FIVE HUNDRED-EIGHTY-SIX DAYS, FOURTEEN HOURS, FORTY-SIX MINUTES, ELEVEN SECONDS

There’s a function reviled by nearly all Final Fantasy XI players, tucked among 24 others on the main screen menu: one small, innocuous-looking icon that reads “Play Time”; a button that seems to hold all the dark secrets of that particular player, and one that interprets their shames as a simple algorithm. Last winter on a popular Final Fantasy XI (herein also referred to variously as FFXI) forum, players of the massively multi-player online role-playing game, abbreviated as MMPORG or simply MMO, vented their respective playtimes, in a collective act of transgression and catharsis. The opening post posited the question: “How much of your life has been wasted?” And there was no shortage of cringing and self-loathing as the numbers, staggering and almost pornographic in their respective volumes, came rolling in: 601 days; 538 days and 21 hours; 615 days and 19 hours; 676 days; 1024 days (but with “lots of AFK¹ time!” the poster insisted.); 573 days, 785 days, 443 days (“no AFK,” this poster admits, with some chagrin); 663 days; 613 days, 2 hours, 5 minutes; 577 days; 256 days; 549 days, 19 hours, 2 minutes; 839 days, 19 hours; 467 days, 21 hours, 12 seconds; 984 days, 15 hours, 16 minutes, 6 seconds; 1081 days, 10 hours, 7 minutes, 5 seconds. And mine just as flagrantly obscene, sits, as of this writing, at 586 days, 14 hours, 46 minutes, 11 seconds.

Of course, I too would like to claim the sanctuary of “includes lots of AFK time!” in the aggregate number, and to some degree, it’s true. However, to be completely honest, I’d have to admit that my AFK time probably only adds up to maybe, and a generous maybe, 20 percent of the total play time, making it roughly 446 real-life days spent completing quests and lengthy missions, hunting monsters or waiting for them to spawn, running long distances from town to town, chatting with other players in real time, standing around idly with a flag up looking for a party of players to join, and, once in a party, deep in the trenches of what we in the MMO-bubble call “the experience points grind”—making my character stronger with each experience level, trailing carrot-on-a-stick-like to get to the next to obtain some hard-earned piece of armor, weapon or spell, or to access a new area. The work is hard and the rewards are tempered to keep you hungry, but sometimes they are great. This is a world of Dungeons & Dragons-like fantasy, where orcs and goblins run rampant over the land alongside temperamental insects and rabid bunnies—that is to say, amok and unfettered—a land of haunted pasts and doomed futures, a virtual universe fully capable of engendering its own heroes, enemies, sages and idiots, bitter rivalries, friendships, social hierarchies, and a seething brand of abrasive elitism specific to MMOs (and maybe audiophile web sites and high-fashion forums), and all packaged neatly into a game that slips its way into your house and then fights to the last splinter to stay within these walls. Final Fantasy XI is the House of the Rising Sun, and it’s been the downfall of many, perhaps better, people than me.

But this is where the story ends. As of July 1, I’ve officially quit FFXI after four long years. And I’ve procrastinated enormously in writing this article, and it was difficult for a long time to figure why I was so loathe to unload this heavy weight from around my neck. But the fact is, there’s a lot of guilt, a lot of owning up to involved in writing this sort of memoir of the last four years, as well as digging up bad memories and things I tried to escape from by diving so deep into an alternate world. So this is to be my confessional for all those times I was disappeared...

It would be hard for me to quantify the amount of heartbreak induced, time wasted, opportunities missed, and potential jobs lost due directly or indirectly to my four years playing FFXI, but I’m sure if I could, they would include: living on about $15 a week (or perhaps less––I could usually make $2’s worth of pasta last two days) because I wasn’t all that eager to find another job and had convinced myself that all writing jobs in San Francisco were insulting and garbage; barely making rent each month as a result; telling myself that the $14 a month I spent on FFXI subscription fees was cheaper than going out to bars and being social (which was true); stopped talking to most of my friends or avoided them in turn for FFXI; missing many a fantastic sunset while sitting on my floor, occasionally squinting through my (usually closed) blinds toward the gorgeous view I had of Twin Peaks, but more likely staring at the FFXI chat window; quitting my only job as a bike messenger; missing pickup games of soccer in Potrero Park and pickup games of softball in Oakland with friends; driving three roommates out of my house by being a curmudgeonly hermit; nearly missing seeing one friend a week before he died; missing seeing another friend one day before he nearly died after getting run over by a motorcycle. Want to know what I was doing all those times I said I couldn’t make it out to meet you? Well, it’s probably a good guess I was at home playing FFXI.

^{1. AFK: Time spent Away From the Keyboard with the game on.}