I still remember the exact moment I became truly addicted to a video game. It was winter break during my sophomore year of college, 1997. The dorms had emptied out for the holidays, but I’d stayed behind for a few extra days to pick up some shifts at the campus bookstore. My roommate had left his brand-new gaming PC behind—a beige monster with a Pentium II processor that he’d spent an entire summer’s earnings on—with strict instructions not to touch it.
Yeah, that didn’t last long.
He’d installed this new game called Diablo, and one night, bored and slightly buzzed from the cheap beer I’d been nursing, I decided to fire it up. Just to check it out, you know? Just for an hour or so before bed.
I didn’t move from that chair for fourteen hours straight.
I emerged from that first session in a daze, my eyes burning, stomach growling, desperately needing to pee but somehow not having noticed until that moment. Outside, the sun had set and risen again without my knowledge. The simple act of clicking on demons and watching them explode into bloody chunks had completely hijacked my brain’s reward system. I hadn’t experienced anything like it before.
Looking back now, I can see exactly what happened. Diablo wasn’t just a game—it was a perfectly engineered dopamine delivery system disguised as a game. And I had mainlined it directly into my frontal lobe.
The formula was diabolically simple: kill monsters, get loot, use better equipment to kill stronger monsters, get better loot, repeat forever. But underneath that simple loop was psychological quicksand. Every chest opened, every unique monster defeated carried the tantalizing possibility of a rare item drop. Maybe the next fallen shaman would drop that unique dagger I’d been hunting for hours? Maybe this treasure chest contained that set armor that would complete my collection? The unpredictable reward schedule—what psychologists call “variable ratio reinforcement”—is the same mechanism that makes slot machines so addictive.
My roommate returned after the New Year to find me pale, unshowered, surrounded by empty pizza boxes and Mountain Dew cans, excitedly explaining how my level 27 warrior had finally found the Godly Plate of the Whale (god, I can’t believe I still remember the name of that armor twenty-six years later). The look of horror on his face as he surveyed his dorm room—transformed into what could generously be described as a depression nest—still makes me laugh when I think about it.
“Dude,” he said, “have you been outside at all?”
The honest answer was no. Not once. Not even to check the mail.
That was my first experience with what I now recognize as the “just one more” phenomenon. Just one more dungeon level. Just one more boss fight. Just one more run to see if Diablo drops The Grandfather sword this time. The sun would start rising, and I’d think, “I should probably get some sleep… after I check what’s behind this door.” Three hours later, I’d still be clicking away, promising myself I’d stop after the next area.
What Diablo did so brilliantly—and what so many games have refined since—was to eliminate natural stopping points. There was always something just ahead, always another goal just within reach. The game never told you to take a break. It never suggested you might want to, I don’t know, eat something that wasn’t delivered in a cardboard box. It just kept offering more carrots, and I kept chasing them.
My grades that semester? Let’s just say they reflected my new priorities. My Intro to Philosophy professor wrote “Where have you been?” on my mid-term paper, which I’d clearly written in a caffeine-fueled panic at 4 AM. I wanted to write back: “I’ve been in the catacombs beneath Tristram, Professor. Far more interesting than Kant, I assure you.”
The physical symptoms of my addiction were bad enough—the bloodshot eyes, the wrist pain, the weird crick in my neck that I still sometimes feel when it rains. But the psychological grip was something else entirely. I’d be sitting in class, not hearing a word the professor was saying, mentally planning my build for a new character. I’d dream about the game—actual dreams where I’d be running through those randomized dungeons, hearing the distinctive sound effects.
My friend Tom (the NHL ’94 buddy from high school, who’d followed me to the same college) staged what he called an “intervention” but was really just him showing up at my dorm with a case of beer and MLB ’97 for the PlayStation. “At least this way we can both play something,” he argued. He wasn’t wrong. My obsession had made me a pretty lousy friend that winter.
I’m not sure I fully understood what was happening to me at the time. Video game addiction wasn’t really part of the cultural conversation yet. This was well before headlines about World of Warcraft players wearing diapers to avoid bathroom breaks or Korean teenagers collapsing after 50-hour gaming sessions. There was no framework for understanding what was happening, so I just thought of myself as really, really into this game.
But looking back with the perspective of twenty-plus years (and a few more gaming obsessions under my belt), I can see the hooks more clearly. Diablo pioneered many of the addiction mechanics that are now industry standard: the randomized loot system, the color-coding of item rarity, the endless progression systems, the social component of showing off your rare finds. Modern games didn’t invent predatory design—they just perfected what games like Diablo were already doing in the 90s.
The crazy thing is, despite knowing exactly how these games manipulate my brain chemistry, I still fall for it. Every. Damn. Time. Just last month I lost an entire weekend to Baldur’s Gate 3, emerging on Monday morning feeling like I’d been on some kind of bender. My girlfriend found me on Sunday night, still in Friday’s clothes, muttering something about needing to find one more ancient relic before I could save. “You’re forty-five years old,” she said, not unkindly. “How are you still doing this to yourself?”
I wish I had a good answer for her. The truth is, that first hit of Diablo rewired something in my brain. It taught me that few things in life deliver satisfaction as immediate and pure as watching a rare item drop after hours of grinding. Real life goals are messy, progress is non-linear, rewards are delayed and often disappointing. But in games like Diablo, the connection between effort and reward is crystal clear. Do x, receive y. The simplicity is intoxicating.
I’ve gotten better at managing these tendencies over the years. I set timers now. I make deals with myself—finish writing this article, then you can play for two hours. I avoid certain genres entirely during busy work periods (roguelikes are completely off-limits during tax season, for instance). I’ve learned to recognize the physical signs that I’ve been playing too long—the slight tremor in my hands, the way my eyes feel like they’re vibrating in their sockets.
But I still feel the pull of that original addiction whenever I start a new game that has similar hooks. There’s a moment of recognition—oh no, this one has randomized loot drops too—followed by a decision: do I want to let this game consume me for the next few weeks? Sometimes the answer is yes, and I clear my calendar accordingly. Sometimes I close the game and uninstall it immediately, an act of self-preservation.
I realize this all sounds a bit dramatic. It’s just video games, right? But anyone who’s experienced that particular brain hijacking knows exactly what I’m talking about. Games like Diablo aren’t just entertainment—they’re relationships. Sometimes healthy, sometimes toxic, always complicated.
I recently found my original Diablo CD while cleaning out a storage box. The disc was scratched almost beyond recognition, a physical manifestation of how many hours it had spent spinning in my PC. I felt a strange mix of nostalgia and wariness, like running into an ex you still have complicated feelings about. Part of me wanted to install it again, just to see if the magic was still there. The wiser part of me put it back in the box.
Some first loves are better left as memories. Besides, I’m pretty sure my girlfriend would hide my keyboard if I disappeared into Tristram for another fourteen-hour session. And honestly? She’d be right to do it.
But sometimes, late at night when I can’t sleep, I still hear the Tristram village theme in my head. And I can’t help but smile at the memory of that sophomore who lost himself so completely in another world, clicking frantically on demons and treasures, trapped in the most enjoyable prison he’d ever experienced.
Just one more level. Just one more item. Just one more hour.
Some things never change.
