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Andy Murray & His Video Game Addiction

3K views 18 replies 16 participants last post by  STRONGSTYLE 
#1 ·

Sir Andy Murray became so addicted to video games that it affected his performance on court.

Murray, the former Wimbledon men’s singles tennis champion and winner of two other Grand Slam titles, admitted that he had been obsessed with gaming and would stay up into the early hours playing before big matches.

He never travelled to tournaments around the world without his Playstation. Late-night sessions of games like Pro Evolution Soccer left him feeling tired when he took to the court hours later, he said.

He gave up gaming while at big events a few years ago, just before the most successful period in his career.

“I would travel with a Playstation everywhere until probably I was like 26,” Murray, now 32, said in an interview with the BBC online.

“I was playing way too much. I had to play tennis the next day and I was playing until like 2 or 3am. It would be hours, not minutes. Pro Evolution Soccer is what I used to play.”

Murray’s former coach Brad Gilbert said that the Scot played video games for seven hours a day when they were working together in 2006 and 2007.

He said that the player’s “obsession” with the games had caused rows between them.

Murray is now playing again after undergoing a hip resurfacing operation in January and he and his wife Kim had their third child, a boy called Teddy, last month.

An Amazon documentary on his comeback released last month shows the impact the injury had on his professional and family life.

In the film, Murray is seen playing with his daughters Sophia, three, and two-year-old Edie at home in Oxshott, Surrey, and dancing to the children’s song Baby Shark. However, the fiercely private sportsman had the girls filmed from behind throughout the documentary and their faces are not shown.

In the documentary Murray reveals how tennis helped him deal with the Dunblane school massacre and his parents’ divorce. He was in the school at the time of the shootings and knew Thomas Hamilton, the killer.

Murray has also admitted that the injury which threatened to end his career put a strain on his marriage. He said his chronic hip pain left him feeling “down” and affected his relationship his wife, Kim, 31.
 
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#3 ·
Well his games would normally be in the afternoon, shouldnt be too much of a problem, but I guess there is more to do to get up early
 
#13 ·
Wasn't it the video games that almost made Andy break up with Kim years ago before they had any children at all?
I do think so.

Glad it didn't affect him more seriously than what it did, could have been worse had he not realised to stop it at certain stage.
Worse for his success, family etc.

Now you can just consider it more or less funny.

And I bet Andy's Aussie mate Nicky boy still has some hope left there regarding his staying up and playing all night long (not commenting the other stuff though) ;).

You, who are more familiar with playing than me, how would you compare the addictiveness of these games to drugs and alcohol btw?
 
#14 ·
Wasn't it the video games that almost made Andy break up with Kim years ago before they had any children at all?
I do think so.

Glad it didn't affect him more seriously than what it did, could have been worse had he not realised to stop it at certain stage.
Worse for his success, family etc.

Now you can just consider it more or less funny.

And I bet Andy's Aussie mate Nicky boy still has some hope left there regarding his staying up and playing all night long (not commenting the other stuff though) ;).

You, who are more familiar with playing than me, how would you compare the addictiveness of these games to drugs and alcohol btw?
While they share some of the same pleasure reward pathways, drugs and alcohol are far worse from a psychological and physiological perspective, because it actually hurts to remove yourself from the source (in terms of neurochemistry - leading to dependence, and associated withdrawal upon cessation), and of course tend to come with more severe and undesirable social and behavioural side effects. A lot of the time, this is a systemic addiction closely linked with depression, sexual abuse and poor parenting - sometimes the addicts were exposed to it as children. That's why it's so tough to treat because you likely also have to deal with root causes.

I've seen some people who can play games on end. That isn't great too. It's actually fairly easy to do that as well. The effects tend to be on school and work performance and motivation. I believe that it is easier to overcome this kind of addiction with proper safeguards and planning. For one thing, games rarely tell the user to "You've played X hours. Please consider taking a break." (would also equally apply to workaholics!) This kind of implementation would be very helpful. They are considering something like this to help people with ADHD as well in their gaming experiences. Perhaps one of the trickier aspects of dealing with gaming addiction is the social side of things. A lot of people play online multiplayer because they can "interact" with other people around the world. I suppose this forum finds existence from the very same. In fact one could expand to say social media and mobile phone usage is becoming an addiction by means of positive reinforcement.
 
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#17 · (Edited)
Well, if we are going to be objective, then we must understand that nowadays there are a lot of atheletes that are addicted to video games and due to that their performances are dropping dramatically. I mean, if there is any football-soccer fan in here, then you might know the case of Mesut Ozil, a german footballer, who plays for Arsenal. So, the guy wasn't even called up to his clubs games, as he was playing a lot of fornite, so his physical condition wasn't good enough. And he is not the only one, there have been a lot of similar cases. I remember there was a lot of fuss around a russian footballer, who was playing a lot of CS:GO. He was very promising, and people were expecting him to play for a big european club. However, he started to stream cs, and during one of his streams he said that getting the dragon lore(a skin in cs), is more important for him at that moment, compared to scoring goals for his team.
 
#19 ·
Well, if we are going to be objective, then we must understand that nowadays there are a lot of atheletes that are addicted to video games and due to that their performances are dropping dramatically. I mean, if there is any football-soccer fan in here, then you might know the case of Mesut Ozil, a german footballer, who plays for Arsenal. So, the guy wasn't even called up to his clubs games, as he was playing a lot of fornite, so his physical condition wasn't good enough.
Also, he's been awful for years now, he's never one good full season at Arsenal.
 
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