The Addiction Virus is kind of a cut on gaming addiction. I kind of just had this on my desktop and decided to refine it a bit and share it.
The Story[]
I work at Gamestop. No big surprise, right. Everyone works at GameStop. I didn't particularly LIKE the job, being I wasn't a huge gamer and there were just some guys here I could just deal without. Just another way to make money. I never expected it to be anything but.
It was an early afternoon, things were winding down and people were starting to less and less show up. I was placing stickers on labels as this kid came in through the door. He slammed a disk on the table and demanded a refund from me, being I was the only one on the shop floor. I asked what was wrong with it and he said it was a hacked disk and that we sold it to him, saying it was a genuine copy of New Super Mario Brothers. Of course, I went through the procedures of checking it over for scratches, chips, and whatnot. Nothing out of the ordinary. I wasn't sure about what to do. Most likely the boss would like to see it. I gave the guy his $20 back and went to my boss with the disk.
My boss wasn't concerned about it. When I told him it was a hacked disk he told me not to re-shelve it and throw it in the garbage. Despite my fair judgment, I pocketed the disk and took it home with me in a protective sleeve from the trash.
I got home and popped the disk into my computer, deciding to gut the disk and see what was on it. I was most interested in the textures, deciding I could use some of the textures for my digital art projects. What I found was not what I expected. All kinds of eyeballs and creepy faces littered the texture files. It didn't bother me too much. It was all B-rated movie stuff. Nothing too obsessively gory. I copied the textures to a folder and popped the disk out. I looked at it for a second and really wanted to know what the kid had played. I turned on my Wii and pushed the disk in, the intro screen was ok, but once I pressed start, Mario was holding a fuckin' shotgun, and every-time I pressed the nunchuck trigger, he fired. How cool. And instead of all the usual enemies, they were zombified. How was this a big deal? I would have kept it.
I played through the game, shootin' down zombie koopas, and actually enjoying the game. This was actually fun. But the level seemed to go on forever till the game eventually overloaded and crashed. I was bummed out. I looked up and saw it was 1:00 in the morning, shrugged, and went to bed.
I woke up with an incredible headache. I was too into my game I guess. I took two aspirin pills and headed out. Not like it was any different than any day. At the end of the workday, my boss told me I looked rather pale. I didn't notice anything wrong, but as soon as I walked out the door, I puked and passed out.
I woke up in the hospital, kind of dazed, but normal. The doctors told me they couldn't find anything wrong with me, so they discharged me. This made no sense to me and I asked, pleaded even to stay a few extra days to have them look me over more, but they simply sent me walking.
I didn't know what to think about this time. I simply popped the game in, from last night, that hacked New Super Mario Brothers "Apocalypse Edition", what I started calling it now, and just had at it till it got late and I went to bed, and every morning I'd wake up with a headache. If I didn't play the game the previous night, I'd be fine the next day. That was rare, however, as I enjoyed blowing the heads off zombified critters.
Two weeks later, it got drastic. I played the entire day, and the next day I felt my head had split open. My ears were ringing and the room was spinning. It was almost like I was on a literal high. I never played that disk again. I realized the game was not worth the pain and I sold it to a friend of mine.
The next morning I found out my friend was hospitalized, already a vegetable when they got him to the hospital. I was in "WHAT THE FUCK" mode at this point. This didn't make any sense. Did that game do it to him? Was it cursed? I always questioned that but never actually put enough energy past work to really get into detail on the whole issue. His parents would probably think I was crazy if I told them a video game did this to him.
I like games a little more now. Mostly games like Silent Hill and Left 4 Dead, but I don't play for more than an hour at a time, as I'm still afraid I'll get the "Addiction Virus" that destroyed my friend last year.
Story Ideas and Final Notes[]
The whole idea of this odd, short story was to make gaming addiction act like an odd drug addiction. I'm not poking fun at gaming or nothing. The stories more of an odd "Old Wives' Tale" layout, mostly telling a short tale to scare little kids to prevent them from doing things, in this case, being overly addicted to video games.
Anyway, that's the story. Hope you enjoyed it.