I started gaming on the Atari 2600. Back then the games were kind of repetitive, but as a kid that didn't matter. I couldn't get enough, I'd be able to clock Space Invaders more than 3 times in a row.

As a teenager I fed more than a small amount of my pocket money into arcade machines such as Mortal Kombat and numerous others.

But it wasn't until consoles such as the playstation came out that gaming became a problem. Games used to have engaging stories, you'd want to get to the next level to find out what happens next. And it was more than once that I would get home from work and sit down to play for a couple of hours. Next thing I knew the sun was coming up and it was time to go to work again. Fortunately games used to have an ending so once I had finished a game there wasn't a lot of reasons to keep playing.

Years later World of Warcraft came out. I loved the other Blizzard games but I didn't see how playing as one character would be as entertaining as their strategy games. It was a few years later that I decided to give it a try. Big mistake, I became addicted and while I wasn't as drawn in as other people all other areas of my life stagnated. What woke me up was as the time living with a flatmate who was obsessed to the point that was all he did. WoW was all he talked about. He would get angry about a small change in the game when patches came out. I did not want to become someone who would rage about something that happened in an imaginary world. I quit soon after. I'd still occasionally play console games but I promised myself I would no longer play online games that never end.

A few years later, I was living in the house that I bought with my girlfriend. Like all relationships, there were ups and downs. After a while I decided I would play WoW in my spare time. Some people drink to hide away from their problems, I'm ashamed to admit that I hid away from life in video games. Problems don't go away just because you hide from them. After a while I typed in /played and saw a huge chunk of my life had gone into this pointless game. I uninstalled and started dealing with my problems in our relationship like I should have already been doing. We broke up later due to reasons unrelated to gaming.

I came to the same conclusions Cam has come to when it comes to avoiding video game addiction. I stopped completely and vowed never to take it up again. I've had a few times where I thought I could just play a little. Some people can do it in moderation, and I see no problem with that. But when I start with video games I don't stop. The only solution that works for me is to avoid them altogether.

Looking forward to contributing to this forum.

Ed

Ed also has a sweet blog called 52in52weeks.com where he's reading 52 books in 52 weeks and leaving a review each time!

that sounds like quite a challenge, how do you read so fast Ed?
Also welcome

Thanks for the link Cam.

that sounds like quite a challenge, how do you read so fast Ed?
Also welcome

?Years of practice

I've always read a lot and even as a teenager while other guys were complaining about reading a 200 page book, I was reading 400-600 page books for fun. There have been a few books that have taken me longer than a week but some are shorter so it averages out. I don't find it to be a huge challenge to read a book a week, the challenge comes in writing a review that I'm happy with.

It's also worth noting that the average book is about 200 pages, and based on average reading speeds you can read about 30 pages an hour.

200 pages divided by 7 days = 28.57/pages/day to finish an average book each week.

So if you read an hour a day, you should be able to do it.