Vidya Gaem
In 2019, what feels like a lifetime ago, one of my friends sent me this article by then 2020 Presidential candidate, Andrew Yang. It’s clear, concise, and certainly worth a read. To summarize, Yang addresses the appeal of video games, particularly for a subset of neglected young male who fail to find meaningful employment or motivation for further education. With typical liberal rhetoric, he finds these men the victims of a political system that has forsaken them and an entertainment industry that conspires against them. He postulates that the combination of the two have turned video games into a compelling alternative to real word progress and self-actualization.
The article was paradigm shifting for me, and revealed video games as the embodiment of evil. All seven deadly sins into one, simulating fulfillment of ones earthly desires while further removing the player from attaining any of them. Yang declares video games an inferior good, whose consumption is directly related to income: the fewer real things one can afford, the more time they spend in the virtual world. Yet I still played video games.
Rather, I continued to play one specific video game, the one whose predecessor is mentioned in Yang’s essay: Dota. Without going too much in depth, it’s a five-versus-five video game requiring significant game knowledge, micro technical ability, and macro strategy, but whose in-game advantages (gold, levels) aren’t carried into the next hour-long game. Details aren’t important; it’s just a silly game. What’s important is that I’ve never stopped playing because I’ve been bored, only because I had other pressing concerns. What’s important is that I have upwards of two thousand hours logged on the game. What’s important is that I’ve played this game for nearly ten years now and its hold on me is just as strong.
Is Dota fun? Most certainly. Is my relationship with the game unhealthy? Almost undeniably. I can see aspects of my Dota fixation reflected in Yang’s essay: after a long, unfulfilling week, I have turned to the game for escape. One can only imagine the frustration when I lose after a marathon session; after all, Dota is a player versus player game with a skill-based matchmaking system: I’m expected to lose about half the time. Even when I win a couple games and stop, I’m filled with some mixture of disgust and anger, since I know I haven’t come any closer to achieving my actual goals.
But that’s not all. I’ve played Dota for ten, twelve hours on end. The stimulation has kept me up more nights than I’d like to admit. Without explaining more about the game, I’ve experienced the Tetris Effect enough to be a little wary. When I was pulling all-nighters to study in college, I would play games between studying because it was more effective than caffeine at keeping me awake, and I would reward myself with it after content checkpoints because it was better motivation than snacks.
Even before reading Yang’s article, I had accepted that my relationship with Dota was abusive. I’ve stopped playing a few times, and managed only two-month long spurts before I kicked it for a whole four years. A whole four years. I uninstalled the game and promised myself that I would only play when “I no longer had any aspirations left in life”. All it took was a global pandemic for me to break the seal. But I’m an adult about it these days. I only occasionally stay up past midnight to play. I haven’t played in a week! I also only play with friends. It’s a social activity!
All kidding aside, I have a complicated relationship with Dota. Its hold over me sometimes affects my relationships, as well as personal and professional goals. At the same time, its pull is not strong enough to derail any single aspect of my life, except my sleep schedule on occasion. It’s disheartening to look at the amount of time I’ve spent on the game, but maybe only because there’s more visability on Dota as opposed to Instagram. The important thing however, is that I don’t need video games to bring me fulfillment in lieu of real-world accomplishments.
The crux of Yang’s article is that video games can replicate higher order fulfillment, stimulating otherwise disappointing lives. Yang portrays these as unskilled lower-middle class men on the fringes of society. I’d like to postulate that a trifecta of technological improvements, unrealistic expectations, and socioeconomic stagnancy has paved a path into video game addiction for well-educated upper-middle class men in the prime of their productivity. I have good friends in high school, as well as college, who fell off the well-beaten path to a conventional middle-class adulthood, attracted by the allure of virtual happiness. I’m not saying that becoming a part of the capitalist machine is the meaning of life. But as Yang states in his article, the satisfaction of living in a basement playing video games does eventually dry up, leading to more stimulating and damaging addictions.
My friend’s situations viewed through Yang’s article has shown me how close I’ve been to falling into the rabbit hole. I credit not conscientiousness or tenacity, but interpersonal relationships and boundless optimism. Despite the persuasiveness of the virtual world, the company of my friends and family has continued to successfully compete for my time. They aren’t always successful; I have often turned down social engagements to sit at home and play Dota, but they have been alluring enough to keep me starring into the looking glass for too long. I also have a bottomless well of romanticism about the possibilities in my life, keeping me from turning to video games as a solution to tenuous long-term satisfaction. I can find fulfillment in my life, banishing doubt about future possibilities, and believing that my big break is just around the corner. But even armed with these two, I am intensely cognizant of how close I am to falling off the wagon every time I go on a Dota bender.
But I have it under control now. I have other hobbies and a career. As Smith says in the new Matrix, I’ve stopped calling it an addiction and started telling people it’s a guilty pleasure. I only play with friends these days. Quitting is easy; after all, I’ve done it many times already.
