My Addiction

It was only supposed to be something to cure boredom at work. 

Sure, there shouldn’t be boredom at the workplace, but, let’s face it, we all experience it.  Those dead minutes turn into torture when you essentially have zero to do.  Of course, you could tell your employer that you have ample time to work on something other than your daily tasks, but that would take away from potential slacker time.  Being a typical droid that worked in front of a computer all day, there was only that beautiful playground known fondly as the internet to cure my tedium.  Unknown to me, my latest find while randomly surfing would become an addiction that would rival any drug habit.

It all started with a Google search on vampires.  Yes, I’m one of those who likes the vampire genre.  Don’t judge me based on current events.  I’ve loved vampirism long before the recent sparkly, night dweller phase.  So there we are, I searched “vampires” for something to read and saw the first hit was a gaming forum.  Forums are always fun to frolic in, so a clicking I went.

It was within the forum that I happened upon a role playing game that was vampire based.  “Play for free” it touted in bold letters scrolled across a banner.  “Free” is always a good option in my book.  Free meant I didn’t need to invest anything except some time which is all I wanted to sacrifice.

I clicked on the banner and was whisked away to some dark yet motley welcome page that requested I give my e-mail and create a password.  This was nothing new or unusual, so I obligingly filled in the asterisked fields and set-up a gaming account.  My computer prompted that I had a new e-mail which was a confirmation e-mail from the gaming site.  I followed the link and confirmed that “yes, I wish to play this game”.

Within 20 seconds of game play, and received three messages asking to join a clan and I was dead.  Wait … what just happened?  I wasn’t even in the game for a full minute.  I was reading how to play the stupid thing via some helpful links within my in-game inbox when I was annihilated by someone named “NewbKiller”.  In my eyes, that was not very sporting of them.

I messaged Mr Killer and asked why they were rude enough to kill me when I hadn’t even started to play.  Their reply was as terse as their in-game profile which simply read, “If you don’t like me killing you, booster or quit.”  Booster?  I responded by asking what exactly a booster was and how I could obtain it.  They didn’t reply.  Since I was already dead and there wasn’t much else I could do in-game, let alone I really didn’t feel like working, I took it upon myself to find out.

I quickly discovered that the word “free” was the way to draw me into the game.  If I wanted to seriously play and survive, I had to pay real cash to the game developer and owner for in-game points.  These points could then be spent on VIP packages that allowed my character more access to game abilities, or they could be spent on booster packs that gave my character a bump up in overall statistics.

Since I was still bored and didn’t see the harm in spending a few dollars, I purchased a bunch of game points.  With these points, I bought a VIP and a booster pack.  After applying the pack, I went into the game forum to see how to really play without dying.  It stated that joining a clan helped newbies and was a great way to get acclimated with the game.  So I went back to my inbox and clicked the first clan invite I received when my account started.  I instantly became a clan member and was given the title of “Dirt” at a rank of 1.  My clan leader then messaged me a bunch of things, telling me what to do for the clan and how to build my character.  Checking my watch and realizing almost an hour had gone by without me doing an ounce of work, I quickly logged out.

When I logged in the next day from work, I had been killed a total of 14 times while I wasn’t online and been given a warning from my clan to start killing others or be kicked out.  I went to my clan forum, read how to kill, healed myself, and went on to kill a bunch of characters with what little energy a new player like me had.  I did this all day long while intermittently doing my job.  By the time I was ready to go home, I had killed a total of 60 players and went from being “Dirt” to “Potential”.  Yay!  My clan leader even messaged me on how well I did and rewarded me with a small booster.  I was so thrilled, I couldn’t wait to come back to work the next day.

This continuous pattern of playing from work, spending money on points, killing for rewards, and generally meeting lots of new “friends” went on for weeks.  I even started playing from home at night when the rest of my family went to sleep.  I was slowly becoming one of the top killers in the game and even got to the point of being able to kill NewbKiller with one hit.

Then it all came to head.  My husband questioned the close to $400 I had spent on a game in six months and my boss had cited me for low productivity.  My workplace noticed my unusual internet usage.  I was lucky in that they spared mercy by not firing me, but instead laid me off.

I abandoned my family emotionally for my in-game husband and friends.  I lost my job and live on the dole.

But I’m still one of the top killers in-game.

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