As somebody who went through nearly the exact same experience with a different game several years ago, it's really disappointing (and unhelpful) to see so much emphasis put on the game. Starcraft 2 didn't destroy his life, his lack of self-control did. There are millions of people playing Starcraft 2 worldwide who did not do what he did. Taking action to overcome the Starcraft addiction is a good first step, but it won't do him any good if he lapses into addictive behavior in another aspect of his life.

It sounds like the poster is a really motivated guy, and lionhearted is correct in his sibling post here that that can be a strong force for productivity if you can master it. I really hope that Tom manages to do so, because at 21, he's got his whole (non-destroyed) life ahead of him. Losing two years to an addiction is a big deal, but it's something you can overcome and possibly even come out stronger from.

Edit: Since I talked a little bit about my own circumstances in a reply, I might as well go into detail here, particularly since it looks like the actual linked post might be a lie/exaggeration. I played Final Fantasy XI (an MMO, unlike most games in the series) from the fall of 2004 until the fall of 2009, and World of Warcraft from then until January of 2011.

During that time, my life outside of the game basically stopped. I dropped out of college, I moved back in with my parents, I stopped programming and reading, which were my main interests before the MMOs came along. For a few of the years in the middle I didn't work or even really leave the house. Eventually I got pushed out because my parents knew that what I was doing wasn't a healthy lifestyle, but I did just enough to adapt and got a job an an apartment and continued gaming.

What pushed me to quitting wasn't any sudden realization, but just a slow-building frustration with the whole idea of MMORPGs. Eventually it hit critical mass and I quit FFXI, thinking that the problem was just that I needed a better game. A year of WoW convinced me otherwise, and I've been putting my life back together since then. I (obviously) don't mind talking about it now, and I'd be glad to answer questions if anyone has them.

This article has a lot of things which sound fake. Here's one:

I was 6'2'', 168 lbs, 1% body fat

When I was climbing competitively, I once had my bodyfat measured (by DEXA) as just under 3%. For climbing, pretty much any weight (even most muscle) is just dead weight, so climbers are as skinny and lean as any athletes out there, and I only very rarely ran into people as lean as me.

I've known a lot of bodybuilders and wrestlers, and even there, it's rare to see people below 3%, and I've never heard of anyone who's tested below 2% bodyfat. 1%? I won't say that it's impossible, but to be alive and functioning at that level would require you to be a genetic freak on the same level as Lance Armstrong or Michael Phelps.

Sounds like he has the "rage to master" personality trait... very conducive to hardcore training and mastery in something like martial arts or a craft skill, or a discipline... also conducive to addiction or getting "way too into" hedonistic pursuits.

I've got it too, and have made insane/amazing progress and gotten quite good at some skills, crafts, and disciplines in fast time. I've also burned many hours on something like Civilization IV or playing lots of Chess. It's a mixed bag.

I wrote about it here --

http://www.sebastianmarshall.com/advice-if-youve-got-the-rag...

Definitely worth reading if you've got the same personality mix.

It seems like he was already screwing up his life pretty well before SC2 was released:

"Fast forward to summer '10. By now I had moved out of three apartments with my friends. I lost three jobs. I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice. In between my friends and I would do odd-jobs that lasted a week at a time then would get paid one large sum, then blow it all on alcohol and marijuana. Living literally off of pickle juice, beer, bread once in a while, redbull, and cigarettes, we found ourselves wasting our days away on the Xbox with nothing else to do but wait for a job. Finally, I had to move back into my mother's house (a big time alcholic, who is seperated 15 years now from my father, a raging, abusive in every way alcholic) and that's where I took the deep plunge into hellish unconciousness.

Waiting eagerly for years for the realease of Starcraft 2 I waited in line 2 hours at 2:00 am for the special release...."

  - 1% body fat
  - ran 12 miles and got bored (so he walked home??)
  - 20 one-handed push-ups on either side (but only 100 combined??)
  - became a monk
  - shrank an inch in a year do to inactivity

I can relate to the OP in certain parts – though some bits do sound odd. (Like the mentioned 1% and being a top monk.)

When SC2 was released, I got into it big time as well. I know I have an addictive personality (if given the right method and circumstance), but I didn't know the term 'rage to master' I'll have to look it up.

Anyway, I slept and breath SC2. I knew it was going to get me in trouble, I had no delusions of going Pro, but I just wanted to be good. I hated the feeling of losing to cheese tactics and winnings games, surprisingly, only gave me a mild high. If I won, I wanted to be a legit win. SC2 to me is chess on steroids. I'd kept playing no matter if I won or lost.

I was aware of my personality flaw so I gave myself a goal – Plat #1 on my division and I'm done. So I reached the goal and immediately quit the ladder game. My ability to do this made me doubt if I really had an addictive personality. I find myself going through the same process for other games such as WoW and D3 – aim for the highest (reasonable) goal, 'prove' something to myself and be done.

It's really unfortunate, since I rarely play games for the sake of 'fun' anymore (any online game bring out the competitiveness in me.) Just like the Matrix guy, I don't see them as games anymore, I see them as ways to min/max, look for exploits, efficiency, risks vs rewards, mathematical equations.

This sounds so fake :/ There are certainly video game addicts out there, it's a serious problem in korea and china, but I think this is a troll and/or pathological liar.

I think video games can become extremely addicting to a certain mental/psychological cross-section that is highly represented on Hacker News. While most drugs have a cycle of reward and withdrawal video games have that in very small sustainable bursts but connected to the act of being clever. We like being clever for its own sake but we really enjoy it when we use it to defeat or conquer something, no matter how synthetic and abstract. Do you feel any different zergrushing an unprepared base or finally getting that Clojure script to run correctly? I really don't, and I've had to remind myself over the years to focus my endeavors towards productive learning even if the rewards come a little more slowly and are harder to get.

It's great that he posted this though. He'll be able to come back and read it over and over - and hopefully it will help him begin to take responsibility for his life and what he can do to change it.

Bit of personal insight here, I have anger issues that may border on bi-polar. I've never attempted a diagnosis or treatment, I just try to maintain a cool head. Most of the time I'm rational and level headed. However, there are certain triggers that just make me snap, completely flipping my personality.

On more than one occasion, Starcraft 2 was one of those triggers. It only occurred after long heated anonymous matches that I lost, never during single player or with friends. I shelved Starcraft 2 shortly after a bad outburst where I broke the door of my wooden keyboard tray.

If I had to guess, the intense focus I was putting into Starcraft broke my normal awareness of my emotions. Thus, loosing control when I was defeated.

I totally understand. Totally. This is a dangerous path taken, but it could happen for everyday things. Having the inner pressure to do things when things dont need to be done only to avoid feeling stale.

I was better than anyone I knew in my job and I kept studying edge cases of my profession that I would never need. Soon my job became too easy. I would spend time studying professioms related to mine only in case I come up with something useful. Make no mistake this was not workaholism since it had nothing to do with my day to day work except in very rare circumstances. I also know that this is personally unproductive since I work as a manager and I can tell mismanagement of resources I mile away. I am very strict unfortunately only on everybody else but me. I read issue queues and follow forums for open source projects for thing I will never use. Same thing goes for stackoverflow for a series of languages. I have studied history books, correlating things on various books and sources and historical archives. Attempting to put everything in an elasticsearch cluster for better fulltext search. To what end, I don't know. My spouse has gotten used to this but my friends seem to have changed during the years. I have no long term goals and many things I learned I won't use. Since my addictions are not fun related they just look like hobbies. The problem is they add up to many hours a day.

I would not call it rage to succeed, I would call it inability to stand still mentally.

> I'm afraid to leave the house to be seen; I don't even want to see my friends anymore. All I want to do is sleep because I'm so ashamed of what I've become it's painful to be awake and have to think about it all.

God, do I know this feeling. I don't know if I would have gotten away from it without friends and family.

This is bizarre, really. You known, while being addicted to something may be a big problem, the OP sounds much more depressed than addicted. Come one, 21 years old and his life is destroyed? how come? He even has money for beer and cigarretes? The guy should take a walk into some hospital to watch people that are screwed up really bad, both physically and mentally.

And I don't mean to be moralist, even if I sound like one. The main problem is that he must get up and decide to change his life, see that he is a perfectly normal young guy. If he can't quit playing by himself, why don't he look for help? A psychologist or even a psychiatrist may be of great help, but they sure wont come to his home from out of nowhere.

The poster has what my mother always called an 'addictive' personality. It's both a benevolent and malevolent trait to have. I'm sure most professional athletes or anyone that 'masters' something to any sort of extreme has to have this sort of trait to stay intrinsically motivated.

I am disappointed to see people blaming 'this or that game' for their problems. Personally these types of folks need help and a good safety net of friends and family to point out what's truly happening instead of being surrounded by those with the same issues. Unfortunately it sounds like this guy had none of the former and plenty of the latter.

Definitely a troll, this was the tell (where he refers to the UFC/combat fighting): "those institutions are false and insulting to real martial artists. The people who take place in them worship violent demagogues."

Funny.

Would it be possible to make a nicotine patch for Starcraft 2? How about a less addictive version to wean yourself off it. Maybe, you switch to Starcraft I, and then Warcraft. How about messing up the resolution, or having a slow internet connection with lag? What if you have a computer that cheats for you?

What would it take to make such a thing? Is it possible? Exactly what elements of Starcraft make it addictive? Would it be possible to make a similar but less addictive version?

Should I feel terrible now?

I work in the team, making one of the the best selling fps games.

Then again I don't like playing fps games, I'm just supporting tools code.

I don't like multiplayer games at all, especially mmorpgs ones. I do love hot-seat multiplayer games like Heroes of Might and Magic - it's great fun. People in the same room, taking turns, and in the mean time having laugh and jokes (and smelly clothes, also a bit drunk after 24hr marathons)

For single player - old quest games, and JRPGs took many hours of my life...

If anything this story has nothing to do with SC2, and all the fact that this guy is a depressed addict. Anything would do, he just chose video games.

I find this story pretty hard to believe. It might, I guess it might be true, but it seems a bit fanciful. For sure, even if only partly, this person clearly has major problems with balancing things. But the Kung Fu master part seems a incredulous to me. In the story, we go straight from being one of the greatest monks the Wu Tang Clan has ever seen to ... doing drywall odd jobs for money to buy weed and beer ... seems like something is missing there. Then there's the bit of moving out into the wilderness, resuming this big regime of training. I just don't know about that.

IANAP (psychologist), but I would say probably this person has a big problem with video games, but more specifically impulses and I would venture to guess possibly a hard time distinguishing reality from fantasy. Probably, the inability to distinguish reality from fantasy is one of the bigger problems here and then addiction. It's good that this person seems to want help, get out of the hole. I think it will definitely take professional help; there's more going on here than just playing Starcraft 2 too much.

Guys this is obviously fake.

Believe it or not, even learning can become addictive. I know a lot of people that have an addiction to learning new technologies, but they never actually build anything. The pleasure of learning new things is what they crave. They learn something, then they go learn something else, then something else. Sometimes they get two or three degrees in unrelated fields. It gives them a false sense of productivity. In the end its like playing Starcraft. It does not lead to any output. Just firing of neurons within their brains.

Videogames are harder to quit than drugs? What has he been smoking?

A friend of mine was just as bad of a game addict when it drove him to drop out of graduate school and become a deadbeat. He's now a successful game designer at Blizzard.

I would bet on contrived.

I find that videogames fill a void more than they create it.

Spending too much time on them seems more like an effect than a cause.

I haven't played StarCraft 2 yet. Wow; is it really that good? Think I might go buy a copy today.

it would be very interesting to know how is he doing now (since a year has passed, as you can see the post linked is from 2011) and why he didn't try to teach martial arts professionally

This was my main problem with the article. While it's well-written, it has many details that (on the face) seem way too contrived.

My friends even looked up to me, as they are monks who train Taoist Wudang Kung Fu in southwestern China. At one point I became a monk by my own right, and I was looked to for even spiritual advice.

So you're such a badass that monks that train others in Kung Fu looked up to you at 18 years old? They also made you a monk and decided you were enlightened enough to give spiritual advice, despite the fact that you have very obviously poor impulse control?

I tried being a drywaller, and a welder twice.

Why didn't you try doing what you spent all that time in southeast Asia learning, and start doing martial arts professionally? You could be a martial arts instructor, stunt man, or any other profession that hires badasses of this caliber.

Also, "being a welder" isn't something you just jump into without previous experience and/or equipment.

This whole thing feels made up for sympathy. Apologies if you're telling the entire truth, Tom.

At 1% you're literally on death's door. He's either exaggerating or just making this story up from whole cloth. My guess is it's one of those cases of "the older I get the better I was".

I'm also a climber, I've been climbing about 20 hours a week lately, and using a cheap electric current device, I was getting measurements between 6% and 12%, and I have very lean muscle.

I have some friends who are physical trainers, and they were talking about low body fat once, saying it's very difficult to to get down to around 5% and lower than 4% is dangerous.

According to a random body building website thread, 3% is essential body fat... http://forum.bodybuilding.com/showthread.php?t=143851451&...

I was measured at <2% bodyfat when I wrestled in highschool. They forbid me from cutting weight because of it. At the same time I was a fully functioning, healthy individual. It DOES happen, though rarely.

edit: it was one of those cheap electrical measuring devices. It's very probable that the machine had a high margin of error.

It is possible his 1% body fat was an estimate or used a different technique to measure. I know nothing about it really, but it is possible he was more interested in training than finding a doctor to give him exact stats.

Yep. The whole shit about martial arts / being a monk is pure bullshit fantasy.

Perhaps it was a typo and he meant 10%? That would be a perfectly healthy athletic body fat percentage and an easy typo to make.

Could be a typo?

Wow, I've never heard of this before, but I knew a friend in college who eventually lost himself to drugs for a bit (dealing it, using it too much). He had gone from passion to passion in 1-2 year cycles. During high school he was seriously into Unix and was incredibly into just hacking on it all day, every day for hours on end. The next year he decided he was over it, and got into really spiritual pursuits (converting to Islam) and wearing traditional garb and was incredibly active in a Mosque. Then, unfortunately, he fell into the aforementioned drugs episode.

Now, however, he's stabilized after going to therapy and has a pretty rad job doing pen testing. Anyhow, thanks for posting this link, I knew there was some sort of thing describing his personality trait :)

I've never heard of the term 'rage to master' but I've been told this behaviour is common in people with Aspergers Syndrome. Intense interests which takes priority in life only to be substituted with something else weeks, months or a couple of years down the line.

Maybe you can shed some more light on the 'rage to master' personality trait you're talking about?

Never heard this term either previously, but I can relate to a lot of those traits. Thanks for the info.

Thanks for this.