PootisBird

First off, sorry if my English is far from perfect... Grammarly and one Year in Scotland, sadly, can't fix everything wrong about my grammar My name's Michael, I'm an Italian\Polish 27 male, and I decided to enter in this forum with a clear idea: my gaming habit must be contained, until. Yep, let me make it clear again: contained. Sure, I'm not denying that my past gaming habits made me spend so much on things that aren't that much productive, in the long run. True, I lost control over it for years, and that cost me some important life goals (and money... lots of money), and even affected my health (in both ways). Far from denying it, there are plenty of activities outside my laptop that are much more worthy to engage, spending time on them. So, you could ask me "Why, even if you're aware of all of this, you still say you don't want to quit this habit for good?" The answer is pretty much simple: I can't, since all my academical years were spent to build connections, skills, and all the other items needed to enter the Videogame Industry. To make things even more interesting (and complicated for me, but that's the fun in that perhaps?), I'm actively moving from my current job (NeuroMarketing and User Research consultant, my academic experience was all over Psychology and Cognitive Science studies) to try starting a doctorate program to study the effect of Loot Boxes over the behaviour of players, and perhaps even find a link between that and gambling addiction. I think now's is, indeed, the best time to do that, since the UK house of commoners finally decided to take action on this, and my chances of getting funds for a project on this topic are at the highest peak possible in this particular year. You can now guess why I can't allow myself to simply move over from the gaming world 100%: even if I have plenty of other activities outside of gaming ready for me (I just need to give them time to substitute my past habits), for the type of job I'm gonna do, being informed of what happens in the Gaming Industry and Communities isn't an option. Alongside with this, I need to keep my Steam Account for my curriculum because, 4 years ago, I was still a trader (unaware of what I was feeling, that will be something I will never forget) in the Team Fortress 2 market (a pretty successful one too), and plenty of people suggested me to use it as a leverage when searching for funds\jobs (as a trader, I learned a lot of things about this industry that no textbook could ever teach me). But what I can and want to do is keep this old habit of mine in check: sure, I'll need to playtest some game with participants and myself from time to time, I'll have to control info from the industry on a regular basis, communicate with fans and experts, talk with them about their favorite games\genres\playstyle, etc... But that doesn't mean I should allow gaming to keep me awake at night, spending money to acquire useless pricey skins in Online Games just out of Loss Aversion, to rage myself when a developer scams me and the other customers by releasing unfinished products, or filled with scummy microtransactions, and, in general, keep poisoning my life like it did for 8 years already. And I'll tell you more: the reason why I'm so fueled into the idea of doing research (or work as a UR) to prove (or not) how these things works is because I truly believe they are dangerous to people (especially kids), and Hell be frozen if I'll not try my best to avoid the pain and the suffering I personally experienced because of this lack of regulations (or, as a UR, I can try to avoid an excessive usage of these practices in the game my company would like to produce). Well, sorry for all this little rant, but I had truly the need to let it out, off from my chest for once. I hope that, even if I'm not going to fully follow the program Cam Adair so kindly gave to us to better copy against this situation, this forum will turn to be helpful to, at least, keep this little rascal of a habit in check, and not howling and biting all day like a feral animal (I think I can actually do it: after all, I'm still deeply involved in the goofy community of Team Fortress 2 (you know those weird videos on Youtube made with Gmod and SFM? That) even if I stopped playing the game from almost 3 years already, and never had any desire to go back, even after all the hours (over 2.000) spent there). Thanks for reading all of this, hope you'll have a wonderful time. Michael