The Dark Side of TPA: over-exertion and injuries

[Slam23]

Hi guys,
I thought it would be a "fun" topic to cover something nobody probably wants to admit: if you get really addicted to this TPA thing, bad things can and will happen to mind and body. Aside from getting your soul sucked into the Abyss by say a table like Big Shot or experiencing a major depressive episode because you messed that last ball up that would have led you to a top 10 score, I'm mostly talking physical stuff here. Let me be the first one to admit to some level of addiction and therefore copious playing time. I know it's probably better to stop every two hours to take a break but boy, when I have that thing rolling, it's just hard to step away! In any case I have had my share of letdowns when putting that monster game away for a while and then returning to it, even despite VikingErik's great advice to stop at a major MB giving you more time to adjust to picking the game up again.

Anyway, this is what I have been going through over the last couple of TPA seasons:

• cramped up neck/shoulder/back muscles: playing on iOS for me often means a crouched body position. You sit down with the iPad, crane your neck forward to not have to hold up the iPad in the air and this already puts stress on your back/neck. Add to that (unnecessary) force used starting out from your back to eventually push your thumbs down on the screen et voila: back trouble.
• lower back pain: just sitting down for so long will stress out your lower back, we are definitely not built to sit for hours on end. I also have a job that requires a lot of sitting, so I'm actually working out when I stand behind a real machine
• over-exerted thumbs/joints: it doesn't matter how often I say to myself that pushing harder won't do anything to what is happening on the screen, I catch myself doing just that a lot, often in tense or frustrating moments. Add to that a table that favors one flipper (here's looking at you Black Knight) and you have yourself some light tendinitis or small repetitive strain injury. I even had a quite long-lasting fasciculation in my thumb muscle, you know the same kind of involuntary tremor that people often have with an eye-lid or leg-muscle.
• split thumbs: this one directly follows from the previous one. When I have a particular intense TPA phase, I sometimes split the skin of my thumb, just at the juncture where my nail digs downward into the skin. It's a small split but can be quite deep and uncomfortable. It's clearly from the pressure applied to the screen and as said above, often unnecessary forceful.
• fatigued wrists: this one I get the most from playing real life pinball, also because of pushing too hard. With TPA I get it less frequently because the thumb is more involved, but if I play for a really long time, even a light iPad Air 2 gets heavier on the wrists.
• sleeping legs/buttocks: no need to explain, just very long games involved A good TPA location like the toilet (quiet surroundings, privacy) just adds more fun to this point.
• cramped up jaw muscle: I developed a bit of tic in which I involuntarily "pull faces" at intense TPA moments, also drawing rave reviews from onlookers like my kids and girlfriend . In long games I can feel it afterward in a tightened jaw muscle.

Well, this is possibly not everything but you get the gist of it....Thanks Farsight!
Now let's hear it from you guys....I can't be the only one suffering here....

 

[rehtroboi40]

Hi guys,
I thought it would be a "fun" topic to cover something nobody probably wants to admit: if you get really addicted to this TPA thing, bad things can and will happen to mind and body. Aside from getting your soul sucked into the Abyss by say a table like Big Shot or experiencing a major depressive episode because you messed that last ball up that would have led you to a top 10 score, I'm mostly talking physical stuff here. Let me be the first one to admit to some level of addiction and therefore copious playing time. I know it's probably better to stop every two hours to take a break but boy, when I have that thing rolling, it's just hard to step away! In any case I have had my share of letdowns when putting that monster game away for a while and then returning to it, even despite VikingErik's great advice to stop at a major MB giving you more time to adjust to picking the game up again.

Anyway, this is what I have been going through over the last couple of TPA seasons:

• cramped up neck/shoulder/back muscles: playing on iOS for me often means a crouched body position. You sit down with the iPad, crane your neck forward to not have to hold up the iPad in the air and this already puts stress on your back/neck. Add to that (unnecessary) force used starting out from your back to eventually push your thumbs down on the screen et voila: back trouble.
• lower back pain: just sitting down for so long will stress out your lower back, we are definitely not built to sit for hours on end. I also have a job that requires a lot of sitting, so I'm actually working out when I stand behind a real machine
• over-exerted thumbs/joints: it doesn't matter how often I say to myself that pushing harder won't do anything to what is happening on the screen, I catch myself doing just that a lot, often in tense or frustrating moments. Add to that a table that favors one flipper (here's looking at you Black Knight) and you have yourself some light tendinitis or small repetitive strain injury. I even had a quite long-lasting fasciculation in my thumb muscle, you know the same kind of involuntary tremor that people often have with an eye-lid or leg-muscle.
• split thumbs: this one directly follows from the previous one. When I have a particular intense TPA phase, I sometimes split the skin of my thumb, just at the juncture where my nail digs downward into the skin. It's a small split but can be quite deep and uncomfortable. It's clearly from the pressure applied to the screen and as said above, often unnecessary forceful.
• fatigued wrists: this one I get the most from playing real life pinball, also because of pushing too hard. With TPA I get it less frequently because the thumb is more involved, but if I play for a really long time, even a light iPad Air 2 gets heavier on the wrists.
• sleeping legs/buttocks: no need to explain, just very long games involved A good TPA location like the toilet (quiet surroundings, privacy) just adds more fun to this point.
• cramped up jaw muscle: I developed a bit of tic in which I involuntarily "pull faces" at intense TPA moments, also drawing rave reviews from onlookers like my kids and girlfriend . In long games I can feel it afterward in a tightened jaw muscle.

Well, this is possibly not everything but you get the gist of it....Thanks Farsight!
Now let's hear it from you guys....I can't be the only one suffering here....

My two main things have been anxiety over almost getting that insanely difficult wizard goal, and the number of 360 controllers I've gone through. Their triggers were never meant for pinball simulations (I've since switched to the shoulder buttons). I'll be getting a One controller soon since W10 has instant XBox One controller support.

 

[EldarOfSuburbia]

I have plenty of physical issues resulting from sitting at a desk in front of a PC all day at work, so I'm not sure if it's TPA-related or not. Besides I was playing games a lot for a long time before TPA came along.

However... my main issue I will call Toddler Push Buttonitis. It occurs in one of two ways:
1. If I'm playing on my tablet, my son will sometimes want to join in, in what he believes is two-player co-op mode - otherwise known as "Daddy, you're playing pinball, I press the screen too!". This results in tilts or ill-timed flips, and tantrums (from both of us).
2. If I'm playing on my PC, I have to remember to lock the PC as well as pause the game. Otherwise I may come back to find the controller in the hands of someone unauthorized, and my promising game reduced to a bunch of very quick drains.

 

[Reagan Dow]

I have plenty of physical issues resulting from sitting at a desk in front of a PC all day at work, so I'm not sure if it's TPA-related or not. Besides I was playing games a lot for a long time before TPA came along.

However... my main issue I will call Toddler Push Buttonitis. It occurs in one of two ways:
1. If I'm playing on my tablet, my son will sometimes want to join in, in what he believes is two-player co-op mode - otherwise known as "Daddy, you're playing pinball, I press the screen too!". This results in tilts or ill-timed flips, and tantrums (from both of us).
2. If I'm playing on my PC, I have to remember to lock the PC as well as pause the game. Otherwise I may come back to find the controller in the hands of someone unauthorized, and my promising game reduced to a bunch of very quick drains.

Now that's some funny s**t! Also very frustrating! .

 

[Fungi]

However... my main issue I will call Toddler Push Buttonitis. It occurs in one of two ways:
1. If I'm playing on my tablet, my son will sometimes want to join in, in what he believes is two-player co-op mode - otherwise known as "Daddy, you're playing pinball, I press the screen too!". This results in tilts or ill-timed flips, and tantrums (from both of us).
2. If I'm playing on my PC, I have to remember to lock the PC as well as pause the game. Otherwise I may come back to find the controller in the hands of someone unauthorized, and my promising game reduced to a bunch of very quick drains.

Just reading this caused me personal stress.

 

[vikingerik]

Slam, I still can't believe you do all those high scores and long sessions on an iPad. Come to the PC side. We have comfortable seating positions, sharper controls, and big screens. I don't get any injuries or physical fatigue from TPA.

 

[invitro]

I don't get any injuries or physical fatigue from TPA.

Me either. And I have 5105 hours played. Plenty of mental fatigue, though. That's OK -- it's good for the soul.

 

[relaxation]

cramped neck, check
sore back, check
pulling muscles in intense situtations, check (I pull my right legs muscle tiiiight, I often sit cross, and my knee hates me for it)

Probably why I don't want to do multiple days of scoring on one table.

 

[Fungi]

And I have 5105 hours played.

Yoicks!

 

[Kolchak357]

You guys are hardcore. I don't play marathon games, so I haven't run into any of these issues.

 

[Snorzel]

I have great games sometimes standing and playing, I thought it was crazy my Steam says I put in 800 + hrs, half of them from me falling asleep with the game running, 5000 is some serious play time!

If Have pains, try learning some Qi Gong it has done wonders for my back, and I think it helps me play better if I do it right before. Also those door mounted pullup bars are great if just to hang from and stretch out. Hope any suffering find releif

 

[vikingerik]

Me either. And I have 5105 hours played. Plenty of mental fatigue, though. That's OK -- it's good for the soul.

That is an insane number. Even I'm only at 1200, and something like a third of that is overnight pauses. Youmust leave TPA running but idle a helluva lot, right?

Hell, the PC version only came out about 850 days ago. You've averaged six hours every single day since release?!

 

[Slam23]

Slam, I still can't believe you do all those high scores and long sessions on an iPad. Come to the PC side. We have comfortable seating positions, sharper controls, and big screens. I don't get any injuries or physical fatigue from TPA.

Tempting! I'm only an iOS guy for TPA though, all my other main gaming fixes come from PC and I have been a PC guy since back in the mid to late 80's when we used words like CGA, MS-DOS, XT, and 386. I have to pick my spots to play and I need a portable device for that, it's that simple. TPA sure does look gorgeous though, I just bought a season pass to look at the screen candy....

 

[Slam23]

cramped neck, check
sore back, check
pulling muscles in intense situtations, check (I pull my right legs muscle tiiiight, I often sit cross, and my knee hates me for it)

Probably why I don't want to do multiple days of scoring on one table.

You sure have the name to go with the pain! But seriously, if I read my own list, a lot of the complaints come from playing too strained and don't really have to develop. It's the same thing with playing real machines. If I would find a way to casually push the buttons instead of mashing them up like crazy, the only serious strain hazard would be the nudging of a 250 pound machine.

 

[Slam23]

That is an insane number. Even I'm only at 1200, and something like a third of that is overnight pauses. Youmust leave TPA running but idle a helluva lot, right?

Hell, the PC version only came out about 850 days ago. You've averaged six hours every single day since release?!

That's another plus of iOS: it won't confront you with statistics about how bad your addiction really is Although I suspect Apple and/or Farsight will probably collect those behind the screens.
It reminds me of the old wisdom that if you want to be truly competent in a complex task, you have to invest at least 10.000 hours in it. I'm talking about mastering the piano at a high level here for example. Offcourse it's a ballpark figure and will probably be mitigated by the level of talent, but there sure are other examples of it. Take the average NBA player and count the practice hours. So Invitro is halfway

 

[relaxation]

You sure have the name to go with the pain! ... If I would find a way to casually push the buttons instead of mashing them up like crazy, the only serious strain hazard would be the nudging of a 250 pound machine.

You gotta slam, if you wanna jam.

 

[Slam23]

You gotta slam, if you wanna jam.

That's it! I should have gone with a name like "SoftlyPushingTheFlipperButtons23", not with Slam....

 

[vikingerik]

A good TPA location like the toilet (quiet surroundings, privacy)

I have to pick my spots to play and I need a portable device for that, it's that simple.

This isn't a physical or device problem, this is a relationship problem.

 

[Tarek Oberdieck]

Me either. And I have 5105 hours played. Plenty of mental fatigue, though. That's OK -- it's good for the soul.

I'm at 3932 hours at the moment. Meanwhile some crazy top scores need so much time...

 

[Slam23]

This isn't a physical or device problem, this is a relationship problem.

I will pass this message on to the proper authorities and get her opinion of your assessment...