
How I overcame my gaming addiction and bootstrapped a business to help others - ChanningAllen
https://www.indiehackers.com/interview/how-i-overcame-my-gaming-addiction-and-built-a-business-to-help-others-56eaf03900
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sleepyandlazy
In increasing digital world, where do you draw the line between a healthy
hobby versus an addiction? From the article, it seems like you would like to
stop people from video games altogether versus curtailing their addiction to
healthier levels. Organizations such as MADD have faced similar problems where
they started as a way to rehabilitate people, but turned into organizations
with an extremist agenda.

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blfr
Unrelated to OP but I ditched computer games and do think that there is no
healthy level. It's a lot like marijuana today. We're way past pong and some
ditch weed. These are very potent products engineered to flood your senses and
highly addictive.

I'm giving the creators here the benefit of the doubt that this is just a side
effect of trying to create great experiences for their users. Not so with
casual free2play games which are clearly designed to drain your wallet.

Either way, they don't really enrich your life, except for a handful of indie
productions they're not art like movies, they're the equivalent of capeshit
but designed to make you watch it over and over again. I would like the ten
thousand hours spent playing Counter-Strike back now.

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sgarman
I don't think you can be so black and white about it. Too much of anything is
probably bad for you. If you replaced counter-strike with chess or golf or
model trains would you feel the same? I think the answer is the same for all
of these categories and I'm wondering if you feel differently why.

Obviously some games really are insidious; I don't think it's fair for that to
dictate an entire genre of activities.

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blfr
No, I don't feel the same way about chess, golf, or model trains for the same
reason I don't feel the same way about "classic" weed and pong: they haven't
been honed on an industrial scale to make them extremely appealing.

Obviously, all activities evolve and change over time but these are more like
your grandma's pie recipe versus industrially optimized Lays with a hundred
million dollar ad campaign to make sure you'll appreciate all the hard work
put in by the chemists. One you can do in moderation, and it's self-
moderating, the other you're better off just avoiding.

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tjbarkley
Interesting article. I feel like I had a problem with gaming, but I didn't
necessarily have an addiction. When I got an Xbox 360 (and by extension Xbox
live), I was able to hangout with my friends without going to their house.
Even when they weren't playing, it was because I made friends and connections
to people all over. Towards the end of my Xbox Live days, I mostly played
without my "IRL" friends.

Now, I rarely game alone, but I play games with my friends in person
(Fortnite, Mario Party, Mario Kart, Smash etc.). I think for me, gaming was a
substitute for social interaction. Most of my interaction is in person now, so
gaming has fallen by the wayside.

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camerondare
Thanks for reading. Gaming is a very common substitute for social interaction
- for me as someone with social anxiety it was easier to just stay home and
'socialize' online then to go out and meet other people, but that only left me
more isolated and depressed. Getting out and interacting with other people has
helped me more since I've quit.

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tareqak
I know that computer and video games are designed to have some level of
attraction in order to obtain and maintain engagement, but I still have to ask
the devil's advocate question: what is missing in contemporary life such that
makes computer and video games so appealing?

My parents would probably describe be as an addict now and then, so I'm not
asking this question in a holier-than-thou manner: I'm genuinely curious about
what characteristics games have that real life doesn't.

Is it escapism? Is it compelling gameplay? Is it granularity of control?

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redmaverick
To start off with:

1\. Really quick feedback loop. 2\. Progressively improving our skills. 3\.
Keeping score. 4\. Having a community/tribe

There was a hn top post article about a guy who gamified his interview
preparation to get into Google.

I think gamification of our daily life is a good idea.

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jdironman
Does anyone have a link to that post?

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camerondare
Thanks Channing for sharing my interview here.

Hi everyone, my name is Cam and I'm the founder of Game Quitters - the website
profiled here.

If you have any questions let me know.

