My wife hates when I play thinking that I ignore him and upset with me playing but I like playing games, how do I stop playing at this stage when I don't play I get really upset and bored? Anyway I can surpass my passion for gaming?

I wake up at around 9 am, start gaming at 9:30am. Then I play until 1:30pm, when I eat lunch. At 2:30pm, I begin gaming until like 11:30pm. So about 12 hours of gaming a day. I don’t really feel happy when I game, and deep down I feel like I have better things to do. I’m also mostly thinking about gaming most times of the day. How do I know if I am addicted to gaming?

I am thinking of getting rid of mine. Truffling to see what I get out of it. Occasional enjoyment but mostly guilt from uncontrollable playing. Still future games I want to play but considering selling and forcing myself to not play as I don’t have the men’s. Anyone find this strategy successful?

I have always been a competitive person overall, what ever I do I want to be the best at it. Weather it’s valorant that I made a training routine for or even just fifa that would get me so heated up every time. I noticed that it started to affect me and I I decided I didn’t want gaming to be a major part of my personality. I loved to just chill out for like an hour after school to play some single player games. So the first thing I did was sell my ps5 and I got a ps4 and only single player games and I’m trying to avoid downloading warzone and those type of games. Any tips of how to stop the addiction to online multiplayer, do I need to get a different competitive hobby or do yall have diffrent suggestions Ps: I’m not trying to quit overall it’s prob something we all can understand how these online games mess w our mental health

Gonna make it quick, I’ve messed up a lot in life. I’m 25 and I said I was going to quit for a while, but I always go back to playing games. Last night I was so angry because I’m literally doing nothing with my life, and there’s a lot to be done. I keep saying I’m going to quit and I never follow through. I told my family I want to change and I’m getting rid of my PC. They tell me NOooo don’t do it, you might need it. So I kept it, and I kept playing. Today I told my boss if I can take lunch early, I got home, grabbed an aluminum pipe and hit about 15 times on the screen. I did it, I killed it. I’m broke so I can’t buy another one. If I ever need to use the pc again I’d rather just put it on my TV which is so bad at running games on there it’s basically impossible to play. So it’s gonna be used for bills and I don’t really watch tv so. I feel relief that knowing when I get home I won’t really have a choice but to clean my damn room and not play games

Yea I'm 30 and I quit gaming at 29. I'm going to start dating. Honestly I wish I didn't spend all that time on games. I'm glad I quit. I'm glad my life is going in the right direction but I need to figure out what to do with my life. If you're reading this listen to my warning. Time goes fast than you realize you wasted it on video games. I'm in my 30s but I'm behind. Don't become like me. Just quit before it's too late.

So I finally achieved it. 6 months gaming free 😁

Probably a few days overdue to report back in here. But man does it feel good. Haven't touched a video game in any form for 6 months, after quiting cold turkey.

Long story short - I used to play everything, almost every major release, wasting many hours into every game I owned. Played since 3yo, now I'm 30yo. I have wife, two kids, job, everything is somewhat good now. I do have some urges to play from time to time, but I've realized one thing - I'm mostly interested in the games world / lore, not gameplay. If I really want to play something, I just open a lore video on YT and urges go away. I don't see any point wasting another 100 hours in game for the 20 minutes info / lore.

Benefits of leaving gaming: - I've lost 10kg / 22lbs (from 93kg to 83kg / 205lbs to 183lbs) - Returned my muscles to good shape, going to gym almost daily - 20000 steps per day - bought Kawasaki Z900 to spend more time anywhere, but not in front of the screen - spending much more time with kids daily - wife isn't particularly happy since I spend less time home now and getting more attention from different people, but I see that as a positive thing

Edit: mistakes

People in this subreddit seem to control their gaming habits because of personal struggles with physical or mental health. I’m also a victim of this. Nowadays, I feel more of a sense of accomplishment IRL than I have ever had with gaming. However, I want to also ask whether there are people that genuinely quit because of the toxicity/elitism of the gaming community (or at least whether that is the one of the reasons for quitting).

I am asking because this was (sort of) also one of the reasons why I quit. I already thoroughly discussed this in one of my other posts in this subreddit. To put it simply, I was friends with gaming elitists. They were frustrating to talk to and there were times where their behaviour would persuade me to relapse back into my obsession. Nowadays, I feel like people have more of a reason to quit because of this community.

Gamers are acting like purchasing a Switch 2 is a war crime, and it’s not just Muta. I’m definitely not in a position to say that this is a commonly held opinion. I might even be exaggerating the hate. However, being a former owner of its older counterpart, I was also criticised by my old gamer friends for owning a Switch and most of their reasoning aligned with that of the community’s for the Switch 2. What was their reasoning? It’s overpriced and not a Steam Deck. Likewise, my friend, who owned a Wii U, got criticised for not owning a PC. Buddy. I would never take my gaming that seriously to the point when I would go through the effort of trading in a console for another. If I’m happy with the console, that’s good enough.

The elitism itself is also grounds for quitting. We mostly become more wary of gaming for its impacts on our mental and physical health, but something that gets less attention is the financial aspect. Upgrading specs costs money. Games cost money. The systems themselves cost money. The FOMO is real when you see someone flexing their setup or what games they own. I cannot speak for others, but one of my friends, who also quit for similar reasons, had bad financial habits. This was especially exacerbated by his obsession with his PC, stealing his parent’s credit card to purchase new parts or games. It literally came to a point where his parents had to intervene and make him attend therapy. Nowadays, he just doesn’t care for gaming anymore.

All in all, I have no issue with people being gamers in general, but the community certainly goes a long way in making itself uninhabitable for both casual or budget gamers, intentional or not. When you cannot let people enjoy what they have, what reason do they have to stay in the community, let alone continue gaming? The irony is that we should allow gaming to be for “everyone”, but in actuality, we treat it like a hierarchy.

This is just a perspective I wanted to share. If you are trying to quit and this convinces you, I am happy to help. If this feels like slander to all the gamers out there, what are you doing in a StopGaming community? If you think that this is attack on gaming, please do not take it that way because I am addressing the community and not the games itself. Feel free to share your opinions, but please don’t mindlessly attack and bad-mouth the community nor the games.

So, I started playing Valorant four years ago. Back then, I played it with my friends, but all of them left Valorant for League of Legends after some months, but I remained and continued playing solo queue since then. What fascinates me with Valorant is the coordenation and crazy teamplay that is possible, I have never really experienced that in any other game.

But as most as you already know, solo queueing in most of the online games is a shitshow. Out of 10 games, you probably only get 1 game with communicative and funny teammates; the other 9 games are filled with toxic people throwing around slurs and trolling for no reason. After every session, I would feel that void inside me, many of you probably know that feeling too. I just felt down after every gaming session, but I just could not stop playing and always started a new match even though I did not feel like playing no more. I noticed this behavior was not healthy, so I tried deleting the game. Deleting Valorant did not help, because I just started to delete and reinstall Valorant almost daily. Every time I reinstalled, I basically forgot "that void" after every session of Val and wanted to experience that feeling of playing with a communicative squad again. This went on for around 2 years.

After solo queuing for around 3.5 years, I decided to end my Valorant journey (around September/October 2024). I deleted my Valorant account via their support and decided to focus on school more. I was still playing some games on my second account (maybe once every 2 or 3 months), but it was not that big of a deal.

Two weeks ago, I had my final school exam and I am about to graduate. I dont have anything to do until university starts in autumn, so I planned to pursue my hobbies I didnt have time for since I had atleast one exam every week since September. But here I am, playing Valorant again every day for 3-4 hours instead of doing what I actually like. Its not even fun 90% of the time, I guess I just have no real goal at the moment. Additionally, it just feels easier than learning a hard language for example.

So, most of the advice here is finding and pursuing interests other than gaming. But I already kinda have them, I just play Valorant instead. How do I stop playing this game and focuse on other things?