Thirith on 3/11/2016 at 14:42

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Have you ever found yourself obssessing over a game? It doesn't happen to me very often, at least not in the last 20 years, but every now and then I go into obsessive mode, and this extends beyond the actual playing of the games: for a while, I'd watch tons of Arma videos (in particular tactical guides and helicopter tutorials), read guides, check out scripting pages and the like, and I had a couple of weeks where I went gaga for Elite Dangerous information. I didn't even play either game all that much, but I still found myself thinking about aspects of them way more than is reasonable.

Have any of you had similar obsessions? How did they manifest themselves? Did they pass by themselves, or did you have to drag yourself away from the game in question?

TannisRoot on 3/11/2016 at 15:41

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I guess it's how you define obsession. Thinking, talking, and researching about games daily? Pretty normal for people who visit this forum I would guess.

Obsession I would say is one step further - is the game what gets you up in the morning? If you're not playing it, are you thinking about playing it? Is it sucking up all your free time? Would you blow off an appointment or social function to play?

It's that total engagement / in the zone feeling that I think most gamers keep chasing. At least when I look back on my fondest game memories it's typically those periods of my life where I got that way about a game. That said, time mostly prohibits me from being able to get fully sucked down the rabbit hole these days, for good or ill. I really have to be able to play everyday at least for a couple of hours.

Usually I get obsessed and eventually burn out. I've never had to do anything drastic like pull myself away or anything. It happens less and less often as I get older. Most recently it was Bloodborne. In my teen years it was WoW, Diablo 2, Counterstrike 1.6, Thief, ES4: Oblivion, etc.

WoW especially...at one point I was logging 60-80 hours a week into vanilla, but burned out hard the summer before the Burning Crusade expansion's release. Probably for the best because I know I could've gotten back into it.

Malf on 3/11/2016 at 15:54

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MMOs by their very nature necessitate a degree of obsession, so are an easy cop-out for this topic, buuuut Guild Wars I was massively obsessed with, analysing builds, chasing titles, the whole caboodle. Then you get tied up on forums, arguing about why, no, Mesmers are NOT OP in PvP, and well, it all goes downhill from there.

My current obsession, as probably guessed, is Civ VI, where I'm researching the historical figures from it I'm less familiar with on Wikipedia and champing at the bit for the Steam Workshop to open.

I did get obsessed with Diablo 3 for a while, but got tired after a couple of seasons with levelling from 0 each time. I still hold out hope they go back and revise the core season concept, as currently older characters you may have invested a lot of time in get sidelined. Of course, I'd also be well up for playing co-op with the TTLG crew, which could rekindle my interest, but I'm not sure there's many big fans of the game here.

The biggest obsession though? The obsession that got me onto the internet?
That I even got into minor modding for, creating AI bots and skins?
Yeah, Quake 3.
I started out playing it on Mac. But my Mac wasn't fast enough unless I played ugly-mode, and even then, it wasn't as fast as it could be on PC.
So I bought my first PC parts in order to play Quake 3 better. I taught myself how to build a PC in order to play Quake 3 better.
The first forum I joined on the internet was the old 3DFX Quake 3 forum, but shortly after I joined the official forums at Quake3World.com, where I'm still a member now, almost 17 years later.
I subsequently got into all sorts of games powered by the same engine, becoming a competitive player of Return to Castle Wolfenstein. Consequently, my experience in the competitive scene led to me becoming a moderator of the game's official sub-forum over at Quake3World.
Quake and Quake 3 even paid off professionally. Part of my job these days is working with network switches and to a lesser degree, Linux. The console from those games taught me how to interact with the command line, drilling into me concepts such as hitting tab to auto-complete and the up arrow to repeat the last command.
They taught me how to write config files, concepts which again transferred to switches and Linux.
They taught me how to interpret pings and how to diagnose problems with my network connection with tools such as traceroute.
They gave me an ever-lasting respect for zip archives and Carmack's clever use of them to pack game files in.

Of all the games I've played, Quake and Quake 3 have probably had the biggest effect on my life outside of gaming thanks to my obsession with them.

faetal on 3/11/2016 at 16:32

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Deus Ex - My burning desire to talk to other people about the game is what led me to this very forum.
Skyrim / FO3 - the sheer amount of time I have spent modding some of the Bethesda games is more than I've spent playing some games.
Dark Souls - Insane amount of hours put into this. Just. One. More. Build.
The Binding of Isaac - Most hours out of any game I've played period. Just. One. More. Run.

Volitions Advocate on 3/11/2016 at 17:23

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Soma has had that effect on me. Playing the game is emotional, but talking about it is just... Important.
In a way I consider that to be some form of emergent gameplay.

I freaking love Alien:Isolation and I went bonkers for it. I haven't played it much this last year, but I keep the 30GB game on my tiny SSD just in case. But I didn't want to talk about it as much as Soma.