This is addiction.

It seems so much easier to admit to being a drug addict than to admit to being a video game addict. To me, there is a sense of respect for the decision to go clean from drugs, while there is only shame associated with recovering from video game addiction. Playing video games has been one of my best kept secrets for the past couple of years, because it genuinely feels embarrassing to admit that that's what I spent the bulk of my free time on for most of my life. Not once have I explained to someone who isn't extremely close to me the extent to which I was absorbed in them, I always thought I would be judged in some way, and not once did I mention video games in my college application, despite being fairly achieved and sinking so many hours into them.

Much of my high school career was characterized by finding the equilibrium where I could balance my passion for video games with my expectation to perform academically. After a difficult transition during freshman year, I found the happy medium in the first semester of sophomore year, and for a while, I was flourishing in and out of school. On March 11, 2020, in a media briefing by the World Health Organization director-general, COVID-19 was officially announced to be a global pandemic. Two days later, I lost my life as I knew it. On March 13, it was announced that our school was closing down. I, along with everyone else, was ecstatic. No in-person school meant more time for myself, more time to do the things that I loved most. It meant I would be happier, right?

Freedom is blinding. Class attendance was for the most part optional, homework was minimal, classes were easy. A pass/fail system replaced traditional scoring methods. And I took this opportunity to shift even more hours into competitive gaming. That's when the delicate balance tipped. To this day, the year and a half I spent religiously refining my skills, with aspirations of playing professionally, still feels like a fever dream. In retrospect, it all seems so obvious; I would never succeed living a double-life as a full-time student taking six APs and a full-time gamer. To this day, I still feel a lot of shame admitting to the story, and everything I’ve lost as a result of it.

In June of 2019, Riot Games released their autobattler-style game, Teamfight Tactics (TFT), and I immediately fell in love. The fast-paced progression, pretty interface, skill expression, and critical thinking involved always felt more interesting to me than anything else. However, the main attraction was the ranking system, which allowed for instantaneous demonstration of improvement or regression, and it was because of this that I got so hooked. It's a system that constantly drives improvement, there was just a certain dopamine trigger associated with gaining Elo. In TFT, this Elo is referred to as "League Points (LP)." Additionally, the abundance of available streams and VODs and simple yet elegant progress tracking due to numerous analytics websites helped cultivate rapid improvement.

As a former two-sport athlete with a math olympiad background, naturally I was very competitive. In real life, competition is different, much less frequent. Opportunities to perform in music were rare for a mediocre pianist like me. Chess wasn't mainstream at my peak interest. Tennis and basketball only usually had 1-2 matches a week during the season. Nothing matched the ability to play multiple ranked matches every night in video games. Statistically, larger sample sizes allow for the most accurate demonstration of an individual's skill, and video game ranking systems allow for just that. In tennis tournaments, one off-game meant you were done. In basketball, a couple bad plays or a bad shooting night meant the bench. In a video game, you could simply requeue.

Ever since the release of the game, it was fairly clear that I was better than the friends I played with at the time. And this drove me to really find out what my true potential was. Still, I didn't take the game too seriously. In set 1, I peaked Platinum 3, about top 5%. In set 2, I hit Diamond for the first time, and in set 3 I hit Masters.

In most games I played growing up, although I did believe I was highly skilled, I was never top tier, partially because of paywalls or hardware limitations and partially because I always thought that school was more important. None of these were the case for TFT, so I set out to see just how far I could make it. For the entirety of summer 2020, I ate, slept and breathed TFT. In September of 2020, I passed the threshold to promote for Challenger, which is the highest rank, top 250 in the region, but I never actually hit Challenger due to dropping ranks before the ladder update. Around this time as school had started already, I grew more and more aware that I couldn’t maintain my form in TFT while still fulfilling my obligations as a high-achieving student. And blinded by the fact that success in TFT seemed to come easier than school, that was the option I chose; that’s the one decision that I still regret to this day.

In the moment, prioritizing TFT over school seemed like a very natural choice and seemed to be an enjoyable experience. I thought that I was finally focusing my full attention on what I loved most. In retrospect, it was anything but that. What started out as a hobby quickly grew unhealthy. I began to associate my self-worth with a number. And I played games on top of games to raise this number as high as possible. Losing would affect my mood for hours, sometimes I would be extremely irritable and on edge for days if I had a bad stretch of games. I hyper-fixated on TFT. I lost so much sleep. I wasted a summer. I let my responsibilities go. I wouldn't try in school. I played games instead of attending lectures in a summer camp I was lucky enough to get into. Worst of all, I ruined my relationship with my parents. For an entire year of my life, increasing my rank was essentially the only thing that mattered to me.

Eventually, I recognized that ruining my entire life for a sliver of a chance at competing professionally in TFT was never worth it. And by that moment, I had already reaped all I had to sow. But I was still stuck in the cycle of relying on video games to pass time and turning to them when I didn't want to do anything else. I didn’t want to give something up that I had dedicated so much time and effort to, even if it was for the better. There's this one quote that I feel sums up my experience, which is from Francis Chan: “Our greatest fear should not be of failure, but of succeeding at the things in life that don't really matter.” Because of my success in TFT, and lack thereof everywhere else, I lost sight of my goals, put all my eggs in one basket and lost everything.

Once I realigned my sense of priority, my relationship with my parents was still very poor because I didn’t really know how to make amends and also because I didn’t want to admit that I was wrong. And even after I woke the school-centered portion of my brain from the coma I put it into, I found it much harder to meet expectations than years prior. Despite trying my absolute hardest, earning an “A” still seemed so out of reach. Because of the easy access, constant stimulation, and instant gratification system that I was used to, I had effectively lost my ability to focus. My brain was hard-wired to seek high tempo, high stimulation, intensive experiences; homework and studying for tests was anything but that. Even when I dedicated myself back to my work, I was failing school and staying up all night not because the work was hard, but because I could not focus at all. Knowing I had the potential to do it, but at the same time drawing blanks and grasping at straws was the most frustrating feeling. And since I pushed everyone away, I had nobody to turn to.

Two years later after efforts to mend relationships, in March of 2022, I finally chose to open up, and I had a long conversation with my mom, debriefing my entire experience with video games, which felt like a big weight lifted off my shoulders. Although it was very apparent that it was difficult for her to understand and relate to, because her experiences in her teenage years were so drastically different from mine, there was a sense of relief in that I finally shared with her my world in a composed manner, and she received it with at least a bit of flexibility.

You would think this is where the story ends. Where I finally learned my lesson. Where I finally left the past in the past and moved on to bigger and better things. When I finally began to assess my priorities and move my life back on track. But I didn't. I had just had a successful summer semester, and was on track to becoming a "normal" person again, whatever normal means. But when everything in my life seemed to be going well, my inferiority called out to me once again.

See, I never hit the Challenger rank. Years of trying so hard and pouring so many hours, yet I couldn't even reach the highest ranking in the game. It never seemed out of reach. I'd always thought of myself to be skilled enough. In fact, I used to believe I was a top 10 player on the server, and could reach that spot on the ladder if I didn't have to go to school. Sometimes I still think I could. And this burden of potential has continued to consume me to this day. From the time I failed to hit Challenger in September 2020 to now, September 2022, I've always had a sour feeling with the game, like I had some sort of unfinished business which draws me back to it every single set. At the end of set 7, I tried to hit Challenger after seven months of barely being involved with the game and playing very casually. I failed.

With the beginning of set 7.5, I made it my ultimate goal to hit Challenger. If I didn't, I'm not sure what events would ensue. Probably something very, very destructive. Luckily, I succeeded. But it wasn't without a cost.

I became a gambling addict. I bet on my own gameplay. I put my wellbeing, my time, my grades, and my health all on the line. I began to sleep one to three hours on weekdays. I started to play eight hours of TFT a day, then nine, then ten, eventually peaking at fourteen hours. I would fall asleep at random places on campus in between classes.

When I was "close" to reaching Challenger, I told myself "fuck it, if I'm going to hit it, I might as well do it as fast as I can." So that's what I dedicated every single second of my life to. Unfortunately, that was the same week I had my first two major midterms. I couldn't focus on studying for those at all, since TFT was all I could think about. I was so addicted. Every waking hour was spent looking at statistics, thinking through game concepts, or playing the game. I didn't eat. I wouldn't leave my room. I was sleeping so little, I was hallucinating TFT units during lectures. I was watching TFT during class. I consumed energy drinks for the first time ever in my life, and before that I had never even drank coffee.

I wasn't even enjoying my time. Every misplay I made made me so angry. Every time I lost due to my perception that I had received worse rolls than other players especially aggravated me. Losing LP annoyed me beyond belief, especially when I felt like I didn't deserve to lose. I continued to play only because I was so fixated on reaching my rank. A meaningless accomplishment, and I put myself through hell for it. On Friday, October 30th, 2022, I finally hit Challenger.

You would think I feel happy about it, especially since I posted it on my Instagram story. I do, a little bit. It provided me with the closure that I so desperately needed from this game. But naturally, we only want to show our strengths on social media. And truthfully, TFT has brought me more pain than it has pleasure these past couple of weeks. This promotion screen is not a sense of accomplishment, it's a sense of, "fuck, I'm so fucked up."

With that being said, I don't think I'll ever go back again. I accomplished what I set out to do, and despite the fact that it still feels like there is unfulfilled potential, the immeasurable pain associated with playing the game just isn't worth enduring. With that being said, I don't think I will take TFT seriously for the forseeable future. I will decay back to 0 LP, and that is perfectly fine by me.

I think at last, I can finally feel good about ending my toxic relationship with the game. The burden of potential now weighs a lot less on my shoulders. It was the never the game I was addicted to, but the rank. The predatory system that controlled my entire life. And at the very least, I'll have that cool metallic sound, and the 2022 Worlds anthem from the client as my Grandmaster icon morphs into the Challenger one as a good final memory.

I'll be posting a follow-up about my thoughts on set 7.5 specifically, as opposed to my entire experience with TFT, and reasons why it was so frustrating (and addicting, which comes hand in hand with frustration). It will probably be very confusing and less interesting to someone who does not play the game, but it is something I would like to write.

This has been jsn7, signing off for a final time.