I don't know if I speak for anybody else, but this thread is really making me reflect on my life. I'm currently 16 years old and going into my senior year of high school. I'm a straight A student with a small group of friends but a large pool of acquaintances. I have a loving girlfriend who is definitely one of the better things that have ever happened to me. Oddly enough, I used to be a lot like many of you posters who have social issues (sorry, it's true) and I'm now rattling my brain to find out what happened to me to change me from a gaming addict to the normal teenager.
The first time I was ever introduced to a FPS game was in 7th grade (2003-2004). The man who introduced it to me was
Will (yes I know him irl) and the game was Battlefield 1942. I didn't exactly fall in love with the game because technical issues with my computer kept me from playing the game until almost half a year after I bought it. I joined a clan and became good friends with a bunch of people who I now regard as assholes because I found out most of them were liars and jerks.
During Christmas of my 8th grade year (2004-2005) I received Battlefield Vietnam, but I never liked this game. What this game did lead me to discover was the production of BF2. With the same group of friends I shared a clan with back during the BF1942 era, we started a clan for BF2 called =KSB= (my BF2 username still holds a shard of memory of this clan). Unfortunately, the demo of BF2 necessitated me to purchase a new graphics card (a Radeon 9600XT), the first computer upgrade I ever installed. Like BF1942, technical issues with my computer kept me from enjoying BF2, and it wasn't until I purchased a second gig of RAM and a better graphics card (6800GT) that I became semi-addicted to BF2. Midway into my freshman year of high school (2005-2006),
Will, who had introduced me to BF1942, had upgraded his computer enough to play BF2, and we both played frequently. However, I often became sidetracked with other games, while he played constantly. My clan quickly disintegrated and with it my will to play solely BF2. Perhaps this is how I never became fully addicted to the game. While Will played BF2 (he surpassed me in points as well), I played many other games such as
RuneScape,
EverQuest II,
Planetside,
Gunz the Duel,
Knight Online ,and many other games.
Around March of my freshman year of high school (2006), I developed a huge crush on this friend of mine, Melissa. She knew it too, but we always found it too awkward to actually discuss it directly, so we both avoided the topic. She constantly chatted away on AIM, and in my desire to have everything to do with her life, I ceased my gaming sessions to chat with her. My crush on her lasted until the beginning of my sophomore year (2006-2007). If I had to pick a place where video gaming stopped being my life, this was it.
To make a long story short, I never actually dated this girl, but she is one of my best friends to this day. I think the point I'm trying to make is that you need to set goals for yourself if you ever want to break your habits. This is where the part of my story with a moral ends, but if you want to see how this decision helped my life, read on.
I think my efforts to date this girl truly changed my life. During my 8th and most of my 9th grade school years, I was socially backwards. I can say with a straight face that I managed to get 90% of my 8th grade classmates to hate me by the end of that year, only because I didn't know how to interact with them. I knew that my problem was that I said inappropriate things (because that's all I knew how to do), so I decided during that summer that I would become the quiet kid during the next school year. I am truly shocked in reflection when I say that I made more friends being the quiet kid than I did as the attention-seeking kid. But this is just background info, let's continue my story.
Around the start of my sophomore year (2006-2007), the girl I had been trying to date since March decided it would be fun if she, her two friends Amy and Erika, and I all started hanging out. At this time, I didn't know either of these two new people. I had never really had hangouts with groups of friends before, but the idea of hanging out with 3 girls, 3 girls who actually wanted me to be there, was thrilling. As a seal of our friendship, I devised a quirky mnemonic to label our friendship.
Travis
Erika
Amy
Melissa
As childish as it may sound, we still use this nickname today. These three girls, and one more girl who I'll mention soon, changed my life. Perhaps the most life changing of these girls was named Devin. I won't regurgitate something I've already written, so if you're interested in seeing how Devin changed my life,
read this post.
Here's how the other two girls changed my life. Erika is a bit strange. She's an anime fan with a ridiculously selfish and closed-minded personality. Oddly enough though, she can be cool to hang out with. Around November of my sophomore year, I started dating Erika. This relationship was a total flop, and I think I only dated her in the first place to say that I dated somebody in high school. We 'dated' (If you can call it that. It was more like talking to each other on the phone once a week) until February 2007. If you haven't read the post I linked above, this is where it becomes significant. I started trying to date Devin once I found out she was crushing on me too. Even though Devin had a boyfriend, she still continually flirted with me.
My junior year (2007-2008) started, and damn was it stressful. I had no classes with Melissa, Amy and Erika went to a different school, and I had only 1 class with Devin (which later turned into a blessing). I had tons of work to do (3 AP and 3 Honors classes), and I was still trying to get Devin to date me. My hopes of dating her came crashing down in a catastrophic cataclysm around the beginning of October (read the post I linked above if you want to know how). It was then when I realized how much having a friend like Devin meant to me. It's true that you only realize how important something is when you lose it. I used to stay up for hours on AIM talking to Devin about anything, and it was comforting to have somebody to talk to, or at least somebody to listen to you. Once I lost her, I turned to Melissa to help ease my loneliness, but she no longer came on AIM to talk, and as I previously said, I had no classes with her. I became semi-depressed due to loneliness and extensive homework. I turned back to video gaming at this point (as I always do when upset). Everything sucked for me back then. I had only one friend to talk to (Will, the same guy I met back in 7th grade who introduced me to online gaming), I had homework every day including weekends, and I had nothing to look forward to except AP exams, because that would mean the end of work in 3 of my classes. I became apathetic to almost everything around me, which brought me peace, if only due to ignorance.
This is where Amy comes in. I found out she had a crush on me around mid-March of 2008. We started dating in April and are still together right now. She's one of the best thing's that ever happened to me. She's the kind of girl that most guys in the world dream about; the kind who enjoys cleaning, cooking, and taking care of people. I only laugh when I look back on my semi-relationship with Erika.
So now, to tie this all together, because you're bored of reading and I'm bored of typing. If I had never made it my goal to date Melissa, I never would have stopped playing video games. If I hadn't attempted to merge my life's path with Melissa's, I never would have met Amy or Erika. If I hadn't stopped playing video games, I would never have gotten to know Devin (even though she would eventually cause me pain, I do cherish the memories we had). All these good people (mostly *stares at Devin*) would never have entered my life if I hadn't set a simple goal. I can't even imagine how different my life would be if not for setting that small goal.
Now, that isn't to say I've completely given up on gaming. In May 2007,
I purchased a $2500 computer to play Crysis (I was obsessed with Crysis). I do still enjoy gaming in my spare time but it is no longer more appealing to me than hanging out with friends.
