People Going Homeless Playing FFXI

I have never played an MMO so addicting that it may have contributed to some players going homeless. This was a long time ago, maybe 10 years, like back when you could play the game on Xbox 360, some people I played with told me they were homeless while in-game. Being younger at the time, it never made me realize how powerful this game could be. It's almost as if that message that pops up before you load into the game was trying to warn me about something. I hope those guys are doing okay now, being such a long time since this happened.

I am now curious; were these rare events that I stumbled on, or something other players have witnessed themselves? Was this game truly destroying people, and if so, does it do it today?

There was someone back in like 2009 in a linkshell I was in back on Odin. His character name was Ojaeh or something, so yeah he told us he lost his job and his wife left him due to how much time he spent on this game.

I don't feel it is this game exactly, we use this game as a form us fun and escapism, I also feel a lot of people who this happens to have some form of underlining issue, or they are struggling with they current lifestyle. (Bad boss or horrible job etc)

Either way it's never fun to see and I feel for anyone who struggles in such a way.

At some point I probably reached very close to that level of addiction, but I always had a stable job so even half assing at work, I still was paid full for it.

I dont know if I would go homeless if I were paid for productivity though, but I can symphatize, yes.

But I think there is a heavy human factor that plays a bigger role than the game itself. Im like that, even playing Palworld, I sometimes feel the urge to ignore my duties to keep playing. It can be kinda destructive when a person has this weak mentality and cant control some urges.

But if you focus solely on FFXI, maybe nowadays not so much. The urge back then was mainly to play with people I had met in game. The cities were so more lively so the player immersion to "another world" was quite solid back then, so much that you can understand people trying to skip reality and feel like Vanadiel is their real home. After all, in real life maybe you have a shitty job, shitty friends/parents, everyone is hostile to you while when you go to Vanadiel, everyone were genuinely happy to see you and play with you. Maybe you also had a Kannagi (popular at that time), then you were like the Superman in Abyssea, in contrast with you weak real self.

Nowadays, game is cold, most linkshell are silent for many hours, many prefer pulling a trust and beating shits. Progression is also more linear than back then, where everyday you could call friend to do NNI, do VW, do X, Y, Z different mobs in abyssea, just grab your underleveled job and jump in gusgen mines to have an invite and beating skellies. Then someone pulls a Ghould and wipe all the gimps. Maybe doing a boss rush in Abyssea for progression. Or farming bayld for the amazing Thundaraut set.

Yeah, nothing is like this anymore so I dont think the feel of escaping the reality is the same. Actually most of time, the feel is like grinding in FFXI is just another job.

I lost my house in FFXIV when I decided I'd rather play FFXI instead. I'm homeless!

I'm really glad you posted this. It's a very salient topic and that warning in the POL launcher is no joke.

A few things (mostly people and a few situations) come to mind:

• I know a person who had to play just one more Nyzule Isle back in the day, woke up late, missed his morning flight and lost his job. He worked offshore for 6 months at a time.

• Someone else got divorced because of how much time he spent on FFXI.

• Another player's spouse: you could hear their spouse on Teamspeak/Ventrilo ...screaming and throwing dishes all over the place because they came home to find their significant other on the computer...

• I definitely worry that people with addiction are transferring their addiction from one thing to another. (i.e. Former smokers, gamblers, drug users often shift from one addiction to the next and will only be a matter of time before they transition again).

In general, I am also concerned how addiction can change the neural pathways in our brains. Even if we can hold down a job, take care of a family, behavior that extends itself through addiction, might diminish that person's capability to feel pleasure in otherwise normal ways. (These often manifest as poor hygiene, neglecting other responsibilities and actively or passively allowing a relationship to deteriorate).

I had a friend, who said in ~2002: "if you have a friend who introduces you to an MMO, that friend is a colossal assole." Honestly, I don't think he's wrong.

Edit: I don't want my reply here to sound too heavy-handed. I have made some awesome friends and met some great people playing FFXI. I'm truly grateful to be a part of this community.

While you usually hear horror stories of how MMORPGs ruined people's lives, it was the opposite for my friend and I. We both recently caught up and talked, wondering how the hell we both ended up where we currently are professionally, and I jokingly said FFXI prepared us for the real world, listing off examples of such. As we light-heartedly listed off reasons to each other, it became apparent that it was mostly true. Preparing for events, showing up on time, communicating with your group and complete strangers to execute various strategies, managing other players or multiboxing to designate tasks as a leader/strategist, putting in time/effort towards organized short/long term goals, learning from your previous attempts and testimonials of others, and more. You would think these are extremely basic tasks, but I'm sure we've all worked/played with at least one person that caused a wipe/makes work a pita that shows otherwise.

As for actual effects, my friend did marry someone they met in game and are still happily together after all these years, my GRE exam was filled with scholar job abilities in the English portion allowing me to pass with a decent score, and during my last job interview I referenced experiences from the game (thanks Odyssey progression) and managed to get hired for a 50% salary increase compared to my previous job.

People that played back them were in the age group 18-25, and were the most likely to get thrown out of their parents for being layabouts. Layabouts need something to do to fill their time, an mmorpg is the prime target for them.

The problem isn't the mmorpg, it's them (or to be more accurate their well meaning parents). If not the mmorpg, it would be Halo, CoD or something else.

Also there really is no addiction to a video game (especially not one as slow paced as XI), and it cheapens the word to use it that way.

There were issues such as lack of sleep, or playing too much. That wasn't because of addiction though, just players wanting to achieve things and the way the game used to be setup wasting too much of your time (lfg for hours, hnm)

Here is an addiction:

"I have an appointment today that will ruin my life if I don't go, I'm not gonna go cause I have to do the thing I'm addicted to."

"I won 10 million dollars, time to do the thing I'm addicted to so much I'll be dead / have no money left in a month"

Wanting to spend all your free time in a game, is not an addiction. It's having issues with life and embracing the game world to get away from them.

If you get divorced cause you spend all your time on XI, the problem isn't XI. It's that you don't like spending time with your wife, or that she isn't willing to share your hobby to spend time with you.

I decided to try this game out during my junior year of college. I may have lost all my free time and my 4.0 GPA, but every bit of it was worth it lol.

This all feels like a personal attack

You mean when my dealer told me to consum responsibly he was upright about it?

Yeah, the problem isn't meth, the problem is your wife not wanting to do meth with you.

Your friend was quite intelligent. Wise beyond his years as mmos hadn't really been widely introduced yet.
(It is fairly true for any hobby though)

Disagree, for instance if someone introduces you to a sport and you get hooked chances are you do it for fun, human interaction or health reasons. Some games, MMO's in partiuclar, go far beyond trying to be a fun pass time. They make a effort to exploit human behaviour and I doubt you find many sports where this was the core idea for the activity.

Yeah, but then you spend 10 grand on gear, supplies and/or membership etc, so your friend says you're an ***.

i was living on a friends floor for a period of time when i got kicked out of school and i def played on my laptop on my blowup bed in his room.

it was probably more the iv drug use rather than playing xi that did me in, but i mean i guess it depends on how you think about it?

i'll agree with radial tho, it's mostly escapism.

this was also before trove, and RoE and whatnot

Meth is a highly addictive and dangerous substance.

XI is a video game.

MMOs, while fun, are incredibly addictive, and can have a terrible effect on your life if you don't control your playing habits. The companies who make MMOs understand completely the predatory nature of these kinds of games and how demanding they are of your time, focus and effort. That warning at the login screen is their way of pretending to care and also probably avoiding legal action if someone wanted to sue them.

The detrimental affect that MMOs or any progress-based games (or anything abused without proper balance) can have on people are just some of the reasons why I convinced myself never to get into things like botting, multiboxing, hardcore endgame grinding asap to max level, mixmaxing etc. I also rarely check people's gear either. I don't want to be influenced into trying to get what another player has if it might require an absurd amount of time. I know how hard and how much time a person has to invest to get what they have, and I don't want to invest that same grind into it, because I also don't know what sacrifices that person made outside of the game to "enjoy" whatever they've earned. In order to be at that high of a level in-game, you have to invest large amounts of time. It stands to reason that if they spend most of their time in the game, their RL might not get as much attention. So there should be some kind of balance to both worlds. It sucks because you won't ever get to the top level if you don't grind as hard as possible, but that's the tradeoff. This is why your peers applaud the players who can grind to be that good and beat the top content, because it is a sacrifice to get to that level, and most are not willing to make it, understandably.

This is why I say MMOs are predatory because the companies who design them are banking on you spending your time here for their gain (sub fees, cash shops, etc), regardless of whatever their messaging suggests. Stuff like Trove, Bonanza, Login rewards etc all reinforce the fact that they want you spending most of your time playing this game. Obviously they are in the business of making money, so they are less concerned about the negative impacts on an individual who happens to not be able to control themselves than they are with creating a product that generates money. This is why Gambling addictions are so dangerous (thats why they have hotlines for people with gambling problems). Smoking, same thing (warnings for enjoying this pleasure)

You don't need to consum a substance in order to develope addiction. Gambling for instance is addictive and some games share design philosophies that can also be found in gambling.

Agree.

Imho progressed-based is fine, it's a combination of things that need to meet in order to turn it negative. A solo player game that makes heavy use of progress-based design is fine if it ends 40, 80 or 120 hours in. However if there is no finish line or a excessively dragged out one it becomes predatory.

You guys can't be trusted with your free time. Cancel all hobbies. Only go to work. Everything else is addiction because you don't have to be paid to be there.

Provide maximum value for investors and then die.

We all have UNLIMITED access to XI by paying $12 a month, we can play it 24/7 if we want.

Do you goto sleep? do you eat?

Give a meth addict unlimited meth, see how that works out.

You don't even know what addiction means.

I've sometimes questioned my relationship with FFXI. There's certainly been times over the past 20 years that I played an unhealthy amount. I've done more than my fair share of 12-hours binges of this game, but I never had an issue going to work, school, or spending time with my friends/family. It's brought wonderful relationships to my life that I wouldn't trade for anything.

Sadly, I've also met several people that were living on a new couch every other week and playing this game instead of taking care of themselves. The log-in message about addiction to this game is way more serious than I initially thought.


While I don't disagree with you, it's usually a little more nuanced than that. Divorce usually isn't caused by just one thing. Not spending quality time together with your spouse or S.O. is often a kiss of death to any relationship. However, if FFXI (or any thing for that matter) is your only source of entertainment, escape, etc then it might be a good idea to try and find another thing. It's not fair to any relationship to only offer one source of mutual entertainment.


Addiction comes in many forms but not all types are the same. If you've made it to adulthood and come to the decision to using meth is a good idea then you've got a whole other world of issues that needs addressing.

The trick is to become the investor.

This is false according to research.

https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10065366/#:~:text=Many%20studies%20have%20shown%20that,other%20psychological%20and%20social%20problems.

All humans are not only susceptible to addiction, they are already addicted to several things. Everyone in this channel is addicted to breathing, we are so addicted that you even do it while sleeping. After that we are all addicted to drinking water and eating food, carbohydrates specifically.

What we call addiction is just the dopamine reward system, evolved as a survival mechanism for living in harsh environments. Modern times no longer constitute a harsh environments but that system still exists and lots of things attempt to use it. Dopamine makes you "want" things, it's what makes you want to eat, want to breath and want to keep living. Broken dopamine systems cause depression and a ridiculous increase in suicide rates. Lifestyle choices like meth, cocaine, heroine, orgies, gym and video games all trigger that dopamine system.

So it's really down to the individual to look themselves in the mirror and say to themselves "I know I want this thing, this thing is not good for me, I will say no to want". Every recovering addict knows how hard it is to say no to your dopamine system, but part of being an adult is taking responsibility for ourselves.

Also people tend to self-medicate using addictive substances to cover for other unhealthy problems they may have. Triggering the dopamine system will generate feelings of joy and happiness, which act as an anesthetic against feelings of sadness and depression. Thus its not enough to just remove the addictive substance, but to also identify and treat the underlying root cause.

We live in a time where everyone wants to blame outside forces for our own failings, so there is profit in telling them what they want to hear. "I'm not fat, it's genetic!" "it's the soda industry that caused it, Im a victim!".

Research can show you anything you want, cause they are carried out for someone that wants a specific result (usually some publication) or the researchers want to find a specific result.

You can find research that says working out is good for you, or bad for you.

Ultimately, you can say anything is technically addictive if there is any positive feeling from doing it, that doesn't mean it's actually addictive. If you drink water after a long run, you'll enjoy it and get a chemical release in the brain. Is water addictive cause you got a dopamine release from drinking it in this situation? Technically yes, but not really.

Also "addiction" is is a heavily misused word. For instance when I played Stellar Blade, I would say the combat is addictive. I wasn't actually addicted to the combat, I was just enjoying it and I used that word to describe it.

I got into the game on the 360 and knew this family through gaming with them on halo 2, anyways I got them into XI and the dad went hard. I am fairly certain he ended up getting a divorce, sorry ninjahotel

When I used the term "addiction" I used it based on clinical definition of it. How you personally use it in other instance does not matter.

What matters is that playing video games can(probably depends on genre and people too) trigger brain condition change according to more than one research paper, if you want to question the research result, you should have publish your own paper instead of just making an internet statement with zero evidence.




Using science to explain how certain brain mechanism works isn't the same as blaming personal failing on science. Those are 2 different things.

The trick is tricking people into thinking that they'll ever actually be an investor so they'll trample themselves for your profits in exchange for the hope that'll be able to trample others some day.

And not allowing people to name their children Luigi!

The word "investor" simply means someone put money in an "asset"(like stocks, bonds, crypto, real estate, gold, business etc) hoping for a gain in the future. It's not a term to describe wealth level.


Technically, if you own a 401k account or IRA account with money in it then you are an investor.

Even if you put all of your money in an asset and the asset lost the value, then you ended up being poor, you are still an investor according to definition.

Drinking water is indeed addictive, that word has a very specific meaning in a biological sense. Anything that triggers the dopamine system is addictive, that's the entire purpose of that system. Our evolutionary biology uses both our positive and negative feedback systems to encourage or discourage specific behavior patterns.

Eating is a good one because it's something we've cracked the biological code on (and pharma is making a killing off it). There are at least two known positive feedback systems associated with eating, the first is when our stomach is full it releases a hormone that triggers our brain to active the dopamine system. The second is when carbohydrates are digested through the gut another hormone triggers our brain to activate our dopamine system. This is what encourages us to gorge ourselves during times of plenty so that we can better survive times of famine. Yes you are quite literally born addicted to eating, it was instrumental to how your ancestors survived. Old diet medication attempted to inhibit that hormone directly, which predictably caused depression and suicidal ideation. Newer diabetes medication semaglutide (Ozempic) is a GLP-1 medication that mimics the GLP-1 hormone your body produces naturally when it's full. When your body detects GLP-1 it releases insulin, some dopamine and slows down the digestion system, it genuinely operates as though you've eaten a large meal, even if you haven't. When this happens amazingly you no longer "want" to eat food. Something that was made to help type-1 diabetes patients to not require insulin injections ended up also helping people lose weight.


This is why it's very important for people to understand their bodies and how and why it works. Understanding where those "wants" comes from is the first step to building the discipline to tell yourself "no" and then adjusting your lifestyle to address the root cause that is triggering those wants. If someone is excessively using video games as a form of escapism from some sort of home or life issue, that issue doesn't just go away. Identifying and addressing those issues would remediate the root cause and result in less of a need to self medicate with escapism and distractions.

Addiction is the result of a very real biological system, it's useful but like all things can be broken or abused.

If I can become an investor then literally anyone can.

The first step is to stop mentally limiting what you can do, and instead start learning how to do it. Create a goal, develop a plan to reach that goal, execute on and stay with that plan. Periodically adjust as needed and realize that it's going to take time.

Pointing fingers and blaming others is just crab bucket mentality and how you stay at the bottom.