
Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life - voidnothings
http://www.olganon.org/?q=node/27012
======
tomku
As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different
game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so
much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack
of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2
worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft
addiction is a good first step, but it won't do him any good if he lapses into
addictive behavior in another aspect of his life.

It sounds like the poster is a really motivated guy, and lionhearted is
correct in his sibling post here that that can be a strong force for
productivity if you can master it. I really hope that Tom manages to do so,
because at 21, he's got his whole (non-destroyed) life ahead of him. Losing
two years to an addiction is a big deal, but it's something you can overcome
and possibly even come out stronger from.

Edit: Since I talked a little bit about my own circumstances in a reply, I
might as well go into detail here, particularly since it looks like the actual
linked post might be a lie/exaggeration. I played Final Fantasy XI (an MMO,
unlike most games in the series) from the fall of 2004 until the fall of 2009,
and World of Warcraft from then until January of 2011.

During that time, my life outside of the game basically stopped. I dropped out
of college, I moved back in with my parents, I stopped programming and
reading, which were my main interests before the MMOs came along. For a few of
the years in the middle I didn't work or even really leave the house.
Eventually I got pushed out because my parents knew that what I was doing
wasn't a healthy lifestyle, but I did just enough to adapt and got a job an an
apartment and continued gaming.

What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-
building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs. Eventually it hit
critical mass and I quit FFXI, thinking that the problem was just that I
needed a better game. A year of WoW convinced me otherwise, and I've been
putting my life back together since then. I (obviously) don't mind talking
about it now, and I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone has them.

~~~
dredmorbius
You could make the same argument that a lack of self-control destroys the
lives of heroin addicts.

That self-control is based, however, on biological and physiological pathways.

Dopamine receptors, and anomalies with the dopamine system, in particular, can
leave people vulnerable to various addictive habits:
[http://www.people.co.uk/lifestyle/real-life/2010/10/03/ms-
tu...](http://www.people.co.uk/lifestyle/real-life/2010/10/03/ms-turned-me-
into-a-compulsive-gambler-102039-22603246/)

~~~
potatolicious
The difference between Starcraft and heroin is that the _vast_ majority of
Starcraft users do not become addicts. In fact, only a _very, very_ small
portion of users do - heroin has no claims to the same.

This also brings social gaming in as a concern - what is the moral stance on
games what have been _specifically and deliberately_ engineered with said
biological and psychological pathways in mind, with addiction as an intended
outcome as opposed to an accidental and marginal one?

~~~
CarlTheAwesome
It's morally wrong to trick someone biological and psychological in order for
them to play games in order to generate income for a game company. But I think
there's a way to balance between making users like the game thus generate
income for the company and making users biologically and psychologically rely
on the game.

~~~
dromidas
In the end, is there really any difference between making a game that is fun
and a game that is addicting? I really don't think there is even if they went
in with the idea of "lets make this game addicting".

I've never once seen a game that is not fun, but is addicting. Although my
friends have said Master of Orion 3 fits that description, but I never
actually saw them ever play it so I think it was a joke.

~~~
Too
There's a great talk about this from some guy at Digital Illusions. He found
some definition of what a "game" is and compared that definition with
Farmville, it failed on every single bullet. I can't remember the exact
details but it contained things like it has to be challenging, a skilled
player should easily beat a newbie, not requiring grinding. What's interesting
is that the definitions are not designed with the sole purpose of bashing
farmville, all of them really make sense and origin from even before computer
era.

 _If somebody knows where to find the talk please post it, my google-fu is
weak today. He also compares the iphone to a swiss army knife and the ipad to
a "swiss-army-kitchen-utensil" (i.e too bad to be really useful and too big to
fit in your pocket). The talk was just a few weeks after the first ipad
release. It also contains alot of other talk about the future of gaming for
the general masses, facebook games and gaming anything in life(like shopping),
etc. If that's enough to trigger anyones memory._

~~~
otisfunkmeyer
Jesse Schell at DICE. No Google-fu required. I just know that talk inside and
out.

------
luu
This article has a lot of things which sound fake. Here's one:

 _I was 6'2'', 168 lbs, 1% body fat_

When I was climbing competitively, I once had my bodyfat measured (by DEXA) as
just under 3%. For climbing, pretty much any weight (even most muscle) is just
dead weight, so climbers are as skinny and lean as any athletes out there, and
I only very rarely ran into people as lean as me.

I've known a lot of bodybuilders and wrestlers, and even there, it's rare to
see people below 3%, and I've never heard of anyone who's tested below 2%
bodyfat. 1%? I won't say that it's impossible, but to be alive and functioning
at that level would require you to be a genetic freak on the same level as
Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps.

~~~
pixelbath
This was my main problem with the article. While it's well-written, it has
many details that (on the face) seem way too contrived.

 _My friends even looked up to me, as they are monks who train Taoist Wudang
Kung Fu in southwestern China. At one point I became a monk by my own right,
and I was looked to for even spiritual advice._

So you're such a badass that monks that train others in Kung Fu looked up to
you at 18 years old? They also made you a monk and decided you were
enlightened enough to give spiritual advice, despite the fact that you have
very obviously poor impulse control?

 _I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice._

Why didn't you try doing what you spent all that time in southeast Asia
learning, and start doing martial arts professionally? You could be a martial
arts instructor, stunt man, or any other profession that hires badasses of
this caliber.

Also, "being a welder" isn't something you just jump into without previous
experience and/or equipment.

This whole thing feels made up for sympathy. Apologies if you're telling the
entire truth, Tom.

~~~
hosh
>> _My friends even looked up to me, as they are monks who train Taoist Wudang
Kung Fu in southwestern China. At one point I became a monk by my own right,
and I was looked to for even spiritual advice._

> _So you're such a badass that monks that train others in Kung Fu looked up
> to you at 18 years old? They also made you a monk and decided you were
> enlightened enough to give spiritual advice, despite the fact that you have
> very obviously poor impulse control?_

That is not as incredible as it seems. You can see his addictive and
competitive personality in the martial arts training. I know people like that
in the martial arts world.

Sometimes, in the East, you're promoted beyond your skill and competency in
order to encourage you to grow into the role. If his teachers are genuine,
they would have recognized his addictive personality to begin with. What's
even funnier and sad is that, they would have accepted his shame in going a
little crazy. It is surviving and healing from this that will allow him more
empathy as his role as a monk in the future.

You're also making a very common mistake that seems to pop up in America,
these strange notions about enlightenment and giving spiritual advice.

> _Why didn't you try doing what you spent all that time in southeast Asia
> learning, and start doing martial arts professionally? You could be a
> martial arts instructor, stunt man, or any other profession that hires
> badasses of this caliber._

That's the same thing as jumping into the UFC. I feel the same way, and have
avoided teaching, let alone doing stunts or getting paid to inflict violence
and death. If he were as obsessed about Buddhism in his teenage years as he
was to games and martial arts training (likely), then these professions would
not have appealed to him.

Anyways, the post is to Gamers Online Anonymous. I'm glad there's such an
organization out there. I doubt this guy wrote it gain sympathy from you
specifically. Maybe the post is for sympathy, maybe it isn't. It doesn't
matter, because the addiction is real.

------
lionhearted
Sounds like he has the "rage to master" personality trait... very conducive to
hardcore training and mastery in something like martial arts or a craft skill,
or a discipline... also conducive to addiction or getting "way too into"
hedonistic pursuits.

I've got it too, and have made insane/amazing progress and gotten quite good
at some skills, crafts, and disciplines in fast time. I've also burned many
hours on something like Civilization IV or playing lots of Chess. It's a mixed
bag.

I wrote about it here --

[http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-
rag...](http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-rage-to-
master-personality-trait)

Definitely worth reading if you've got the same personality mix.

~~~
awef
I've never heard of the term 'rage to master' but I've been told this
behaviour is common in people with Aspergers Syndrome. Intense interests which
takes priority in life only to be substituted with something else weeks,
months or a couple of years down the line.

Maybe you can shed some more light on the 'rage to master' personality trait
you're talking about?

~~~
lionhearted
Ellen Winner coined the term in the book "Gifted Children: Myths And
Realities" --

[http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017592/ref=as_li_ss_tl?...](http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017592/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465017592&linkCode=as2&tag=sebastianmcom-20)

I'm not able to find the definitive research paper on it right now which was
titled "The Origins and Ends of Giftedness," but here's one on the trait in
the visual arts which should give you an idea --

<https://www2.bc.edu/~winner/pdf/talent_in_visual_arts.pdf>

Despite the term being catchy/interesting, most of the literature on it is
very academic and somewhat dry. It probably makes for poor curiosity reading,
but it's _supremely valuable_ to dig through the academic papers if you have
the trait yourself or you're a parent/guardian/teacher of someone who does.

~~~
awef
Seeing as I have yet to read up on the matter I can't say that I do or do not
have the trait myself. But from the little that I've come to understand I'd
say it's highly plausible.

I'll continue to look into it, I find awareness of oneself's personality of
highest importance and I always strive to learn more about why I do the things
I do.

------
Claudus
It seems like he was already screwing up his life pretty well before SC2 was
released:

"Fast forward to summer '10. By now I had moved out of three apartments with
my friends. I lost three jobs. I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice.
In between my friends and I would do odd-jobs that lasted a week at a time
then would get paid one large sum, then blow it all on alcohol and marijuana.
Living literally off of pickle juice, beer, bread once in a while, redbull,
and cigarettes, we found ourselves wasting our days away on the Xbox with
nothing else to do but wait for a job. Finally, I had to move back into my
mother's house (a big time alcholic, who is seperated 15 years now from my
father, a raging, abusive in every way alcholic) _and that's where I took the
deep plunge into hellish unconciousness._

Waiting eagerly for years for the realease of Starcraft 2 I waited in line 2
hours at 2:00 am for the special release...."

~~~
klochner
I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a fabrication - the details all sound like
what you hear from a bad liar:

    
    
      - 1% body fat
      - ran 12 miles and got bored (so he walked home??)
      - 20 one-handed push-ups on either side (but only 100 combined??)
      - became a monk
      - shrank an inch in a year do to inactivity

~~~
LoganCale
24 miles in a day is a long day but feasible. I've done 18 miles walking,
starting mid-morning and ending early afternoon. Running one way would shorten
the time needed (though would also cause faster exhaustion, I presume).

The other sounds less likely...

~~~
agscala
I think the silly part is why would you run 12 miles, get bored, and then WALK
home? Shouldn't you just run home?

~~~
icegreentea
Nah, sometimes you just don't want to run anymore. I've definitely done 10k
runs, and just stop and look for a bus home. It's not even that you're too
tired to run (though that plays a role). Some people can just keep running as
long as they keep in the flow. When you lose it, running quickly becomes
boring.

------
justjimmy
I can relate to the OP in certain parts – though some bits do sound odd. (Like
the mentioned 1% and being a top monk.)

When SC2 was released, I got into it big time as well. I know I have an
addictive personality (if given the right method and circumstance), but I
didn't know the term 'rage to master' I'll have to look it up.

Anyway, I slept and breath SC2. I knew it was going to get me in trouble, I
had no delusions of going Pro, but I just wanted to be good. I hated the
feeling of losing to cheese tactics and winnings games, surprisingly, only
gave me a mild high. If I won, I wanted to be a legit win. SC2 to me is chess
on steroids. I'd kept playing no matter if I won or lost.

I was aware of my personality flaw so I gave myself a goal – Plat #1 on my
division and I'm done. So I reached the goal and immediately quit the ladder
game. My ability to do this made me doubt if I really had an addictive
personality. I find myself going through the same process for other games such
as WoW and D3 – aim for the highest (reasonable) goal, 'prove' something to
myself and be done.

It's really unfortunate, since I rarely play games for the sake of 'fun'
anymore (any online game bring out the competitiveness in me.) Just like the
Matrix guy, I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max,
look for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations.

~~~
ismyrnow
"... I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max, look
for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations."

I was talking with a fellow gamer, and we both made the same observation about
playing video games at an above-casual level. I realized (when playing Skyrim)
that I was focusing so hard on being as efficient and successful as possible,
that I wasn't really enjoying myself anymore.

I've since been making an effort to play games more casually. I can still be
competitive, but if playing games feels like a chore, I'm doing it wrong.

------
picklefish
This sounds so fake :/ There are certainly video game addicts out there, it's
a serious problem in korea and china, but I think this is a troll and/or
pathological liar.

~~~
JonnieCache
I do know what you mean. All that stuff about becoming a monk was curiously
non-specific. Still, we should assume good faith here: we stand to gain
nothing by making accusations.

------
jboggan
I think video games can become extremely addicting to a certain
mental/psychological cross-section that is highly represented on Hacker News.
While most drugs have a cycle of reward and withdrawal video games have that
in very small sustainable bursts but connected to the act of being clever. We
like being clever for its own sake but we really enjoy it when we use it to
defeat or conquer something, no matter how synthetic and abstract. Do you feel
any different zergrushing an unprepared base or finally getting that Clojure
script to run correctly? I really don't, and I've had to remind myself over
the years to focus my endeavors towards productive learning even if the
rewards come a little more slowly and are harder to get.

It's great that he posted this though. He'll be able to come back and read it
over and over - and hopefully it will help him begin to take responsibility
for his life and what he can do to change it.

------
ericcholis
Bit of personal insight here, I have anger issues that may border on bi-polar.
I've never attempted a diagnosis or treatment, I just try to maintain a cool
head. Most of the time I'm rational and level headed. However, there are
certain triggers that just make me snap, completely flipping my personality.

On more than one occasion, Starcraft 2 was one of those triggers. It only
occurred after long heated anonymous matches that I lost, never during single
player or with friends. I shelved Starcraft 2 shortly after a bad outburst
where I broke the door of my wooden keyboard tray.

If I had to guess, the intense focus I was putting into Starcraft broke my
normal awareness of my emotions. Thus, loosing control when I was defeated.

~~~
JonnieCache
Going from normal to angry is not "flipping" your personality. It's called
bipolar for a reason: there are two poles, equidistant from a center. It's
also called manic depression: when you're not depressed you're often high as
fuck.

What you described is called "getting really angry and losing your shit." It
happens to pretty much everyone.

EDIT: I probably should have written that like less of an asshole. Sorry - I'm
not here to deny your problems. The point still stands though.

~~~
ericcholis
Perhaps I chose the word bipolar incorrectly, but it's the closest word that
describes the situations I've encountered with my anger.

I guess the feeling is hard to describe; "getting really angry and losing your
shit." doesn't cover it at all, especially in the situations I can remember.
Everybody looses their cool, this is way beyond that for me. The situations
where it's come up wouldn't constitute the level of rage I've felt.

~~~
JonnieCache
There is a continuum between losing your shit, like normal people do, and
having a full blown behavioural disorder that destroys your life. We all lie
somewhere on it. There's probably another continuum that goes off in the other
direction, with jesus hanging out on the end with master joshu or something.

If you need to put a label on yourself, intermittent explosive disorder or
something is likely closer than bipolar.

<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermittent_explosive_disorder>

There really is no reason to pathologize your behaviour unless you want to
seek treatment though. There's a lot of shite in the DSM.

------
antman
I totally understand. Totally. This is a dangerous path taken, but it could
happen for everyday things. Having the inner pressure to do things when things
dont need to be done only to avoid feeling stale.

I was better than anyone I knew in my job and I kept studying edge cases of my
profession that I would never need. Soon my job became too easy. I would spend
time studying professioms related to mine only in case I come up with
something useful. Make no mistake this was not workaholism since it had
nothing to do with my day to day work except in very rare circumstances. I
also know that this is personally unproductive since I work as a manager and I
can tell mismanagement of resources I mile away. I am very strict
unfortunately only on everybody else but me. I read issue queues and follow
forums for open source projects for thing I will never use. Same thing goes
for stackoverflow for a series of languages. I have studied history books,
correlating things on various books and sources and historical archives.
Attempting to put everything in an elasticsearch cluster for better fulltext
search. To what end, I don't know. My spouse has gotten used to this but my
friends seem to have changed during the years. I have no long term goals and
many things I learned I won't use. Since my addictions are not fun related
they just look like hobbies. The problem is they add up to many hours a day.

I would not call it rage to succeed, I would call it inability to stand still
mentally.

------
neutronicus
> I'm afraid to leave the house to be seen; I don't even want to see my
> friends anymore. All I want to do is sleep because I'm so ashamed of what
> I've become it's painful to be awake and have to think about it all.

God, do I know this feeling. I don't know if I would have gotten away from it
without friends and family.

------
alberich
This is bizarre, really. You known, while being addicted to something may be a
big problem, the OP sounds much more depressed than addicted. Come one, 21
years old and his life is destroyed? how come? He even has money for beer and
cigarretes? The guy should take a walk into some hospital to watch people that
are screwed up really bad, both physically and mentally.

And I don't mean to be moralist, even if I sound like one. The main problem is
that he must get up and decide to change his life, see that he is a perfectly
normal young guy. If he can't quit playing by himself, why don't he look for
help? A psychologist or even a psychiatrist may be of great help, but they
sure wont come to his home from out of nowhere.

~~~
tankbot
You do realize that obsessive/addictive personalities and depression go hand
in hand right?

~~~
alberich
Sure, and I'm also aware that there is cure for this, but you must go for it.
If this story is real, I hope that now that he is aware that he is troubled,
he will seek professional help.

------
jwwest
The poster has what my mother always called an 'addictive' personality. It's
both a benevolent and malevolent trait to have. I'm sure most professional
athletes or anyone that 'masters' something to any sort of extreme has to have
this sort of trait to stay intrinsically motivated.

I am disappointed to see people blaming 'this or that game' for their
problems. Personally these types of folks need help and a good safety net of
friends and family to point out what's truly happening instead of being
surrounded by those with the same issues. Unfortunately it sounds like this
guy had none of the former and plenty of the latter.

------
coryl
Definitely a troll, this was the tell (where he refers to the UFC/combat
fighting): "those institutions are false and insulting to real martial
artists. The people who take place in them worship violent demagogues."

Funny.

~~~
mindcrime
I dunno... I could see the heads of some traditional McDojo type TKD or Karate
schools trying to promote thinking like that. I think they realize that most
of the world has moved on and recognized MMA / hybrid training as more
effective for actual combat, so they might try to reposition themselves by
trying to paint MMA as wanton violence.

Heck, some of them might actually _believe_ that their stuff is superior to
MMA, based on some woo aspect or other. :-)

------
gersh
Would it be possible to make a nicotine patch for Starcraft 2? How about a
less addictive version to wean yourself off it. Maybe, you switch to Starcraft
I, and then Warcraft. How about messing up the resolution, or having a slow
internet connection with lag? What if you have a computer that cheats for you?

What would it take to make such a thing? Is it possible? Exactly what elements
of Starcraft make it addictive? Would it be possible to make a similar but
less addictive version?

------
malkia
Should I feel terrible now?

I work in the team, making one of the the best selling fps games.

Then again I don't like playing fps games, I'm just supporting tools code.

I don't like multiplayer games at all, especially mmorpgs ones. I do love hot-
seat multiplayer games like Heroes of Might and Magic - it's great fun. People
in the same room, taking turns, and in the mean time having laugh and jokes
(and smelly clothes, also a bit drunk after 24hr marathons)

For single player - old quest games, and JRPGs took many hours of my life...

~~~
AznHisoka
No, it is not your responsibility if people have no self control and abuse the
game. Just like if you work in McDonalds and someone keeps eating there
everyday.

------
digitalpacman
If anything this story has nothing to do with SC2, and all the fact that this
guy is a depressed addict. Anything would do, he just chose video games.

------
dinkumthinkum
I find this story pretty hard to believe. It might, I guess it might be true,
but it seems a bit fanciful. For sure, even if only partly, this person
clearly has major problems with balancing things. But the Kung Fu master part
seems a incredulous to me. In the story, we go straight from being one of the
greatest monks the Wu Tang Clan has ever seen to ... doing drywall odd jobs
for money to buy weed and beer ... seems like something is missing there. Then
there's the bit of moving out into the wilderness, resuming this big regime of
training. I just don't know about that.

IANAP (psychologist), but I would say probably this person has a big problem
with video games, but more specifically impulses and I would venture to guess
possibly a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy. Probably, the
inability to distinguish reality from fantasy is one of the bigger problems
here and then addiction. It's good that this person seems to want help, get
out of the hole. I think it will definitely take professional help; there's
more going on here than just playing Starcraft 2 too much.

------
ericz
Guys this is obviously fake.

------
TheMagicHorsey
Believe it or not, even learning can become addictive. I know a lot of people
that have an addiction to learning new technologies, but they never actually
build anything. The pleasure of learning new things is what they crave. They
learn something, then they go learn something else, then something else.
Sometimes they get two or three degrees in unrelated fields. It gives them a
false sense of productivity. In the end its like playing Starcraft. It does
not lead to any output. Just firing of neurons within their brains.

~~~
nostrademons
Accomplishment can also become addictive. That's why they call it workaholism.

Usually these things result from a misfiring in the brain. Some are more
impressive to the outside world than others, but none of them really satisfy
the person.

------
Tichy
Videogames are harder to quit than drugs? What has he been smoking?

~~~
jseliger
I lost a lot of seventh and eighth grades to video games, and the final
departure from them entailed smashing Starcraft 1 and Brood War CDs in my
driveway, in front of my friends, who were telling me "not to waste the CDs."
But I needed to do something cathartic, and in my case smashing the discs
helped me go cold-turkey.

I wrote about it a little bit more here:
[https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-
departmen...](https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-department-
of-no-shit-technology-and-computers-are-not-a-silver-bullets-for-education) .

~~~
Tichy
I guess there is still a chance that playing those games gained you some super
powers, similar to Karate Kid washing the cars.

There are also a lot of ways to waste time. Few people seem to make good use
of it, so perhaps again it is not really Computer Games that are to blame?

~~~
onli
Who didn't lose a lot of time on 7th and 8th grade to something? That age is
defined by being a lost time for the most of us.

~~~
jseliger
I think a lot of people were playing sports, or practicing an instrument, or
learning how to deal with the opposite sex (or maybe even the same sex), or
reading. . . all of them, to me, more viable activities than Starcraft, at
least at the level I played.

------
DavidAdams
A friend of mine was just as bad of a game addict when it drove him to drop
out of graduate school and become a deadbeat. He's now a successful game
designer at Blizzard.

------
kenster07
I would bet on contrived.

------
kmfrk
I find that videogames fill a void more than they create it.

Spending too much time on them seems more like an effect than a cause.

------
benhoskins
I haven't played StarCraft 2 yet. Wow; is it really that good? Think I might
go buy a copy today.

------
mikemoka
it would be very interesting to know how is he doing now (since a year has
passed, as you can see the post linked is from 2011) and why he didn't try to
teach martial arts professionally

------
joeblau
What league are you in? I hope GM!

------
drivebyacct2
I am very thankful that I don't have a too terribly addictive personality. At
worst, I'm addicted to "the Internet", but only in the sense that I'd rather
be reading Hacker News or programming a side project than hiking or sitting on
my ass watching TV.

That having been said, I have a handful of friends or acquaintances that have
problems with addiction. Each of them ruined their college experience with a
combination of: drinking, pot, alcohol and finally Adderall (to fix their
attention, but ultimately fueling alcoholic-ish binges).

It's terribly sad because I'm an excellent student who spent basically three
years straight getting high after classes and homework and continued to work
on my github projects. Stopped when I moved away for an internship cold turkey
and had a headache for a few hours and then was back to normal.

I hope that we can learn how to screen for these things or provide better
treatments for people that get addicted to those sorts of psychological
releases. Video games are a nice way for me to relax and I've been known to
have a four hour binge with a bottle of wine on a Friday night, but I can't
imagine literally losing control of my life.

