OGD-Obsessive Gaming Disorder

Obsessive Gaming Disorder – I read these words somewhere on the online gaming magazine some times back and I immediately liked them (& make an entry in my vocabulary journal). I seriously believe that these three words (OGD) themselves can so profoundly and strongly represent and define entire hard core gaming community, comprises of fanatic gamers like me, in a way that no other lengthy introduction is required. OGD is not a word but identity. And I am sure that all the patients suffering from this disease will take proud of it.

First of all, I’m not talking about only gaming here (casual gaming & occasional gaming is no symptom of it, so if you are like that, be happy and go marry with your usual ordinary life). I’m talking about people who eat, sleep (actually not sleep), drink and have sex with gaming (OK, last one is far too imaginative).Point is you just don’t play games; you live games, than you most probably suffering from OGD.

Why one becomes obsessive about something? (I don’t want to go in details about effect of chemical composition Serotonin on our mind which is prime suspect for obsessive behavior). I believe its gradual process from first impression to liking, enjoying, contemplating, passionate liking and obsession, just like Love (People say that love is obsessive, I prefer the other way, if it’s obsessive, it must be Love)

I still remember my first divine touch with gaming medium when I was a child, traveling to north India with my family and only attraction for me was to have a handheld electronic device from Delhi marketplace which allowed me to have singular gaming experience. The idea of moving something on the black & white pixilated screen with a press of a button was so much fascinating to me at that time. I had bought one with maximum buttons on the panel (four: two on each sides excluding “start” button). I still remember the premise of the game where a bird shooter had to shoot as many goose as possible coming from four different directions (top-left, bottom-left, top-right, bottom-right). You just had to press appropriate button to shoot and kill in particular direction with precise timing. If 3 gooses escaped, it’s game over. Thing is it was so much difficult to kill 1000 gooses (that was my target at that time) as after crossing the score of 600 to 700, you had to work so fast that it looked impossible to reach 1000 without having an alien hands with four thumbs and a brain induced with super power chip, working and acting and responding with teraflops of calculations per seconds (I still remember, my high score was 950).

Then I came in touch with retro gaming legends and similar sprit-ed games like Mario, Contra, Pac-man, Bomberman, Space invaders, and lot others, eating away my summer vacations like piranhas eating their prey. Then came period of time, during start of my secondary education, when I happened to shy away from two of my likings: comics and games. These were mere hobbies that time, still not converted to passion. Here I should make clear the difference between hobby and passion. I have a very simple idea for testing: What you do in free time is hobby and for what you free the time from your busy life is passion. So I had to move away from my gaming so as I could satisfy the expectations of the surrounding to be grown up, to rake higher up in the rank, to concentrate on study, to get selected in good carrier and thereby making bright future. Now looking back, I can do nothing but laugh at the irony of my life as after following so called “ideal-path-to-success”, after getting myself better and better over others’ expectations, getting into the grooves of set carrier and social status and earning hefty amount of money, what I’m doing to satisfy my urge of happiness: Gaming and reading Comics (Life is really a circle).

After completing my secondary and higher secondary education, There came a point where my ideal study-and-make-bright-carrier route allowed me to get myself admitted to well known collage with computer engineering as major. Anyhow, I liked the idea of having personal computer just because of that. My parents bought me new PC with same notions as every parents in the world would have when they buy personal computers for their child for first time like PC would help to learn and make study smother, somehow it makes child more intellectual and clever. To me, it’s absolutely wrong notion (somehow I believe that parents also know this). I can firmly say that PC is going to be used up to or more than 90% for gaming, multimedia, movies and for lot other things rather than study for boys (I can not say the same for girls as I believe girls are far more sincere and studious in that regard and also I’m not having demographic data for that part).

I got PC in the year of 2002. Four years before i.e. 1998, the newly found corporation called Valve by two former Microsoft employee (Gabe Newell & Mike Harrington) had released it’s first product which was going to revitalize and direct FPS gaming to new heights and branded me with so deep impression of gaming that I could not make myself free from web of computer gaming whole of my life. That product is called Half-life and that was the first game which I played with my new PC. I never heard the game’s popularity before. I just picked up and played by impulse of playing something horrible and weird. I always thought of how I can get forward and what to expect next in Half-life during whole of my days: during lectures, playground, at collage, everywhere. Next gaming session would not satiate my hunger but add fuel to it for more play (to this day).                       

From than on, I just played on, never looked back. Gradually but certainly my passion turns into addiction and than an obsession. I tried to play every genre (TPS, Action-adventure, RPG, Hack & slash). Even I made a list of all the played games till date (don’t know why someone is interested in it except me). I had upgraded my system (along with higher end GPUs) thrice so that it is capable of playing all games there in the market with all the glory (& gory) details. I can not muster enough time to go home and play like old days as I’m working in different city and I deliberately avoided taking my Gaming rig with me with fear that I may loose my grip completely over reality and real life problems. But still I bought whatever new game in the market without contemplating how I’m going to play and finish it. And whenever I’m away from playing games, I read about games, think about games, want to know about gaming technologies, collect games and lot more. Games just stop being portal to lose myself in another world; it just becomes my world blurring the line between real and surreal.

 I don’t know why I’m writing all this stuff, why somebody really wants to read about my obsessive gaming journey. But may be I need a kind of valve to let my emotions and feelings out to something, same as Valve has done to me with Half-life years ago. At least games give me worlds and environments which based on some concrete values and rules. In games, I can prove myself worthy and can get rewards for my values and character development (it’s not as random and undependable as real world). May be games give me more freedom to explore and imagine (now I have idea why people get addicted to drugs). May be games give me courage to face my fears and live up to expectations. May be games give me notions that actions and traits matters more than your physical appearance (that’s why I like FPS more). In short, I love to be obsessed with computer gaming, I love to save the world again & again & again.

“A question that sometimes drives me hazy: am I or are the others crazy?” – Einstein.

More Reads :

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Video_game_addiction

http://addictions.about.com/od/videogameaddiction/f/is_video_game_addiction_real.htm

http://www.rockpapershotgun.com/2007/11/12/what-is-the-truth-about-gaming-addiction/

Books:

Game Addiction: The experience and the Effects by Neils Clark and P. Scott

If your ethical model defeats you........

“If your ethical model defeats you, change the model “– DBC Pierre in “Lights out in wonderland “

Moral values, ethical choices, good vs. evil, black or white – these all are topics of deep discussion and vary from person to person depending on their own perspective and views.  Still sometimes it drives me crazy that what should be the ideal structure to believe in. May be there is no ideal model of values as it has been taught to us as a child.

I happened to come in contact of a novel by DBC Pierre, titled “Lights out in Wonderland “. I’m an impulse buyer. As I gone through beautifully bleak and weird cover graphics and cryptic, allegorical excerpts, my impulse to read this novel goes sky high and I bought it. It’s about a guy who decides to cut short his life but before that he wants to indulge in decadence. Yes, novel is all about decadence in its purest form. (Still I went through few chapters only :). It raises so many questions about the validity of values and ethical model. Why we are so much rigid in accepting any new perspective? Why we strictly stick to model where everything we want to be divided into black and white only? Why we really don’t have any freedom of choice to live on our own way and make decisions on our own?  

In India (yes, I deliberately opt for India and also some “so called” traditional stats like Gujarat), idea of these moral values and ethical structure is so forcefully imbued into mind of a child so that as one grows up, this entire model cemented it’s place with so much ferocity that it becomes indestructible and rock-solid. And when time comes to test it against real world scenarios, it will attribute, person having it, with zeal of resistance and rigidity. It becomes so much difficult for the person to embrace the change that he/she outright rejects it without any proper notion and reason (even though change is good one). I believe that with too many social interactions we are losing individualism. We are losing right to live on our own notions and hence for our own happiness. Please bear in mind that I’m not indicating to severe social ties and relationships (in fact they are the most beautiful things that can happen to you in this hopeless era). It’s about choosing what you feel right without any interruptions. It’s about getting free reign to take decisions for your own life(of course after maturity) .It’s about constructing your own model and changing it whenever you feel right as per basis on your lifetime learning experience(good or bad, whatever).

If you really want to have a feel of choices and its consequences, you should opt to play good RPGs (Role Play Games).Even though most games provide you very broad line choices between good and evil, sometimes they really test you with moral choice which is falling into dark grey shade. One such incident I can remember is with Fallout 3 (my most favorite post-apocalyptic game with retro-futuristic environment).

There is one quest in the game where you caught between struggles of two extreme socially distanced groups. One is composed of civilized and well mannered people who had maintained there high living standards (even in the nuclear desolate world), residing in Tenpenny tower (a high rise structure still intact in the city).Other one is composed of  radiation infected and mutated ugly people who are living with very low life approach, called “Ghouls”. As you can expect that this big social chasm leads to conflicts between the two and the later one wants to take control of tower which represents dominance of richer life over others, while the former one wants to defend it and not to share their wealth with low lives as they dare to maintain their values intact in this devastated world. Now you had to take side and take moral decision to support one of them. Leader of the “Ghouls” (the mutated people) asks you to open secret passage in the tower so as entire of his army can ambush and capture the tower. On the other hand protector of the tower gives you the assignment to assassinate leader of the “Ghouls” to end the conflict and rebel. (There is one peaceful solution also where you can avoid the violence la “Mahatma Gandhi” style. If you had developed your speech skill proficiently, you can convince both sided to live together in unity. That’s where RPG really shines J ) . First I decided to help the ugly Ghouls as I sympathized with them on living a better life. But as soon as I opened the gates for them my decision proved flawed to me as ghoul army just destroyed everything in the tower and killed and slashed all the people in the tower, bringing down the civilization to their own low, savage level. So I decided to load previous save game and this time I supported the residents of Tenpenny Tower by executing the Ghoul leader with slipping a live grenade in his pocket while he was sleeping. But again I felt betrayed by my moral decision as just because ghouls are ugly and savant didn’t mean to end their rights to lead good life.

What if this is the real world scenario (not just the game) where any decision you make will have deep percussion s on the various aspects and lives of others and you can not reverse it. In Joker’s words “you changed it everything forever.“ (In The Dark Knight to Batman). One thing is for sure: You can not make everybody happy. And that’s why we better not strongly stick to our ethical values and give some space to ourselves as well as others to experiment and hence learn from it.

There is no right, there is no wrong there are only consequences.         

The Biggest RPG ever played.....

The famous poet and playwright Shakeshpeare had said that Life is a big stage and we are just characters playing various roles. Agree , totally agree with him. Even I can twist it a little bit to say in computer gaming jargon that Life is one of the biggest RPG ( Role Playing Genre ) Game ever and we are nothing but playing character whose only desire to gain level cap, thereby gaining experience and to build a character which has a conceivable effect on surrounding open world. 

First of all , let me give you insight to what actually RPG is.  ( If you are not into computer gaming , then it's possible that you have never heard it before.) .Even though I call myself hard-core Gamer ( If I can trust my memory then I'm playing computer games since 7 years  ,say from 2002 ) , still I just started to pay attention to RPG since last year only. ( Fallout 3 has done it ) . I must say that if after spending ( wasting in terms of other people who are not willing to play it :) 75 to 80 hours in barren wastelands of Fallout 3 , it still manages to attract me to play it , wander about in open post-apocalyptic retro futuristic environments then Fallout 3 must be a hell of a good RPG ( and now i'm  looking forward to Fallout:New Vegas )Then I go through other RPGs also like Mass Effect 1 , 2 and Dragon Age . I don't meant to list down what I played and not played by ranting all this stuff. Point is, As I started to superimpose my "in game" fantasies to real world ( as most gamers do ) ,I realized that this world is nothing than the biggest RPG ever we played all along our lifespan, the only difference is "game of life" never allows you second play-through.
 
In general all RPG's have basic structure consisting mainly of experiences or Level Caps,Stats,Perks and character development.You start with very basic features which are mostly incompetent in brutal game world. so you have to learn the things fast and try to gain as much experience points as you can to take on the fight against monsters or evils or ogres or  dragons or whatever it is. Your ultimate goal is to solve the quests ( thereby earning more XP :).  The best part of RPG is you choose to build a character as you like and still continue to go for various quests with different approaches.Either you can build a all trigger-happy killing frenzy or  silent shadow follower assassin or highly intellectual hacking geek or ........list goes on. 

Now consider and compare all these with our real world situation symbolically. Life is always like that. After happy memories of childhood ( training period ), all you required to do is get yourself  familiar with skills ( schools and collages ) and then plunge into real world for gaining more experience and build a character ( fighting inner demons , morality and lot other ). Also sometimes it seems that outer world is no more hostile and treacherous than fictional gaming world. You have to move and depend on your instincts, sometimes build a relationships ( with NPC ) and continuously go on for the new quest. 

Well, but not all is same here. I would like to point out a factor which favors in computer RPG  over real life ( absolutely my view only ). In real life you never had chance to live again with different path (very sad aspect ). 

so choose to indulge in RPG gaming (real or fictional : your take ) and build your character well so that you can fight back and register a victory over later stages (of game or life) and never ever fall back due to high difficulty as I said it's matter of time and earning experience and knowledge to overcome the problems ( evils or dragons or zombies or radiation or  loan payments or relationships problems or career roadblock or whatever the hazard :)

Childhood, Maturity and Love for Comics

I love comics, It's fact. It took 28 years ( yaa now you know my age :) to confess but I know that I'm not the only one who just wish to find childhood fantasy within beautiful, exotic and hilarious pages of comical fictional world.

Any person who had passed through obvious childhood had come in contact with comics world at any point in his life.Any child is more attached to this pictorial presentation of imaginative work than lots and lots of gibberish study material. I can still remember to finish my homework  as soon as possible so as I could lay my hand on new comics stealthily. It has acted as motivational force for me to accomplish things. And still people believed comics to be a taboo kind of thing not to be attached with ( yup, I'm talking about parents ).Still I like to be in the universe of Chacha Chaudhary, Nagraj, Super commando dhruva etc. in the childhood. Time has changed, world has changed, priorities were changed since then, only effect it had on my affection for comic is characters were replaced by more serious ones. Story telling was transcends from absolute fantasy to more lethal, cynical, and mature one. Persons psychological personality is reflected via his comic venture. I used to not like the batman when I was kid. I felt it too much dark and uninteresting. But now I am more attached to "The Dark Knight" than highly superficial Superman or any other superheros.      

In collage days my only link to this beautiful world had been a series of cartoon strips published in Times of India.( At that time one more obsession has begun to take me over : Gaming, there's going to be blog on this also :). I was not knowing at that time that my old love for comics was going to grape me by throat and plunged me with more force in it's own universe after graduation and some years of struggling phase. After getting an economical backbone of my own ( earning handsomely so as survival in Mumbai is not really tough ) , I just happen to come in contact with graphics novel "Joker"  and I begun to have the surge of drooling, to feel the covers of the comic and to go through brilliantly penciled and colored frames of each page. I bought it, and I fell to quicksand.

After "The Killing Joke" and "Watchmen" my appetite for graphics novels gets more voracious."Calvin and Hobbes" make me to crave for growing up again.Time has never changed, just that I am looking to this world of comics with whole new perspective as I had when I was kid. Only best part of to be grown-up is you can live out your childhood dreams without any restriction and control and that's what I'm doing it.

I LOVE COMICS.... Really.     

Inception - Masterpiece ??

......... and protagonist give a turn to it's totem to believe the truth but distracted by the sight of his children, he just goes to meet them after long exile. Camera continuously pan to the twisting top, concentrating on it's unaltered motion. Meanwhile mass of audience hold their breath to conceive on the result of the spinning top. After precious few seconds top faltered once or twice to relieve the audience from their dilemma ........ and it gains the momentum again. After that credits starts to roll ending the 2 hour journey in to dreamland...........

              Last credit roll acted as a kick to pull me out of my trance. It's Inception.Movie had done something with my mind on some subconscious level that after leaving the movie hall, got auto, and we- me and my partner ( no , not GF ) - reached to our room , we just discussed about the story, logic, presentation, and lot other pertaining to the movie - Inception. There are varied reviews and suggestions about this new Nolan's venture : some say it confusing, some say it brilliant,some believe that it's illogical. I don't want to review the movie here, whatever it is, but thing is Inception has started a trend which nobody has given thought to. It allows people to apply their mind and logic with movie-watching. There were other movies like this say matrix, Nolan's memento,but  their underlying allegory and meanings are related to few moviegoers who desperately follows these movies. Inception brought this idea to mass general people. Never mind lots of people still struggle to understand the movie, but the fact is Nolan's movies never required to be reasoned and understood in first go.
              I read somewhere that if you want to enjoy unique and different art form , you should learn to appreciate unique and different art whenever it comes out.This applies to all whether it's paintings, games, books, or movies. Even if we don't want to ignore the logical loopholes or structure there are various points which will make Inception a masterpiece in terms of movie making. 
Point 1 : Tight script and storytelling :  Nolan is master storyteller , seriously he never allows audience to settle down once his movie gets started. He knows how to unfold the story to put the audience in the same state as movie protagonist ( remember memento's backward/forward slice story telling ). Inception also has same effect on it's watching audience. Movie is about dream.It says during dream stat you will feel it to be true and real , however illogical or strange it is. During watching movie , I always feel to be gripping and interesting . After the end of the movie only I just give a thought on it's logical structure , same as dream. ( If you also feel the same then movie had already succeeded to awe you and to mesmerize you ).

Point 2 : Characterization :  Inception has so good character importance that you keep out the working of one character and entire movie collapsed without it. Nolan has always come up with variety of characters through his movie run as a director. Weather it's tormenting psyche of the Dark Knight , totally unpredictable but horrifyingly insane psychopath Joker, or flawed genius dom cobb of inception , each character is picked from great depth of the mind.


Point 3: Supersonic Pace : Pace is the most important aspect of any thriller movie and Inception is like roller coaster ride.


There are other points also which makes movie a must watch such as superb cinematography, class background score, brilliant acting, grand special effect, edge of the seat action sequences and lot more.

I rate it as masterpiece, may be flawed one but masterpiece and a template of movie making.
Want to know more : http://makingthemovie.info/2010/07/inception-explained-spoilers.html