My Online Gaming Addiction Started with Playing Scrabble on Facebook

I couldn’t stop playing word games with strangers, craving the dopamine hit winning provided

Photo by Clarissa Watson on Unsplash

It started with an occasional game of Scrabble on Facebook. The choices were between two- or five-minute matches, or one playable over twenty-four hours. I experimented with each, alternating between snap retrieving a word from the corners of memory and loading it as fast as my fingers could type, and having all day to contemplate the best possible move. Unlike playing someone in person, being able to come and go meant I could take on several games simultaneously. I was hooked.

The more often I played, the more proficient I became. I learned that words like “adze” and “qintar” would score more than a hundred points if engineered in a certain way across triple-letter and triple-word squares. My ratings rose with every high-scoring word, edging me to that part of the Scrabble stratosphere where the Mensa types dwelt. Without realizing it at the time, wins, especially consecutive ones, were sending dopamine rushes at a dizzying speed to my brain’s reward system, fueling a craving for more.

Unbeaten runs were critical to ratings, and the easiest way to stretch a winning streak was to play low-ranked players. The rush of trouncing someone with an inferior vocabulary, however, soon palled. My inner competitor wanted to acquire unbroken runs by beating players who were either as good as or, preferably, better than me, people whose lexicons of esoteric words I could later look up and learn from. I knew that a time would come when I’d be dethroned because that was the reality. And when it happened, I’d reset my stats to zero and start again.

Some players liked to chat between moves. While I had no time for diversionary tactics during two- and five-minute games, there was ample scope to engage in small talk over the course of a day-long match. We exchanged banter about our cities, favorite sports, movies, travel, food, and more. It was pleasant, lighthearted and non-threatening. I became Facebook friends with some of them.

But not everyone was nice. When a player asked me to give him head, I felt dirty and vulnerable. Another accused me of cheating. Who, me? I had never cheated at anything in my life! Complaints to the game moderators were met with stony silence, reinforcing the perception of Facebook’s variable attitude toward maintaining community standards. The only way to stop the flow of allegations and abuse was to block the offender and forfeit a game, which terminated my unbeaten runs. So I’d reset my stats to zero and start again.

Out of the swamp of dirty talk and false accusations, a grain of sand started to scratch away inside the oyster of my thoughts. With another window open showing a word scrambler (an online tool that takes a set of letters and turns them into words) I, too, could conjure up the magic required to stay on top of the pack. No one would know about my little secret, nor was there any way they could prove it if they suspected. I was careful to avoid words not in everyday usage and reasoned that if the game’s rules were silent on Scrabble solvers, then using one was legitimate by default—even if it didn’t quite feel right.

One day Facebook announced that it was terminating its Scrabble provider and, with it, the fast-paced games I loved. I joined the chorus of outrage at having to wait hours for another player to take their turn. Facebook couldn’t have cared less. I should have quit then. Instead, I migrated to Lexulous, a Scrabble imitator with quick turnaround times.

I abandoned the word scramblers, having decided there was only one honor in winning and that was by my own wits. A streak of early wins powered up my addiction and for a while I felt happy, knowing that I was being true to myself. But, like Facebook, Lexulous had its own brand of vitriol. You’re violating the rules, opponents would say, spitting at me like angry cobras. I played through months of bullying and harassment before pleading with—even begging—the administrators to ban me.

With nowhere else to go, I thought, for the first time, about breaking the habit. If it was impossible to play an honest game without vilification being heaped upon me, where was the satisfaction? More importantly, why was I wasting time on internet games when I could be cooking a meal, tidying the house, or working up a piece of writing? Where was the reward for spending vast tracts of my time on an activity that produced no benefit other than to make me want more of it? I felt ashamed of what I had become. Then I went back to Facebook’s Scrabble.

As I waited for a player in a different time zone to make a move, I’d start a new game. Then another. And another one after that. I’d wake up during the night to see who had taken their turn, shielding the glow of my phone under the comforter to avoid disturbing my partner. Interruptions for meals and conversation were greeted with unbridled resentment; “I’m busy,” I’d say, the hollowness of false conviction echoing in my ears. I stopped reading books, my concentration levels shattered by screen time overload.

I remember the day friends who live up country invited us to stay for a week. It was spring, a time for bush walks, whale watching, and fresh air. I visualised myself walking on the headland near their home, watching kangaroos nonchalantly chewing grass while surf pounded the rocks. Holidays have always been a time for getting distance and perspective. But what would I do about the sixteen games in play, three of them barely started? How many would become void due to my lack of moves, ceded to players I might otherwise have beaten? I thought about taking my laptop but knew that even if I put a time limit of ten minutes a day on Scrabble, the temptation to duck out every so often for an update and quick move—or to start a new game—would be impossible to resist. My absences wouldn’t go unnoticed either. I’d have to invent lies to explain them, reinvigorating a cycle of deception.

I threw the lot. This time I didn’t reset my stats to zero and start again.

Rose Saltman is an urban planner, writer and editor who lives in Sydney, Australia. Her short stories have been published in The Guardian, Overland Literary Journal and The Brevity Blog, among others. More about Rose is at rosegsaltman.wordpress.com and bsky.app/profile/rosesaltman.bsky.social.