Short version: Have you ever felt like you cared more about a videogame world than you did about physical reality (your job, your education, etc)?
Which game made you feel this way? What about it was so immersive/engaging/addicting?
Did you manage to tear yourself away? Eventually lose interest? Are you still playing it?
How did you feel after leaving the game behind? (Or, how do you feel about not leaving the game behind?)
Long version: I started playing videogames not long after toddlerhood, pretty much on the day I became intelligent enough to be aware of screen and keyboard. I started with DOS-based adventure games ("Mom, how do you spell 'swim'?!??... Never mind, he drowned."), moved to educational stuff when my dad finally bought a computer mouse, and it's been a long road to Bioshock and Braid and Time Fcuk from there. The Magic Candle II has plagued me for almost two decades now.
With most games, I visit the world (be it Pandora or Neverwinter or Daventry) for however many hours at a time, and when I put down the controller I know which life -- Sine Shepard's or mine -- takes precedence. I have, say, a 15% overall investment in the videogame world (to be totally arbitrary) and an 85% investment in everything else (my schoolwork, job, friends, future plans, etc).
A few videogames, though, have flipped this ratio for me. Baldur's Gate II was maybe the first, and then Animal Crossing (weird, I know) did it some years later. I had a really intense (like, sleep with laptop and log in upon waking) World of Warcraft phase for about a month and a half, and, most notably, a couple of summers ago I began to think of the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3 as an alternate reality, perhaps more of a home than my physical house.
I don't abandon my friends or fail classes or start poopsocking, but the physical world begins to feel like it exists mostly to support the videogame world. I keep up the 25% or whatever effort that it takes to go through the motions at school and work, but my ambition and excitement, as far as I can tell, are directed almost completely at stuff going on in Amn or Rivet City. When real-world obligations (read: midterms) take videogames away for long stretches of time, it feels different than just losing a hobby, different than having to give up skiing in the spring or swimming in the winter. It's drastic, something like leaving or waking up.
If you've stuck with me this far, hopefully that means you know at least a little bit about the feeling I'm trying to describe. If that's the case, what's your take on it? Which game has caused this kind of reality-creep to happen to you, what about the game made it happen, and how do you look back on it?
Why I'm asking: If you don't care for personal introductions, you can skip this bit. I'm a student at Brown University, and I'm researching videogames and life inversion for my nonfiction thesis. (Incidentally, I'm also a longtime Escapist reader, watcher, and forum lurker.) I want to know if anyone out there has had an experience like mine, and I thought I'd throw the question out to a community I've come to know and respect (albeit at a distance -- I'm a lurker, after all).
I'm not really interested in the extreme cases, the people who starve to death while playing WoW or log years of real-world time in Lineage II and then bring suit against NCsoft over it (I'm looking at you, Mr. Smallwood). I think it's quite possible that there are some or even many smart, social, functional, successful people out there who care more about videogame reality than they do about the physical world. But it's a question, of course -- I could be very wrong.
Final note: I may, with your permission, use your comments in my thesis, in which case I'd cite you in whatever manner you prefer.
Which game made you feel this way? What about it was so immersive/engaging/addicting?
Did you manage to tear yourself away? Eventually lose interest? Are you still playing it?
How did you feel after leaving the game behind? (Or, how do you feel about not leaving the game behind?)
Long version: I started playing videogames not long after toddlerhood, pretty much on the day I became intelligent enough to be aware of screen and keyboard. I started with DOS-based adventure games ("Mom, how do you spell 'swim'?!??... Never mind, he drowned."), moved to educational stuff when my dad finally bought a computer mouse, and it's been a long road to Bioshock and Braid and Time Fcuk from there. The Magic Candle II has plagued me for almost two decades now.
With most games, I visit the world (be it Pandora or Neverwinter or Daventry) for however many hours at a time, and when I put down the controller I know which life -- Sine Shepard's or mine -- takes precedence. I have, say, a 15% overall investment in the videogame world (to be totally arbitrary) and an 85% investment in everything else (my schoolwork, job, friends, future plans, etc).
A few videogames, though, have flipped this ratio for me. Baldur's Gate II was maybe the first, and then Animal Crossing (weird, I know) did it some years later. I had a really intense (like, sleep with laptop and log in upon waking) World of Warcraft phase for about a month and a half, and, most notably, a couple of summers ago I began to think of the Capital Wasteland in Fallout 3 as an alternate reality, perhaps more of a home than my physical house.
I don't abandon my friends or fail classes or start poopsocking, but the physical world begins to feel like it exists mostly to support the videogame world. I keep up the 25% or whatever effort that it takes to go through the motions at school and work, but my ambition and excitement, as far as I can tell, are directed almost completely at stuff going on in Amn or Rivet City. When real-world obligations (read: midterms) take videogames away for long stretches of time, it feels different than just losing a hobby, different than having to give up skiing in the spring or swimming in the winter. It's drastic, something like leaving or waking up.
If you've stuck with me this far, hopefully that means you know at least a little bit about the feeling I'm trying to describe. If that's the case, what's your take on it? Which game has caused this kind of reality-creep to happen to you, what about the game made it happen, and how do you look back on it?
Why I'm asking: If you don't care for personal introductions, you can skip this bit. I'm a student at Brown University, and I'm researching videogames and life inversion for my nonfiction thesis. (Incidentally, I'm also a longtime Escapist reader, watcher, and forum lurker.) I want to know if anyone out there has had an experience like mine, and I thought I'd throw the question out to a community I've come to know and respect (albeit at a distance -- I'm a lurker, after all).
I'm not really interested in the extreme cases, the people who starve to death while playing WoW or log years of real-world time in Lineage II and then bring suit against NCsoft over it (I'm looking at you, Mr. Smallwood). I think it's quite possible that there are some or even many smart, social, functional, successful people out there who care more about videogame reality than they do about the physical world. But it's a question, of course -- I could be very wrong.
Final note: I may, with your permission, use your comments in my thesis, in which case I'd cite you in whatever manner you prefer.
