Ask Lemmy

I have been consistently playing EverQuest for 26 years now. I'm not sure it's a phase.

I think most here are too generous with the term addiction.

I had to uninstall Hearthstone years ago, because I compulsively played it multiple hours every single day, despite not really having fun playing it anymore. It was either grinding to get cards or tilting on ladder. That's what I would call an addiction.

Edit: After Hearthstone I played a lot of Slay the Spire and after that Marvel Snap. Never more then I enjoyed it, so I wouldn't count those.

Shattered Pixel Dungeon. Spent years on that one.

Cracktorio

Nothing will ever hook me as badly as Kerbal Space Program did. If I wasn't at work, I was playing Kerbal for five years straight. No breaks, didn't play anything else during that time. Once I got RealSolarSystem and RealismOverhaul working, you couldn't pry me away from the computer. I put in aver 10,000 hours, easily.

I've been playing and DMing D&D sessions on Neverwinter Nights for two decades.

The only other game that got me for an extended period of time was Dead by Daylight. (Around 1500 hours)

Path of Exile. And by extension Path of Building.

I've only played like 8 leagues (each league is around 3 months long) and I have almost 5k hours :/.

Usually if I decide to play a league, i will make sure I have no obligations for an entire month and then I will take the first week of the league off work.

Dota without question. CS along with some rts games like zero hour and CoH used to be up there but it's not even close. Got to a ranked immortal at my peak. Still, was a lot of fun playing with friends and family, so not like it was always a solo activity. Glad I quit though.

DDRaceNetwork, bcs of the fun ppl i meet all the time. About 1800 hrs.

Definitely animal well. When I played it out was the coolest sense of discovery that I had ever felt playing a game, and it kept going for so long. I would play it whenever I had a spare minute, especially if I had an idea for a puzzle. I'm not great at normal puzzle games, my brain just doesn't work like that, but I love exploration and easy puzzles and animal well really scratched that itch for me in a way no other game has.

Aside from that, I wouldn't be surprised if I had like 10,000 hours in Minecraft, since that's pretty much the only video game I like to play, and I've been playing it for almost ten years. Not an addiction though, I only play when I have the time and the desire.

For a while it was Elite Dangerous. Reached triple Elite, then eventually Odyssey drops and I stopped playing. After Elite was Baldurs Gate 3. Bg3 was the fastest 1000+ hours I’ve ever dropped in a video game

I saw a lot of factory games in other comments but I didn't see my drug of choice : Captain of Industry. The process chains are really complex and you can't just throw space at a problem. I played for 24 hours straight once without getting up from my chair.

Eve online

Unfortunately Fortnite. The Jak series. I guess that's it. I'll edit if I think of more.

The worst for me was elder scrolls: oblivion. I played it on xbox back when it came out. I played nothing else for about 18 months. I must have had thousands of hours by the time it got old.

Morrowind.

Old School Runescape. I have multiple characters, but started from scratch a month ago, already have 250 hours of play time on it.

Spent 4,000 hours on Dota 2. Finally kicked the habit and Valve goes and drops Deadlock 🙄

Minecraft, on a server with friends. We still play it

Timberborn is my drug of choice right now. But every few months I have a No Man's Sky relapse.

Another answer for me is Super Smash Bros. Melee (but could probably apply to many multiplayer games).

Normally I'd always engaged with it in person, at events. But when I started playing online, it was almost too much of a good thing.

On the Internet, your next match is always 15 seconds away. You get beat, you go 'I can do better, just give me another chance'. You win, you're on a high, you don't ever want to stop.

The game has that perfect push and pull (at least when you're playing someone anywhere near your level) that just builds compulsion. You're constantly engaged in decision making or quick button pressing each moment, and it just feels satisfying.

I was supposed to be working on a project the day terraria released on Steam. I ended up playing it for like 9 hours straight

It's a toss up between Hardspace: Shipbreaker, My time At Portia and Just Cause 3 for me. Three very different games. Floaty slicey boom, cute engineer mining and grapple fly shooty basically 🤣

Also very much in an "addiction phase" for the demo of G-Rebels which sadly goes away on Sunday 😥

Factorio, Dyson Sphere Program, Derail Valley Simulator, Terraria, and Vintage Story.

I probably have more hours in Diablo 2 than any other game.

I didn't buy the remaster because I value having a life now.

Dwarf Fortress.
I would constantly miss meals and sleep to keep playing. Sometimes multiple days at a time. Went like 36 hours without eating or sleeping until someone popped into vent and asked what I was up to and after hearing me talk about the Fortress the asked when the last time I ate was...

Dark Souls 1 and Hollow Knight

Right now I'm really hooked on Lucky Tower Ultimate. I've never been this into anything like it before, roguelites mostly bore me, but this game has such a goofy charm and - for an Early Access game - surprisingly deep explorability. It's my go-to game for picking up my Steam Deck and screwing around for 20 minutes or an hour. I'm still having a ton of fun with it.

First it was Call of Duty in the mid 2000's. Then it was WoW. It all culminated in EVE Online. Untold hours spent in those games.

I have zero game addictions now. It just doesn't hit like it used to.

I'm more into stuff like Dwarf Fortress, Cogmind, and Caves of Qud now.