Healthy Habits for Online Gaming

By Lisa Greer
Published January 24th, 2010

In just an hour a day I can paint my walls, change out my flooring, harvest crops on my farm and cook dinner in my restaurant for numerous customers. Have I discovered a new method of multitasking? Not at all. It’s virtual reality games that are making me that efficient, but the down side –it is just that. Virtual. While I’m playing these games, nothing gets done around my own house, so I’ve had to really restrict my time. I enjoy the games, but one can be too easily caught up in the several that are offered on Facebook.com. At one time, I had signed up for 6 different games. That’s right -6. Now I’m down to three again. Farmville, Farmtown & Mini Planet. The others had no residual benefits. Sure, I could create a zoo, or a fish world, run my own theme park, or even battle it out in Mafia Wars, but I found no benefit in participating in these. With the farming games and Mini Planet, I could let my creativity blossom. As a writer, it’s important to do exercises that stimulate creativity. For example, if I’m writing about a character and want to develop that character’s environment, I can go to Mini Planet and design her home. Perhaps she is from rural America, and in that case, I can develop her surroundings based on things in the farming games.

While such games are entertaining and often provide a relaxing diversion, it’s important to police yourself, making sure you’re not getting so involved it’s difficult to separate the game from reality. There have been cases of individuals mentally meshing with online games to the point they have lost their jobs, their homes and relationships for the sole purpose of building a virtual life. While I can’t get that much into a game, recently I wanted to purchase an item for my house and was trying to remember where I saw it. Unfortunately, it was on my online game.

To effectively evaluate yourself, answer the following questions. If you are guilty of any of these, make sure you prioritize your life with the people and things that matter most. The least of these should be your online games:
1. Do you go straight to your game the minute you get up?

2. Are you late for work because you just couldn’t stop playing?

3. Are you staying up too late because you just can’t stop playing/just want to achieve one more level?

4. Are you spending less time with family and more time gaming?

5. Are you sitting there with your laptop playing games while watching a movie  with your family on family night?

6. Are you calling in sick at work because you don’t feel like working and would rather live out your fantasy life in your online game?

7. Do you think about your games often throughout the day?

8. Are you shirking your chores at home because you’ve had a rough day and you’d prefer just to sit and play your game?

9. For believers, are you spending more time gaming than with God?
10. Do you have difficulty separating your real relationships from your virtual ones?

If you answered yes to any of these, you may be headed down that addictive path. Try weaning yourself off the games and spend a couple of days not playing at all. If you find it difficult to do that, you may have a problem, and I would encourage you to seek counseling before it gets out of hand.

 For those of you who answered no to the questions, happy gaming! You are approaching it from a healthy perspective with a bit of relaxing fun as your goal.

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