Tooned Out

Online Friends - Update #2

2008-02-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

A long time ago, I wrote about how my online friend had come from Texas to my hometown in the Pacific Northwest to visit me. It was a bit weird, meeting someone in real life that I had met through a children's online game, but she turned out to be just as great in real life as she was in Toontown. Caution: we were both mom's, sensible people, and had 'known' each other quite a while. Shortly after she returned home, she discovered she had cancer, and fought a courageous, but ultimately losing battle against that implacable disease.

While she was here visiting, I made a point of taking her to some beautiful places around here, one beach on the Olympic Penninsula in particular. During one of our telephone conversations while she was in treatment, she asked me to promise to help her husband find that spot and spread some of her ashes there, when the time came. Of course I said that wasn't going to be necessary, and that she and her whole family were going to come see me when she got better instead.

Well, last spring I got a call from her husband letting me know that she had lost her final battle, and we talked about when a good time would be for him and their boys to come out and fulfill her last request. This past summer, I met up with her husband and two sons, and we drove out to the beach and spread her ashes there. I was very happy to do this for her and for them, and I was absolutely struck by both the sadness and the oddness of the situation. It was incredible to me that something as banal as an online game had led to this poignant moment, and that something as simple as an off the cuff remark like "if you ever want to come out this way, I'd love to show you around" could lead to taking someone somewhere that made such an impression on them they'd want to spend eternity there.

Update '08

2008-02-27T15:21:00.000-08:00

Still Toontown free as of today. I'm not at all tempted to go back. Zero impulse. I will say that I still have definite compulsive tendencies, like when I started "helping" my son with the new Zelda game for the Wii and then proceeded to blow around 100 hours of my precious time. At least that game has an end (although I never did do all the side quests...) I guess you just never grow out of this stuff.

I occasionally spend a great deal too much time on line. Lately it's Facebook, which I used to laugh at until I learned how to put photos up for my relatives to see and then joined a group or two - well it's all downhill from there. I can exercise control most of the time, however. In any event, I have been terrible about moderating comments, and I will try to figure out a way to get better at it. If anyone out there is trying to quit online gaming, please know that you absolutely can. If I can do it, anyone can.

Dream On!

2006-07-04T17:49:00.000-07:00

I don't update this blog nearly enough, even when inspiration strikes. Today I just happened to check my Statcounter account and that reminded me of an idea I'd had several weeks ago and wanted to write about. I'm pretty beat just now after a busy (and long!) weekend so I don't know if I can do it justice, but best not to put it off any longer. So here it is in a nutshell:

I think that people who game obsessively are missing something. I don't mean that they're a few cards short of a deck, or a couple doughnuts short of a dozen, but rather that there's something lacking in their life, whether they realize it or not. When I started gaming, I had a very full life. I had a husband, children, a house, lots of stuff and loads of responsibility. What I didn't have was a self, an identity. Before Toontown, I lived for my husband, my kids, my house and they were how I defined myself. With Toontown, my identity became a little brightly colored collection of pixels who had a cool name and was way cute and way tough. And had lots of friends. And never got tired. And always had a clean house. And when she got her butt kicked all she had to do was hang out in the playground collecting stars or whatever until she was good as new, ready to take on the toon world again.

Fact is, I couldn't have quit playing and gone back to the same life I had before Toontown. In a weird way, I was more in my fantasy world and once I quit I had to be more in the real world. Toontown kept me in a holding pattern at a time when my real life was overwhelming and overwhelmingly boring at the same time. It kept me limping along, but it was a crutch I used for far too long. It helped me not think about things, but while I was not thinking about things I wasn't dreaming either and I wasn't growing as a real person in real life. I had to quit playing to start dreaming and growing again. Now that I'm not incessantly thinking about the toon me I have time to think about the "me" me. Who that character is, what she likes to do and what she is capable of. It's much harder than playing a toon character, but in the end it's sure to be much more rewarding.

Now instead of my real life suffering because of my fantasy life, my poor little toon is sadly neglected. She may never grow up because I am rarely interested in visiting her. Ah well, better her than me!

Update

2006-05-15T15:46:00.000-07:00

Wow, it's been ages!

I think I mentioned last time that I had bought my daughter an account and had even started a new toon. Well, we still have the account and I still have a toon - a different one now because my daughter deleted the first one. I'm getting back into the game (albeit in a more realistic way) but I have an excuse...

I have a friend (who I actually met in Toontown), in fact, the same one who came to visit me in October. Shortly after she returned home, she was diagnosed with cancer and had major surgery. She is still battling this horrible disease, which has weakened her body but not her spirit. On her good days, she likes to play Toontown. While she has a ton of friends on her big toons, I made a toon so we could quietly play together on one of the toons she doesn't use much. When she's not feeling up to playing, I play my toon for an hour or so to build it up because even her little toon is much stronger than mine!

So that's my excuse, a good one maybe, but still an excuse. I do find that Toontown is different for me now, luckily. When I first started playing again, I did go a little ways down the old path of obsession/addiction, but I caught myself in time. I worked hard at keeping it in perspective, and I managed it. I still really like to play, but I'm not obsessed. I don't think about the game much when I'm not playing, and if I miss a day or so, I'm not cranky and chomping at the bit to get back to it. It really is just a game for me now.

Happy Holidays

2005-12-17T10:29:00.000-08:00

As 2005 runs through it's last few days, I realize that my gaming phase has wound itself out and is at an end. I no longer feel like I must game. I can pick up my game and put it down at will. I can play for a bit of fun and relaxation, or not play if I have better things to do, which is most of the time. My self-esteem is no longer involved in anything that happens in my game or online, but rather it is firmly rooted in real life where it belongs.

I'm quite sure that what made the difference for me was getting out of the house and starting a new job. My job is menial and low skilled but luckily I work for a company whose values include treating their employees with respect and actively promoting self-esteem. My cynical side wants to discount outright a "corporate value" of promoting employee self-esteem, but I have to admit seeing it in action and in all fairness I have to admit that it works, even on me. I'm also sure that I would have reaped the same benefit from seeking out volunteer activities for an equal amount of hours each week, or returning to university to further my education.

I no longer compulsively check the OLGA website. I don't post much there anymore. I no longer feel like it's up to me to save the world from gaming addiction. My obsession with the problem of gaming addiction is fading, just as my addiction itself has faded. It's wonderful to know that even if I don't respond to all of those who cry out for help at OLGA, others will. There will always be someone there to help; that's just the kind of place it is. I've taken my turn; others will follow.

I started this blog to let people know that any MMORPG can be addicting. My addition was for Toontown, and I wanted to let people know that even though it's a game ostensibly made for kids, adults play it and adults get addicted to it. If you are an adult who is addicted, feel free to email me at portia9@gmail.com. I will always write back, though it may take me a day or two.

To get over my addiction, I had to quit outright. I didn't even think about picking up my game again for several months, and then only after I had made significant changes in my life and done a considerable amount of work on my inner self. I don't play any other online games. The only 'offline' game I play is Dance Dance Revolution. I play with my kids and it's great exercise, as well as a fun way to spend time together. I wouldn't advise anyone to return to gaming until they've done all the work necessary to understand what led them down the path to gaming addiction.

My slide into gaming addiction was caused by depression, anxiety, and resulting low self esteem. I wasn't aware of the extent that I was suffering from these problems until I quit gaming. Only after I left the game was I able to deal effectively with these issues. Online games are compelling and can be all-consuming. They squeeze out so much of real life that there's often not enough time or mental energy left to deal with real life problems. This leads to a downward spiral, and the only way back up is to leave the game, take a good look around, and fix what's broken in your real life.

The New Year is often a time for people to take stock and think about changes they'd like to make in their lives. If you are a gamer whose gaming is out of control, perhaps it's time to take your life back. Best wishes to all of you who've taken the time to read my ramblings.

Auuggghhh! Oh wait, it's ok, really

2005-11-19T11:46:00.000-08:00

Ok, I'll fess up. I bought my daughter a Toontown account, and worse than that, I've been dipping my toes into the digital pond a little now and then. Want to know something weird though? I don't like it much anymore. I'd rather read a book or just cuddle up in bed and watch a DVD. I just don't have much desire to play; it's boring and pretty inane. I guess it was a bit of a dangerous gamble to try it again, but I had a feeling that I was pretty much over it, and it turned out I was right. Toontown just doesn't do it for me anymore.

So what made the difference? I think it's kind of "been there, done that" as well as having gotten over the hump as far as dealing with my depression/anxiety. I didn't even know I was depressed until I quit gaming, and now that I'm 'in recovery' (gah, hate that phrase but can't think of a more appropriate one at the moment) Toontown, and games in general have lost their lustre. Cool.

Also, I got a part time job and bought myself a nifty new set of wheels. Nothing like some real life stuff to make virtual stuff seem so, um, unreal. So I'm out in the big bad real world with new responsibilities and something fun to look forward to in the form of zipping around in my sporty little car. I know that material things can't fill the void any more than gaming can though. I know too that I have to work on the part of me that felt like it so desparately needed to escape to my toon world. I still get frustrated at the tortuously long time it is taking to fully regain my emotional self, but hey, all in good time, all in good time.

A Little Perspective

2005-10-26T10:54:00.000-07:00

Here's a link to an article about the reaction of Chinese WoW players to that country's plan to limit the amount of time that gamers can legally play online games. It's an interesting concept and one that has been discussed in at least 2 threads at Olganon. So what do you think? Bad idea? Good idea? What if there was a legal limit on the time you could spent playing online games? Would it solve the problem of online gaming addiction?

Well, in my opinion, the answer is "Of course not!" People, especially addicts, would inevitably find a way around it. The tech savvy would do it the hacker way, and the tech challenged would just pay someone tech savvy to do it for them. A more interesting question, at least for me, is "should we do this here?" While I know that such a law would not end online gaming addiction, certainly it would help in some, perhaps many, cases. So should we do it here? Well, I vote nay. Here's why.

The argument for legally mandated limits placed on gaming time is that the gaming companies psychologically manipulate us gamers into becoming mindless zombies consuming their digital product in a kind of trance, having lost the ability to think for ourselves and make rational decisions. To be honest, that's true, they do exactly that. They carefully construct games that are pleasurable, engrossing, absorbing, attractive, and that consume vast amounts of our time. They do it on purpose. Bad companies, bad! Well, surprise, they are certainly not the only ones creating that kind of consumer atmosphere.

Malls do it, casinos do it, amusement parks do it, and they don't do it for the good of our health, they do it to get our money, as much of it as they can. Personally, I detest the mall, but when I must go I often come home with a bunch of crap that I never intended to buy. So the psychology works on me, much to my chagrin, even though I can't stand the place, and avoid it if humanly possible. I won't even go into how many unnecessary and not so good for me tidbits end up coming home with me from the grocery store, in spite of my awareness of the tricks used by retailers to manipulate me! I know that's not addiction, but there are an awful lot of people who love the mall, and happen to be compulsive shoppers.

Now let's talk about TV. 99% escapism, mostly just visual and mental candy floss, and it turns us into overweight, out of shape spuds. Ever notice how many shows use those teasers like "later in the broadcast we'll see ..." and then describe the most titillating or emotionally gripping portion of the show? So you wait through the commercials to see whatever it is and then you find out that it's going to be on after the next break, or the next. Usually it's the very last portion of the broadcast, and you sat through 55 minutes of junk you weren't really interested in to see a couple of minutes of other junk. Ever notice how much of TV is just advertising more TV? "Must See TV" indeed. What is the average for Americans now? 5 hours a day? TV must be the most prevalent addiction today when you think about it. Of course there's also a handy way to combine compulsive shopping with television. I think in my area we get at least 4 shopping channels. You can also get your gambling fix from home now with online gambling. Ditto pornography.

Here's the thing though, annoying as all this temptation and manipulation for profit is, only a fraction of people will be seriously impacted by it to the point of compulsion or addiction, and the same is true of online gaming. Only a small fraction of gamers are addicts. Most gamers can play and maintain balance in their lives. That's not to minimize the damage done to the compulsive gamers (and other compulsives like shoppers, overeaters, and gamblers, to name a few) by their compulsion. It's just wrong to single out gaming by limiting hours played when there are so many other ways that people use compulsive behavior to hurt themselves.

In the end, you'd have to have TVs that shut themselves off after a couple hours, casinos that kicked you out - win or lose - after a specified period of time, customer cards giving you a weekly allotment of junk food, libraries and bookstores limiting the number of books you could have, grocery quotas, "what's good for you" spending limits on your bank accounts regardless of how much money in your account, and the list goes on and on. It just isn't workable because the number of ways human beings can find to make themselves miserable through compulsion or obsession is infinite, and once you to try and solve one through legislated limits where do you draw the line?

One of the scariest things about such a scenario of big brotherism is that, while perhaps we'd all be healthier in some ways, we'd never develop any self-control. You need to exceed the limits sometimes to know where your tolerance level is. Growth as a human being is not possible without making many mistakes and learning from them. The whole challenge of living is in making your way through the maze of choices, good and bad, and learning from experience. If we get lost for a while, going around in circles, it's up to us to figure out how to take that one different turn that's going to get us out. If we have big brother leading us out every time we'll never learn.

*Parts of this entry are excerpted from my posts on the Olganon boards. If they look familiar it's just me quoting me. I can only have so many reasonably intelligent thoughts per day, ya know.

Online Friends - Update

2005-10-20T11:12:00.000-07:00

I did something recently that I never, ever thought I'd do. I spent a weekend with someone I met online. Now, before you get carried away with salacious thoughts of secret trysts and infidelity, let me say that this person is also a hetero, married woman, and that she stayed the Friday and Saturday nights alone at the airport Marriott, while I spent those nights at home, with my husband.

A little background is in order. I 'met' Stacy* about a year and a half ago in Toontown. She was a friendly green dog and I was a fat brown cat. When I first met her, we weren't able to chat openly. In Toontown, to protect the children that play, you need to pass a secret code to chat openly with another player. There are clever ways to pass codes between strangers, but only the initiated, veteran players know how. Neither of us was that sophisticated yet, so we could only use the simple, chipper phrases provided by the game makers, Disney. Conversations would go something like this:

"Howdy!"
"Hi there!"
"How are you doing?"
"Toontastic!"
"Great!" "What toontask are you working on?"
"I need to recover 10 lumpy cheeses from big wigs."
"Cool." "Would you like some help?"
"Yes."
"OK." "Let's go to The Brrrgh."
"Thanks." "You rock!"

Not real deep, obviously, but the weird thing about Toontown is you can actually tell a lot about someone from how they behave in game, even if your conversation options are limited to several dozen stock phrases. Stacy was really sharp, and me being more advanced in the game, I soon taught her a lot of game strategy, which can be tricky. Innocuous phrases can mean many different things. "Let's wait for my friend." can mean the obvious, but it can also mean "wait for all the cogs (enemies) to line up," or "let's help this stranger," or "my friend is afk (away from keyboard) and will be back," or "my friend's computer is lagging," etc. It takes brains to figure out all the various meanings.

You can also joke around using speed chat phrases, and some people are very clever at it. There are even jokes that make the rounds. There was a fart joke that was unavoidable for a while. You'd get into the elevator in a cog building (enemy fortress) and it would go like this:

"Oops!" "Sorry." "Excuse me."
"Phew!" "That stinks."
"Sorry, I couldn't wait any longer."
"You stink!"
"Ha, ha!"
"Hee, hee!"

Yes, I know it's not exactly the height of witty repartee, but whatever. There were more clever examples, honestly, but the ones I can remember are too hard to explain if you haven't actually played.

Anyway, eventually Stacy and I figured out how to pass codes so we could chat openly in the game. I found out she was the mom of 2 kids who were close in age to my own. She was married and did accounting part time. She lived in Texas. We shared many of the same values and would chat for hours, trying to solve the world's problems at one a.m.; 2 cartoon characters meowing and barking away in the "pit" in front of the VP lobby (boss level.) She always said that she wanted to see my part of the country. I always said, yes, come, I'll tour you around. So, she did.

It felt really weird meeting her. Here we'd spent hundreds of hours talking in game, and exchanged many emails since I'd quit, but I still didn't feel like I actually knew her. "Call if she's a psychopath," my husband said cheekily, as I left to pick her up for dinner Friday night. I laughed and said of course she wasn't a psychopath, but I admit I felt a tiny twinge of unease. I wasn't worried about her being a lunatic so much as I was worried that it would turn out I didn't really like her. I had committed to spending the entire weekend showing her around, after all.

I needn't have worried. Stacy turned out to be a lovely person: kind, generous, thoughtful, funny, engaging, enthusiastic, and open minded. We had a nice light dinner at an Irish pub in Alki, since I was so late picking her up (did I mention she was also forgiving and understanding?) and went for a little walk along the beach. It was just fine. The next day we toured Seattle Center, Pike Place Market, Fremont, Ballard (I'm not sure what she thought of my favorite store, Archie McPhee), and the downtown waterfront. Then on Sunday we did a tour of the penninsula, since her top to do's were to see Seattle, the ocean and the mountains, all in 2 days! Luckily, just as we were about to head back to the airport, the clouds opened up and gave us a splended view of the Olympics from the look-out over the beach at Sequim. Ocean and mountains all at once, perfect.

Now, if I'm ever in Dallas I know who to call to show me around.

*Name changed.

Attack of the Emotionless Zombie Woman!

2005-10-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

Ok, to be honest, I feel like crap lately. I miss my game - no wait, that's wrong. I miss how I felt when I played my game. A young guy submitted a beautifully written post to OLGA the other day describing his overwhelming addiction to online games (WoW currently, I believe.) In it, he wrote poignantly about how he only felt emotionally alive while he was playing. Oh, so true.

I downloaded the free trial of my game the other day. I played for a half hour. It was boring, and I uninstalled it. I told myself at the time that I wanted to see how I'd react - kind of an experiment, but I think that what I was really looking for was that wide awake feeling I've been missing so much. A weird thing happens to game addicts. The virtual world becomes the real world, and the real world becomes flat. Then when you leave the virtual world behind, everything is flat. It's an awful feeling; to me it feels like being dead but still alive. If you're not reacting to life, what's the point of living?

Well, all right, it's not that bad really. Sometimes I do feel connected again. Sometimes I'm 'all there', so to speak. But I have to work hard at it, and I didn't before I quit. All I used to have to do was log in and, presto! there I was, alive again, like magic. Granted, I was alive in an unreal world, but my emotions didn't know the difference. Then there was all the guilt and shame I felt when I wasn't playing. So at least I had feelings of some kind most of the time.

Sigh. It's all part of the journey to recovery I guess. I am also very worried about my son. Wait, worry is a feeling, right? I guess that's, um, something? What I'd really like is a vacation from myself. I need some kind of metaphysical travel agent to sell me 2 weeks as someone else.

***Coming soon... is there a link between gaming addiction and depression? (Maybe you saw that one coming, did you?)

Who Am I?

2005-09-18T13:30:00.000-07:00

Perhaps it's a little late in the game, but it's just occurred to me that I haven't mentioned much about me beyond the bare facts of my game addiction, and the problems I've been having with my oldest son. Here are a few other tidbits about my life that may provide a bit of perspective to my story.

I am a married 39 year old mother of a blended family of 5 children. I've been a stay at home mom for over 10 years, except for a year long stint working part time in retail. My husband has a successful career working for a large corporation. In my totally unbiased opinion, he is brilliant. He is also honest and principled, which, surprisingly, have not kept him from getting ahead and doing very well. Nice guys don't always finish last.

We live a typical middle class suburban lifestyle. Our kids play sports, go to an excellent public school, and have friends in the neighborhood. The neighborhood itself is beautiful, well established, safe, and quiet. It's all very nice. And bland. And, well, stifling. As I suspect is the case with many others, we live here for the benefit of our kids, so they can be safe, get a great education, and have peers who, like them, will go on to successful, productive lives. At least, that is the hope.

I am keenly aware of how lucky I am. I'm aware there are people, some right here in the midst of my affluent community, who aren't even able to adequately feed their families. I don't feel a sense of entitlement to this privileged life that I lead. We got here with much hard work and sacrifice, but could easily have ended up somewhere very different if not for a bit of luck at the right times.

So there you have it. Typical suburban lifestyle, typical suburban home, typical suburban mom, and a game addict to boot. Go figure.

Playing Games with Kids Lives

2005-09-15T12:35:00.000-07:00

I found a gut wrenching article yesteday about a couple in Scotland who were jailed recently for child neglect. The degree of neglect in this case was extreme, and disgusting. It sounds as if it rivalled the neglect that meth addicts' children are often subjected to. The online game these 'parents' were playing instead of caring for their children was not mentioned in the article.

I can't help but wonder how many of the millions of households now playing online games resemble this Scottish hellhole of a home, at least to some degree. When I played my online game, I knew many families where both parents played. I know of one family in my neighborhood where the single father plays a popular MMORPG for hours on end when he's not at work. His children do most, if not all, of the cooking and cleaning in the house. They are basically raising themselves.

Even in my own case, I was not the mother I could have been to my kids. I didn't play games while they were at home, but I wasn't all there for them either. I was either thinking about my game, or rushing through my chores so I could get back to the game the minute they went to bed. Mine was a very mild case, compared to many of the stories I've read over the past few months, but it's left it's mark on my family.

Of course, one could argue that people get obsessed with all kinds of things: work, school, church, PTA, sports, etc. That's true, they do, but I would argue that any obsession that keeps you from being the best parent you can be is a bad thing. Period. It's all about balance, isn't it? You only get one shot at parenting; you have to make it count.

How Are Things Back at the Ranch

2005-08-26T00:04:00.000-07:00

you may ask. Well, here's the scoop.

My son has been out of the house for a month tomorrow. It's been heck, really, but fingers crossed, it'll all be worth it. He is alive and well and couch surfing at his friends' houses. He says he is working and that he still has most of the "stake" money we put into his account. I saw him today and what struck me was that, even though he is technically homeless, he looked much healthier than he did when he was living here, sneaking time on WoW and staying up all night. (He, unknown to me until after he moved out, secretly rewired his internet connection so he could play after the rest of the family went to bed.) His complexion is clear, his eyes are clear, he has gained weight, and the color has returned to his face. Amazing. Now, if only he stays away from WoW once he finally finds an apartment and settles down.

As for my own game addicted self, I have been clean for over 2 months now. Luckily, I have not gained weight, but my problem is in the other direction. I have been working out more or less regularly but the pounds are not budging, probably because I am still spending way too much time keeping the chair warm in front of the computer. Curses to the internet. Frankly, I am sick to death of the computer. (Ha, ha, as I sit here typing - yeah, yeah, I know.)

I am slowly coming back to life, but it's not happening all at once, just in dribs and drabs. I feel more connected to the world much of the time. I still tend to 'space' and get preoccupied more often than I used to, but that could be a function of age. I'm fightin' it hard though. I find that the habit of becoming engrossed in my game for hours on end has transferred itself to other things, like searching for businesses for sale on the internet (we're looking to buy a small business), or investigating my dream car (a Mini Cooper convertible), or even just not being able to put down a really great book. I need to relearn how to make a clean break when switching from one mental activity to the next.

It's a little like waking up from a really long bad dream, or maybe a catatonic state. I guess it's a bit like the smoking thing. I smoked for 20 years and didn't expect to get over it immediately. It's probably not realistic to expect to get over gaming addiction quickly either. Then again, there's still the nagging question of what made me vulnerable to gaming addiction in the first place. It's a pretty safe bet that those issues haven't just disapeared all by themselves.

Do I miss my game? Yes and no. I miss the pure escapism of it. It's a lot like drugs I think. The world disappears from around you, just melts right away, and there's only the game. The game is fun, and challenging in a manageable sort of way, and the game universe is predictable, and knowable. I really believe that playing these games causes a release of endorphins to the brain that is similar to drugs. It's the same idea as runner's high. I used to run a lot and vividly remember my first runner's high, it was wonderful. I felt like I could run forever; everything disappeared except the pure, physical joy of movement. Gaming addiction is like that, without the effort of putting in the miles to get there, and can be sustained for hours with virtually no effort.

What I don't miss is the cruel tyranny of the game, the incessant demands on my time and mental energy. I don't miss the daily guilt of stealing time away from my kids and my husband. I don't miss the frantic, and completely useless, attempts to somehow shove a 10 or 12 hour day into the 3 or 4 hours that were left after the game had had it's fill. I don't miss trying to find excuses to get out of fulfilling my volunteer time at the kids' school, or being late for nearly every appointment. Most importantly, I don't miss my unreal world. The real world is not pretty, or simple, or even clear, but it's where I choose to be because it's where I'm needed and it's where I can be what I need to be: real.

So What's Your Story?

2005-07-26T23:44:00.000-07:00

It's six weeks tomorrow for me. Rest in peace Purrfect and Pinky, my little alter egos. I'm pretty much over Toontown now. If the stress of dealing with my WoW addicted child, and having all the smaller ones roaring through the house all day during the summer break hasn't driven me back, nothing will.

So far this blog's been all about me, but I'm very interested in hearing from other moms in the same predicament. Any other Toontown moms out there trying to kick the habit? Any husbands wishing their wives would take a permanent vacation from Toontown, or wives wishing their husbands would just give those cogs a rest already?

My Much, Much Better Half

2005-07-25T09:58:00.000-07:00

I'm pretty stressed today over my son's predicament, but a thread that's been going on over at OLGA has prompted me to write a bit about my husband and how he dealt with my gaming. First off, let me say that my husband is not perfect. He's a fallible human being just like everyone else. He did, however, manage to fluke off the perfect way (in my opinion) of dealing with my gaming addiction. So here's what he did (and didn't) do.

He did not plead, argue, or bargain. He did not overtly criticize me, threaten, or give me an ultimatum. He did not enable me. He did not pick up the slack as far as the household chores or looking after the children went. I should add here that I did not play my game when the children were around, and I did my best to keep the house in order and make sure that the shopping and the laundry were relatively under control. Toward the end, I also did not play my game at all on the weekends, which were our designated "family time." In other words, in some ways I was not as far gone as some of the online game addicts out there, so his method may not work for very severe cases.

Ok, so here's what he did do. He did consistently ask me if I wanted to spend time with him. Every night, in fact, for months, he would ask me if I wanted to do something together. Of course I'd always put him off with "give me an hour," or "maybe later," and much more often than not he'd end up going to bed alone while I'd still be up playing my game. Finally, the guilt of putting him off every night irritated me so much that we agreed that I would ask him if I wanted to do something together. I never did want to, but a funny thing happened once he stopped asking. Instead of being relieved that I could play without the pressure of knowing he was waiting for me, I missed him asking me and felt just as guilty. Even worse (and this is really petty) I was miffed when he went and did things on his own without asking me if I wanted to join him.

He did some other things that helped. He listened to my anecdotes about the game and the people I knew in it. He tried hard to understand what the game was about and what the attraction was. Although he must have resented my game, he never went off into a rant about how stupid it was, or what a waste of time it was. In fact, he pointed out that there were much worse things I could be doing with my time. He also made a point of reminding me of the other positive things I could be doing, like going to college, or taking a class, or spending time with my real life friends. He kept telling me what a talented, intelligent person he thought I was.

He ended up using exactly the aspects of the situation that were the most likely to help me win my freedom from my mental prison. He subtly (perhaps even inadvertently) reinforced the guilt I felt at neglecting my marriage and my family, the two things that are the most precious to me, but at the same time he bolstered my self-esteem, which tends to be shaky. When I talked to him the other night about the wonderful way he had dealt with it, he told me that it wasn't a strategy that he had devised, or anything like that. He was just being himself. It's only now, a year and a half after the whole thing started, that I realize just how patient and understanding he has been.

Not Just Me

2005-07-21T10:26:00.000-07:00

I want to talk about my son today. It's not easy for me, as we're in a really tough patch right now on his journey to productive adulthood.

My son is 18. He is a game addict just like his mom. He has other problems to be sure, but gaming addiction is the straw that broke the camel's back. He has dropped out of school now, and even though he no longer plays WoW (I cut his internet connection), he hasn't got a job, or any plans for the future that I'm aware of.

I have a wonderful therapist that I see regularly. She's a cognitive therapist, action oriented, not the smarmy "and how does that make you feel?" type. She and I together came up with a plan to help my son become the responsible adult that he must someday become. I think that it has a chance of succeeding, and it's not a novel or unusual plan. We have set a deadline and he must move out.

I have known this date was coming for a long time. I gave my son plenty of warning, ample time to get a job and save some money, get things in place for himself. Of course he hasn't done any of that. We have a few more days left and I am at my wits end. I can't sleep, my stomach is like a boiling cauldron, I am terrified. I sure as hell never wanted his life in my care to end this way.

Part of the plan is that, unknown to him, if he doesn't manage to get some money together himself, I will give him a few hundred dollars to keep himself alive initially. So he won't starve and he should be able to keep a roof over his head for a while, but it's all so, well, heartrendingly disappointing. This is a bright kid. He tested in the 94th percentile in the standard achievement test he took in 4th grade. He was reading at a 9th grade level in 2nd grade. He's funny, attractive, imaginative. He has so much potential, all mostly wasted so far.

The thing is I feel like such a colossal failure as a parent. I can't help but think that if I had done a better job, been a better mom, he would be off to college now instead of being sent off in seeming disgrace, "kicked out" by his parents. I can look back and see so many wasted opportunities. So many moments that I could've used to make our relationship better, all gone now. I can tell myself that I wasn't the worst parent in the world (not by a long shot), and that's true, but in the end I still failed.

Speaking of Huge Wastes of Time

2005-07-17T09:25:00.000-07:00

Time period: March 2004 - June 2005 = 15 months = 66 weeks = 450+ days

Average time spent in game per day: 3.5 hours

Time spent in game per week: 25 hours

Per month: 100 + hours

Per year: 1278 hours

Total time spent in game: Approximately 1575 hours or over 65 full days.

That's how long I was away from my family during the 15 months I was hooked.

Imagine if I had spent even 1/2 of that time practicing piano, or learning French, or going back to college, or writing a book, or volunteering at a food bank, or training for a marathon, or learning to fly a plane, or working at a part time job, or, well, you get the picture.

And a Pretty Big Waste of Money

2005-07-17T08:51:00.000-07:00

$318.75

Which is the same as 3 nice dinners out with my husband, or a couple of nice outfits, or a new bike, or a day or 2 skiing with the family, or a weekend at the beach, or 4 months of piano lessons, or tuition to a course or 2 at community college, or 3 months dance class, or 4 months membership at the Y, or...

One Month + One Day

2005-07-16T09:18:00.000-07:00

June 15th was my quit day. It's now been 31 days since I deleted my characters. It's been surprisingly hard, even with the help of my husband, my family, and the wonderful folks at OLGANON. I haven't yet used all the resources available at OLGANON and am toying with the idea of asking to become an actual member. I can't pin down what stops me from going whole hog into the 12 step thing except that I'm stubborn and like to try and do things my own way first. I'm probably just making things harder for myself.

I quit Toontown once before. I managed to go for 6 weeks that time. What's different about this time is that I'm not using other games as a substitute. Last time I played a couple of 'offline' games in place of my online game. That didn't work, obviously, because what happened was that when I finished those games and couldn't find any others to interest me I headed right back to TT. This time I'm not playing any games at all, although in a moment of weakness I did try the Sims Online - luckily not at all my cup of tea.

I worry a bit about my excessive use of the internet. A component of online gaming is time spent at game forums. For the first few days after I quit I went to my game forums but since I wasn't playing anymore I quickly lost interest. The time I used to spend on those forums (and more, unfortunately) I now spend on this blog and other forums. It adds up to more time than I ever spent online before I got hooked on Toontown but a great deal less than when I was playing. It's starting to taper off, thankfully, but it still feels like such a huge waste of time...

Online Friends

2005-07-09T10:03:00.000-07:00

In my first post I talked a bit about online friendships and dismissed them as being mostly shallow and meaningless. I want to say that I did make a few friends through my game that I've kept in touch with and who do mean a great deal to me. One especially has been very supportive of me in my efforts to get "clean," and is herself, I think, slowly trying to get away from the game.

One of the things that makes Toontown so attractive to women my age is that most of the adult players are, well, women my age with children. Just a bunch of women (and some men) hanging out, being goofy, laughing and joking around. It's fun. Most other adult players understand that you might sometimes have to bolt from the computer to check on a crying child, or that you have to leave right now to pick up your kids from school, and will cover for you, no matter what's going on in the game.

I had a lot of fun playing and really enjoyed many of the friends I had in the game. If I had been able to limit myself to playing only when I actually had the time to play (maybe 5 hours a week instead of 25!) I'd still be playing.

How I Became a Toon, Part II or... So What's the Big Deal Anyway?

2005-07-08T22:37:00.000-07:00

Toontown is a simple game on the face of it. Buy gags (weapons), kill cogs (robot enemies), finish tasks, (quests.) It's designed so very young children can run their own toon around without too much trouble. To be successful in the game requires much more, however. There are a variety of gags that work together in the turn based battle scenes, with varying degrees of success. The wrong choice at the wrong time can send your team back to the playground (you don't die in Toontown, your toon becomes sad and has to go back to the playground until it's happy again.) There are tasks that involve getting items from certain types of cogs that can be very tricky. Many tasks, even in the early stages, require teamwork and can be very difficult, especially if you are part of a randomly formed team.

The end stages of the game are challenging. There is an immense amount of repetitious, time consuming play involved in finishing a character. Toons don't have levels so their status is determined by their hit points, or laff, and the strength of their weapons (gag level.) The only way to get the maximum laff is to defeat the 2 current bosses (2 more are planned for later release) over 75 times each. Before you even get to the bosses you must defeat their respective factories (fortresses) many times to acquire items and enough points to earn a promotion. Before the bosses were released, the game developers estimated that it took about 200 - 400 hours to complete a character. That has more than tripled now.

It's pretty obvious that the boss areas, or Headquarters as they are called, were added to keep adults and teens involved in the game. All you get for defeating them over and over and over again are laff - status - and some single use items. The stars of Toontown are those with the current maximum laff, but you can't get maximum laff just from defeating bosses. You must also catch fish, currently 70 species worth, to get the last 7 points. Add another couple hundred hours to the total.

But wait, there's more! You must earn jellybeans, the Toontown currency, to pay for your gags. You also need to earn those beans to buy the latest fashions from the catalog, decorate your house, and get a "doodle," a toon's best friend. As you can see, there's plenty to do in Toontown. Like any other MMORPG, it's a rich, ever changing landscape, full of possibilities. Also, like other MMORPG's, it is a society unto itself, complete with status symbols and social cliques.

How I Became a Toon

2005-07-07T11:08:00.000-07:00

I decided to start this blog for 2 reasons. The first was the purely selfish reason of giving me something to do online that wasn't playing my game. I am hoping it will be my substitute, my digital methadone. The second was that in my days of searching the internet for non-EQ related accounts of online gaming addiction I found that there was precious little out there. It seems reasonable to assume that any and all MMORPG games can be addictive, or obsession inducing, if you will. They all operate basically the same way. Maybe EQ is the most pernicious but that doesn't make the others harmless.

Let me tell you then about my own experience becoming obsessed with an online game, or "How I Became a Toon...."

About 2 years ago, we bought a new house. That meant many changes. A new neighborhood. A new school for the kids. A bigger mortgage meant a part time job for me (which, thanks to my husband getting promoted I've since quit.) I left my old snug house in a state of complete renewal, everything finally finished. Repainted, refitted - 2 new bathrooms - and re-landscaped. The new house was twice the size and so impersonal. I felt lost. Then I injured my back and couldn't run, my one healthy obsession. I felt lethargic and even more lost. I was vulnerable.

As you may have guessed I have an addictive personality. I was a huge console game fan starting with the first NES. I loved RPG games like Zelda, Dragon Warrior, Final Fantasy, Quest of the Avatar. I played hours and hours of Civilization on computer. As I got older however, I lost interest in console games (except for Halo, and I never liked the live version, thankfully) and computer games. I tried Age of Empires but never really got into it. Myst - eh, whatever. Knowing my addictive nature I scrupulously avoided online games like Everquest and Asheron's Call and the rest.

About the same time we moved, my friend recommended a game for my kids called Toontown. I got them a subscription, watched them play it, and thought it was cute but booooring. My kids began asking me to help them with their toon characters after they were in bed. One night, to expedite the bedtime process, I promised I would. I played for a bit and discovered that I really liked the game. So more often than not, I'd get online after the kids were in bed and "help" them. At first I was really mortified that I liked the game so much. I thought I must be a real sicko and the only grownup playing this kids' game. Then it dawned on me as I was playing at midnight, PST, "look at all these people online, how could they all be kids from Hawaii or wherever..." It had also occurred to me that lots of these kids were extremely proficient with "speedchat" the canned chat phrases that Disney provides as the primary form of communication for toons.

I searched the internet for forums about the game. Lo and behold, I found one with thousands of members, many of whom were adults just like me! There were plenty of posts from people who said that they had gotten hooked exactly the same way as I did. There were also plenty of posts from people who talked about how addictive the game is, in that joking sort of way typical to online gamers - "Toontown = digital crack," "join us, resistance is futile," and so on. I thought they were funny. Relieved that I wasn't the only adult on Toontown I happily created my own character, started visiting the forum often and exchanged codes so I could chat freely with other adults in the game. I settled comfortably into my alternate life as a toon.

The Meaning of Life

2005-07-03T18:58:00.000-07:00

Today I was really, really, really bored so I googled "the meaning of life." Guess what? Plenty of people think they know the meaning of life. Unfortunately, they mostly disagree with each other. Do I have to read all of the crap that they've written in support of their pet scientific, or pseudo-psychological theory, or particular religious belief to try and deduce which one is right? Ugh. They're probably all at least partly wrong anyway. Man, I never had time to worry about this kind of stuff when I was addicted to my online game.

What got me going was seeing Chekhov's "Three Sisters" last night. The play is pretty much all about the meaning of life, time, work, boredom, and marriage. That is also pretty much what my thinking is about right now, only in reverse order. There was no easy answer provided by this play either, but you could tell that Chekhov, in his short life, thought about the question a great deal.

Chekhov did seem to value work a great deal which makes sense. Work equals flow which negates boredom. Flow is that pleasant state of absorption that you get when you lose track of time in a task. After you have finished your work and have been in "flow," you are pleasantly tired, physically and mentally. You are receptive to interacting with your loved ones. You have an appetite and savor your meals. It's all good.

Flow is different from the time and life devouring obsession of online games and internet addiction. Flow is temporary and when it's over, it's over. The switch is off and your mind can engage with something else. Obsession means that the switch doesn't ever get turned off. You have to leave the room and hope that if you stay away long enough the bulb will burn out.

What does this have to do with the meaning of life? Well, nothing really. It's just a little nugget of common sense to make living more pleasant and maybe even more meaningful. So what is the meaning of life? I've no idea. Go figure it out for yourself, but don't bother with the internet, I've already looked and it's not there.

Got That Spacey Feeling?

2005-07-01T22:51:00.000-07:00

I came upon a couple of interesting articles lately that explained that "spacey" disconnected feeling I always used to get after I logged off after playing for several hours. I always thought it was just me... The first is an article about people who absentmindedly execute certain "moves" from their games in real life, starting with a woman who tries to "pick up" things as you would in Katamari Damacy. The other is an account of a panel discussion hosted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) about video game addiction which talks a bit about disassociation, i.e, that "spacey" feeling.

Game Addict? Who? Me?

2005-06-30T21:30:00.000-07:00

2 weeks ago I finally googled the words "online game addiction." I had meant to do it for a long time, but somehow it always conveniently slipped my mind. The reason I felt I needed to do a bit of internet research about game addiction was that I had a hunch that, well, I might be an addict. Not an addict in the jokey sense that you hear so often from online gamers, but an actual addict. I found a site, Online Gamers Anonymous, which billed itself as an online 12 step program for online game addicts. Yes, I know it's ironic to have an online program for online gamers, but bear with me. I used their handy assessments to take an unblinking look at my own gaming habits. Turns out I am an addict after all. Holy cow. I spent the entire morning surfing the web reading about my newly discovered addiction and the psychology of MMORPGs . It was fascinating stuff, mostly about the notoriously life and time consuming Everquest but still relevant to my own situation. I read truly horrifying accounts of parents neglecting their children, kids flunking out of school, lost friends, lost jobs, lost spouses - people losing years of their lives mired in virtual worlds. All so terribly, terribly sad.

I read accounts by people who vehemently denied being addicted to online games, though they had played them for years and spent as much time in their virtual worlds as a part (or full) time job. Denial? Maybe, maybe not. I think the key for me was that I wasn't controlling the game, it was controlling me. Even though I didn't play for 10 hours a day, and I didn't ever play when my kids were around, I thought about it all the time, and whenever I wasn't playing I wanted to be. I used to smoke and I know what it is to have a whiney tyrant controlling your every waking moment. I recognized the familiar nagging little voice that called me back to the computer even when I knew there were other things I needed to be doing.

I also read accounts by people who justified their online gaming as a hobby, something they were obsessed with, something they wanted to spend every spare minute on, but something that was also beneficial in the sense that it was a social outlet, and a relaxing form of recreation. Hmm. Well, that certainly could be true for some people. I have a cousin who used to drive me nuts because she could smoke whenever she went out clubbing, or whenever we were hanging out doing whatever, but she never got addicted, never. She just wasn't susceptible. It's possible that these people aren't addicted, that they are just really obsessed with gaming as a hobby, like some people are obsessed with golf, (you've heard of golf widows, right?) or stamp collecting, or Star Trek. It may even be that I'm not addicted in the true sense of the word, rather I'm obsessed with something that is an engrossing escape from the real world, an escape from my mundane life which is available to me 24/7, at little cost and without requiring a change of clothes or freshening my makeup - if I wore makeup (-;

Here's the problem. Even if online gaming is just an obsession and a hobby, it's not a healthy obsession for me and it's not a very beneficial hobby. Being an introvert by nature, online games give me the illusion of socializing, but at heart I'm uncomfortable with the type of socializing they offer. I tend to have trust issues so it's really hard for me to trust people I've never actually "met." So much of communication is body language, tone of voice - nonverbal, and not communicated through online chat. Keystrokes just aren't enough for me to judge what someone's really like. Also, the primary thing that you have in common with other players is the game. I mean, stuff might happen in real life, like someone loses their job or someone's teenager runs away, or some other catastrophe, and you commiserate of course, you might even feel really bad for them, but a few minutes later it's forgotten and it's back to the business of the game. Online relationships are mostly so shallow it's hard to call them relationships at all.

Online gaming is a net negative for me in other ways. As a woman of a certain age, I have to work harder and harder at winning the battle of the bulge. Sitting on my butt in front of a computer does not help me win the battle, obviously - it's a huge handicap. I do work out but it's not nearly enough to cancel out hours of daily inactivity. Then there's the time factor. As a stay at home mom, you might think I have a ton of time on my hands but as most moms know that's simply not the case. Moms, even stay at home moms, have precious little time they can call their own. I have 4 children and a husband who works very long hours. I don't have time for an obsessive hobby that consumes a third of my waking hours and most of my waking thoughts.

Addict or no, I decided that I had to be ruthless and cut the game out of my life. The same day I first googled "online game addiction" I deleted all my characters. I uninstalled the game. I cancelled my 2 accounts. I wrote emails to my online buddies and told them I quit. I posted a letter on my game forum, explaining why I had quit. Then I spent the rest of the day surfing the internet instead of playing the game, reading the stories of other addicts and obsessives to try and strengthen my resolve. I experienced a great feeling of freedom and a strong sense of self-satisfaction and accomplishment. I went on with my day as usual when the kids came home from school. By 9 p.m., the time I would usually be logging on again with the kids tucked snugly in bed, I was mentally exhausted and sat and daydreamed until I finally gave up trying to do anything and went to bed myself.

Now, 2 weeks later, I find myself constantly having to squelch the little voice that tells me I can just start a new character, that I can avoid my old friends, that with a new character I won't be as likely to play for hours, that I can just get on for a few minutes and that'll be it. In other words, my brain is really missing that utopian netherworld of digital perfection, constant camaraderie, goofy game humor, and complete obliteration of real life worries. I should tell you also that I've quit before, unsuccessfully....