Excessive Mobile Legends Gaming

“Welcome to mobile legends, five seconds 'till the enemy reaches the battlefield, smash them!”

“All troops deployed!”

Does this seem familiar? Personally, I've lost count how many times I heard these words. It even seems like wherever I go, I can hear this. And yes, this is what you'll hear at the start of every Mobile Legends game battle.

Have you ever played the game mobile legends? How many enemies have you slain? Or do you know someone who plays it? Perhaps a family member, a friend or your boyfriend or girlfriend.

I'm writing this to release the frustration and annoyance I'm feeling right now. Since I don't want to burst in anger because of my housemates, my siblings to be specific, I'll just write my thoughts. It's been three years since my brother started playing this mobile game while two of my sisters started playing it last year too. Before I don't have a problem with them playing this mobile game since they just play it during their free time. But as time goes by, they have become addicted to the game and that's when things got worse.

For the nth time, I feel annoyed and can't help myself from blaming them because they are addicted to the game. I was supposed to go somewhere but I can't go out of the house earlier because I have to cook our meal first. My siblings are actually old enough to do it, but they don't know how to. If I don't cook, we won't have a decent food on the table. They are too focused on the game that every time I ask them to cook even just the rice, they can't do it properly and in the end I'll just become annoyed.

There are hundreds of mobile games out there but Mobile Legends seems to be on top of the list of every gamer nowadays. A lot of individuals from various age bracket knows how to play the game and they enjoy it a lot because of its great user interface with lots of heroes and different modes to play plus it is also super easy to learn how to play it. I'm talking based on experience because out of curiosity, I played it some time ago as well. But I didn't let myself be carried away of how fun it is to play it unlike others who are already addicted to it. Other players not only spends so much time on the game, but they also spend their money just to buy heroes and hero's skin which will help them to have better gaming experience.

Playing Mobile legends is not necessarily wrong as long as it is only done just to ease a person's boredom or to kill time. Studies even show that playing the mentioned game has positive effects on a person. Example, a person's thinking ability can be improved when formulating strategies on how to lead the team to victory. And it can also bring people together since the game has a feature to form a team and communicate with each other while playing.

But in my observation, excessive mobile legends gaming has more negative effects than the positive.

Here are the negative effects of excessive mobile legends gaming:

• Inability to focus on more important things which leads to poor performance. Almost all the time, mobile legends addict have the game in mind. They only think about playing the game even when they are doing other tasks and activities, be it at home, in school or at their workplace. Take the example of my brother, our dad always scold him whenever he is asked to do something. It's like he's trying to do the tasks assigned to him as fast as he can, so he could go back to gaming. And as a result he usually fails to meet the tasks required of him. It's the same with my sister, whenever I ask her to at least cook rice for our meals, it's either the rice is not fully cooked or it is burned.

• Unstable emotion and increased aggression. Some players don't notice it but the game actually encourage violence since it requires each gamer to slain or kill his or her enemy so that they could either destroy the enemy's turrets or defend their own turrets. Either way, the more they have slain an enemy, the higher chance they have do as to achieve victory. Excessive playing of violent games could influence the gamer to become violent as well. Players who are addicted to this game tends to be very irritable and can easily lose their temper. When my sister started playing this game, her attitude also changed and now she even says foul words and curses. It's because most players of this game are fond of profanity and throwing bad words against their teammates or enemy team.

• Relationship and interpersonal communication problems. While the game can bring people together because of its great features, it can also ruin one's relationship with his family and close friends. Since they always have their attention on the game, they tend to neglect their interpersonal communication with their own families. Same with my siblings, we can't even talk to them or have a proper communication with them. It seems like they are always irritated when you try to start conversing with them. My cousin and his fiancée also broke up for about a year and almost unable to proceed with their wedding just because my cousin became addicted to the game and neglected his fiancée.

• Health problems. Due to excessive gaming, they often stay up all night, so they usually lack sleep. At times, they even skip their meals just to focus o gaming. And too much use of mobile phones or computers can increase the risk of being exposed to radiation, thus results to eye-strain and headaches. I even watched on the news some time ago about a mobile legend gamer who went blind after playing the game for more than 24 hours and someone also died of colon cancer because of lack of sleep and not eating. Sad to say, there are people who are addicted to this game and prioritize the game instead of their health.

These are just few of the negative effects of excessive playing or addiction to mobile legends which I concluded based on my first hand experiences and observations. And there might be some that I overlooked.

Nowadays, young or old alike have their mobile phones and gadgets jam-packed with different mobile games and applications. There is nothing wrong in playing these mobile games as long as we do it moderately, as long as we only do it to kill time, to release stress or tension and to ease our boredom. But it's not okay to get addicted to it and compromise our relationship with others, our health and neglect the more important things in life such as our work or our studies. We can all play any mobile game but always make sure not to make it our priority and learn to manage our time wisely. Our mobile phones are just gadgets, so we should be the one to control it, not the other way around. Don't let your mobile phone nor the mobile games gain control in your life!

If you are of those seems like being enslaved by your mobile phone or gadget check out this article that might help:

ARE YOU IN CONTROL? OR DOES YOUR GADGET CONTROLS YOU?

Thank you so much for reading! - @esciisc 💕