Do you try to entice her, wearing your sexiest undies, and she just ignores you?
Not only is there no such thing as gaming addiction but in my make belief communist utopia I would making gaming mandatory for everyone, young and old, along with reading, watching films and listening to music.
The people who wreck their lifes by doing nothing but gaming would have been otaku or stamp collectors or any other activity, if gaming had not existed.
Whoa!
Confession time. Fallout 4 survival mode was my “gaming high” last year. That is in past tense because the high is gone. But I remember that high: exploring the unknown while barely staying alive, and getting cool loot. And a save is probably 0.5-1 hour away. I can’t get that in any kind of real life activity (statistically I would have died many times instead of having countless close shaves.) For at least a couple of months I had been getting that high, that’s how long for me to get through Fallout 4 + DLCs.
That probably makes me an adrenaline junkie, but I got very little patience for PvP shooter (hell is other people, especially when those people think teabagging is ok). Only ME3 Platinum PvE gave me that kind of high/satisfaction. Or SF2, back in the days, lining up in the arcade, quarters in hand. The most excitement I get from work is to speak up in a meeting saying contrarian but reasonable things, knowing there will be pushbacks but I’m willing to defend my position (and sometimes, accompanied by utter disappointment when people actually agree with me. Fight me damn it!).
Then the game ends.
So what do I do?
- Find another high? or
- Accept that the high is one-off and move on.
The problem with #1, like other kinds of high (e.g. sex), is that the chance of finding similar high is not good. It is utterly unpredictable whether the next game (or the next orgasm) will give you that high. So it is probably an utter waste of time to chase it.
Chasing past high again is also a waste of time. I cannot unremember playing Fallout 4. The community playing ME3 PvE or SF2 is gone.
So I move on. I have to. When I get the next high I’d be grateful I get that high. But I just don’t count on find it ever again. At least I have the memories.
Not sure if it will work for you, but I had a time when I was a bit tired of AoW3. I took a long break, came back, installed some mods, and enjoyed the feeling of discovery all over again, the feeling of learning which comboes work, which don’t so well, and now I am modding a little bit.
To help me get over the technical hurdles, as I am anything but a programmer, I treat the modding as a game. So I set myself goals, like:
get this new grapeshot ability to work
which for an experienced modder like Gloweye would be child’s play, but is challenging for me.
And when it does work, that’s a good feeling too.
It’s like a combination of writing (which I used to do alot of and enjoy when I was a child) and painting and playing an instrument, in the sense of learning something new and having something to show for it.