Events | 2010.02.08
I'm trapped in the drop zone | Ariane Sherine
Work and friends are being neglected, but no one will intervene in my video game addiction
Recently a friend confessed that he was hopelessly addicted to a computer game, yet declined to tell me which one. "It will eat up your life," he cautioned. "I\'m spending 12 hours a day on it, and my eyes have gone funny."
"It won\'t do that to me," I assured him, safe in the knowledge that I had never been addicted to anything. I thought people who claimed to be hooked on electronic games were either very weak-willed, or were making excuses so they didn\'t have to do dull stuff instead.
"If you\'re sure," the friend replied, before confiding dolefully, "it\'s called Drop 7 . It\'s like Tetris , but worse."
The next day, bored on a long train journey, I decided to download the game and discover whether it really was as compelling as the friend insisted. If it helped swallow five hours of nothing but cows whizzing by, that would surely be a good thing.
The game was very similar to the shape-fitting puzzle Tetris, but used numbers instead of shapes. I spent an hour working out how to play it; after that, I was mesmerised, barely registering train announcements or the tea trolley. There was, I realised, something strangely satisfying about exploding the brightly coloured blocks: it took skill and strategy.
As the train pulled into its destination, I briefly found myself wishing the journey had been longer, so I could have dropped more virtual circles, before shaking the thought out of my head. The game had been a pleasant enough diversion, now it was time to forget it.
To my dismay, I found this difficult. When an acquaintance met me off the train and asked what I\'d like to do before dinner, I lied and said: "Have a sleep" – aware that saying "play a computer game on my phone" would sound weird and antisocial.
He duly left me in my bedroom, where I proceeded to manoeuvre numbers around a bleeping screen. Each time I started a game, I promised myself it would be the last; each time, I broke my promise.
During dinner, in a break between courses, I did the unforgiveable: I began playing the game under the table. Seconds later, I was discovered. "I\'m sorry our conversation isn\'t interesting enough for you!" my host snapped, only to be met with an eloquent "Mmph?"
That night, when I tried to sleep, all I could see were numbered spheres falling down behind my eyes. It was as though the game had somehow inserted hooks into my neurons and synapses, and now it was their sole focus of interest. At the end of the next day, I resolved to take drastic action and deleted the game from my phone, only to crack and download it again within an hour.
As a child, I had read books while my brother squashed imaginary mushrooms on his Nintendo console; as a student, I had played the piano while friends mashed opponents at Street Fighter III . In my first ever Guardian column I lamented the silliness of addiction. Now I was the silly one, wasting my life and feeling guilty and ashamed.
The trouble with this kind of obsession is that no one is going to stage an intervention. It\'s up to you if you want to fritter away the only life you have. It\'s true that no one will ever lament on their deathbed, "I wish I\'d played more computer games", but addicts know this, and it makes little difference. Games give us some semblance of control in an illogical and chaotic world; beguilingly, they reward and punish us in a logical, reassuring way.
It\'s been two months now, and I still haven\'t shaken my attachment to Drop 7, neglecting work and friends in favour of small coloured circles. I don\'t have shares in the game and don\'t know anyone involved in it; part of me wishes I did, so I could bribe or blackmail them into deleting it forever.
Two weeks ago, in a panic, I eventually called the friend who had warned me about the game\'s intoxicating properties, and admitted that he had been right. To his credit, he didn\'t say "I told you so", but merely replied: "I don\'t play that any more."
Excited, I wondered what the secret solution to the sleepless nights, listless days and sense of self-loathing was. Maybe there was hope after all. "How did you stop?" I demanded eagerly, vowing to do whatever he\'d done.
He sighed: "I found a game that\'s even more addictive."
For more information, please visit
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/[...]k-friends-videogames-addiction
