Gaming Anxiety

The title of this post isn't a life threatening condition, or an ailment that can be diagnosed, but simply a description of a feeling I've experienced a lot. The best way I can describe the condition is 'the buildup of intense feelings (pressure, dread, trepidation) experienced during a session of playing video games.' Trying to come up with the best way of fleshing out this idea led me to describe it using anecdotes from my own personal experience, which I'll share now.

One of the first times I truly experienced gaming anxiety was while playing through Bioshock. In this case, I think there were a multitude of factors that combined to create this particular version of gaming anxiety: the combination of the macabre setting and narrative; the mix of psychological 'terror' (i.e. hearing movements or voices somewhere, but not knowing when the owner of the voice would try to end my life) and 'jump you in your seat' scares; my relative inexperience with the FPS genre, creating real tension as I learned the controls; the fact I played the vast majority of the game at night in a poorly lit basement on a large TV with good surround sound. All of these contributed to the fact that I couldn't play this game for long stretches before my nerves would feel raw and frayed, I would be jumping at the slightest noise, from the game or within the house, and I would feel genuinely overwhelmed and shut the game off. It wouldn't be until the next day that I could start another play session, after all the perceived dread and excess adrenaline had drained away.

A second, and rather intense, case of gamer anxiety came about because of my desire to play through Half-Life 2. In particular, I vividly remember having a lot of trouble playing through the Ravenholm section of the game. The well-crafted atmosphere of the game, in addition to the enemy encounters and multiple 'jump in your seat' moments made it particularly difficult for me to deal with this part of the game. After that, I was always on the edge of my seat, waiting for the 'jump' moment in the excellent guided experience that Valve created, which added to the overall tension. Reflecting on this particular setting after completing the game, I did realize that it was one of my favorite segments, regardless of how I felt while experiencing it.

The next time I remember experiencing gaming anxiety came during my experiences with Fallout 3. In this case, the feeling of hopelessness, isolation and despair created by the good folks at Bethesda really got me thinking, with the added condition that my play sessions always occurred at night in the dimly light corner of the basement, adding to the overall ambiance of the situation. After an hour or two of adventuring, exploring old buildings and being jumped multiple times by enemies hidden around corners, all the while soaking in the atmosphere of the environment, I would have to stop playing and purge that experience with some lighter fare. Often I would need to read a book, watch something on TV or simply have a conversation with my wife, all of which needed to be about a lighter topic than what I'd been dealing with in the game. There were some nights when I wouldn't properly decompress after a game session, and those nights were often plagued by dark dreams or fitful sleep.

The latest experience I've had with gamer anxiety comes in the form of Borderlands. In this case, my lack of FPS skills combined with the game's atmosphere seem to be the biggest contributor to the intensity of the feelings I have after the game has been turned off. In fact, last night was a night where I didn't sleep that well, mostly because I didn't properly decompress after an almost 2 hour game session. That experience was the genesis for this post.

Not all games affect me in this manner. During a period in my life when I had far more free time, countless hours were spent playing round after round of golf in Tiger Woods PGA Tour '04 and '05 on the XBox and PS2. As a kid I could wile away entire days on NES games like Romance of the Three Kingdoms or Wizardry. I couldn't even begin to account for the time I spent playing the original Everquest, first in '99 - '00, and then later in '03 - '04. Nowadays, though, whenever I try to play a game with intense narrative and/or setting, or (more often) involving the first-person perspective, I succumb to the buildup of tension and anxiety and feel the need to step away for a bit and decompress.

Has anyone else experienced this? A cursory search on the internet provided no other relevant material, but if you're out there and have dealt with anything such as this, your comments, experiences, thoughts or observations are more than welcome.