No video games & nofap.

I had a huge problem with ARK when I first played it. Logged about 1000 hours over the course of a single summer. Sometimes played 24 hours in a sitting, started long (8 hours +) solo tames late at night and I couldn't leave the computer because I had to guard the tame. Logged on as soon as I woke up to make sure I didn't get raided, food stocks were full, etc. What a nightmare.

I've been addicted to video games since 1st or 2nd grade and I agree, it's WAY worse than PMO for people like us.

 

I used to have a problem just like most hardcore gamers, the whole pre order buzz too when that was out back in 2010 onwards , and got lazy and even getting food delivered starting to trash life i was an early teen then so managed to get my act together towards the end of highschool when i found my second love music already having an interest in rock thought why not, getting more involved and productive i guess, with maybe playing games if at all 1 hour a night at the end, and now and again its just single player easy to pickup stuff currently the fnv dust mod and all college work getting in to so im outta time for it and now i dont really care about it

 

I wish I could moderate gaming more, but I'm having lots of trouble. I'm so desensitized from porn, that I find it difficult to enjoy gaming yet I still do. I should definitely put more of that energy into self improvement. I could use some advice other than to "Quit games forever".

 

for me i find that the more i do the better, as u physically have no time to fap or play games or anything, If u have another interest outside of games then go for that, hell if u like shooting games for example u could do airsoft it is nice to immerse a bit of that stuff in real life in my opinion but its whatever applies to u, if that helps, and in itself games isnt so bad anyway, so long as it doesnt take over ur life id say no problem, so u dont need to, u could maybe try and setup a blocking tool for ur internet so it turns off at a certain time really brutal but something to think about and give pass to someone and change it, i dont know how it works but something, there can be another solution,

 

Chris555 i really have no clue who you are but your situation.....it is like you are talking out of my soul.
It is insanely similar to mine and i feel it is time to share my situation too.

It all started with getting bullied in elementary school and then i met 2 guys at the school. They showed me video games and i did a deep dive in the whole videogame world at the age of around 7/8. I tried to survive school and then got back home played videogames until bedtime and then repeat. This behaviour continued throughout middle school and high school.

I neglected everything in this time, sleep, healthy food, sports, education, social life, friends, girlfriends.
And who could have guessed it, porn came into this whole thing too and ruined my sex life too.
But i got my highschool done with good grades, have other hobbies and had girlfriends in the past.

And now after over 10 years of videogames/porn i started getting rid of them 2 years ago and grew so much in every part of my life.
Socially, confindence, lost a lot of weigth and right now i'm at university.

I'm almost done with gaming, but once a month i get drawn to games like a moth to a lamp and waste 3 days with almost nothing else than videogames. In those days i neglect everything that i build in those 2 years with a lot of sweat and struggling.
And i can not do the last step where i dont do any videogames at all.

IMO Gaming is a lot worse then PMO, it fucked up my whole life for so many years now

 

It's so fucking hard to not play games... this might be harder than NoFap. I don't even pay attention to my streak anymore because I never want to do anything other than browse the internet/youtube or play games. At least I'm not thinking of fapping constantly anymore.

 

My Steam account has been finally wiped out. It was a month ago that I requested to have my account deleted and I didn't give in during the 30 days. I'm not against games, but for someone like me, they are dangerous. I can't just play them casually for half an hour; I must master the games I play and I need to beat everyone else and discover all the hidden secrets and extra levels. It's like another full-time job. I'm so glad I'm done with gaming.

 

Wow thats a tough decision ! I thought about doing it too, but all the money that i spend and all the hours that went into this account...

 

That's incredible man. I couldn't imagine doing that but perhaps that's the kind of drastic step that I need.

How addicted were you and do you think I should do the same? I've tried uninstalling but I always reinstall.

 

What got me through it was knowing I was being irrational in my decision making. I knew playing games was having a hugely negative impact on my life so the obvious decision is to stop. But like you, I "reasoned" that it would be a waste of my time and money to delete my account. After all, I spent hundreds of dollars and thousands of hours on my "hobby"... That's when I realized I was succumbing to the sunk cost fallacy. Sunk cost fallacy says we should never consider what something was worth to us in the past; we should only consider what it is worth to us now in the present and in the future. So I asked myself: If I wasn't already a gamer, would I pay good money and spend a lot of my free time to start gaming now? Of course not. So why should it matter that I spent good money on a bad decision in the past? That's not a justification to keep on throwing away even more money and time. Business people have a saying for this: throwing good money after bad.

I've playing since the NES days. So probably it's been over 20 years since I first started playing. I'm a huge sucker for RPGs like Diablo and Skyrim, but I liked other genres as well. I remember when it first came out, I would spend entire weekends on Diablo 2 playing from the time I got up to sunrise the next day and only stopping to eat and use the bathroom. I'd go for about an hour of sleep weekdays before heading out to work. Eventually, I'd have to stop doing that and go to sleep because I couldn't stay awake anymore, but sometimes I was crazy and would down some Mountain Dew or energy drinks just to keep going. I had no life (still don't but I'm improving) and games were my means of escape. Eventually, I slowed down because I wanted to have a good career so I stopped playing and went back to college for an MS in CS and started working in software engineering. I switched to Linux as well to make it difficult to play games and to better understand computers and operating systems. It was only recently that I saw Steam available on Linux and I knew I needed to kill this thing now before it got out of hand.

I think you need to know yourself well so you can make a decision. I knew deep inside that I can't handle playing for just an hour a day or so, yet some people can, but I'm not one of those. If I start playing, it's going to be for at least 4-5 hours or more or until I do something significant in the game. Before I quit, I looked at all the hours I spent just on only one game (too embarrassed to consider all of them): Skyrim. I logged several thousand hours in that one game alone. I imagined if I did the same with all the other games I owned or wanted to buy, then I would be playing for the rest of my life without any time to do anything else. I couldn't see myself doing that anymore. So I quit.

 

Wow, great example. This is crystal clear. Just did some math and I have almost 8,000 hours on my Steam games alone. That's 333 days.If I were to guess I'd say I have maybe 30,000 - 40,000 hours outside of that (WoW, World of Tanks, Roblox, Consoles). You're right, I'd never choose to spend all that time today.

 

I'll join the fight! I just deleted all the games off of my phone today and once I get home, I'm going to delete all my pc games. I haven't had an unhealthy relationship with gametime in my life since college/kids (except for shadowkeep release ) but I've noticed that any gaming sets myself up for PMO. It's what I used to do after every night of gaming in my adolescence. So, the hope is that I will be able to return to gaming once I have defeated my PM addiction. Hate to miss all the time sensitive shadowkeep events. kill me.

 

This really made me think...the idea to delete my gaming accounts is really interesting to me. Maybe it is the final stroke to end this stupid thing and let go of gaming completly.

 

What is gaming worth to you right now? If you still value the time and energy you spend on it, then deleting your account won't make sense. To me, gaming isn't worth anything in the present. In the past, I enjoyed it a lot but I don't want to keep doing that since it's clearly interfering with the life I want. Perhaps you just need to slow down and play in moderation like an hour or so. I sure couldn't do that which is why I took such drastic action.