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October 24, 2005
Why addictive games finally let you go: My latest Wired News column
Wired News has just published my latest gaming column, and this one is about the curious arc of video-game addiction: The way you become totally obsessed with a game, can't stop thinking about it, and then one day it's just gone. The column is online permanently here at Wired News, and an archived copy is below:
The End of the Affair
An obsession with a game always ends suddenly. Why?
by Clive Thompson
My addictions always run the same course.
One day a few weeks ago, I picked up Burnout: Revenge -- the superb new car-racing and -smashing game -- and within an hour I was hooked. I abandoned all work, blew my writing deadlines and ignored my wife. The few moments when I could pry myself from the console, I'd fantasize about when I could return. It seemed like I'd never be able to stop, and indeed, like any addict, I didn't want to.
Until suddenly, after two weeks of monomaniacal play, everything ended.
I finished a three-hour binge of racing, clicked off my Playstation 2, and ... it was over. My compulsion had vanished. I still enjoyed the game, and had plenty more challenges to complete. But I didn't need to play it any more. For some mysterious reason, Burnout had suddenly released me from its talons.
This is one of the abiding mysteries of games: Why do they let us go so suddenly? Every gamer I know describes the same abrupt drop-off, totally unexpected, arriving after hours or even weeks of feverish play. It is like a curious, unintentional form of cold turkey. You wake up one day fully expecting to spend another four hours in an eye-glazed stupor, only to discover that the thrill is gone.
Now, I'm not describing the "end" that comes when you complete a narrative game. In that case, it's obvious why you'd stop playing. I'm speaking of the open-ended addictions -- including online worlds, puzzle games, sports titles or Xbox live play -- where you theoretically ought to be able to play ad infinitum.
I called several of my hard-core gamer associates to see what they think. Jonathan Hayes, a forensic pathologist in New York, regularly falls hard for gorgeous-world games like Ico, and recently he was swallowed whole by Resident Evil 4. He thinks the reason he stops playing a game is that he's unwrapped every skin on its onion.
"You kind of see through the game to its underlying mechanics," Hayes says, "and it suddenly seems no longer worth the investment of time." This is much like what Raph Koster argues in his Theory of Fun: We humans seek constant novelty, so only gameplay that has nearly infinite permutations -- like chess -- can hold our attention forever.
And not many games rise to the complexity of chess. Indeed, one of the reasons it's hard to get there is that there's a paradox built into success. The better a game, the longer we play it -- and the longer we play it, the more likely we are to notice tiny, subtle flaws in the game design. "For a while, with a really amazing new game, it's all you do, all you think about," says Luke Smith, who writes for the game blog Kotaku and recently has spent weeks fanatically rolling a level-60 character in World of Warcraft. "But then it's balance issues, buggy play, poor online optimization. You keep trying to 'make it work,' and it won't."
Perhaps a game "ends" because teensy frustrations build up like plaque in our brains -- until one day we suddenly rebel, and our attention shifts. In fact, this might be part of the reason I finally ended my servitude to Burnout. I hit upon a class of vehicles that I couldn't perfectly control, and the joyful sense of mastery -- the cybernetic loop that made me one with the machine -- was suddenly tainted.
Though it's also true that our addictions aren't always, or even chiefly, about the games. Sometimes the forces that drive us into the arms of a game -- and then release us from its grip -- are in ourselves. Greg Sewell, a friend of mine, has been swept up by everything from Quake to "casual games" like Blix and Collapse; he thinks his periods of addiction are driven as much by the high quality of the games as by the occasionally crappy quality of his life. His peak gaming moments occurred as a way of avoiding his thoroughly cipher-like dot-com jobs.
"For me, the obsession is sometimes a coping mechanism -- with a job that is boring, or some other life rut. And the obsession seems to end when the boredom ends or the situation I'm avoiding sorts itself out," he says. He compares it to the emotional curve of a breakup. You pick an album that seems to embody your woe -- then play it over and over and over. When the hurtin' ends, the album instantly goes into the dustbin.
Indeed, top-40 hits are the only pieces of pop culture that behave like games. They flare brilliantly, demanding incessant and constant replay -- until one day when we suddenly can't abide them. Virtually no other forms of entertainment suffer this same drastic drop-off. When we fall out of love with TV shows and comic books and favorite writers, our attraction peters out. (I faithfully watched Alias for three seasons, and then slowly drifted away as the fourth season's scripts got progressively duller.)
Conservative pundits have long fretted over the addictive quality of games, of course. But maybe the psychological curve of addiction is the ultimate tribute to the medium. They're a form of culture so intense and delightful that we only have two options -- delve in wholeheartedly, or walk away.
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I emailed this to Clive this morning after reading the article in Wired. He asked me to repost it here.
I'm a big fan of your blog and your writing; but this is the first time I've felt compelled to write. I run PoopReport.com, a site dedicated to the intellectual appreciation of poop humor. (www.poopreport.com/about.html) We publish stories of humorous mishaps, of course; but we also provide a forum for intelligent discussion and thought about a subject so taboo that intelligent discussion and thought are quite rare indeed. As such, we're as much a community-driven site as we are content-driven.
I thought you'd be interested to know that the behavior you describe today in Wired -- in which users show an intense, all-consuming love for a game, followed by a quick fall-off of interest -- exists also among the users of my site.
Here's the behavior I observe: a new reader discovers the site. He or she (we get lots of she's!) is enthralled, perhaps by the discovery of such open and frank discussion of something rarely discussed with any intellectual depth. I'll observe a flurry of participation -- hours spent browsing the site, numerous comments on existing articles, a few emails of praise sent in, and then a few stories submitted by the reader. This will last a few weeks, with the user checking back and commenting on the new content every day. And then... gone. An abrupt slowdown, and we hardly ever hear from the person again.
(Fortunately, for every five one (s)hit wonders, we get someone who joins the community and never leaves.)
I'd argue that it's the same phenomenon as your theory about gaming. You discover a whole new world, and you immerse yourself in that world; but eventually the world loses its novelty, and you move on. In fact, most of the theories you suggest about why games gain and lose novetly are probably just as applicable to someone joining and leaving an online community.
I'm sure I'm not the only webmaster who has observed this. Thought you'd be interested in hearing about it.
Dave
Editor, PoopReport.com
Posted by: poopreport at October 24, 2005 2:53 PM
I know the feeling well. My addiction to Civ III just died unexpectedly. But the weird thing about Civ is I seem to have relapses. I get bored, decided to play a game, and I'm hooked again. It's as if I feel like by rediscovering the game, I'm going to find new subtleties and intricacies. Often I find once I get to that point I keep playing games despite my complete boredom from them. So though I started playing them to cure my boredom, they then begin to be the source of my boredom.
Posted by: Steve E. at October 24, 2005 4:29 PM
Surely you've gotten comments from women about this being exactly the same pattern they observe in men when it comes to dating?
Posted by: mysterioustraveler at October 24, 2005 7:25 PM
I had this experience with pretty much every game in the 'Grand Theft Auto' series. Most recently, of course, was San Andreas. Over the past few months, I have put it down and picked it back up at least 5 or 6 times. I'll get into the game for a few days or weeks, then not touch it for a month or more. Then out of the blue, the hunger hits me, and I'm on a seemingly one way flight to Liberty City or San Andreas. Then there's also the obsession I develop for the Final Fantasy games - the desire to complete EVERYTHING in the game. In the RPGs common to PS2, I have to get every item, every spell, every hidden character, etc. Soon after picking up the controller, it seems more like work than gaming, but I will sit for an 8 or 10 hour marathon session to get to the next boss (or area, or puzzle, etc.). I stumbled across this page and thought 'No way! I thought I was the only one!'
Posted by: Bugg Man at October 24, 2005 7:36 PM
Dave, that's really interesting to hear about people's posting patterns. I've read that blogging patterns are similar -- zillions of people start blogs, blog like crazy, then suddenly abandon 'em, with no phase transition between the two.
Steve, yep, a good game tends to lead to periodic replay as time goes on, even after one's first "end" of play. But I also think that an obsession is necessary for later replay; by which I mean, unless a game actually can ensnare us once into frenetic, constant, addictive play, it won't ever have the chance of becoming a sometimes-played game later on. This is something else I hope to write a column on later: Can a game be considered "amazing" without also being "addictive"?
mysterioustraveler -- ahahhaha!
Bugg Man, oh no most certainly you are not the only one, heh. I've behaved precisely the same way with games ... I have never even come close to finishing GTA:SA (I only know one person who has completed it, and he was crippled with a back injury in bed for six weeks, which is what gave him the time), so I sort of gave up on it. Yet I still return for an hour or two of pimpin' whenever the mood strikes.
Posted by: Clive at October 24, 2005 9:23 PM
I get the same way with the FF sub games.
"Note to self: why are you digging holes with a chocobo?"
"Because it's there."
"Are you having fun?"
"......."
"......."
Posted by: baturkey at October 24, 2005 10:12 PM
This just happened to me yesterday!
I've been completely hooked on GTA San Andreas, and as of last night I had my fill. I feel no remorse about not finishing it, I know the game now. Will look for a new addiction. Excellent observation Clive.
Posted by: lorbus at October 25, 2005 2:07 AM
I can think of one good reason why it can be hard to go back to a game after that first initial addiction fades.
Most videogames require some learning of controls, some adaptation from the player. You get into 'the zone' of each game, as Clive mentioned with his "... cybernetic loop that made me one with the machine". Take a day away from the game in question, take two days away, and you struggle to get back into that zen-like state. You can't instantly control it with the same level of mastery you once did. So you feel disappointment, you feel let down by your abilities, and you switch it off in favour of something more fun.
Posted by: Tony at October 25, 2005 4:22 AM
Much as mysterioustraveler said, this phenomenon doesn't seem to be isolated to videogames alone. As I was reading your article I couldn't help but draw parallels with dating and goals in general. A goal only holds our attention as long as there is some vibrant newness to it. How many times have people started exercise regiments, only to quit soon after when it loses that fresh luster?
Thanks for the insightful analysis of the addiction, as it has really helped me better understand the emotions involved with dating.
Posted by: Sand at October 25, 2005 11:09 AM
Hmm, I wonder if this explains why I *can't* get into games lately. My real life is very satisfying, and I no longer need to escape from it. Or perhaps it's the blog addiction that limits the gaming addicition lately...
Posted by: tigger at October 25, 2005 1:22 PM
This is soooo true. I've experienced this a few times in my life: --break--
1. Phantasy Star 1 & 2 (sega genesis). When I was pretty young. --break--
2. Warcraft 2 really sucked me in for about 4 months. --break--
3. I blew off about 2 weeks of work with Gran Turismo 1 (playstation) about 7 or so years ago. --break--
4. I got completely wrapped up in Asheron's Call (first one) for a year or more. --break--
I've come to realize two really influencial facts about #2 and #4 which caused the extended infatuation. --break--
#2 - Warcarft 2:
--break--
I started playing this online against human opponents using an application called "Kali". This was before battlenet, which I believe is one of the key reasons why it sucked me in so hard. The communicty was very limited. There were basically a few hundred to a thousand of us playing WC2 over Kali at the time and this impacted the level of competition as well as a real sense of community (small town community v.s. large city community is extremely different). Without Kali I would never have become so addicted. I got into Starcraft slightly later on over battlenet, but that faded pretty quick, I think due to the number of people playing and the anonymity due to the large size. --break--
#4 - Asheron's Call: --break--
The game dynamics itself only held my interest for about a month, then it became all about power leveling / being the best (competition obsession which I blame genetics for) which really took over. Leveraging my technical skills (coder here) I got really involved in figuring out how everything in the game worked and how to script it / cheat. I'm a little ashamed of it, but to me this is what made it so much fun, and I was definately not alone. I loved that the size of the community was fairly small (few thousand on my server) and spread across that community and others on the other servers we created our own sub-community of basically cheaters. We weren't so blatent about the fact that it was cheating at the time, in fact there were plenty of arguments over whether or not creating the latest and greatest unnatended money making scripts or experience generating scripts was wrong. That's really besides the point though, it was a completely new game within the game which was far more complex than originally intended. To see the kind of sophistication I'm talking about do some googling on "AC decal" or "AC skunkworks", or the early stuff like "AC macro". The cheating community was the one I really belonged to in the end and not the gaming community. It was a power trip, and you got to feel like a god in this virtual world. At one point I was able to make a few thousand dollars on ebay in one month selling backpacks full of money notes (D notes at the time) which I created with a script that exploited a bug in the game. --break--
Anyways, to sum up. This was a pretty strange experience. This would not have happened had the platform itself not lent intself to an unintentional openess which allowed some pretty dedicated muckers to exploit it's system. This in effect created the best and most addictive video game experience in my life to date. --break--
Not sure if there's any lesson to be learnt here though... just felt like sharing ;-)
Posted by: rapstar at October 25, 2005 1:45 PM
Clive, I disagree that other forms of entertainment interact with us differently. I don't watch TV, particularly, but on occasion I'll hear about a great show and get a whole season on DVD. No matter how much I love the program, watching two episodes a night for a week or whatever, there comes a point where the fix...just...stops. Happened with Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, the L Word, even The Office (although I stuck that one out because it was so damned fantastic). It doesn't seem to related to the quality of the show, or changing opinions about the characters, or anything like that. It's just done. Any plot points I'm curious about, I can just as easily ask a fan and not be pissed that they're revealing spoilers. The need to watch is gone.
I'd say that the difference between media lust and other addictions -- gambling, drugs, etc. -- is that there is no built-in escalation process in media. So you can't get MORE of a fix from an episode of Oz than is contained in the actual show (DVD add-ons being an attempt to provide such things, I suspect), in the way that you can escalate your drug use to chase an elusive high, or enter higher-stakes games if that's your vice.
Which may explain why Star Trek doesn't seem to suffer from the phenomenon. People get so into it that they create real-world situations for their fix...and I think this is starting to qualify as a tangent. Have a nice day, now.
Posted by: braine at October 26, 2005 2:08 PM
Braine, interesting points! I had asked a bunch of TV watchers whether they go cold turkey on shows or slow down ... they all "slow down." But the psychology of what you're talking about makes sense too.
Rapstar, great explication of your experiences! I've sometimes thought it'd be interesting, when I start playing a new game, to actually stop and record my thoughts, level of excitement, etc., once an hour to see how my perceptions of the game change over time.
Tigger -- heh, yep. Blogging addictions can easily supplant gaming addictions.
Lorbus, glad you liked it -- and yes, I've had several people tell me that they had this experience with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I mean, that game is so huge that like no one can finish it.
baturkey, ahahahahha!
Posted by: Clive at October 26, 2005 4:31 PM
Braine,
Nice call on the lack of escalation in media compared to drugs & gambling.
Clive,
You touch on this phenomenon occuring with music at times too. I'd go so far as to posit that perhaps this "drop off" occurs with all forms of art & media. I know I've been hooked on albums, songs, writers and artists in the past. Those whose work I was crazy about I'm still able to revist and enjoy, but the overwhelming "need" to listen/read/observe the work is not as strong.
Perhaps that's why bands and writers that are capable of constantly re-inventing themselves retain the spotlight, while those that rehash old songs, stories, characters or structure fall by the way side. As J. Hayes says, "You kind of see through the game to its underlying mechanics,". In the same way, the mystery of a band/author/artist lessons as the listener/reader/observer becomes familiar with their prose, background and style.
Posted by: garthbreaks at October 27, 2005 2:24 PM
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I emailed this to Clive this morning after reading the article in Wired. He asked me to repost it here.
I'm a big fan of your blog and your writing; but this is the first time I've felt compelled to write. I run PoopReport.com, a site dedicated to the intellectual appreciation of poop humor. (www.poopreport.com/about.html) We publish stories of humorous mishaps, of course; but we also provide a forum for intelligent discussion and thought about a subject so taboo that intelligent discussion and thought are quite rare indeed. As such, we're as much a community-driven site as we are content-driven.
I thought you'd be interested to know that the behavior you describe today in Wired -- in which users show an intense, all-consuming love for a game, followed by a quick fall-off of interest -- exists also among the users of my site.
Here's the behavior I observe: a new reader discovers the site. He or she (we get lots of she's!) is enthralled, perhaps by the discovery of such open and frank discussion of something rarely discussed with any intellectual depth. I'll observe a flurry of participation -- hours spent browsing the site, numerous comments on existing articles, a few emails of praise sent in, and then a few stories submitted by the reader. This will last a few weeks, with the user checking back and commenting on the new content every day. And then... gone. An abrupt slowdown, and we hardly ever hear from the person again.
(Fortunately, for every five one (s)hit wonders, we get someone who joins the community and never leaves.)
I'd argue that it's the same phenomenon as your theory about gaming. You discover a whole new world, and you immerse yourself in that world; but eventually the world loses its novelty, and you move on. In fact, most of the theories you suggest about why games gain and lose novetly are probably just as applicable to someone joining and leaving an online community.
I'm sure I'm not the only webmaster who has observed this. Thought you'd be interested in hearing about it.
Dave
Editor, PoopReport.com
Posted by: poopreport![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 24, 2005 2:53 PM
I know the feeling well. My addiction to Civ III just died unexpectedly. But the weird thing about Civ is I seem to have relapses. I get bored, decided to play a game, and I'm hooked again. It's as if I feel like by rediscovering the game, I'm going to find new subtleties and intricacies. Often I find once I get to that point I keep playing games despite my complete boredom from them. So though I started playing them to cure my boredom, they then begin to be the source of my boredom.
Posted by: Steve E.![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 24, 2005 4:29 PM
Surely you've gotten comments from women about this being exactly the same pattern they observe in men when it comes to dating?
Posted by: mysterioustraveler![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 24, 2005 7:25 PM
I had this experience with pretty much every game in the 'Grand Theft Auto' series. Most recently, of course, was San Andreas. Over the past few months, I have put it down and picked it back up at least 5 or 6 times. I'll get into the game for a few days or weeks, then not touch it for a month or more. Then out of the blue, the hunger hits me, and I'm on a seemingly one way flight to Liberty City or San Andreas. Then there's also the obsession I develop for the Final Fantasy games - the desire to complete EVERYTHING in the game. In the RPGs common to PS2, I have to get every item, every spell, every hidden character, etc. Soon after picking up the controller, it seems more like work than gaming, but I will sit for an 8 or 10 hour marathon session to get to the next boss (or area, or puzzle, etc.). I stumbled across this page and thought 'No way! I thought I was the only one!'
Posted by: Bugg Man![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 24, 2005 7:36 PM
Dave, that's really interesting to hear about people's posting patterns. I've read that blogging patterns are similar -- zillions of people start blogs, blog like crazy, then suddenly abandon 'em, with no phase transition between the two.
Steve, yep, a good game tends to lead to periodic replay as time goes on, even after one's first "end" of play. But I also think that an obsession is necessary for later replay; by which I mean, unless a game actually can ensnare us once into frenetic, constant, addictive play, it won't ever have the chance of becoming a sometimes-played game later on. This is something else I hope to write a column on later: Can a game be considered "amazing" without also being "addictive"?
mysterioustraveler -- ahahhaha!
Bugg Man, oh no most certainly you are not the only one, heh. I've behaved precisely the same way with games ... I have never even come close to finishing GTA:SA (I only know one person who has completed it, and he was crippled with a back injury in bed for six weeks, which is what gave him the time), so I sort of gave up on it. Yet I still return for an hour or two of pimpin' whenever the mood strikes.
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 24, 2005 9:23 PM
I get the same way with the FF sub games.
"Note to self: why are you digging holes with a chocobo?"
"Because it's there."
"Are you having fun?"
"......."
"......."
Posted by: baturkey![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 24, 2005 10:12 PM
This just happened to me yesterday!
I've been completely hooked on GTA San Andreas, and as of last night I had my fill. I feel no remorse about not finishing it, I know the game now. Will look for a new addiction. Excellent observation Clive.
Posted by: lorbus![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 2:07 AM
I can think of one good reason why it can be hard to go back to a game after that first initial addiction fades.
Most videogames require some learning of controls, some adaptation from the player. You get into 'the zone' of each game, as Clive mentioned with his "... cybernetic loop that made me one with the machine". Take a day away from the game in question, take two days away, and you struggle to get back into that zen-like state. You can't instantly control it with the same level of mastery you once did. So you feel disappointment, you feel let down by your abilities, and you switch it off in favour of something more fun.
Posted by: Tony![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 4:22 AM
Much as mysterioustraveler said, this phenomenon doesn't seem to be isolated to videogames alone. As I was reading your article I couldn't help but draw parallels with dating and goals in general. A goal only holds our attention as long as there is some vibrant newness to it. How many times have people started exercise regiments, only to quit soon after when it loses that fresh luster?
Thanks for the insightful analysis of the addiction, as it has really helped me better understand the emotions involved with dating.
Posted by: Sand![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 11:09 AM
Hmm, I wonder if this explains why I *can't* get into games lately. My real life is very satisfying, and I no longer need to escape from it. Or perhaps it's the blog addiction that limits the gaming addicition lately...
Posted by: tigger![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 1:22 PM
This is soooo true. I've experienced this a few times in my life: --break--
1. Phantasy Star 1 & 2 (sega genesis). When I was pretty young. --break--
2. Warcraft 2 really sucked me in for about 4 months. --break--
3. I blew off about 2 weeks of work with Gran Turismo 1 (playstation) about 7 or so years ago. --break--
4. I got completely wrapped up in Asheron's Call (first one) for a year or more. --break--
I've come to realize two really influencial facts about #2 and #4 which caused the extended infatuation. --break--
#2 - Warcarft 2:
--break--
I started playing this online against human opponents using an application called "Kali". This was before battlenet, which I believe is one of the key reasons why it sucked me in so hard. The communicty was very limited. There were basically a few hundred to a thousand of us playing WC2 over Kali at the time and this impacted the level of competition as well as a real sense of community (small town community v.s. large city community is extremely different). Without Kali I would never have become so addicted. I got into Starcraft slightly later on over battlenet, but that faded pretty quick, I think due to the number of people playing and the anonymity due to the large size. --break--
#4 - Asheron's Call: --break--
The game dynamics itself only held my interest for about a month, then it became all about power leveling / being the best (competition obsession which I blame genetics for) which really took over. Leveraging my technical skills (coder here) I got really involved in figuring out how everything in the game worked and how to script it / cheat. I'm a little ashamed of it, but to me this is what made it so much fun, and I was definately not alone. I loved that the size of the community was fairly small (few thousand on my server) and spread across that community and others on the other servers we created our own sub-community of basically cheaters. We weren't so blatent about the fact that it was cheating at the time, in fact there were plenty of arguments over whether or not creating the latest and greatest unnatended money making scripts or experience generating scripts was wrong. That's really besides the point though, it was a completely new game within the game which was far more complex than originally intended. To see the kind of sophistication I'm talking about do some googling on "AC decal" or "AC skunkworks", or the early stuff like "AC macro". The cheating community was the one I really belonged to in the end and not the gaming community. It was a power trip, and you got to feel like a god in this virtual world. At one point I was able to make a few thousand dollars on ebay in one month selling backpacks full of money notes (D notes at the time) which I created with a script that exploited a bug in the game. --break--
Anyways, to sum up. This was a pretty strange experience. This would not have happened had the platform itself not lent intself to an unintentional openess which allowed some pretty dedicated muckers to exploit it's system. This in effect created the best and most addictive video game experience in my life to date. --break--
Not sure if there's any lesson to be learnt here though... just felt like sharing ;-)
Posted by: rapstar![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 25, 2005 1:45 PM
Clive, I disagree that other forms of entertainment interact with us differently. I don't watch TV, particularly, but on occasion I'll hear about a great show and get a whole season on DVD. No matter how much I love the program, watching two episodes a night for a week or whatever, there comes a point where the fix...just...stops. Happened with Sex & the City, Six Feet Under, the L Word, even The Office (although I stuck that one out because it was so damned fantastic). It doesn't seem to related to the quality of the show, or changing opinions about the characters, or anything like that. It's just done. Any plot points I'm curious about, I can just as easily ask a fan and not be pissed that they're revealing spoilers. The need to watch is gone.
I'd say that the difference between media lust and other addictions -- gambling, drugs, etc. -- is that there is no built-in escalation process in media. So you can't get MORE of a fix from an episode of Oz than is contained in the actual show (DVD add-ons being an attempt to provide such things, I suspect), in the way that you can escalate your drug use to chase an elusive high, or enter higher-stakes games if that's your vice.
Which may explain why Star Trek doesn't seem to suffer from the phenomenon. People get so into it that they create real-world situations for their fix...and I think this is starting to qualify as a tangent. Have a nice day, now.
Posted by: braine![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 26, 2005 2:08 PM
Braine, interesting points! I had asked a bunch of TV watchers whether they go cold turkey on shows or slow down ... they all "slow down." But the psychology of what you're talking about makes sense too.
Rapstar, great explication of your experiences! I've sometimes thought it'd be interesting, when I start playing a new game, to actually stop and record my thoughts, level of excitement, etc., once an hour to see how my perceptions of the game change over time.
Tigger -- heh, yep. Blogging addictions can easily supplant gaming addictions.
Lorbus, glad you liked it -- and yes, I've had several people tell me that they had this experience with Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas. I mean, that game is so huge that like no one can finish it.
baturkey, ahahahahha!
Posted by: Clive![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 26, 2005 4:31 PM
Braine,
Nice call on the lack of escalation in media compared to drugs & gambling.
Clive,
You touch on this phenomenon occuring with music at times too. I'd go so far as to posit that perhaps this "drop off" occurs with all forms of art & media. I know I've been hooked on albums, songs, writers and artists in the past. Those whose work I was crazy about I'm still able to revist and enjoy, but the overwhelming "need" to listen/read/observe the work is not as strong.
Perhaps that's why bands and writers that are capable of constantly re-inventing themselves retain the spotlight, while those that rehash old songs, stories, characters or structure fall by the way side. As J. Hayes says, "You kind of see through the game to its underlying mechanics,". In the same way, the mystery of a band/author/artist lessons as the listener/reader/observer becomes familiar with their prose, background and style.
Posted by: garthbreaks![[TypeKey Profile Page]](http://www.collisiondetection.net/nav-commenters.gif)
at October 27, 2005 2:24 PM