10 Addictive HABITS ONLY Gamers Will Understand

Introduction

After playing a bunch of video games, I think it's safe to say that every gamer develops some sort of compulsive or addictive behavior within the games. You know, those strange behaviors that just don't make sense to the outside world. If you explain to somebody what you do in a video game, it might sound like you're talking a different language. That's going to be the focus of this whole video. We have 10 examples of strange addictive video game behaviors, so let's get started.

Saving Items for an Emergency

Saving items for an emergency but then beating the game without ever using them. I mean, this is a pretty obvious one. I think we've talked about this in the past. You know when you're just hoarding a specific type of ammo or a special grenade or the bullets for the Magnum, the most powerful gun, or something like that, waiting for the right moment, the right opportunity to use it? And then you just get so addicted to hoarding and saving that stuff for the right moment that you just never even end up using it. You finish the game by saying, "Oh, I never used that grenade launcher thing I needed." Or maybe you're hoarding healing potions like you're just walking out into the battlefield with a mound of them or something because you never know what's going to happen. Like what if there's a bigger emergency down the line? You're going to need all those health potions, right? This is a very common thing, at least for me personally, in survival horror games. Like when you're playing through Resident Evil for the first time and you don't know what's around the corner, you're going to hoard all those acid grenade launcher rounds or something like that, waiting for the right moment to use it. And then you just never end up doing so. That's why it's always so good to replay survival horror games like this because after going through a playthrough just compulsively hoarding health and ammo and trying to scrape by and then realizing there are a couple of parts in the game where you can let loose and use them, that's when you do that second playthrough. Still, we're starting this list with the most common one. I think we've all done it. Everybody plays it safe at some point because they want to win. They want to get through the game, right? So I would say, you know, maybe next time you play through a game, take it easy, let loose, use your stuff. The game is giving you these tools to have fun, right? But I mean, there's no changing this habit. You're probably still going to continue to do it anyway.

Talking to NPCs Multiple Times

Talking to NPCs multiple times to see if they'll say something new. This is, for me, the definition of insanity, doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result. Sometimes you click on an NPC, they say their little thing, and that's it. Then you click on it again, and maybe they'll say something a little different. They'll continue to feed you new things. Sometimes it's useful, sometimes it's not. Sometimes it's just the game designers saying, "Here, we'll give them a little bit more to say so the immersion isn't broken when you click on them twice." These non-playable characters think us no more than a shelter from the rain. We've spoken long enough. That being said, those games kind of spoil us for the games where an NPC just says one canned thing, and that's it. Because we've all done it. We've all clicked on an NPC multiple times and just heard the same line repeated a couple of times. Why do we do it? I don't know, but it's just something you walk over to an NPC with a name above their head and you spam the talk button. We've all done it, and nothing ever comes from it. You're hoping there would be some other line or something, but no, this NPC in this instance has no juice whatsoever. That being said, I've also found myself doing this when I don't know what to do in a game when I'm stuck at a point and I can't figure out where to go or what to do next. I will walk up to an NPC multiple times, and go, "Wait, wait, did you say? What did you say? What did you say?" Maybe if I walk away and come back and click on it, that'll activate the quest. I don't know. It's just that thing where you're trying to make something work in a game, and sometimes it means that poor NPC just has to say the same thing over and over again. It is a fool's errand, for sure. Some games play around with this whole talking to NPCs multiple times. In some games, they'll get annoyed when you click on them so many times. "You need to jump this much? Well, anyway, you know what to do." But that's few and far between. Most of the time, we just spam these suckers.

Trying to Kill an Important Character

The age-old trying to kill an important character just to see if you can. A lot of powerful, in-depth, well-designed RPGs allow you to do this. The games are specifically designed around you killing a quest giver or a significant character to be certain, and the game is written and designed to work around that and adjust to the death of a character. But then there are other games where that's not the case, just a regular old traditional game where you're stuck talking to an NPC and you want to take out a gun or a sword and see what happens, just to see. It's something that you would never do in real life. I'm notorious for attempting this. You know, you ever get stuck in a game where you're slowly walking behind an NPC as they walk you through an area, talking about something or another? That's when I try to see if I can take out my gun and point it at them and shoot them. Usually, games put in barriers in a place where, like, the gun just doesn't raise or it doesn't fire when you're pointed at that character, but that's more of a modern thing. In older games, I feel like you were able to just fire bullets right through that person, and nothing would ever happen. It's stupid. You missed. Missed again. But, you know, you didn't know until you tried it, and that's everything with games and with this list, right?

Hyper Intuition on Choosing Paths

This isn't like an addictive behavior, but I think this is more like hyperintuition, just something you get when you've played a lot of games. It's seeing two paths in front of you and immediately just kind of getting a feel or being able to easily identify which way is the right way, which way is the main path, and which way is the wrong path or just a distraction. And then you always end up choosing that wrong or distracting way first because this isn't real life. In real life, you know if you're faced with a fork in the road and you know going to the right is going to get you where you need to go, you're going to take that immediately. But in a game you love, in a game world, you just want to spend more and more time with and find more stuff, discover exciting new things, and just live in the world. You're going to take the wrong path because it means spending more time here and having even more fun. I mean, most of the time. Sometimes a wrong turn or a left turn can mean death extreme difficulty or just wasted time. Have you ever taken an alternate path or the long path or the wrong path and got to the end of it just to find a treasure chest with some lame-ass loot? It happens, but still, ultimately, I think we're glad we did it. And it's just what we all kind of tend to do in these games, man.

Getting Quiet in Stealth Games

This is a very specific one, not for everybody, but I've known some people who just get very, very quiet when playing a stealth game. You're not going to notice this unless you live with other people, you know, you have brothers and sisters around you, a roommate, a significant other, because they're going to come around and try to talk to you or try to do something or turn a light on or turn the radio on, and it's going to throw off your groove because you were trying to be silent as you were creeping through a game world. It sounds corny, but I think more people subconsciously do it than they would like to admit. It has no bearing on the game, of course. The game doesn't care what is going on on the other side of the screen, how loud you're being, whether the lights are on, or if like, you know, your mom or your husband or your wife is stomping around behind you behind the couch. None of that makes a difference to the game or to you winning it. The only way it does make sense is if you're being quiet to try to pick up on subtle sound cues in the game for enemy awareness and trying to sneak around that. But most of the time, it's just people being silly. It results in people doing things where, like, they change how they are while they're playing a game, which we'll talk about a little bit more later on in this video.

Stealthy Behavior in Non-Stealth Games

If we're talking about stealth, it's trying to be stealthy in a game that doesn't have stealth. Just a non-stealth game. We've all done it, and I think more and more modern games have adapted to this. You know, even in big open-world adventures that aren't stealth-oriented often allow you to crouch and kind of sneak around enemies that have kind of like detection rings and stuff like that. But not every game is created equal, and there are a lot of games where you're just not supposed to stealth, but you still try to do it anyway. Maybe it's a force of habit, maybe you're a coward like me, or maybe you just really love stealth games. You're going to do it if it means just kind of breaking the game a little bit to try to squeeze around a wall where an enemy doesn't detect you. But it's just like the broken AI, you know, something like that just might give you the leg up and get an extra hit on an enemy before they start wailing on you. It's manipulating games to your whim, trying to out-sneak the game that doesn't even really have sneaking like designed or put in it in the first place. But we all do it, and sometimes it works out a little bit. Other times, we just end up looking like an idiot.

Button Mashing During Loading Screens

If we're talking about strange addictive behaviors, things that we all do in games, it's mashing buttons while the game is loading. This is just something we all do and for various reasons. A lot of the time, it used to be out of boredom. Loading screens were long, and you would just kind of mash buttons to make it feel like you were doing something or just to screw around while you wait for the game to load while you're just staring at a screen. Every once in a while, a game would have a little bit of a thing in a loading screen that lets you press a button and make something happen just to kind of distract you. But that was few and far between. Most of the time, you're just mashing buttons, nothing is happening. You're just biding your time. It's kind of like the video game equivalent of twiddling your thumbs, but there's a controller in your hand. That's what I've always equated it to. But I'll also say that mashing buttons in a loading screen is also, if you're a rage gamer like me, if I lose a tense boss battle or some annoying encounter over and over again, I am going to mash the load button or the restart button, and then I'm going to continue to mash buttons while the game reloads. Does it make me feel better? Maybe. I don't know. Maybe I'm channeling my rage a little bit. But I'm just saying we all mash buttons during loading screens for different reasons.

Blaming the Game

This is a behavior a lot of us have developed: blaming the game when it's you. I mean, multiplayer gamers will do this all the time. We've talked about this in the past where people will blame lag, but it was just them sucking. Well, the same goes for any other game, like a single-player game or maybe like a Souls game. You press the block button or the dodge button or something at the right time, but the game still kills you or hits you, leading you to think that the game is stupid, not your blocking skills. I've done it. I've been there, you know, blocking or trying to parry or maybe trying to nail the Mikiri counter thing in Sekiro, just being so set on yourself being like, "Yeah, I got this. My timing is right. It's the game that's..." We've all been there. I mean, cooler heads usually prevail in this situation. It's best to walk away and come back. You'll probably realize pretty quickly it was you being silly. But it is a feeling we've all felt quite a few times. It definitely kind of becomes a compulsive thing where as soon as you screw up, you go, "Oh, come on, stupid game."

Move Playing

One of the most interesting ones is what I call move playing, where you change your body depending on how you're playing and what you're doing. Various reasons or examples of this I've known people that like when they hit the crouch button in a game and they like crouch, they might physically in real life kind of lower their head a little bit into their shoulders, lean down a little bit, just kind of tense up a little bit as you're crouching. I'm also very guilty of like in a game when you're winning, you're sitting back, you're chill, maybe you're under the blanket, you're leaning back, you're playing, having a good time. But when you're losing or things are really tough, you're leaning forward, eyes bulging out of your head, face closer to the screen, usually hunched, just general bad posture and probably not helping you succeed in the game. But it's just a habit. Also, my favorite one is with some people doing racing games like Mario Kart or something and young kids do this, but we're all still kind of guilty of it sometimes. It's turning the controller when you're steering in a racing game. Like if you're turning left hard, you might kind of shift your hand, shift your controller over to the left, almost like it's an imaginary steering wheel. It doesn't do anything in the game, but it's something that we've all done. You might be hooked or addicted to doing that, turning with the game without even realizing it. It's just another example of strange compulsive things we do.

"Just One More Game" Mentality

If we are talking about like addictive behaviors, I know we've been all over the place with this list, we got to talk about the whole "just one more game" thing. This is with multiplayer, but it's also like with run-based games, roguelikes, anything like that, or even like one more chapter, one more scene in a game. You say "just one more" and then you end up looking outside your window and the sun's coming up and you just wasted all night and didn't sleep playing a game. To me, that is the mark of a really good game. You're so hooked on it that you say "Just one more" and one more turns into three or four more. And if you're a competitive type of person, that's even worse, you know, because there's like different mindsets, right? Like you, if you're winning so much, you don't want to get off, right? Maybe you'll say like, "I'm winning, I'm on a good streak, maybe I'll stop playing when I lose." But maybe you just keep winning. Then there's the other side of the coin where you know you're losing and you say, "Well, I can't get off the game on a loss, I can't go to bed on a loss, I gotta get a win." Both of these approaches, both of these styles are dangerous if you're thinking like this in a game. I don't want to see you at a betting table in Vegas, that's for sure. But hey, those are 10 strange compulsive, sometimes addictive behaviors that we all kind of end up doing in games sometime or another. 

Outro

We want to hear from you guys in the comments if you have any examples of this, you know, maybe you're guilty of some of this or maybe something else, something we missed. We'd love to talk about this more. So let us know in the comments. But as always, thanks for reading, and we'll see you guys next time.