Hi, Today I want to write about my experience of being a video game addict. So, back in 2014-2015, my parents bought me a computer with some games from GTA and other 2000s games installed. 

The “open-world” factor of gta games got me engaged and there you go, I got obsessed with gaming. I would just come home from school and start playing games on my computer. Back then It was not much of an issue because I was in 1st or 2nd grade. So, there is no pressure from academics at all. 

Fast-forwarded to 2017,  my computer started lagging while playing games and the load-shedding thing was happening in my area and the electricity would just go off at any time while I was playing games. The pc would shut down and my mission ends there. I lost interest in pc games and slowly got into mobile games. 

Different mobile games were rising back then. But this battle-royal games genre was at the top [sort of]. I got into the world of “Free Fire”. 2017-2018 During this time phase, I just had changed my school and all my classmates were new people to me. So, to socialize, I started playing the games that they played to connect with them. Free fire was one of them. We started playing Free Fire together after school. Well in the start I was having trouble mastering the mechanics because I never played an online multiplayer shooting game before. I had to work on my reaction speed, my stable heart rate during the whole match etc etc. 

I was kind of an academic topper you can say, I had to complete my daily lessons so I could not put that much time into what my friends did. That is why I took way too much time to get better at that game, and my friends ranked higher than me in the meantime. Afterward, my friends stopped inviting me to play with them. I somehow felt the fire in me to get better ASAP. I started playing the game for 3-4 hours straight. The phone’s battery would run out. But I would keep playing with the charger connected to my phone. Everything went like this for 2-3 months. Just when I started to get better, all my friends quit Free Fire and moved on to a different game. I’m not sure if it was Minecraft or pubg. Whatever. Due to being obsessed with free-fire, my grades for the next few exams dropped. My parents seized my phone and got me to study again.

Things started to get good with my grades and I started to socialize more. Unfortunately in 2020 covid hit and everyone got locked into their home. No exceptions for me either. Slowly I started to get addicted to social media scrolling. I binge-watched YT content and hung out with my friends all day long. Soon I got to know about the game “Valorant”. I had this fire lit in my that I had some free time. ‘Cause schools are closed. Academic pressure was little. My parents did not care much if I am into my pc all day long or not. Okay, Valorant was my first pc fps game. As I was used to watching Valorant videos on YT or Valorant Twitch streams, I got super excited to climb up to the higher ranks of this game. 

I wanted to be good at this game. As I saw many pros playing in competitive events I also had this fire in me that I would also get better and go pro in VCT. 

I started focusing on my mechanics, game sense, voice comms, etc. But soon I realized It wasn’t that easy to rank up. I was getting hardstuck at every rank. Sometimes It was me performing badly and sometimes my teammates weren’t keeping up. There were times I would lose 5-6 games in a row and drop down to lower ranks. And It was getting tough for me to stay sane. 

Despite all of that, I kept on playing and playing. Even if I am having socializing issues, I’m not going outside, I am not connecting with my friends that much, and I keep on playing. 

During that time phase, If any match did not go as planned, I would just think about how I had wasted all my time behind this game. And that feeling would make me play it again thinking I can be better, Let’s not lose hope. At that point, I was not really enjoying the time I was putting into it. But I could not stop. I was addicted to the rank system.

And that is the thing. Game devs make the rank system, coins/credits, etc. to hook the customers. Let me tell you this, when one stops having fun in anything he does regularly, and yet keeps on doing it intentionally/by the will of mind, whether he is enjoying it or not, you can call that particular practice an addiction. 

Later in 2023, I was putting so many hours into Valorant that my grades again started to go down. And this year was important. My parents started to make me understand about my career. I was also starting to practice this “personal development” stuff. Soon I realized, that maybe Valorant was not for me from the start. I should rather focus on my other hobbies or academics. I already lessened the hours that I was putting into Valorant. Slowly, I stopped missing Valorant. Afterward, the Valorant addiction slowly faded away from my life.

I still have Valorant on my pc. Do I play it still? Yes. Do I hate it? No. Am I happy playing it once in one or two weeks? Yes. 

Overall speaking, there are so many stuff surrounding us that are highly stimulating to our brain. And our brain loves to consume/do them. If we start doing that regularly by hampering our day-to-day lives, that practice is unhealthy and should be avoided.