was FF VII on the PS. Not the greatest game ever, but losing myself in the card games and the awesome cut scenes and music got me through a very rough year.

shizawn

The original Civilization nearly consumed my life. I missed a ton of my senior year of high school because of it.

Edit: there hasn't been a game since that's had that effect on me (Civilization II probably came the closest).

Trevor

Heroes of Might and Magic

I played the first three games of this series thousands upon thousands of times. As recently as a couple years ago I replayed the campaigns of one of them, spending every off-work hour for a week or so. The 4th and 5th in the series could never quite grab me, thank God.

taffer

Civ IV consumed my life. I never played the first three, but I have put in literally thousands of hours playing Civ IV. Its one of the very few games that I still play today in fact.

I am convinced that the developers somehow digitized crack cocaine, and that's what Civ actually is. There is no other explanation as to how so many people get so completely addicted to that series.

I loved the first three as well, and I agree 4 and 5 weren't as good.

Man, just thinking about Civ and HoMM makes me wish they had iPad ports. I know there is a Civ Rev port, but its not nearly the same thing.

starseed1981

Nope. But when I was in undergrad I had a roommate that got so addicted to Everquest that he went from a deans list Chemical Engineering major to getting kicked out of school. Then when I entered grad school I roomed with a kid that was so addicted to Warcraft 3 that he lost 50 lbs....which is a big deal for a 5 foot 3 guy.

dvdjunkie32

Starcraft BroodWars Multiplayer - the only game that I ended up purchasing multiple times after the disc would get so scratched up. I was so addicted to that game that I could not wait to get off work so I could play some more. I logged around 10K matches, researched every build strat that I could find, tried dozens of strategies and still got my ass handed to me 50% of the time because every strategy had a counter-strategy if you are fast and good enough.

It didn't help that people were using cheat hacks to win either.