Is your gaming harming your mates?

Diddums

Diddums

Diddums

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I used to play World of Warcraft fairly extensively, and I ran a very successful guild, the members of which were all good mates and the atmosphere was a blast. Always. The banter used to flow like water out of a tap, laughs were had every night and we helped each other out when things went pear shaped, so when one of our guild mates lost his house in a flood, we all chipped in and bought him a new PC, desk, chair (one of the guildies worked at Ikea which helped) and loads of other stuff to help him get back on his feet.

Anyway, one of these guys suffered quite badly from depression and we eventually found out that he was also self harming. Suffice to say we tried all we could to try and make his life as pleasant as possible, we sent him cards when he was admitted and chipped in again for his brother who was on the other side of the world to visit him. We always made space for him in raids, battlegrounds, whatever. We really did go over and above to make him feel wanted and a bit special.

We're talking a good 6 years ago now, I've since moved on and stopped playing WoW years ago and very rarely had contact with him as he deleted himself off of Facebook and whatnot, and rarely replied to emails.

Well, I found out this morning that he hung himself last night. His parents are putting a lot of the blame on his gaming, saying that he was depressed because he used to play till all hours of the night, killing off any regular sleep patterns and that he had almost no contact with the outside world due to his gaming and the people he games with.

He was 28 years old, RIP James.

This did get me thinking however, not many people would admit to having issues IRL whilst online with mates, they do after all enjoy gaming and for many people it's an escape from said issues. However, the voice you hear over the headset could well be hiding some very severe issues, and you'd never know about it because you aren't told and your mates are good at hiding it.

This got me thinking, could you playing with your mates online be harming them? If someone is always online, regardless of when you log on, could it be because they are evading issues which they'd be better off addressing? If you suspect that a friend could be facing problems in their life, should you bring it up and try to help, or simply carry on gaming and offer them the best escape you can?
 
It's too broad a statement to make, one persons issues could be caused by numerous issues. Though I agree that spending every possible hour 'gaming' can't be good for your mental health, it's still way too hard to pinpoint the issue to that.
 
Yeah I've known/know people like that. Thankfully none have suicided but it's a very worrying statistic that suicide is the biggest killer of men in their 40s. I think gaming is just a symptom of wider problems in society and men's role in it.
 
I'll answer this question as i've done both, suffered from multiple severe depressive episodes and I played WoW a long time then quit for 3 years or so now i've been playing again recently (mainly boredom, no other games out).

This is kind of a what came first the chicken or the egg? situation. What do I mean?

Well did his depression come from playing PC games and having no life outside of them or did his depression drive him onto pc games.

For me it was the latter (And personally I think it generally it is the latter although I can't speak for everyone), I had a lot of emotional issues long before Wow came along.... What did Wow offer me? an escape (not like I didn't enjoy it I'd have played it if I wasn't depressed i'm sure because it was a decent game).

I would log onto WoW purely because it was the one thing I could do that didn't feel like such a burden to do (Plus I really do have some fun memories of wow). I used to go out with friends as well at the time clubbing all that kind of stuff, but really sometimes it felt like a massive effort and difficult to do. WoW was easy and gave me some brief respite.

Does gaming harm people? yes, I do think it can because it can sometimes give you a temporary solution to mask a problem. If you read up about people who talk about being drug addicts at one time or another they often say it was because it helped them cope and allowed them to escape.

In your friends case? gaming probably helped him if anything because he like me had a good group of friends on the game. On my bad days it really used to boost me up to log on and have a laugh with mates on-line when the option wasn't available in person. My best memories/hardest laughs i've had are a mix of real life friends and online friends.

I think his parents are in a state of shock / grief and generally people will try to make sense of something like a suicide (because often reasons are unknown and as humans we always want to make sense of things) and try to find something to blame. It helps them to cope with it. In this case it's blaming his pc gaming, but really from the sounds of it like I said above he had a good group of friends who probably helped him more than anything.

This is going to sound grim, but if acted on my thoughts of suicide my parents would also have said I don't understand? he was always so happy! it's because people with depression get good at hiding it. His parents may have not even had the slightest idea how much he was suffering.

Sorry for your loss, it's very sad to hear. Men are sidelined very hard in this society, many suffer secretly because they are shamed for being open about our feelings/admitting we are having a tough time. This is why men make up 80% of suicides (something like that don't quote me exact figures).

Be glad of that time you all spent online together, you probably all helped him in more ways than you realise.
 
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I'm sorry for your loss.

Gaming is not special, it's just a thing people do and sometimes desperate people use what they do to escape from reality. Drinking, gambling, partying, car racing, stamp collecting... any activity can be the object of an obsession that shuts the person away from the rest of the world. You can't blame the people with whome the activities are shared, they're not the cause of the problem nor can they do much about the issues. If your problem is drinking, would you expect the people who visit the same bar regularly to help with your alcoholism?
 
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Sorry for your loss.

In relation to what you said I do think gaming can massively exacerbate problems. Various games are strongly structured on a risk vs reward mechanic where there is an incentive to continue quite unhealthy patterns.

Whilst I am sure gaming was not the root cause. Sitting in a chair, keeping unstructured eating and sleeping patterns and existing in an environment where social contact is not very realistic and highly conditional is never going be very healthy.

Gaming like anything is something that should be done in moderation. Unfortunately, several games employ mechanics that actively seek to ask for more than this. In fact they are designed that way. I have personally noticed in F2P games it tends to be those who can least afford to pay who end up spending the most money and those that need to engage most with life that play for the longest.
 
The "in real life" thing really does nothing to address the stigma that gaming still has to some extent.

You're still in "real life", and I don't understand the notion that it's somehow different.

However, with regards to your friend his depression will have had nothing to do with the time he spent playing games.

This is just a coping mechanism that some people use to try and blame what's happened on something they don't like, or disapprove of.

This is why foolish people still insist that violent video games are detrimental to people. They don't use anything but their feelings to form an argument. This'll be what's happening here.

Your friend will have been consumed with games because of his depression (as an escae), not depressed because of them.
 
Xordium said:
Sorry for your loss.

In relation to what you said I do think gaming can massively exacerbate problems. Various games are strongly structured on a risk vs reward mechanic where there is an incentive to continue quite unhealthy patterns.

Whilst I am sure gaming was not the root cause. Sitting in a chair, keeping unstructured eating and sleeping patterns and existing in an environment where social contact is not very realistic and highly conditional is never going be very healthy.

Gaming like anything is something that should be done in moderation. Unfortunately, several games employ mechanics that actively seek to ask for more than this. In fact they are designed that way. I have personally noticed in F2P games it tends to be those who can least afford to pay who end up spending the most money and those that need to engage most with life that play for the longest.
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This sort of behaviour is brought on by depression though, no? People do the same sort of things with other hobbies unrelated to gaming too.
 
I suspect he probably didn't have a great sleeping pattern in the first place - people who tend to stay up late gaming, etc. generally don't have as an established pattern as others.

Sun, fresh air and some exercise can certainly make you a bit more positive and the bombardment of reward/gratification from gaming can make real life seem depressingly dull in comparison at the same time for people with real issues online/online gaming can give them an escape that they won't find IRL as Xordium says though it needs balance and moderation - getting shut away indoors without friends and stuff to do in general tends to be a downwards spiral not easy to reverse i.e. harder to make new friends, etc.
 
Diddums said:
I used to play World of Warcraft fairly extensively, and I ran a very successful guild, the members of which were all good mates and the atmosphere was a blast. Always. The banter used to flow like water out of a tap, laughs were had every night and we helped each other out when things went pear shaped, so when one of our guild mates lost his house in a flood, we all chipped in and bought him a new PC, desk, chair (one of the guildies worked at Ikea which helped) and loads of other stuff to help him get back on his feet.

Anyway, one of these guys suffered quite badly from depression and we eventually found out that he was also self harming. Suffice to say we tried all we could to try and make his life as pleasant as possible, we sent him cards when he was admitted and chipped in again for his brother who was on the other side of the world to visit him. We always made space for him in raids, battlegrounds, whatever. We really did go over and above to make him feel wanted and a bit special.

We're talking a good 6 years ago now, I've since moved on and stopped playing WoW years ago and very rarely had contact with him as he deleted himself off of Facebook and whatnot, and rarely replied to emails.

Well, I found out this morning that he hung himself last night. His parents are putting a lot of the blame on his gaming, saying that he was depressed because he used to play till all hours of the night, killing off any regular sleep patterns and that he had almost no contact with the outside world due to his gaming and the people he games with.

He was 28 years old, RIP James.
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Thats really sad :(

And also utter crap from the family, sometimes gaming is the ONLY thing I feel up to doing, and when im engrossed in a game I'm not thinking about all the other BS that bothers me day to day.

OhEsEcks said:
He had bigger problems than gaming. Gaming was just an escape.
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This.
 
Sorry for your loss. I dont think grinding games like world of warcraft help accelerate peoples pursuits in real life (eg career/friends/relationships) etc. I've seen similar from an old flatmate, playing occasionally is fine but these encourage over the top play hours. (But I guess most would just go to any other type of game instead)
 
Mmos can take over your life if you have nothing better to do "for real"
If you succeed in an mmo it ticks the same feeling boxes as doing well "for real"
When your playing too much that you dont have a job, Social life etc its time to put the mouse down.
They really are bad cos they can fill the voids made by depression and its a downward spiral if you dont intervene.

Rip that guy
 
Make no mistake, I was sucked in to the MMO scene good'n'proper, to the point where it started affecting my day to day life, which is when I quit and never looked back.

I'm just wondering, if you are aware that someone is going through these issues, what do you do? Ignore it as he's obviously coming to escape, or approach him about it at the risk of him shutting you out, or letting you help him out?

I do feel we did everything we realistically could for James at the time, he was like a family member and a genuinely nice guy, always fixing our website when the idiot admin broke it (me) and I can honestly say that he would always put others before himself.

But was what we did the right thing to do? Should we have maybe got in touch with his parents and explained to them what was going on?

Hindsight is a wonderful thing.
 
spoffle said:
This sort of behaviour is brought on by depression though, no? People do the same sort of things with other hobbies unrelated to gaming too.
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You are correct they are more likely to fall into such patterns but most other behaviours aren't designed to tap into the very mechanics they have problems with obvious exceptions eg gambling etc.

It is simplistic I feel, and I have helped research in adjacent areas to this, to say that people who have such problems are more likely to do such things, or that such things are more likely to cause the behaviour. Realistically they both drive each other and events can spiral out of control.

There is some very good research done in Scandinavia about the structural changes in the brain that are caused by prolonged gaming. The tl:dr of it is that online gaming does increase the aggression centres (note aggression does not always exhibit as violence as is not unhealthy it can give you the impetus and drive to succeed eg in business) and it does cause problems with things such as the essential routines of life correspondingly in the normal individual though they were able to demonstrate patterns of growth in the social centres. One was balancing the other as one would expect. However, in people who had abnormal social functioning there would never be that counterbalance. This is why I think it is naive to say gaming does not cause such problems because in some people (eg people who are on the autistic spectrum) then it may well because the brain is structurally unable to offer that counterbalance.
 
Diddums said:
...If someone is always online, regardless of when you log on, could it be because they are evading issues which they'd be better off addressing? If you suspect that a friend could be facing problems in their life, should you bring it up and try to help, or simply carry on gaming and offer them the best escape you can?
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Yes, classic denial.

I'd say get them to talk to a GP / medical professional about depression ASAP. Never ever let them bottle it up, because it will only explode in some way later.

RIP James :(
 
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