How To Manage Your Online Gaming Addiction

Online Games Addiction Could Be Serious! It's Not Too Late.

Hello guys, here is an article that I found on Uproxx to help you manage your online gaming addiction. The article was written by Andre Infante and it was published on  02/23/2010 I hope you like it.

Welcome to the world of the functioning addict.  You have a job, friends, maybe even a girlfriend, but you spend more time in games like World of Warcraft and Eve Online than you’d like, and you want to cut back.  Here are a few simple tips to make it easier. 

1)  Quit your guild.

One of the tricks online games employ to keep you coming back is the guild (or corporation, depending on the game).  A guild provides friends, a community, and a sense of duty.  If people are relying on you, you’ll sink hour after hour in the game to fulfill your responsibilities.

2) Change how you play.

Every aspect of online games are engineered to draw you in.  The vast worlds, the hundreds of quests to perform, the Chinese dwarves spamming gold in broken English.  Okay, well, not that last part. 

3) Find something else to do with your time.

Whenever someone discards or cuts down on a hobby, it leaves large stretches of empty time in their life.  These stretches are dangerous, as they can easily end with you sitting at home in front of the computer, bored senseless.  Under these circumstances, it’s likely your willpower won’t hold out, and you’ll be back to your old levels of activity within a week. Given this, it makes sense to try to find a new hobby.  Ideally, it should be something that interests you, and something that involves spending time with other people.   Exposure to direct sunlight and girls are also good.  The graphics are better outside anyway.

4) Stop reading the magazines and websites. 

There are hundreds of websites, magazines, an feeds devoted to any game.  If you found this article helpful, you probably read most of them.  Stop.  This is the equivalent of a recovering Vicodin addict buying a crate of tic-tacs.

5) Find other forms of entertainment. 

Odds are, you got into the game because you like high fantasy.  Or space operas. Or gritty neo-noir.  Or Asian people with implausible hair.  Whatever.  The point is, there’s nothing wrong with any of those things. 

 

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