"Welcome to mobile legends. Five seconds till' the enemy reaches the battlefield. All troops deployed."
"Smash them!"
"You have slain an enemy."
"An enemy has slain."
"Legendary."
"Double kill!"
"Triple kill!"
"Maniac!"
"Savage!"
"Victory!"
Does these phrases sounds familiar?
If you or the people around you such as your family or friends plays the mobile game called Mobile Legends, I'm sure that you are familiar with the phrases above. If not, then let me tell you about this game first. It was released by Moonton back in 2016. Since then, gamers from all over the world started to play the game be it to ease their boredom or just to kill time, to bond with their family and friends and for others it became their bread and butter through streaming their games, and they earn a lot from those streams. It became an addictive game for a lot of people and even the people around me became addicted to it. And I am not exempted to that!
I started playing the game in 2019. I was just curious why few of my friends loves playing the game, even my girl friends! Likewise, I started playing the game too, and I started to lose some sleep because of that. There are times that I stay up all night, sleeps at 4:00 or 5:00 a.m. and wakes up at 6:00 a.m. and starts playing again. That time, I was still living with my parents and my mom is always annoyed because it's not just me, but my siblings also plays the game as well as soon as the day breaks.
Months have passed, and I finally understood why the people around me loves playing the game a lot. It could be very addicting indeed! It came to a point that all I could think of is to play and play and play.
And one day, a realization hit me. I realized that I have to quit playing the game.
And these are the reasons why I have to stop:
It consumes my valuable time.
'Time is gold' as the saying goes. And I know that I am losing all my precious time due to excessive playing. I am too focused on the game that I tend to neglect all the important things that I need to do and focused on the game instead.
I am unable focus on my task at hand.
Like I said, I have the game in mind at all times. I have the game in mind when I'm eating, when I'm doing some household chores, when I'm at school, when I'm doing school activities and even when I'm at the comfort room! I can even imagine what's happening on the game and I try to formulate combos how to slay my enemy. It was getting worse every day because I was always in a hurry to finish what I'm doing so that I can go back to playing. The result? I always end messing up the task that I'm doing.
I get easily mad and aggressed.
The game is focused on slaying or killing your enemy hero. So as a player you'll have to do your best to get your enemy killed and try not to get killed also because if you're not careful, you will bring your teammates down, and you might end up losing during the game. Once this happens, your teammates will surely get mad and some will even curse at you. I ended up becoming easily triggered and mad because I was always associating myself to people with bad manners virtually. Although I didn't reach the point where I have to curse others, but I can easily get mad at others and even hurt my family members. Sometimes, I even say hurtful words such as calling my siblings 'fool', and that word is strictly prohibited at home.
Less time for my family and friends.
Because I was always playing, I get lesser time talking to my family and friends. I was always in a hurry even when I'm eating, so I end up not having any conversation with my family members whenever we're eating together.
I also don't talk to my friends when we're together, sometimes they get mad at me for not paying attention and I simply tell them that what's important is my presence not realizing that I'm starting to have a toxic attitude and that I might lose my friends and loved ones if I continue to do so.
When I finally realized the negative effects of this mobile game on me, I knew then that I need to get a hold of myself, focus on the more important things and little by little try to quit playing.
It was not easy at first because I was super addicted and been playing for months. So what I did is every single day, I started to limit the time I use for playing. I started with playing only in the afternoon and evening, then after a week, I only play during the evening, and it came to a point that I only play 1-3 rank games per day. It continues for weeks and I just found myself not playing the game anymore.
It was a rough decision to make, but I'm proud to say that after all my efforts, I managed to totally quit playing this addictive game.
