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Once a somebody, now a nobody: Starcraft 2 has destroyed my life

122 points by voidnothings 14y ago

digitalpacman 14y ago
If anything this story has nothing to do with SC2, and all the fact that this guy is a depressed addict. Anything would do, he just chose video games.
lionhearted 14y ago
Sounds like he has the "rage to master" personality trait... very conducive to hardcore training and mastery in something like martial arts or a craft skill, or a discipline... also conducive to addiction or getting "way too into" hedonistic pursuits. I've got it too, and have made insane/amazing progress and gotten quite good at some skills, crafts, and disciplines in fast time. I've also burned many hours on something like Civilization IV or playing lots of Chess. It's a mixed bag. I wrote about it here -- http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-rage-to-master-personality-trait http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-rag... Definitely worth reading if you've got the same personality mix.
- awef 14y ago
  I've never heard of the term 'rage to master' but I've been told this behaviour is common in people with Aspergers Syndrome. Intense interests which takes priority in life only to be substituted with something else weeks, months or a couple of years down the line. Maybe you can shed some more light on the 'rage to master' personality trait you're talking about?
  - lionhearted 14y ago
    Ellen Winner coined the term in the book "Gifted Children: Myths And Realities" -- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017592/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465017592&linkCode=as2&tag=sebastianmcom-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017592/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... I'm not able to find the definitive research paper on it right now which was titled "The Origins and Ends of Giftedness," but here's one on the trait in the visual arts which should give you an idea -- https://www2.bc.edu/~winner/pdf/talent_in_visual_arts.pdf https://www2.bc.edu/~winner/pdf/talent_in_visual_arts.pdf Despite the term being catchy/interesting, most of the literature on it is very academic and somewhat dry. It probably makes for poor curiosity reading, but it's supremely valuable to dig through the academic papers if you have the trait yourself or you're a parent/guardian/teacher of someone who does.
    - maayank 14y ago
      the definitive research paper on it right now which was titled "The Origins and Ends of Giftedness" It seems this is it http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.110.1265&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.110...
    - awef 14y ago
      Seeing as I have yet to read up on the matter I can't say that I do or do not have the trait myself. But from the little that I've come to understand I'd say it's highly plausible. I'll continue to look into it, I find awareness of oneself's personality of highest importance and I always strive to learn more about why I do the things I do.
  - goblin89 14y ago
    You probably should read the document lionhearted linked to: > Google the term “rage to master” – click around, read some summaries, and then check out a couple academic papers. It will be very worth your time. I'm not sure if it's related to Aspergers, but I don't think negativity[0] is warranted. Having an intense interest is good by itself; if it keeps for a few months—there you have a startup. =) The only problem is indeed that you have to master it, and not always do conscious attempts help. [0] Although I might be mistaken and there wasn't any in your reply.
    - awef 14y ago
      I'll go ahead and do a little research. My comment might've come out a bit blunt but there was no negativity implied. More of a partly sceptical tone as to where the seemingly hip term came from. I'd love to discuss the good and the bad with the trait itself but I should probably do some reading first to verify that it's the same trait that I'm referring to.
- datalus 14y ago
  Wow, I've never heard of this before, but I knew a friend in college who eventually lost himself to drugs for a bit (dealing it, using it too much). He had gone from passion to passion in 1-2 year cycles. During high school he was seriously into Unix and was incredibly into just hacking on it all day, every day for hours on end. The next year he decided he was over it, and got into really spiritual pursuits (converting to Islam) and wearing traditional garb and was incredibly active in a Mosque. Then, unfortunately, he fell into the aforementioned drugs episode. Now, however, he's stabilized after going to therapy and has a pretty rad job doing pen testing. Anyhow, thanks for posting this link, I knew there was some sort of thing describing his personality trait :)
  - the_cat_kittles 14y ago
    "pen testing" is not the act of checking to see if pens work, as google has just informed me, though the story would be hilarious if it was. It's short for penetration testing, which is checking for vulnerabilities in a security system.
- gavinlynch 14y ago
  Never heard this term either previously, but I can relate to a lot of those traits. Thanks for the info.
- crgt 14y ago
  Thanks for this.
Tichy 14y ago
Videogames are harder to quit than drugs? What has he been smoking?
- pragone 14y ago
  Videogames can evoke the same physiological responses from your mind and your body as the high of many drugs. Most anything is capable of being an addiction for biological creatures such as ourselves - it's simply in the chemistry of our minds that defines what gets us "high".
  - pbhjpbhj 14y ago
    Many videogames are designed as Skinner boxes of some form or other. Bejewelled was a big addiction for me that I noticed coming and managed to quit before I got too far in - I have [had] a tendency to get "addicted" to games. The games provide consistent rewards. From the gamers perspective the only down side is leaving the game - you're suddenly tired, hungry, possibly feel unwell. Of course those are the symptoms of sitting on your ass all day playing video games but one isn't aware of the symptoms until one finishes playing (or later, eg trying to work on a couple of hours sleep). It seems all the emotional, adrenaline rewards are in the game and all negative feelings - pain, hunger, tiredness - are outside the game. Such feelings get amplified by having respect within a game for your position, having friends within a game, etc., if one has none of these things in the real world ... I find it very easy to get in to drink. If I could afford it then it would be a problem for me too I think. Thankfully I've managed to avoid other drugs (except caffeine).
- jseliger 14y ago
  I lost a lot of seventh and eighth grades to video games, and the final departure from them entailed smashing Starcraft 1 and Brood War CDs in my driveway, in front of my friends, who were telling me "not to waste the CDs." But I needed to do something cathartic, and in my case smashing the discs helped me go cold-turkey. I wrote about it a little bit more here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-department-of-no-shit-technology-and-computers-are-not-a-silver-bullets-for-education https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-departmen... .
ericcholis 14y ago
Bit of personal insight here, I have anger issues that may border on bi-polar. I've never attempted a diagnosis or treatment, I just try to maintain a cool head. Most of the time I'm rational and level headed. However, there are certain triggers that just make me snap, completely flipping my personality. On more than one occasion, Starcraft 2 was one of those triggers. It only occurred after long heated anonymous matches that I lost, never during single player or with friends. I shelved Starcraft 2 shortly after a bad outburst where I broke the door of my wooden keyboard tray. If I had to guess, the intense focus I was putting into Starcraft broke my normal awareness of my emotions. Thus, loosing control when I was defeated.
- trafficlight 14y ago
  I've always said Counter Strike makes me go from 0 to Angry in 9 seconds flat.
- herval 14y ago
  What symptoms do you get that make you think you're bipolar? I'm asking because most people diagnose themselves as being either bipolar or ADHD, and it's almost always a bogus diagnostics based on very common personality aspects that everyone has, such as some level of mood swings or tendency to procrastinate...
  - ericcholis 14y ago
    For me, it's the complete 180 of my personality. Sure, I get angry like anybody else, but it's usually the frustration type of anger. These are usually diffused by simple discussion or critical thinking. That type of anger isn't what I'm referring to. None of my incidents have been in a work environment, which may be linked to my analytical personality. Situations at work can be controlled and resolved easily. The fits I'm citing are full on rage, like zero to "put your head through a wall" in 2 seconds flat. Like I said, and you mentioned, I'm only guessing at a diagnosis. It's likely that my rage is linked to my level of control in a situation.
    - herval 14y ago
picklefish 14y ago
This sounds so fake :/ There are certainly video game addicts out there, it's a serious problem in korea and china, but I think this is a troll and/or pathological liar.
- JonnieCache 14y ago
  I do know what you mean. All that stuff about becoming a monk was curiously non-specific. Still, we should assume good faith here: we stand to gain nothing by making accusations.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    Snopes is pretty good evicence that "why would X person lie?" is a naive worldview. People make up stories to get people to believe them, for laughs. Addicts think and speak out of the bounds of "good faith" on a regular basis. They are very unreliable narrators.
- tomku 14y ago
  Could be, but the parts about game addiction itself are dead on with my experiences. I effectively lost six years of my life and dropped out of college. While I was playing the game, that seemed like a reasonable loss - it was only after I stopped playing completely that I realized how badly I had fucked up my life. I should add that I don't live in Korea or China. I'm a guy in my late 20's who lives in rural Wisconsin, and I know several people that I met while playing that particular game that have gone through similar (though usually less severe) experiences. The ones that I've kept in touch in agree that they were addicted as well, and that it's probably a lot more common than anyone would like to admit for players of certain genres of games, particularly MMOs.
tomku 14y ago
As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2 worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft addiction is a good first step, but it won't do him any good if he lapses into addictive behavior in another aspect of his life. It sounds like the poster is a really motivated guy, and lionhearted is correct in his sibling post here that that can be a strong force for productivity if you can master it. I really hope that Tom manages to do so, because at 21, he's got his whole (non-destroyed) life ahead of him. Losing two years to an addiction is a big deal, but it's something you can overcome and possibly even come out stronger from. Edit: Since I talked a little bit about my own circumstances in a reply, I might as well go into detail here, particularly since it looks like the actual linked post might be a lie/exaggeration. I played Final Fantasy XI (an MMO, unlike most games in the series) from the fall of 2004 until the fall of 2009, and World of Warcraft from then until January of 2011. During that time, my life outside of the game basically stopped. I dropped out of college, I moved back in with my parents, I stopped programming and reading, which were my main interests before the MMOs came along. For a few of the years in the middle I didn't work or even really leave the house. Eventually I got pushed out because my parents knew that what I was doing wasn't a healthy lifestyle, but I did just enough to adapt and got a job an an apartment and continued gaming. What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs. Eventually it hit critical mass and I quit FFXI, thinking that the problem was just that I needed a better game. A year of WoW convinced me otherwise, and I've been putting my life back together since then. I (obviously) don't mind talking about it now, and I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone has them.
- tomrod 14y ago
  >What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs Same thing built up with Minecraft for me. What a lost amount of time :/. So fun at the time, but there is only so many Legos I can afford to spend time on.
killpg 14y ago
So did he get diamond rating?
Claudus 14y ago
It seems like he was already screwing up his life pretty well before SC2 was released: "Fast forward to summer '10. By now I had moved out of three apartments with my friends. I lost three jobs. I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice. In between my friends and I would do odd-jobs that lasted a week at a time then would get paid one large sum, then blow it all on alcohol and marijuana. Living literally off of pickle juice, beer, bread once in a while, redbull, and cigarettes, we found ourselves wasting our days away on the Xbox with nothing else to do but wait for a job. Finally, I had to move back into my mother's house (a big time alcholic, who is seperated 15 years now from my father, a raging, abusive in every way alcholic) and that's where I took the deep plunge into hellish unconciousness. Waiting eagerly for years for the realease of Starcraft 2 I waited in line 2 hours at 2:00 am for the special release...."
- klochner 14y ago
  I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a fabrication - the details all sound like what you hear from a bad liar: - 1% body fat - ran 12 miles and got bored (so he walked home??) - 20 one-handed push-ups on either side (but only 100 combined??) - became a monk - shrank an inch in a year do to inactivity
  - LoganCale 14y ago
    24 miles in a day is a long day but feasible. I've done 18 miles walking, starting mid-morning and ending early afternoon. Running one way would shorten the time needed (though would also cause faster exhaustion, I presume). The other sounds less likely...
    - agscala 14y ago
      I think the silly part is why would you run 12 miles, get bored, and then WALK home? Shouldn't you just run home?
      - icegreentea 14y ago
        Nah, sometimes you just don't want to run anymore. I've definitely done 10k runs, and just stop and look for a bus home. It's not even that you're too tired to run (though that plays a role). Some people can just keep running as long as they keep in the flow. When you lose it, running quickly becomes boring.
jboggan 14y ago
I think video games can become extremely addicting to a certain mental/psychological cross-section that is highly represented on Hacker News. While most drugs have a cycle of reward and withdrawal video games have that in very small sustainable bursts but connected to the act of being clever. We like being clever for its own sake but we really enjoy it when we use it to defeat or conquer something, no matter how synthetic and abstract. Do you feel any different zergrushing an unprepared base or finally getting that Clojure script to run correctly? I really don't, and I've had to remind myself over the years to focus my endeavors towards productive learning even if the rewards come a little more slowly and are harder to get. It's great that he posted this though. He'll be able to come back and read it over and over - and hopefully it will help him begin to take responsibility for his life and what he can do to change it.
luu 14y ago
This article has a lot of things which sound fake. Here's one: I was 6'2'', 168 lbs, 1% body fat When I was climbing competitively, I once had my bodyfat measured (by DEXA) as just under 3%. For climbing, pretty much any weight (even most muscle) is just dead weight, so climbers are as skinny and lean as any athletes out there, and I only very rarely ran into people as lean as me. I've known a lot of bodybuilders and wrestlers, and even there, it's rare to see people below 3%, and I've never heard of anyone who's tested below 2% bodyfat. 1%? I won't say that it's impossible, but to be alive and functioning at that level would require you to be a genetic freak on the same level as Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps.
- revorad 14y ago
  Could be a typo?
- deleted 14y ago
  [deleted]
- K2h 14y ago
  It is possible his 1% body fat was an estimate or used a different technique to measure. I know nothing about it really, but it is possible he was more interested in training than finding a doctor to give him exact stats.
  - illuminate 14y ago
    Considering that there's not a zillion ways to define it as it is usually used, chances are more likely pointing towards fib.
  - mindcrime 14y ago
    Saying "1% bodyfat" doesn't really mean much, because even the most accurate methods of measuring bodyfat have a not insignificant margin of error. And skin-fold calipers, the most common way (in my experience) of measuring bodyfat, definitely have a significant margin of error. You might actually read 1% on the skinfold caliper, but that doesn't necessarily mean you literally have only 1% bodyfat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage
jwwest 14y ago
The poster has what my mother always called an 'addictive' personality. It's both a benevolent and malevolent trait to have. I'm sure most professional athletes or anyone that 'masters' something to any sort of extreme has to have this sort of trait to stay intrinsically motivated. I am disappointed to see people blaming 'this or that game' for their problems. Personally these types of folks need help and a good safety net of friends and family to point out what's truly happening instead of being surrounded by those with the same issues. Unfortunately it sounds like this guy had none of the former and plenty of the latter.
coryl 14y ago
Definitely a troll, this was the tell (where he refers to the UFC/combat fighting): "those institutions are false and insulting to real martial artists. The people who take place in them worship violent demagogues." Funny.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  I dunno... I could see the heads of some traditional McDojo type TKD or Karate schools trying to promote thinking like that. I think they realize that most of the world has moved on and recognized MMA / hybrid training as more effective for actual combat, so they might try to reposition themselves by trying to paint MMA as wanton violence. Heck, some of them might actually believe that their stuff is superior to MMA, based on some woo aspect or other. :-)
drivebyacct2 14y ago
I am very thankful that I don't have a too terribly addictive personality. At worst, I'm addicted to "the Internet", but only in the sense that I'd rather be reading Hacker News or programming a side project than hiking or sitting on my ass watching TV. That having been said, I have a handful of friends or acquaintances that have problems with addiction. Each of them ruined their college experience with a combination of: drinking, pot, alcohol and finally Adderall (to fix their attention, but ultimately fueling alcoholic-ish binges). It's terribly sad because I'm an excellent student who spent basically three years straight getting high after classes and homework and continued to work on my github projects. Stopped when I moved away for an internship cold turkey and had a headache for a few hours and then was back to normal. I hope that we can learn how to screen for these things or provide better treatments for people that get addicted to those sorts of psychological releases. Video games are a nice way for me to relax and I've been known to have a four hour binge with a bottle of wine on a Friday night, but I can't imagine literally losing control of my life.
kmfrk 14y ago
I find that videogames fill a void more than they create it. Spending too much time on them seems more like an effect than a cause.
justjimmy 14y ago
I can relate to the OP in certain parts – though some bits do sound odd. (Like the mentioned 1% and being a top monk.) When SC2 was released, I got into it big time as well. I know I have an addictive personality (if given the right method and circumstance), but I didn't know the term 'rage to master' I'll have to look it up. Anyway, I slept and breath SC2. I knew it was going to get me in trouble, I had no delusions of going Pro, but I just wanted to be good. I hated the feeling of losing to cheese tactics and winnings games, surprisingly, only gave me a mild high. If I won, I wanted to be a legit win. SC2 to me is chess on steroids. I'd kept playing no matter if I won or lost. I was aware of my personality flaw so I gave myself a goal – Plat #1 on my division and I'm done. So I reached the goal and immediately quit the ladder game. My ability to do this made me doubt if I really had an addictive personality. I find myself going through the same process for other games such as WoW and D3 – aim for the highest (reasonable) goal, 'prove' something to myself and be done. It's really unfortunate, since I rarely play games for the sake of 'fun' anymore (any online game bring out the competitiveness in me.) Just like the Matrix guy, I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max, look for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations.
- ismyrnow 14y ago
  "... I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max, look for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations." I was talking with a fellow gamer, and we both made the same observation about playing video games at an above-casual level. I realized (when playing Skyrim) that I was focusing so hard on being as efficient and successful as possible, that I wasn't really enjoying myself anymore. I've since been making an effort to play games more casually. I can still be competitive, but if playing games feels like a chore, I'm doing it wrong.
kenster07 14y ago
I would bet on contrived.
ericz 14y ago
Guys this is obviously fake.
malkia 14y ago
Should I feel terrible now? I work in the team, making one of the the best selling fps games. Then again I don't like playing fps games, I'm just supporting tools code. I don't like multiplayer games at all, especially mmorpgs ones. I do love hot-seat multiplayer games like Heroes of Might and Magic - it's great fun. People in the same room, taking turns, and in the mean time having laugh and jokes (and smelly clothes, also a bit drunk after 24hr marathons) For single player - old quest games, and JRPGs took many hours of my life...
- AznHisoka 14y ago
  No, it is not your responsibility if people have no self control and abuse the game. Just like if you work in McDonalds and someone keeps eating there everyday.
alberich 14y ago
This is bizarre, really. You known, while being addicted to something may be a big problem, the OP sounds much more depressed than addicted. Come one, 21 years old and his life is destroyed? how come? He even has money for beer and cigarretes? The guy should take a walk into some hospital to watch people that are screwed up really bad, both physically and mentally. And I don't mean to be moralist, even if I sound like one. The main problem is that he must get up and decide to change his life, see that he is a perfectly normal young guy. If he can't quit playing by himself, why don't he look for help? A psychologist or even a psychiatrist may be of great help, but they sure wont come to his home from out of nowhere.
- tankbot 14y ago
  You do realize that obsessive/addictive personalities and depression go hand in hand right?
  - alberich 14y ago
    Sure, and I'm also aware that there is cure for this, but you must go for it. If this story is real, I hope that now that he is aware that he is troubled, he will seek professional help.
neutronicus 14y ago
> I'm afraid to leave the house to be seen; I don't even want to see my friends anymore. All I want to do is sleep because I'm so ashamed of what I've become it's painful to be awake and have to think about it all. God, do I know this feeling. I don't know if I would have gotten away from it without friends and family.
antman 14y ago
I totally understand. Totally. This is a dangerous path taken, but it could happen for everyday things. Having the inner pressure to do things when things dont need to be done only to avoid feeling stale. I was better than anyone I knew in my job and I kept studying edge cases of my profession that I would never need. Soon my job became too easy. I would spend time studying professioms related to mine only in case I come up with something useful. Make no mistake this was not workaholism since it had nothing to do with my day to day work except in very rare circumstances. I also know that this is personally unproductive since I work as a manager and I can tell mismanagement of resources I mile away. I am very strict unfortunately only on everybody else but me. I read issue queues and follow forums for open source projects for thing I will never use. Same thing goes for stackoverflow for a series of languages. I have studied history books, correlating things on various books and sources and historical archives. Attempting to put everything in an elasticsearch cluster for better fulltext search. To what end, I don't know. My spouse has gotten used to this but my friends seem to have changed during the years. I have no long term goals and many things I learned I won't use. Since my addictions are not fun related they just look like hobbies. The problem is they add up to many hours a day. I would not call it rage to succeed, I would call it inability to stand still mentally.
DavidAdams 14y ago
A friend of mine was just as bad of a game addict when it drove him to drop out of graduate school and become a deadbeat. He's now a successful game designer at Blizzard.
joeblau 14y ago
What league are you in? I hope GM!
gersh 14y ago
Would it be possible to make a nicotine patch for Starcraft 2? How about a less addictive version to wean yourself off it. Maybe, you switch to Starcraft I, and then Warcraft. How about messing up the resolution, or having a slow internet connection with lag? What if you have a computer that cheats for you? What would it take to make such a thing? Is it possible? Exactly what elements of Starcraft make it addictive? Would it be possible to make a similar but less addictive version?
mikemoka 14y ago
it would be very interesting to know how is he doing now (since a year has passed, as you can see the post linked is from 2011) and why he didn't try to teach martial arts professionally
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I find this story pretty hard to believe. It might, I guess it might be true, but it seems a bit fanciful. For sure, even if only partly, this person clearly has major problems with balancing things. But the Kung Fu master part seems a incredulous to me. In the story, we go straight from being one of the greatest monks the Wu Tang Clan has ever seen to ... doing drywall odd jobs for money to buy weed and beer ... seems like something is missing there. Then there's the bit of moving out into the wilderness, resuming this big regime of training. I just don't know about that. IANAP (psychologist), but I would say probably this person has a big problem with video games, but more specifically impulses and I would venture to guess possibly a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy. Probably, the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy is one of the bigger problems here and then addiction. It's good that this person seems to want help, get out of the hole. I think it will definitely take professional help; there's more going on here than just playing Starcraft 2 too much.
TheMagicHorsey 14y ago
Believe it or not, even learning can become addictive. I know a lot of people that have an addiction to learning new technologies, but they never actually build anything. The pleasure of learning new things is what they crave. They learn something, then they go learn something else, then something else. Sometimes they get two or three degrees in unrelated fields. It gives them a false sense of productivity. In the end its like playing Starcraft. It does not lead to any output. Just firing of neurons within their brains.
- nostrademons 14y ago
  Accomplishment can also become addictive. That's why they call it workaholism. Usually these things result from a misfiring in the brain. Some are more impressive to the outside world than others, but none of them really satisfy the person.
benhoskins 14y ago
I haven't played StarCraft 2 yet. Wow; is it really that good? Think I might go buy a copy today.

122 points by voidnothings 14y ago

If anything this story has nothing to do with SC2, and all the fact that this guy is a depressed addict. Anything would do, he just chose video games.

lionhearted 14y ago

Sounds like he has the "rage to master" personality trait... very conducive to hardcore training and mastery in something like martial arts or a craft skill, or a discipline... also conducive to addiction or getting "way too into" hedonistic pursuits. I've got it too, and have made insane/amazing progress and gotten quite good at some skills, crafts, and disciplines in fast time. I've also burned many hours on something like Civilization IV or playing lots of Chess. It's a mixed bag. I wrote about it here -- http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-rage-to-master-personality-trait http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-rag... Definitely worth reading if you've got the same personality mix.

awef 14y ago
I've never heard of the term 'rage to master' but I've been told this behaviour is common in people with Aspergers Syndrome. Intense interests which takes priority in life only to be substituted with something else weeks, months or a couple of years down the line. Maybe you can shed some more light on the 'rage to master' personality trait you're talking about?
- lionhearted 14y ago
  Ellen Winner coined the term in the book "Gifted Children: Myths And Realities" -- http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017592/ref=as_li_ss_tl?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creative=390957&creativeASIN=0465017592&linkCode=as2&tag=sebastianmcom-20 http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0465017592/ref=as_li_ss_tl?... I'm not able to find the definitive research paper on it right now which was titled "The Origins and Ends of Giftedness," but here's one on the trait in the visual arts which should give you an idea -- https://www2.bc.edu/~winner/pdf/talent_in_visual_arts.pdf https://www2.bc.edu/~winner/pdf/talent_in_visual_arts.pdf Despite the term being catchy/interesting, most of the literature on it is very academic and somewhat dry. It probably makes for poor curiosity reading, but it's supremely valuable to dig through the academic papers if you have the trait yourself or you're a parent/guardian/teacher of someone who does.
  - maayank 14y ago
    the definitive research paper on it right now which was titled "The Origins and Ends of Giftedness" It seems this is it http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.110.1265&rep=rep1&type=pdf http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.110...
  - awef 14y ago
    Seeing as I have yet to read up on the matter I can't say that I do or do not have the trait myself. But from the little that I've come to understand I'd say it's highly plausible. I'll continue to look into it, I find awareness of oneself's personality of highest importance and I always strive to learn more about why I do the things I do.
- goblin89 14y ago
  You probably should read the document lionhearted linked to: > Google the term “rage to master” – click around, read some summaries, and then check out a couple academic papers. It will be very worth your time. I'm not sure if it's related to Aspergers, but I don't think negativity[0] is warranted. Having an intense interest is good by itself; if it keeps for a few months—there you have a startup. =) The only problem is indeed that you have to master it, and not always do conscious attempts help. [0] Although I might be mistaken and there wasn't any in your reply.
  - awef 14y ago
    I'll go ahead and do a little research. My comment might've come out a bit blunt but there was no negativity implied. More of a partly sceptical tone as to where the seemingly hip term came from. I'd love to discuss the good and the bad with the trait itself but I should probably do some reading first to verify that it's the same trait that I'm referring to.
datalus 14y ago
Wow, I've never heard of this before, but I knew a friend in college who eventually lost himself to drugs for a bit (dealing it, using it too much). He had gone from passion to passion in 1-2 year cycles. During high school he was seriously into Unix and was incredibly into just hacking on it all day, every day for hours on end. The next year he decided he was over it, and got into really spiritual pursuits (converting to Islam) and wearing traditional garb and was incredibly active in a Mosque. Then, unfortunately, he fell into the aforementioned drugs episode. Now, however, he's stabilized after going to therapy and has a pretty rad job doing pen testing. Anyhow, thanks for posting this link, I knew there was some sort of thing describing his personality trait :)
- the_cat_kittles 14y ago
  "pen testing" is not the act of checking to see if pens work, as google has just informed me, though the story would be hilarious if it was. It's short for penetration testing, which is checking for vulnerabilities in a security system.
gavinlynch 14y ago
Never heard this term either previously, but I can relate to a lot of those traits. Thanks for the info.
crgt 14y ago
Thanks for this.

Tichy 14y ago

Videogames are harder to quit than drugs? What has he been smoking?

pragone 14y ago
Videogames can evoke the same physiological responses from your mind and your body as the high of many drugs. Most anything is capable of being an addiction for biological creatures such as ourselves - it's simply in the chemistry of our minds that defines what gets us "high".
- pbhjpbhj 14y ago
  Many videogames are designed as Skinner boxes of some form or other. Bejewelled was a big addiction for me that I noticed coming and managed to quit before I got too far in - I have [had] a tendency to get "addicted" to games. The games provide consistent rewards. From the gamers perspective the only down side is leaving the game - you're suddenly tired, hungry, possibly feel unwell. Of course those are the symptoms of sitting on your ass all day playing video games but one isn't aware of the symptoms until one finishes playing (or later, eg trying to work on a couple of hours sleep). It seems all the emotional, adrenaline rewards are in the game and all negative feelings - pain, hunger, tiredness - are outside the game. Such feelings get amplified by having respect within a game for your position, having friends within a game, etc., if one has none of these things in the real world ... I find it very easy to get in to drink. If I could afford it then it would be a problem for me too I think. Thankfully I've managed to avoid other drugs (except caffeine).
jseliger 14y ago
I lost a lot of seventh and eighth grades to video games, and the final departure from them entailed smashing Starcraft 1 and Brood War CDs in my driveway, in front of my friends, who were telling me "not to waste the CDs." But I needed to do something cathartic, and in my case smashing the discs helped me go cold-turkey. I wrote about it a little bit more here: https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-department-of-no-shit-technology-and-computers-are-not-a-silver-bullets-for-education https://jseliger.wordpress.com/2011/09/04/from-the-departmen... .

ericcholis 14y ago

Bit of personal insight here, I have anger issues that may border on bi-polar. I've never attempted a diagnosis or treatment, I just try to maintain a cool head. Most of the time I'm rational and level headed. However, there are certain triggers that just make me snap, completely flipping my personality. On more than one occasion, Starcraft 2 was one of those triggers. It only occurred after long heated anonymous matches that I lost, never during single player or with friends. I shelved Starcraft 2 shortly after a bad outburst where I broke the door of my wooden keyboard tray. If I had to guess, the intense focus I was putting into Starcraft broke my normal awareness of my emotions. Thus, loosing control when I was defeated.

trafficlight 14y ago
I've always said Counter Strike makes me go from 0 to Angry in 9 seconds flat.
herval 14y ago
What symptoms do you get that make you think you're bipolar? I'm asking because most people diagnose themselves as being either bipolar or ADHD, and it's almost always a bogus diagnostics based on very common personality aspects that everyone has, such as some level of mood swings or tendency to procrastinate...
- ericcholis 14y ago
  For me, it's the complete 180 of my personality. Sure, I get angry like anybody else, but it's usually the frustration type of anger. These are usually diffused by simple discussion or critical thinking. That type of anger isn't what I'm referring to. None of my incidents have been in a work environment, which may be linked to my analytical personality. Situations at work can be controlled and resolved easily. The fits I'm citing are full on rage, like zero to "put your head through a wall" in 2 seconds flat. Like I said, and you mentioned, I'm only guessing at a diagnosis. It's likely that my rage is linked to my level of control in a situation.
  - herval 14y ago

picklefish 14y ago

This sounds so fake :/ There are certainly video game addicts out there, it's a serious problem in korea and china, but I think this is a troll and/or pathological liar.

JonnieCache 14y ago
I do know what you mean. All that stuff about becoming a monk was curiously non-specific. Still, we should assume good faith here: we stand to gain nothing by making accusations.
- illuminate 14y ago
  Snopes is pretty good evicence that "why would X person lie?" is a naive worldview. People make up stories to get people to believe them, for laughs. Addicts think and speak out of the bounds of "good faith" on a regular basis. They are very unreliable narrators.
tomku 14y ago
Could be, but the parts about game addiction itself are dead on with my experiences. I effectively lost six years of my life and dropped out of college. While I was playing the game, that seemed like a reasonable loss - it was only after I stopped playing completely that I realized how badly I had fucked up my life. I should add that I don't live in Korea or China. I'm a guy in my late 20's who lives in rural Wisconsin, and I know several people that I met while playing that particular game that have gone through similar (though usually less severe) experiences. The ones that I've kept in touch in agree that they were addicted as well, and that it's probably a lot more common than anyone would like to admit for players of certain genres of games, particularly MMOs.

tomku 14y ago

As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2 worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft addiction is a good first step, but it won't do him any good if he lapses into addictive behavior in another aspect of his life. It sounds like the poster is a really motivated guy, and lionhearted is correct in his sibling post here that that can be a strong force for productivity if you can master it. I really hope that Tom manages to do so, because at 21, he's got his whole (non-destroyed) life ahead of him. Losing two years to an addiction is a big deal, but it's something you can overcome and possibly even come out stronger from. Edit: Since I talked a little bit about my own circumstances in a reply, I might as well go into detail here, particularly since it looks like the actual linked post might be a lie/exaggeration. I played Final Fantasy XI (an MMO, unlike most games in the series) from the fall of 2004 until the fall of 2009, and World of Warcraft from then until January of 2011. During that time, my life outside of the game basically stopped. I dropped out of college, I moved back in with my parents, I stopped programming and reading, which were my main interests before the MMOs came along. For a few of the years in the middle I didn't work or even really leave the house. Eventually I got pushed out because my parents knew that what I was doing wasn't a healthy lifestyle, but I did just enough to adapt and got a job an an apartment and continued gaming. What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs. Eventually it hit critical mass and I quit FFXI, thinking that the problem was just that I needed a better game. A year of WoW convinced me otherwise, and I've been putting my life back together since then. I (obviously) don't mind talking about it now, and I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone has them.

tomrod 14y ago
>What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs Same thing built up with Minecraft for me. What a lost amount of time :/. So fun at the time, but there is only so many Legos I can afford to spend time on.

killpg 14y ago

So did he get diamond rating?

Claudus 14y ago

It seems like he was already screwing up his life pretty well before SC2 was released: "Fast forward to summer '10. By now I had moved out of three apartments with my friends. I lost three jobs. I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice. In between my friends and I would do odd-jobs that lasted a week at a time then would get paid one large sum, then blow it all on alcohol and marijuana. Living literally off of pickle juice, beer, bread once in a while, redbull, and cigarettes, we found ourselves wasting our days away on the Xbox with nothing else to do but wait for a job. Finally, I had to move back into my mother's house (a big time alcholic, who is seperated 15 years now from my father, a raging, abusive in every way alcholic) and that's where I took the deep plunge into hellish unconciousness. Waiting eagerly for years for the realease of Starcraft 2 I waited in line 2 hours at 2:00 am for the special release...."

klochner 14y ago
I'm pretty sure the whole thing is a fabrication - the details all sound like what you hear from a bad liar: - 1% body fat - ran 12 miles and got bored (so he walked home??) - 20 one-handed push-ups on either side (but only 100 combined??) - became a monk - shrank an inch in a year do to inactivity
- LoganCale 14y ago
  24 miles in a day is a long day but feasible. I've done 18 miles walking, starting mid-morning and ending early afternoon. Running one way would shorten the time needed (though would also cause faster exhaustion, I presume). The other sounds less likely...
  - agscala 14y ago
    I think the silly part is why would you run 12 miles, get bored, and then WALK home? Shouldn't you just run home?
    - icegreentea 14y ago
      Nah, sometimes you just don't want to run anymore. I've definitely done 10k runs, and just stop and look for a bus home. It's not even that you're too tired to run (though that plays a role). Some people can just keep running as long as they keep in the flow. When you lose it, running quickly becomes boring.

jboggan 14y ago

I think video games can become extremely addicting to a certain mental/psychological cross-section that is highly represented on Hacker News. While most drugs have a cycle of reward and withdrawal video games have that in very small sustainable bursts but connected to the act of being clever. We like being clever for its own sake but we really enjoy it when we use it to defeat or conquer something, no matter how synthetic and abstract. Do you feel any different zergrushing an unprepared base or finally getting that Clojure script to run correctly? I really don't, and I've had to remind myself over the years to focus my endeavors towards productive learning even if the rewards come a little more slowly and are harder to get. It's great that he posted this though. He'll be able to come back and read it over and over - and hopefully it will help him begin to take responsibility for his life and what he can do to change it.

luu 14y ago

This article has a lot of things which sound fake. Here's one: I was 6'2'', 168 lbs, 1% body fat When I was climbing competitively, I once had my bodyfat measured (by DEXA) as just under 3%. For climbing, pretty much any weight (even most muscle) is just dead weight, so climbers are as skinny and lean as any athletes out there, and I only very rarely ran into people as lean as me. I've known a lot of bodybuilders and wrestlers, and even there, it's rare to see people below 3%, and I've never heard of anyone who's tested below 2% bodyfat. 1%? I won't say that it's impossible, but to be alive and functioning at that level would require you to be a genetic freak on the same level as Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps.

revorad 14y ago
Could be a typo?
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
K2h 14y ago
It is possible his 1% body fat was an estimate or used a different technique to measure. I know nothing about it really, but it is possible he was more interested in training than finding a doctor to give him exact stats.
- illuminate 14y ago
  Considering that there's not a zillion ways to define it as it is usually used, chances are more likely pointing towards fib.
- mindcrime 14y ago
  Saying "1% bodyfat" doesn't really mean much, because even the most accurate methods of measuring bodyfat have a not insignificant margin of error. And skin-fold calipers, the most common way (in my experience) of measuring bodyfat, definitely have a significant margin of error. You might actually read 1% on the skinfold caliper, but that doesn't necessarily mean you literally have only 1% bodyfat. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_fat_percentage

jwwest 14y ago

The poster has what my mother always called an 'addictive' personality. It's both a benevolent and malevolent trait to have. I'm sure most professional athletes or anyone that 'masters' something to any sort of extreme has to have this sort of trait to stay intrinsically motivated. I am disappointed to see people blaming 'this or that game' for their problems. Personally these types of folks need help and a good safety net of friends and family to point out what's truly happening instead of being surrounded by those with the same issues. Unfortunately it sounds like this guy had none of the former and plenty of the latter.

coryl 14y ago

Definitely a troll, this was the tell (where he refers to the UFC/combat fighting): "those institutions are false and insulting to real martial artists. The people who take place in them worship violent demagogues." Funny.

mindcrime 14y ago
I dunno... I could see the heads of some traditional McDojo type TKD or Karate schools trying to promote thinking like that. I think they realize that most of the world has moved on and recognized MMA / hybrid training as more effective for actual combat, so they might try to reposition themselves by trying to paint MMA as wanton violence. Heck, some of them might actually believe that their stuff is superior to MMA, based on some woo aspect or other. :-)

drivebyacct2 14y ago

I am very thankful that I don't have a too terribly addictive personality. At worst, I'm addicted to "the Internet", but only in the sense that I'd rather be reading Hacker News or programming a side project than hiking or sitting on my ass watching TV. That having been said, I have a handful of friends or acquaintances that have problems with addiction. Each of them ruined their college experience with a combination of: drinking, pot, alcohol and finally Adderall (to fix their attention, but ultimately fueling alcoholic-ish binges). It's terribly sad because I'm an excellent student who spent basically three years straight getting high after classes and homework and continued to work on my github projects. Stopped when I moved away for an internship cold turkey and had a headache for a few hours and then was back to normal. I hope that we can learn how to screen for these things or provide better treatments for people that get addicted to those sorts of psychological releases. Video games are a nice way for me to relax and I've been known to have a four hour binge with a bottle of wine on a Friday night, but I can't imagine literally losing control of my life.

kmfrk 14y ago

I find that videogames fill a void more than they create it. Spending too much time on them seems more like an effect than a cause.

justjimmy 14y ago

I can relate to the OP in certain parts – though some bits do sound odd. (Like the mentioned 1% and being a top monk.) When SC2 was released, I got into it big time as well. I know I have an addictive personality (if given the right method and circumstance), but I didn't know the term 'rage to master' I'll have to look it up. Anyway, I slept and breath SC2. I knew it was going to get me in trouble, I had no delusions of going Pro, but I just wanted to be good. I hated the feeling of losing to cheese tactics and winnings games, surprisingly, only gave me a mild high. If I won, I wanted to be a legit win. SC2 to me is chess on steroids. I'd kept playing no matter if I won or lost. I was aware of my personality flaw so I gave myself a goal – Plat #1 on my division and I'm done. So I reached the goal and immediately quit the ladder game. My ability to do this made me doubt if I really had an addictive personality. I find myself going through the same process for other games such as WoW and D3 – aim for the highest (reasonable) goal, 'prove' something to myself and be done. It's really unfortunate, since I rarely play games for the sake of 'fun' anymore (any online game bring out the competitiveness in me.) Just like the Matrix guy, I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max, look for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations.

ismyrnow 14y ago
"... I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max, look for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations." I was talking with a fellow gamer, and we both made the same observation about playing video games at an above-casual level. I realized (when playing Skyrim) that I was focusing so hard on being as efficient and successful as possible, that I wasn't really enjoying myself anymore. I've since been making an effort to play games more casually. I can still be competitive, but if playing games feels like a chore, I'm doing it wrong.

kenster07 14y ago

I would bet on contrived.

ericz 14y ago

Guys this is obviously fake.

malkia 14y ago

Should I feel terrible now? I work in the team, making one of the the best selling fps games. Then again I don't like playing fps games, I'm just supporting tools code. I don't like multiplayer games at all, especially mmorpgs ones. I do love hot-seat multiplayer games like Heroes of Might and Magic - it's great fun. People in the same room, taking turns, and in the mean time having laugh and jokes (and smelly clothes, also a bit drunk after 24hr marathons) For single player - old quest games, and JRPGs took many hours of my life...

AznHisoka 14y ago
No, it is not your responsibility if people have no self control and abuse the game. Just like if you work in McDonalds and someone keeps eating there everyday.

alberich 14y ago

This is bizarre, really. You known, while being addicted to something may be a big problem, the OP sounds much more depressed than addicted. Come one, 21 years old and his life is destroyed? how come? He even has money for beer and cigarretes? The guy should take a walk into some hospital to watch people that are screwed up really bad, both physically and mentally. And I don't mean to be moralist, even if I sound like one. The main problem is that he must get up and decide to change his life, see that he is a perfectly normal young guy. If he can't quit playing by himself, why don't he look for help? A psychologist or even a psychiatrist may be of great help, but they sure wont come to his home from out of nowhere.

tankbot 14y ago
You do realize that obsessive/addictive personalities and depression go hand in hand right?
- alberich 14y ago
  Sure, and I'm also aware that there is cure for this, but you must go for it. If this story is real, I hope that now that he is aware that he is troubled, he will seek professional help.

neutronicus 14y ago

> I'm afraid to leave the house to be seen; I don't even want to see my friends anymore. All I want to do is sleep because I'm so ashamed of what I've become it's painful to be awake and have to think about it all. God, do I know this feeling. I don't know if I would have gotten away from it without friends and family.

antman 14y ago

I totally understand. Totally. This is a dangerous path taken, but it could happen for everyday things. Having the inner pressure to do things when things dont need to be done only to avoid feeling stale. I was better than anyone I knew in my job and I kept studying edge cases of my profession that I would never need. Soon my job became too easy. I would spend time studying professioms related to mine only in case I come up with something useful. Make no mistake this was not workaholism since it had nothing to do with my day to day work except in very rare circumstances. I also know that this is personally unproductive since I work as a manager and I can tell mismanagement of resources I mile away. I am very strict unfortunately only on everybody else but me. I read issue queues and follow forums for open source projects for thing I will never use. Same thing goes for stackoverflow for a series of languages. I have studied history books, correlating things on various books and sources and historical archives. Attempting to put everything in an elasticsearch cluster for better fulltext search. To what end, I don't know. My spouse has gotten used to this but my friends seem to have changed during the years. I have no long term goals and many things I learned I won't use. Since my addictions are not fun related they just look like hobbies. The problem is they add up to many hours a day. I would not call it rage to succeed, I would call it inability to stand still mentally.

DavidAdams 14y ago

A friend of mine was just as bad of a game addict when it drove him to drop out of graduate school and become a deadbeat. He's now a successful game designer at Blizzard.

joeblau 14y ago

What league are you in? I hope GM!

gersh 14y ago

Would it be possible to make a nicotine patch for Starcraft 2? How about a less addictive version to wean yourself off it. Maybe, you switch to Starcraft I, and then Warcraft. How about messing up the resolution, or having a slow internet connection with lag? What if you have a computer that cheats for you? What would it take to make such a thing? Is it possible? Exactly what elements of Starcraft make it addictive? Would it be possible to make a similar but less addictive version?

mikemoka 14y ago

it would be very interesting to know how is he doing now (since a year has passed, as you can see the post linked is from 2011) and why he didn't try to teach martial arts professionally

dinkumthinkum 14y ago

I find this story pretty hard to believe. It might, I guess it might be true, but it seems a bit fanciful. For sure, even if only partly, this person clearly has major problems with balancing things. But the Kung Fu master part seems a incredulous to me. In the story, we go straight from being one of the greatest monks the Wu Tang Clan has ever seen to ... doing drywall odd jobs for money to buy weed and beer ... seems like something is missing there. Then there's the bit of moving out into the wilderness, resuming this big regime of training. I just don't know about that. IANAP (psychologist), but I would say probably this person has a big problem with video games, but more specifically impulses and I would venture to guess possibly a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy. Probably, the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy is one of the bigger problems here and then addiction. It's good that this person seems to want help, get out of the hole. I think it will definitely take professional help; there's more going on here than just playing Starcraft 2 too much.

TheMagicHorsey 14y ago

Believe it or not, even learning can become addictive. I know a lot of people that have an addiction to learning new technologies, but they never actually build anything. The pleasure of learning new things is what they crave. They learn something, then they go learn something else, then something else. Sometimes they get two or three degrees in unrelated fields. It gives them a false sense of productivity. In the end its like playing Starcraft. It does not lead to any output. Just firing of neurons within their brains.

nostrademons 14y ago
Accomplishment can also become addictive. That's why they call it workaholism. Usually these things result from a misfiring in the brain. Some are more impressive to the outside world than others, but none of them really satisfy the person.

benhoskins 14y ago

I haven't played StarCraft 2 yet. Wow; is it really that good? Think I might go buy a copy today.