Pac-Man Fever?

I'm in the market for a good 12-step program. It seems that I may have a real problem with video games. I realize that it doesn't sound serious, but you'd be surprised. Ask yourself how long you would last if you were up until 3:00 A.M. every night and then getting up at 6:00 for work every morning? An unchecked video game addiction can put you in a place where you are absolutely worthless to everyone except, of course, your fellow junkie gamers.

Maybe you have the same problem and don't even know it. Just step back and take a good look around. If you find yourself at work on Friday unable to remember anything you did that week, be wary. If you begin to notice that everything in your life has an analogy to a game, that's a sign. If you ever get confused after putting money into a drink machine because you can't figure out how to play, it's time to get help.


My slide began with the arrival of our Atari 2600. It was great, but after a while, it wasn't enough to play Pac-Man, Defender, and Pitfall in the living room. I started spending what little cash I had at the arcade, playing "real" video games. But like the purveyors of any good narcotic, video game manufacturers continued to up the ante. Eventually, the games got to where we could get arcade quality on the personal computer. That's where it started to get really ugly.

In my junior year of college, the guy next door had a PC, and he had Tetris. Every evening, a number of us would descend upon his room to try our hand at that insidious time thief. I know that more than once, I sat in there and played long after poor Kelly had gone to bed. How many times must he have fallen asleep with that little Russian theme going through his head, perhaps dreaming of guys in big furry hats swilling vodka and dodging giant blocks falling from the sky?



In graduate school, we had games loaded on the computers in the lab. I remember one particular night, I brought a buddy over to the lab to show him a cool new game. At 7:00 AM, I told him, "Hey, you'd better leave before the professors start coming in." If that isn't the most pathetic pseudo-tryst ever, I'd like to know what is. It's the gaming nerd's equivalent of a one-night stand.

My problem is so bad that I've stayed up for 2 extra hours playing a game that my 7-year-old found on a kids' web site. My wife laughed at me, but I think it was only so that she wouldn't cry.

My poor children have been deprived of a video game system for the simple reason that I'm afraid to bring one into the house. It's way too easy to imagine Halo ruining my life. In fact, it's hard to imagine that it wouldn't. At first, my kids would just be puzzled to see me already playing when they got up in the morning. Naively, they would assume that I had gotten up before them (which, by the way, never happens). Eventually, they would get mad at me for monopolizing the game console. My wife, of course, would be fuming long before the kids had a clue anything was wrong, but it would take them longer to get upset, partially because they would be distracted and intrigued by the steam coming from Mom's ears.

After a while, they would wonder why I don't go to work any more, and eventually they would figure out that I was sleeping on the couch. Still, they wouldn't know whether it was because I had been banished there or because I couldn't bear to stray too far from my fix. Everyone would be upset about the smell, and sooner or later, they would realize that if they would just throw the game out into the back yard, I would go with it.

No, there will be no X-Box in my house anytime soon.

I recently moved to an area that has a Dave and Buster's. If you're not familiar with it, it's essentially an arcade crossed with a bar. It sounds so much like heaven that the catch must be absolutely horrifying. I went once, years ago, but fortunately I was just visiting, and my home town didn't have one. But now I see the sign on the interstate, and I'm very tempted, but I know that Dave and Buster's is basically a crackhouse to someone like me. I would wind up sitting by the door in tatters offering to shine people's shoes for a token. My only hope would be to survive long enough for the place to get raided so the police could take me to rehab. Of course, that wouldn't happen since video games are legal, which means that walking through those doors would be the beginning of a downward spiral with no end in sight.

So, there you have it. I need help. My one hope is that games are becoming so complex that I'm not sure I can keep up. If I can steer clear of the little kids' games, I might just make it.