Why Quit DotA?
Read on.
As someone who has played DotA right from the map when Rikimaru’s ulti was a Death Ward and his invisibility was a skill that could be taken early, I have a long history with this game. It was fun times, those naïve years when LAN Gaming was all the rage and everyone I knew was either into Strategy games or FPS shootouts like CS.
Such a harmless entertainment model, is it not?
Yes, Computer games do have their benefits in that keep your brain active and stave off dementia in your old age (and insert the reason or fact that we use to justify it to ourselves), but the Harm far outweighs the Gain.
Sure, it’s harmless when you play a game for light relaxation and then get suitable relaxed and move on in life, but not when that game controls your relationships, your studies, your career and finally, your whole life.
Now, I don’t want to sound like a parent or a concerned friend or a doting girlfriend or worse, a know-it-all, but having Quit this and then fallen back into it eerily reminds me of my drug-addiction days.
DotA is just like that, it’s like the high you get off any drug or booze, making you forget all your problems and just completely grasping all your attention, till you see the game summary screen. Where it does differ from regular psychotropic substances is that you are not 100% guaranteed a high; because if you are like me, then losing a game is a depressingly huge low! When you have played with map hackers, drop hackers, lag hackers and their ilk, then you realise that there are people out there who would do anything to ensure their high.
I have played on both side of the fence, with hacks and without them. So, I can humbly say that I have faced what it’s like to play with them. I realised an even bigger low, losing while playing with hacks; sometimes its team mates, sometimes skill-levels, other times just wrong picks. But victory and defeat is part of life, it’s that when it’s DotA and why we play it, “Winning is everything and Losing is just another reason to continue playing", hoping against hope that the next game guarantees that which we so much desire, that feeling of accomplishment, that feeling of achievement, that feeling we are actually worth something more.
I just read what I have written down already and I realize something, having Quit this game and relapsed back into it so many times. I’m writing this down more for me than for you. But, I don’t want to be selfish about it. I have made enough mistakes with my life and I have wasted all my potential playing this game. I could have been anything, accomplished so much. But, I look back and I realize that the time I wasted playing this game is gone and I can never get it back.
I used this game to escape life and its problems. It was the purest form of instant gratification. And what do I have it at the end of all that escapism? The same problems, only they have gotten bigger and more difficult to deal with time speedily running out on me.
And this is why I used the word Quit, because when you are addicted to something so beautiful, yet ugly, something so enjoyable, yet deadly, and something so alluring, yet damning, just like any life-destroying drug, it's a dangerous addiction that you need to Quit.
I know I can’t convince you to Quit anything unless you want to of your own free-will. With 15 years of mistakes in my bag, on a signing-off note, I quote an old Russian Proverb:
“The Wise Man Learns from the Mistakes of Others, The Fool Has to Learn from His Own”I urge you, don’t make the mistakes I made, learn from my mistakes. Don’t waste away your awesome potential with this game. All those awe inspiring moves you pulled off, you can too in the real world. You know what it is that keeps drawing us back, the competitive urge. We have to transform that urge into real life scenarios and compete out there in the real world, where it truly does matter.
It's not going to be easy. But, ask this to yourself, "Was DotA easy?" How many AI games dide we play before we mastered Invoker and SF? How many noobness labels and death threats did we endure? But, we got through it all. Now, we bask in the silence that comes with grudging approval of our opponents.
Therefore, what this proves is we can do anything as long as we really want to, as long as we enjoy what we do.
For a parting thought, I leave you with this oft-quoted thought-provoking statement:
