Addiction - please help.

I've been this way since I played Civ1 many years ago. Started up again with 2... and briefly with 3 (but didn't last long), but is back very strongly with Civ4.

Basically the game consumes my life. I played the game 12 hours straight yesterday. Hel;, I needed to take a piss, but I waited another 3 or 4 turns before getting up. Crazyness!

This wasn't as big of a deal when I was younger with less responsiblities and when my body could handle 12 nonmoving, nonblinking hours staring at the computer. But now I can not spend this much time (at once) playing this (or any) game.

What I'm really looking for is a program where I can say "Let me play for an hour, then lock me out for hour." Or something similar. Hopefully you can't work around it easily. I have enough willpower to say I will quit in a hour... as long as that hour is an hour away.

Anything like this out there... or other suggestions?

Thanks so much,

Adam

My wife says the same thing about me. "Why did you spend 7 hours of unmoving unblinking time in front of that game? You do have things to do you know"

It may help to use the alarm feature in game. Also, have plans for when you get off the game. This way your not getting off the game to do what you have to 'here in a bit'. Start on what you quit the game for immediatly like errands or whatnot. As far as time spent with your significant other, um... try to get the game out of your head is all I can offer. If you catch yourself thinking about it, quit. Otherwise it will be calling your name and distracting you the whole time.

Anyways here is what I do. Set the alarm for like 2 hrs or whatever time you have, then when it goes off play to around the nearest 50 year mark. (650, 300, 250, 1200, 1650, etc.) That's my method. If I am at war when it goes off, I get to a good strategic position before logging off.

adamschroeder said:

I've been this way since I played Civ1 many years ago. Started up again with 2... and briefly with 3 (but didn't last long), but is back very strongly with Civ4.

Basically the game consumes my life. I played the game 12 hours straight yesterday. Hel;, I needed to take a piss, but I waited another 3 or 4 turns before getting up. Crazyness!

This wasn't as big of a deal when I was younger with less responsiblities and when my body could handle 12 nonmoving, nonblinking hours staring at the computer. But now I can not spend this much time (at once) playing this (or any) game.

What I'm really looking for is a program where I can say "Let me play for an hour, then lock me out for hour." Or something similar. Hopefully you can't work around it easily. I have enough willpower to say I will quit in a hour... as long as that hour is an hour away.

Anything like this out there... or other suggestions?

Thanks so much,

Adam

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What I do is turn on the clock feature and just keep track of it on the screen so I don't have to waste time turning around to see what time it is and also so I can tell if I've been on for too long or not.

Also note that I

could handle 12 nonmoving, nonblinking hours staring at the computer.

Click to expand...

Never attempt to smoke a briscuit while playing hotseat. Went to my brothers for a BBQ with his family. Put the briscuit on, got the heat right, then decided to hotseat for a hew hours while it was smoking. yup. Toasted it.

Thanks for the replys!

I actually didn't know there was an alarm or a time feature. Besides scouring through the civilpedia I actually haven't spent much time looking around the options screen.

Making plans ahead of time is definitely a good method to make sure you get off. When my wife is home she is actually a very good balance for me in making sure I don't spend to much time playing games, but she is retail store manager so I can't rely on her support much this time of year.

Most of what I need to do is on on the computer (programming projects and such). So, I'm actually at the office now so I don't get tempted to fire up the game (if I was working from home). Once I'm away... I'm ok. But breaking away is very hard. Small goals (like getting into a good strategic position in a war) don't work, as I come up with a new one before I complete the first.

The alarm option is cool, I will try that out. I just wish you could go into the options and set a permanent (unrevokable) command that said. Once the alram goes off save the game and don't let me play for an hour (or set other length of time). Then it would just need some way to know that I didn't go into my system settings and avance the time by an hour.

Cooking while playing is hard to do... I manged by turning the heat down low enough on the stove that it wouldn't burn if I 5 minutes turned into 15+.



adam

Making plans is a good way to force yourself off the computer. Trouble I find is my brain argues over whether or not I can cancel said plans to get in a few more turns. Not good.

My friend and I had a good chuckle at the alarm feature when we first noticed it. Haven't used it yet, but some poor programer had the right idea.

Civilization Anonymous. Must have been posted on these boards several dozen times, but here it is again.

Thanks for that link Kan. I hadn't seen that before.

Man... its to bad the whole "People are not responsible for there own actions" didn't continue after we went after the tobacco companies. If a couple fast food chains were taking down for making people fat, we could probably find a zealous lawyer to represent us civ addicts. We could get a huge settlement, become independently wealthy and then not worry about nagging responsibilities getting in the way of our play time.