Sonic The HedgeBlog

Did you miss me yesterday? I know you did. Don't pretend you didn't keep pressing refresh all day waiting for my daily blog entry.

For this, I apologise - I hate to disappoint you so.

Today I'm going to be talking about my gaming addiction, or my fear of being consumed by it.

First of all, I should highlight that I am not actually a 'gamer' or whatever it is these people like to call themselves. Sorry but I don't get excited about the prospect of turning myself into an elf in World of Warcraft and fighting white tigers with enchanted nunchucks. In actual fact I have no idea what the fuck it's all about.

Similarly, I've never owned a Playstation, or an X-Box, or a Wee-Wee or whatever they are called.

I haven't for a reason - I would become addicted way too easily.

As a child I did have an Amstrad 64K, on which I played Treasure Island Dizzy to reasonable excessiveness when I was about 11 years old. And I briefly had a Sega Megadrive as a 14 year old on which I played Sonic The Hedgehog until I got bored and gave the console away (Mum & Dad wouldn't buy me any other games & I was more interested in spending my pocket money on Panini sticker albums at the time).

But since these innocent times, my interaction with computer games has always been brief but scarily intense to the point where I've had to go cold turkey to get away from it.

Three Instances brought me to the realisation that I'm a freakish addict when allowed unlimited access to computer games:

1.) In my 1st year at University, bored at the lack of actual study to do (or made to do at least) I played Donkey Kong Country on my flatmate's NES for the first 4 weeks of term. After he took the NES away from me, I spent the remaining 6 weeks of the term playing Sim City 2000 on my PC. Even now I am often reminded by one ex-flatmate that whenever he walked past my room he only ever heard gorilla noises or the sound of bulldozers raising virtual schoolhouses to the ground.

2.) Shortly after University, I borrowed a Playstation from someone whilst they were on holiday for a week. I played a Football Management game for about 18hours in one sitting until I realised I needed to stop.

3.) A Few years later I wondered what all the fuss over The Sims was about, so bought a copy and played it at home after work. In a similar case to the previous incident, I one night looked down at my watch to see it was 5am, I hadn't eaten since lunch and I had to be up for work in 2 hours. I destroyed the CD with a hammer.

Since these worrying dalliances with the dark world of gaming I have actually spent the last decade of my life pretty much free of this pursuit.

Until about 3 months ago that is, when i discovered Farmville via Facebook. Now, I don't know what it is about this particular game, but at the moment I'm obsessively visiting my virtual farm to harvest crops and milk cows on a daily basis. There are 44 crops which you have to plow, plant and harvest to gain 'mastery' of the crop. Depending on the crop, you may have to do this 500 times or even 26,000 for each crop to gain this 'mastery'.

I've mastered 17 already and I don't know how the hell I'm gonna stop before I've done all 44.

As you also interact with other players to gain and grant gifts and extra levels of play sometimes you have to post things on your Facebook wall in order to get access to them. So strong is my addiction to this game that I don't even care about looking silly by posting these messages. Indeed, just an hour ago all my facebook contacts were informed about the perfect Morning Glory I'd grown this morning.

My name is Fantastic Mr Ox, and I am a Computer game addict.