I, the "Power"-Gamer

When reading through Sherry Turkle's book The Second Self (which I reviewed just a moment ago on this blog) I started reflecting about myself and my own interaction with the computer. Granted that Turkle's book is quite old and thus my interaction is hardly nowhere near what Turkle describes in her book but thinking back to when I was much younger I came to realize that I've always kind of searched for ways to play games.

When I was a child I played chess, Monopoly and other fun table top games with my brother but also with several of my friends. When I got closer to my teenage years I bought my first console, an 8-bit Nintendo that today is called NES. The NES didn't last all that long though because the games was to expensive for a 12 year old to buy so I bought a, second hand, Commodore 64 that came with something like 200 games and so I was pretty much dug in for years to come. Had it not been for the fact that I only a year later discovered the wonders of role-playing games I would probably have had my face glued to the screen playing The Last Ninja or Pirates still.

The roleplaying games gave me the chance to meet several friends over the years, one of them I even ended up sharing an apartment with for a few years, and most of them I still have contact with. Something that can't be said for most of the people I grew up with otherwise as they found other things (cars, bikes, etc) to occupy their time with instead.

In my early 20s I bought my first real PC (a 80486DX2 that I had custom made so to speak) and so I again dove into the wonderful world of computer gaming. I bought the computer mainly to learn about computer hardware at the time and also to learn more about computers in general, which I did but it quickly gave away to hours upon hours of gaming. The year just before I bought the computer I'd spent pretty much all of the time at a mate's place playing games and living a life that very similar to the life Turkle describes that the MIT hackers lived during the late 70s and early 80s. Stuck in a world of their own, programming through the nights and meeting like minded people for breakfast at the pancake house. Some of them living on a 36 hour cycle, which meant that they were awake for 24 hours and slept for 12. I had many days during those days in the early 90s where I lived on a 48 hour cycle, 36 awake and 12 asleep. How I managed to study too is today beyond me but I guess things change as we grow older.

After this period of my life I started studying at the University and not that many years later I got my first internet connection at home and this again of course lead me to pick up my gaming. And so I started playing Counter-Strike online and joined first one and later two more online communities created around computer games. One of these communities lead me to discover MMORPGs something that I've spent many hours on since then. During a leave of absence, during which I worked, I started to sink deeper into the online worlds, something that most likely lead me to lose the woman I lived with at the time something that in turn most likely also helped me sink even deeper in to the games. So when I lifted my eyes off the screen around Christmas almost 5 years ago I came to the conclusion that during the past months I'd spent about 120 hours a week in my game. So I shook it off and dragged myself back to my studies and that's where I find myself today.

Now you might wonder why the hell I haven't considered this before but when you live in it and you eventually find solutions to things and can put the blame on something else you don't really keep a clear view on how things actually are. Still, I wouldn't call myself an computer game addict even though I do realize that I might have been or at least many would say that I have been. I do however realize now that gaming has been a way for me to find a peaceful and recognizable place for me since I was a little boy and that in itself might actually be a problem that I maybe should look at more seriously. Today I still play computer games but I might average around 5 hours a week and many weeks less than that.

So why have I put the word power in the topic of this post? Well, many people that play MMOGs extensively are considered to be powergamers by the gamer community (Wikipedia unfortunately doesn't help us here since it only describes one type of powergamer). There are several different groups of powergamers but for this post that doesn't really matter, what does however matter is the time spent in front of the screen and so by writing this post I hope that others can come to realize that it might not be really healthy or good to spend all that time in an other world. Or if you have a kid that spends to much time in front of the screen then ask yourself why and actually think about what you can do to break them out of it except screaming at them or turning off the power. Because the computer might be the only place they consider safe, so don't rip it out from underneath them. While I was playing at the peak there were several others I played with around the world that were around the same age as me (say plus minus 5 years), that is late 20s. So this is not specifically a teenage or adolescent problem (as Wikipedia likes us to believe).

Well, I hope somebody else than me at least got something to think about or at least reflect over. If not, read Turkle's book. Personally I intend to read her latest book too since that one might have more to do with this subject than The Second Self did. Anyway, now I'm going to go play some games to unwind before I go to bed.