Gaming with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

Off-topic
#1

Continuing the discussion from Escapism. Is this you?

Gaming with Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder

When a mental illness enters a digital space.

By Ryan Clements, IGN
July 26, 2012

Despite my love of lost magic, dragon-hunting, and picturesque fields, 'Skyrim' tore me up inside. While some might savor the hundreds of adventures and glittering chests, I dreaded the exploration. With each turn in the dark depths and darker dungeons, I fought my fears. My fear of missing a single tome. A fabled shield. A letter, lost. The thought of missing such treasure wore away my patience. It shriveled up my fun in Bethesda's world. Such is the exhausting challenge of gaming with a mental illness.

The term "obsessive-compulsive disorder" (OCD) gets thrown around often in the realm of gaming to categorize quirky behavioral patterns and habits in our otherwise happy game sessions. But many gamers lack a full understanding of this disorder and its unique impact on what should otherwise be a satisfying pastime. What, then, is this illness?

The [U.S.] National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) explains:

"...People with OCD feel the need to check things repeatedly, or have certain thoughts, or perform routines and rituals over and over. The thoughts and rituals associated with OCD cause distress and get in the way of daily life. The frequent upsetting thoughts are called 'obsessions'. To try to control them, a person will feel an overwhelming urge to repeat certain rituals or behaviors called 'compulsions'."

This disorder, like all illnesses, affects people in different ways and to different degrees. I have the good fortune of only suffering a minor case of OCD. And while I smile at my many quirks, I also battle the anxiety and negative thoughts characteristic of the illness. It started in my childhood when I asked my mother to assure me that all the doors were locked every night before bed, and it continued to challenge my perceptions of sickness and – surprisingly – romantic relationships well into adulthood.

But video games also provide a breeding-ground for OCD. Considering this, we must strive to identify those specific frustrations and encourage those gamers in need of real help to reach out to their doctors.

Several professionals in the gaming space have tackled this issue before, including our colleagues at 'The Escapist'.[1] While these explorations shine a light on the illness and its interaction with video games, many gamers still confuse personal quirks with OCD. Jumping through the doorway to a boss battle in 'Mega Man' or a methodical process to track down collectibles and Achievements don't always correlate with the illness.

As detailed by the NIMH, the illness generally entails the coupling of negative thoughts, fears, and anxiety with the rituals meant to alleviate them. Failing to carry out these rituals, like performing a certain action in a game, can lead to strong feelings of anxiety.

To illuminate the discussion, allow me to submit some personal examples. Before starting a game, I feel the need to check every item in the options menu before beginning the game proper. Playing before performing this ritual causes anxiety, and I will even reenter the options menu after starting to confirm that the options have not somehow changed in the process.

A more recent example arose from playing the 'Mass Effect' series; specifically, I noticed obsessions emerge from the dynamic between Paragon and Renegade points. 'Mass Effect' allows players to make moral choices that reward the hero, Commander Shepard, with points that gauge his morality. Focused on playing a Paragon character, any time I accidentally accumulated Renegade points I felt the urge to redo that choice.

Coming into 'Mass Effect 3', my heart plummeted when my hero started the game with a sliver of Renegade points that I had no control over. Anxiety erupted with every glance at those points on screen. Even a miniscule and arbitrary detail like this was enough to hurt my experience.

In my many years of gaming these issues have fluctuated in intensity. From replaying entire quests after missing a line of dialogue to completing each map of 'Diablo III', my OCD has formed and faded but never left. It gnaws at my thoughts when I play games and challenges me to practice self-control.

Fortunately there are ways to cope with OCD which can help victims further enjoy their gaming and – more importantly – their life as a whole. PubMed Health, an online resource from the U.S. National Library of Medicine, notes this reassuring point about treatment: "Cognitive-Behavioral Therapy (CBT) has been shown to be the most effective type of psychotherapy for this disorder. The patient is exposed many times to a situation that triggers the obsessive thoughts, and learns gradually to tolerate the anxiety and resist the urge to perform the compulsion."

What does this mean? Victims can learn how to carefully expose themselves to anxiety and avoid the unnecessary compulsions that typically follow. With the right help and a whole lot of patience, people can handle the disorder and prevent it from consuming them. But always, always consult a medical professional to help you make any important choice related to your health.

Do you have an illness that affects your gaming? Do you feel comfortable discussing it with others? Share your experiences, frustrations, breakthroughs and thoughts in the comments section below. And never forget that gaming should add to our lives in meaningful ways.

[1] www.escapistmagazine.com/articles/view/video-games/issues/issue_254/7563-The-OCD-Gamer

A poem about vainglory
#2

Gaming’s Most Obsessive Moments

How many of these are you guilty of?

By Brian Altano & Brian Miggels, IGN
August 4, 2010

We gamers are a meticulously psychotic bunch. In a good way, of course, but that's not to say that we're not chock full of neurotic little compulsions that plague nearly every game we play. Here's a collection of some of our most common videogame obsessions. So how many of them are you guilty of? [...]

#2. Anxious Ammo Clipper
So, you have a full clip of ammo in a first-person shooter. Should be good enough, right? Nope, because there's *another* full clip of ammo sitting right there on the floor. But since your clip is full, you can't pick it up. That's where you find yourself firing off a single round so that you *can* pick it up. But why? Because you can't just leave it there on the floor. Somebody else might grab it.

#3. Legendary Lawnmower
Look at that field, it's a damn mess! And it's all thanks to you. You couldn't just walk past the lush 'Zelda' plant life and ornate pottery neatly aligned in rows? You had to completely destroy everything in sight, just for the off chance that you might find an extra rupee or two, even when your wallet's capacity is maxed out? Come on, man, that grass takes entire seconds to grow back!

#4. Heavy Inventory Hoarder
Your pockets are completely, totally, absolutely full. You're traversing 'Fallout' with the agility of a walrus. But that's not going to stop you from opening every single crate, barrel and locker just to see what you "can't" possibly fit in your inventory, right? Right. Hoarder. [...]

#7. Persistent Percentage Practitioner
Are you the type of gamer that needs to complete everything? You know, unravel every secret, uncover every corner and collect every single pointless coin, statuette and balloon just to get your game completion percentage to 100%? Or worse, to some arbitrary number ["102%"] that the developer set just to screw with you? Then this one's for you.

#8. Regular Race Restarter
Sometimes you can figure out within the first few seconds of a heated racing game that things just aren't going to pan out for you. Are you that much of a doubtful perfectionist that you're positive that you won't be able to turn things around during the next lap? Who cares? Just restart the damn thing to be sure, right?

#9. Frequent Furniture Facilitator
Your 'Animal Crossing' bedroom is a meticulously organized page from an IKEA catalog. Your real life bedroom, however, looks like a scene from a John Carpenter movie. We're not going to ask you to learn to prioritize better, we're obsessive gamers too. Just try and make sure you've got a little bit better balance between both worlds. Or don't, because that polygonal Nintendo furniture set isn't going to collect itself.

#10. Constant Clock Stopper
When dumping 130 hours in to a game about a boy whose sister is a wizard that flees the town after an evil emperor burns it to the ground or whatever other RPG cliches are in motion, there's nothing more important than making sure the game recognizes your actual completion time down to the second. That's why you obsessively pause the game to stop the clock, right? You just can't help it.

#11. Save Slot Maniac
Enter door. Save. Open inventory. Save. Use health potion. Save. Save again. Grab a drink of water. Save. Save, save, save. Ask yourself, "Why am I constantly saving?" Save. Who knows when you might need to restore a save file where your character has exactly 76 mana points? After all, there might be a boss up ahead. Save again. [...]

But as Ryan Clements has already pointed out, “a methodical process to track down collectibles and Achievements don’t always correlate with the illness.” OCD is more like “replaying entire quests after missing a line of dialogue”.

“Perfectionism” (that is, maladaptive perfectionism – which means that it doesn’t work) is more of a symptom of anankastic personality disorder. Ananke was the Greek goddess of destiny, fate and necessity.

Don’t let some obsession determine your “destiny”!

1 Like
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#14

my ocd exist outside of gameplay. usually have to do with aesthetic. i always avoid unrealistic, stupid looking things. like parachuting from fighter jet in battlefield. that makes no sense because it operates on ejection seat, not ww2 style bail out. i avoid all games after battlefield 2 for that reason. they never fix that issue.

#15

Looking for “unrealistic things in games” (don’t nail me to that expression
) is not quite what the authour of this fred meant, I guess.
Even in Bioshock Infite, there are things I strongly dislike. For example the level of detail given to some things, you would’ve barely come across if it not was for your almost-obsessive behaviour of pressing ‘n’ to see where your quest line goes - and then turning around and look the other way first. And then there are things, you see at most open place, not to mention fairs and markets: Baskets full of (supposedly) fruit, apples or similar-looking things. It’s a mere nothing, that gets me upset everytime. Otherwise I pretty much like the game so far. :smiley:

Also, I thought the “almost-obsessive” part stressed, because it’s not quite obsessive, I think. For me it is just curiosity to see what’s behind a corner the game doesn’t directly point me to.

Edit says: I also like the style the quotes are written in. A bit of self-ironical with a (literal) smile, that is somehow honest, but humourless serious as well.

#16

#3, 4 and 8
 :smiley:
Well, maybe #11 as well gut just a bit. I HATE checkpoint saving systems
-.-“
And I need a save function in my non-computer-life, gods damnit. It’s not that a actually regret choices made, but that I pretty much could’ve done better
-.-”

#17

Unfortunately I have no power to do so :slight_smile: you’ll just have to wait 24h :slight_smile: sry.

#18

Humour is always a serious business. The jester’s role was to tell the truth.

Stanczyk (1862) by Jan Matejko (1838–1893)

Full title: Stanczyk during a ball at the court of Queen Bona in the face of the loss of Smolensk

The jester is depicted as the only person at the ball who is troubled by the news that the Russians have captured Smolensk in 1514 (then a part of Poland).

#19

Aye
 telling the truth, where no truth is wanted. Good ol’ zanies


#20

Stand-up comedy (“telling jokes”) isn’t the same as humour, though. At least not in my book.

#21

How? Is anything you don’t find funny not actual humor? (àČ _àČ )

#22

Jokes bring laughter, humour brings smiles.

#23

No
 Look up the definition of humour, I’m fairly certain it can make people laugh.

#24

“Looking for ‘unrealistic things in games’ (don’t nail me for that expression) is not quite what the author of this thread meant, I guess.”

Actually, that could be an obsession/compulsion.

“And I need a Save/Load function in my real life, dammit. It’s not that I actually regret choices made, but that I pretty much could’ve done better
”

"Don't aim at success – the more you aim at it and make it a target, the more you are going to miss it. For success, like happiness, cannot be pursued; it must ensue, and it only does so as the unintended side-effect of one's personal dedication to a cause greater than oneself or as the by-product of one's surrender to a person other than oneself. Happiness must happen, and the same holds for success: you have to let it happen by not caring about it."

–Viktor E. Frankl (1905–1997), Austrian Jewish neurologist and psychiatrist
#25

Nice quote you’ve digged up there
However, my before mentioned sentences should not tell anyone, I am not “happy”. I have been quite successful in my rather few days, and I still am. Well, o’ course on some other matters “success” ist not quite what I have achieved - e. g. due to some things, I should’ve done better in the past. :stuck_out_tongue:
Anyway, I’m not into regretful thoughts.

How nicely you’ve stressed the ‘could’
 :wink: As for me, I’m mostly curious: “Where we would go to if no one’s just going to look what’s actually there
” - deliberately translated “catch-phrase” of a friend of mine.

It certainly does. But ‘humour’ is quite more than making people laugh. It is more
 “grown-up” it many way.

Similar to this, but also your quote is merely an aspect of the whole. Even dictionairies can’t catch all of humour’s definition, for ‘humor’ is rather defined by a person individually. Also, I’ll cut out the historical meaning of ‘humour’
 - adding that part as well would quite mix up a confusional ‘pot-pourri’ of different meanings.
And it would mix up that topic of disorders again. :wink:

#26

That quote reminds me of Howard Hughes (1905–1976)
 It just shows that “Success at all costs” (and often at the expense of those around you!) has, indeed, a cost – your mental health.

#27

Warning - long text ahead! Turn back now, or struggle through!

Not quite ‘mental health’
 - yet, it is my opinion and /or experience, that nowdays there are people that wants to be used and those who want to use. However ‘mental health’ again is quite a personal defintion to me. :wink:
Some state the whole humankind is mentally sick to the brim. Some state that some of those declared mentally ill are one of the few really not being sick.

Erm
 I’ll stopp this now, 'cause I don’t want to tear it down to a discussion about perspectives - sorry 'bout that.

To get the loop back to topic, with modern things come modern ills. As well such that won’t have evolved without those modern things. Or would not have showed up, due to the “missing link” 
 So the typical RPG hoarder-mentality have a hard time to show up if the person in question never has contact to something “hoardable” - or would show up in more “smoother” actions, like keeping a rusty mountain bike for 6 years in the cellar, because mabye it is of some yet unknown use lateron


I, personally, won’t call something “mentally deranged”, which is not perceived as such by the person itself. Up to certain extend, of course. I am talking about daily behaviour like keeping the key to one’s flat at the exact same place every day to make sure you don’t leave without it. Nothing more ‘extreme’ that that.
Only Society telling you, you are ill, doesn’t mean anything. You won’t believe a “crazy” man, who’s trying to tell you that you are crazy, would you?
For the quoted articles, although, I like his style of writing mostly, I cannot agree to all of his arguments. Simply, because my point of view is another one. But I can understand, why he used such arguments.

Aaand now I lost my following thoughts again. So well, off ye be, finally, when you stood strong against that text-ish wall of mine.

**You had been warned. :stuck_out_tongue: **

#28

[Warning! The reply is even longer. :-)]

“Some state the whole humankind is mentally sick to the brim.”

“When we remember we are all mad, the mysteries disappear and life stands explained.” –Mark Twain :smiley:

“Some state that some of those declared mentally ill are one of the few really not being sick.”

"It is true that some speak lightly and loosely of insanity as in itself attractive. But a moment's thought will show that if disease is beautiful, it is generally some one else's disease. A blind man may be picturesque; but it requires two eyes to see the picture. And similarly even the wildest poetry of insanity can only be enjoyed by the sane."

–Gilbert K. Chesterton (1874–1936)

“You won’t believe a ‘crazy’ man, who’s trying to tell you that you are crazy, would you?”

"The madman's explanation of a thing is always complete, and often in a purely rational sense satisfactory. Or, to speak more strictly, the insane explanation, if not conclusive, is at least unanswerable; this may be observed specially in the two or three commonest kinds of madness. If a man says (for instance) that men have a conspiracy against him, you cannot dispute it except by saying that all the men deny that they are conspirators; which is exactly what conspirators would do. His explanation covers the facts as much as yours. Or if a man says that he is the rightful King of England, it is no complete answer to say that the existing authorities call him mad; for if he were King of England that might be the wisest thing for the existing authorities to do. Or if a man says that he is Jesus Christ, it is no answer to tell him that the world denies his divinity; for the world denied Christ's.

"Nevertheless he is wrong. But if we attempt to trace his error in exact terms, we shall not find it quite so easy as we had supposed. Perhaps the nearest we can get to expressing it is to say this: that his mind moves in a perfect but narrow circle. A small circle is quite as infinite as a large circle; but, though it is quite as infinite, it is not so large. In the same way the insane explanation is quite as complete as the sane one, but it is not so large. A bullet is quite as round as the world, but it is not the world. There is such a thing as a narrow universality; there is such a thing as a small and cramped eternity; you may see it in many modern religions. Now, speaking quite externally and empirically, we may say that the strongest and most unmistakable MARK of madness is this combination between a logical completeness and a spiritual contraction. The lunatic's theory explains a large number of things, but it does not explain them in a large way. I mean that if you or I were dealing with a mind that was growing morbid, we should be chiefly concerned not so much to give it arguments as to give it air, to convince it that there was something cleaner and cooler outside the suffocation of a single argument. Suppose, for instance, it were the first case that I took as typical; suppose it were the case of a man who accused everybody of conspiring against him. If we could express our deepest feelings of protest and appeal against this obsession, I suppose we should say something like this: «Oh, I admit that you have your case and have it by heart, and that many things do fit into other things as you say. I admit that your explanation explains a great deal; but what a great deal it leaves out! Are there no other stories in the world except yours; and are all men busy with your business? Suppose we grant the details; perhaps when the man in the street did not seem to see you it was only his cunning; perhaps when the policeman asked you your name it was only because he knew it already. But how much happier you would be if you only knew that these people cared nothing about you! How much larger your life would be if your self could become smaller in it; if you could really look at other men with common curiosity and pleasure; if you could see them walking as they are in their sunny selfishness and their virile indifference! You would begin to be interested in them, because they were not interested in you. You would break out of this tiny and tawdry theatre in which your own little plot is always being played, and you would find yourself under a freer sky, in a street full of splendid strangers.» Or suppose it were the second case of madness, that of a man who claims the crown, your impulse would be to answer, «All right! Perhaps you know that you are the King of England; but why do you care? Make one magnificent effort and you will be a human being and look down on all the kings of the earth.» Or it might be the third case, of the madman who called himself Christ. If we said what we felt, we should say, «So you are the Creator and Redeemer of the world: but what a small world it must be! What a little heaven you must inhabit, with angels no bigger than butterflies! How sad it must be to be God; and an inadequate God! Is there really no life fuller and no love more marvellous than yours; and is it really in your small and painful pity that all flesh must put its faith? How much happier you would be, how much more of you there would be, if the hammer of a higher God could smash your small cosmos, scattering the stars like spangles, and leave you in the open, free like other men to look up as well as down!»

"And it must be remembered that the most purely practical science does take this view of mental evil; it does not seek to argue with it like a heresy but simply to snap it like a spell."

–G.K. Chesterton, 'Orthodoxy' (1908)
#29

“To get the loop back to topic, with modern things come modern ills.”

‘Obsessive-compulsive disorder’ is a modern term, but it is not a “new” illness.

"The thing that hath been, it is that which shall be;
and that which is done is that which shall be done:
and there is no new thing under the sun.
Is there any thing whereof it may be said,
'See, this is new'?
it hath been already
of old time, which was before us." (Eccl. 1: 9-10)
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