Curbing the Addiction

As I drove up to Calgary this morning, I began to realize just how much time I've been wasting online with various facebook games. To be clear, I'm not talking about "there's 15 minutes of my life I'll never get back". No, it was more along the lines of creating Excel spreadsheets to calculate the return on investment for crops planted or upgrades purchased, etc. I even had a spreadsheet that could tell me if the progress meter showed 86% complete on a 6hr crop/ride/upgrade, that meant I have roughly 50 minutes before I have to come back and harvest/build/whatever for the next step. And there's always a next step. Or I could type in 67% on a 4hr project and it would tell me I have 1.32 hours remaining. You get the idea... There was also the time on the farm game where I found out how to overlap the fields and essentially triple the production output.

As I looked back, I saw some common elements between my "addiction-of-the-month" applications. First, they don't have any defined ends to the game. You continue to level up, seemingly without any upper limits. Second, you have to recruit a specific number of friends in order to unlock certain aspects of the game in increasing intervals. Third, when none of your friends want to sign up, you can always go into the discussion forums and post your link to the "Add Me" thread so complete strangers can add you as a facebook friend, allowing you to sign up under each other's group. Fourth, there are always incentives to come back to the game on a frequent and regular basis. I know people who set the alarm on their watch so they would know when to be back home in time to harvest their virtual crops on a farming game... While I never set alarms to remind me my game was ready, I did use Dawn's account to sign up under my character to help me advance in more than one game.

I freely admit my addiction, the most recent being Roller Coaster Kingdom, where you get to design your own amusement park. As you earn more experience points, you unlock new rides and attractions. You also book tours in advance, which bring more visitors to your park, which in turn earns more money and experience. I found myself staying at the computer in the evenings so I could book the tours with the 8hr lead time. That way, when I get up in the morning I'll have new visitors waiting to get into my park (if they wait too long in the parking lot without being admitted, they go away angry and you lose the money you paid to book them). I only had to befriend 18 total strangers in order to have enough neighbors to unlock park expansions and rides.

There was also a medieval adventure game where you complete quests, battle monsters and dragons, etc. When I deleted that one this morning, I had 53 members in my army. Not bad, but I only actually knew about 6 of them. My facebook games purge also resulted in removing about 60 "friends" I had either recruited or accepted from discussion forums. Before that was a futuristic pirate game, another medieval-themed game, a variation of the Sims, and the list goes on to embarrassing lengths.

Now that I've taken out all the games, I have to admit I'm going through application withdrawal. It was routine to log in and do my regular maintenance on the various games, and then check them again after 15 minutes... and again... and again...

I'm hoping to fill the void with actual productive activities. Books to read, personal development time, maybe even come out of the office periodically to see the rest of the house. Baby steps...