How to really stop my brother's videogame addiction?

[Oasis]

he means ram no need to get on his case

RAM wouldn't effect what he was talking about. I assume he meant the video card, though I'd really like to know his explanation.

[Ad Bot]

[shitlord]

RAM wouldn't effect what he was talking about. I assume he meant the video card, though I'd really like to know his explanation.

well if you remove the ram it would certainly stop his computer from working but like op said he has other devices

[TristanLuigi]

After you sabotage his RAM, GPU, or both, take him out to do something fun other than games. A movie, SkyZone, something like that, and keep him off the computer as much as possible. Hopefully he realizes life is more then games. It's he's not too bitchy about it, give him back his parts. If he's a douche about it, keep them.

[GMO Ferret]

I meant video card, I think it's called

[Kochieboy]

Take the ram, easy to pull out and very unnoticeable. It's not like pulling out the gpu in which it leaves a quite noticeable lack of connectors and stuff.

[Alyx Vance]

What's a really good one?

Beats me

[Nonnel]

uninstall the operating system

[Oasis]

I meant video card, I think it's called

Yup, that's what I thought. Ok, carry on. :)

[Kochieboy]

uninstall the operating system

I mean if you want to take that route, totally format his drives, deleting everything.

[spideykong]

Your parents are the one in charge, they can just take his stuff away and can throw a fit and fuss and do nothing about it.

Computer addiction is sorta weird. I play the computer alot (every day for most of the day) but that's because it's one of my favorite hobbies, but I like the outdoors and other things and doing other things lol

[ultimamax]

You could probably change the administration stuff on his computer so that he can't install programs without you or your parents typing a password he doesn't know. You could also use Cold Turkey, it's a very low level Windows application that bans certain programs from running. (of your choice) Turning it off is really hard (there's a separate application you have to download to turn it off, if you could prevent him from being able to run it youd be golden)

But I would first attempt to do an 'intervention', if you can get him to agree to try and stop you can do something like wean him off or some other less aggressive thing.

[elm]

I can write a script, fully open-sourced to disable games of your/parents choice. This will make it so any game he tries to play that is blocked, will require a password of your/parents choice.

[Harm94]

High School senior

I'm afraid he is probably too far gone at this stage. Cold turkey and just throwing on restrictions never works. The urges are still there and aren't being fed so chances are he'll just get angry or short tempered, frustrated, and rebellious and he probably try to find a way around restrictions to feed that addiction after that.

My advice though is find out what makes him. Try to get in his mind and speak from your hearts while trying to persuade him from his view point. Talk about how you are concerned about his addiction and how it's hurting your family and everyone around him while trying to appeal to his emotions. If you can make him look at himself and what he his and get him to feel about it, then you might achieve some form of favorable result.

Next thing you can do is try to expand his horizons or replace part of his addiction with something else. Find something close to his likes such as board games, table top games like rpgs, wargames and what not. Basically try to find hobbies he might like and divert more time to doing.

[Planr]

My parents tried cold turkey methods with me and it was one of the most miserable experiences of my life, and it didnt work. He has to choose to give up this addiction on his own accord, as human stubbornness and pride will make him root himself even harder if others try to force him to stop.

The best way to help IMO is to amplify the consequences of his actions, or create problems that piss him off so much he wont want to play anymore. Some ideas:

• Install some programs on the computer that slows down game performance or frequently interrupts the game so normal play gets frustrating for him (eg netnanny with its constant popups when you are playing online games and it thinks the game is research). He might just ragequit and go do something else.
• (This is a really important one) People naturally want to feel they are living good and productive lifestyles. If he is not in much contact with "normal" people, he will be more prone to feel ok with living an addict lifestyle and wont want to leave it. But if he sees other people, namely his big brother and his friends, leading amazing non-addict lives and doing cool stuff, he will start comparing himself to you and want to improve himself, hopefully choosing to leave his addict lifestyle in favor of something more productive. Try having casual (not raunchy or crazy or overwhelming though) parties at the house, and invite him to join you in the fun, or be going out and doing fun stuff with friends and always invite him to come along. Or just spend some one-on one times with him.
• Sabotage his gaming stuff when he isnt there so he experiences frustrating problems (eg headphones wont play sound out of one ear, GPU is burned out, there is damage to cables, keyboard keys dont work, etc). Nullifying some keyboard key functions might be the most impactful and effective ways of doing this.
• Get into his game accounts somehow and destroy his valuables (eg tf2 loadout items, minecraft worlds, save files, etc.) but without getting caught, and make it appear it was a virus that infected the computer. He may get so upset about losing his stuff he will go and do IRL stuff
• Cut the power at the house (without getting caught by him) when there are storms so that he will have to go and do other stuff. If he believes its really a power outage he shouldnt be distressed much because he will be expecting it to come back on later so that he can resume play. That will give you a time window in which you can try to get him interested in some other things.

[Blocky943]

sell everything he owns actually that's a great idea planr talk to him about it. if he doesn't change his ways, he'll soon see the consequences of his actions