Despite the fact that many times the players themselves are the ones who self-diagnose if they are addicted to video games or if their time playing them is quality or not, most of the time they are wrong in their answers. Something that can be recognized by following the advice of specialists, who see from their perspective if the experiences of gamers are beneficial or not for their quality of life.
This is something that has been addressed by Mike Amory, co-creator of the satire site of technology and gaming Hard Drive in the middle Polygon (via LevelUp), who gives thanks to his years of experience, some “strategies to examine your relationship with the video game”.
In his text, he indicates that as a first exercise to review our experience playing a title, he recommends stopping every 15 or 30 minutes and stopping playing, to ask ourselves if the game gives us real satisfaction and we are not really having fun. Amory says that this technique is used to detect behaviors such as, “I realize that often when I play video games, it’s because I’m sad after having a fight with a partner.”
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In addition, the author indicates that it is healthy to review whether we really play video games to entertain ourselves or as a form of escapism, which ends up being a practice to block family or friend relationships.
“Getting 100% pleasure from a region of a video game map is not a problem; It only becomes one when you do it out of compulsion and not for fun. The goal is to develop a relationship with the motivation instead of running away or fighting it,” he says.
Something that Mike Amory serves to be able to detect if we use gaming to cover some affective deficiency, assuring that “there is nothing wrong with having friends online or even that some of them are important parts of your life, but we all need connections from the real life. If you’re overindulging in any activity, it’s probably because it serves a maladaptive purpose for you. You play for 10 hours a day because it’s the one place in your life where you have a sense of accomplishment, where you connect with others, where you matter, etc.”
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