Sisyphus Triumphant

I need to level with all of you.

I’m an addict.

Not to drugs, thank all the gods and goddesses above.  I don’t actually even try drugs, for fear my personality is far more addictive than the limits I’m already familiar with.

Not to alcohol, although my penchant for writing while drinking may upend that yet.

No, what I am addicted to is a video game.  It’s called League of Legends.

Let me be clear: This game is toxic garbage.

I mean that.  It’s not a joke.  This game involves some of the most detrimental flaming this side of youtube trolls.  You are basically asked to drink volcanic lava flows of liquid poison while trying to corral four random yahoos to focus on objectives instead of fighting each other endlessly. 

Playing League of Legends requires an immense amount of personal fortitude, combined with a colossal ability to ignore things going poorly and focus on what will make you win.  To top all that off, you require the reflexes of the best twitch gamer (First Person Shooter-type) in the universe in order to land all your abilities in the fashion required.

Now, do that for roughly thirty minutes every game, with the possibility of hour long games a real threat.

By all rights, I should’ve thrown up my hands and quit playing this game a month after I first started playing it. 

I’m addicted though.  Addicted to the style of game it represents, which is a MOBA.  MOBA’s originated in 2003 with the advent of Warcraft 3 and the vast array of map modifications it spawned.  I played the original Defense of the Ancients when it came out, and I have. not. stopped.

I played DotA when I should’ve been focusing on school work.  I’ve played DotA when I needed to be exercising.  I’ve played DotA when I should’ve been looking for work.  You name it, I did it.  It has cost me, without a doubt, more than almost any other activity I have ever engaged in.

And I cannot stop playing.  The thought of going without some form of MOBA in my life makes me physically ill.  Really.  If that isn’t an addiction, then I don’t know what is.

This year, it has gotten extremely dark.  I lost my job in May, my short stories are basically worthless junk, and to top that off I’ve packed on close to fifty pounds.  I’m at a real low point with my self esteem and self worth.  With League of Legends, I’ve had seven seasons (years) of shiny borders and rewards which function as a reminder that I’m not worthless.  That I strive to be excellent at everything I do, because that’s just how I’m wired.  I like winning, and I work hard to make sure I keep doing it. 

Yet… yet. 

This year, I tried to stretch myself from my normal plateau in League.  There are ranking systems in League if you care to venture into ranked play.  They are as follows:  Bronze, Silver, Gold, Platinum, Diamond, Master, Challenger. 

For me, I stop at Gold each season.  It puts me in the upper third of players, and gives me access to the most ‘time efficient’ level of rewards.  I get the triumphant skin, which starts at Gold.  I get a special border displayed to all players distinguishing my accomplishment, and I get a few other odds and ends goodies.  It’s nice, honestly.  It’s been a constant source of pride, and despite the way you may hem and haw at ‘accomplishments’ in a video game, this is actually an eSport with tens of millions of fans and players.  Being good at this game is no small feat, and it’s definitely something worth noting.

When things turned south for me, I hatched a plan.  Like most hair-brained schemes, it looked really good on paper.  When it inevitably soured on me, it went lemon so hard that I’m certain I’ll be dealing with the scars from it for years. 

I wanted Platinum. 

Platinum is a step above Gold in the rankings, but it is far more than a step above Gold in the player base.

Most people do what I do: They hit Gold, and call that good enough.  There’s a lot of turnover and new player entry in the Silver / Gold border, and getting to Gold is usually enough of a chore than pushing harder isn’t really desirable.

Why’s that you ask?  Because, you can be demoted. 

Yeah, I should’ve remembered that. 

When I began pushing for Platinum, I had comfortably reached Gold in my standard game number.  Usually around twenty to thirty games of ranked is enough for me to push through.  That wasn’t enough this year.  I wanted to prove that I wasn’t a worthless piece of garbage (I’m not, but depression brain is a harsh taskmaster).  So I continued playing ranked games.

I won some, I lost some.  I climbed a little in Gold, but backslid pretty consistently.  Eventually, I got to the point where losses cost me more points than a win would gain me.  See where I’m going with this?

I crashed, hard.  I’m a very good league player, and my mechanics and game knowledge are easily on par with the players in the middle of Platinum.  However…  There are five players in a game of League of Legends, and we are all mushed together without any real ability to coordinate or otherwise communicate in a game specifically designed to require teamwork to win. 

Yeah.  Yeaaahhhh.

I started losing, a lot.  I got demoted.  No problem, I could fix that.  I would grind out my promotion series and pop back into Gold.  Rinse, repeat.

Four times, I was demoted, four times I climbed back.  I was roughly a hundred games in now, and getting kind of nervous.  At this rate, it was going to take forever to climb into platinum.

Enter demotion number five.  I went on a twenty game losing streak.  I am not making that up.  I dipped down so low I was playing with people who had never been anything but Bronze.  The lowest ranking possible.  It was… ugly. 

I got super depressed about this.  I’m a better player than almost everyone in my game, but the game requires that you work with the players in your group to win.  I can’t play every role, I can’t be everywhere on the map.  I can’t do everything myself.  So I would lose, and lose, and lose.

This happened in Mid-August.  From the time I dropped for the fifth time to Silver, UNTIL LAST NIGHT WHEN I FINALLY GOT GOLD AGAIN, I played a thousand ranked games of League of Legends.

One.  Thousand.  Games.

Half an hour, usually more like fifty minutes, per game.  Twelve to fifteen games a day, FOR NEARLY THREE MONTHS.

Each time I queued up, I knew this would be when I turned it all around.  Each time, I would get close, then have someone deliberately lose the game for our team.  Or have someone disconnect in anger, or a litany of problems I can’t even begin to describe to you unless you’ve played a significant amount of the game.

Problem after problem, game after game, I went nowhere despite all the effort I put into the game.  No matter how well I learned my role, no matter how flexible and supportive I was with our team.  No matter how individually talented I am, I couldn’t lift us to victory enough for it to matter.

I took this hard.  Really, really hard.  I had tied all of my self worth, all of my own meaning as a person, to this game.  This one thing I had that I was still good at, that I could still rely on.  I bought all sorts of equipment to stream the game, I was ready.  This would be the corner I would turn my life around on.

Negative good buddy.  That’s a big nopearino.  I couldn’t even stream, because people only watch when you’re above a certain level.  Close to ten million people play this game: No one wants to watch your average hum-drum.

I begged, I pleaded, I pushed, I pulled.  I gave everything that I was and everything that I am to each game, only to fail over and over and over and over. 

I became, in a real sense, Sisyphus.  I was doomed to forever push this boulder with all my might, only to start over again once it fell back down the hill.  I had entered my own personal hell.

I don’t mean that as a trivial thing.  If hell is real, if I am wrong about the whole afterlife thing, I now know exactly what I will be doing for all of eternity.  And I will do it to myself.

I could’ve quit.  I could’ve called it a wash, and done other things.  I could’ve focused on the blog (which suffered terribly without me writing consistently).  I could’ve focused on promoting and writing more material.  I could’ve done a host of other things with the six to eight hours a day I played of League while I searched for work.

Yet each day I would tell myself it was today.  Each game would be the one that started the winning streak back into Gold.  Platinum had become a lost dream, a desert oasis that was simply a mirage, vanishing in the heat haze as I waded through a desert of Silver. 

I’m not well, mentally.  I have a host of personal issues that I’ve fought hard to maintain control over, and I was jobless and broke, with no access to medication.  This had become what my mind focused on.  I lost a lot of things in those few months.

I lost my connection to my siblings, because I was so constantly tired and extremely upset that I was unable to deal with them in a rational fashion.  We’ve never really seen eye to eye on a lot of things, and our relationship was strained as it stood.  However, this was the final straw.  They don’t want to talk to me anymore, and the feeling is mutual.

I pushed away a really good person, who just happened to catch me at the wrong time on the wrong day, and I wasn’t really able to articulate to her what had happened, or the full depth of what I was struggling with.  My whole entire Id had become tied to this game, and my failures there became my failures everywhere.  How could I explain that properly, rationally, when I was mired in the depths of it.   I hope we can work through it and get back to being friends.  My family needs her.  She’s good people.  If she doesn’t though, I’ve no one to blame but myself.

Speaking of families, I’ve been a nightmare at home.  The house is… well, it looks like a tornado went through it, and no one bothered cleaning up after.  I’ve worried the wife sick, who has already had so much to deal with it’s insane.  I’ve been ugly to the toddler at times, who can’t help that he’s two.

It’s over now, however.  It’s finally over.  I cried for a full half hour before I could wake my wife up to show her that it was over.  My mind, convulsing and feverish as it maintained its death grip on League and my self worth, relaxed.  I got some of the most restful sleep of my life since I claimed Gold for the sixth and final time.  I’ve cleaned more of the house in the last day than I have in the last two months. 

It will take time to heal from this.  I did myself serious damage because of my addiction.   I did others around me damage because of it, too.  If I had one wish, it would be without a doubt to wish away any sense of caring for or about any MOBA ever again for all of my days.  Yet I can’t do that.  I can’t stay away, so what I need to do is bear the scars from this year.  They will have to serve as a reminder that I can’t do everything myself, and that no matter how bad things may seem, I am never worthless. 

I fervently pray it will be enough.

Leaguefully,
Justin