Quitting Football Manager

[kanoute-ozil]

Hey everyone!

I would really appreciate your help in this problem, which is a very serious issue for me. I am a fourth year statistics student at U of T, and a huge fan of football manager. I bought Football Manager 2011 close to when it was first released. I never updated to FM 2012 but I play FM 2011 a lot. Being in my fourth year, this is very problematic indeed. I need a good GPA to make it to Grad School, and things are difficult enough already as I suffer from a medical condition that causes frequent and long sessions of ruminating thoughts (I am on medication for this). Many of the ruminating thoughts center around FM, so it is negatively affecting my health as well as GPA. I can understand why some of you might think this is a joke but it has caused me considerable distress.

Now to the problem. Whenever I try to delete FM for good and even steam, there is the option to reinstall both steam and then FM again due to my purchase. I have tried many things, but I can't find a solution. I would appreciate if you could tell me of a permanent way to delete FM. A permanent way such that the only way to play FM is to buy it again.

I may like to purchase FM 2013 as I am hoping to be done university by the end of this year. But for now, I would like to concentrate on studies and other things in life.

Thanks you!

[Wellyboo]

Get a friend to change your steam password and not tell what it is you until you've finished.

[x42bn6]

There is no permanent way, though you can certainly try.

If you find addiction to be an issue, you may wish to speak to a medical professional.

Your University may well also provide you with support as you are probably not alone.

One suggestion is to plan your day properly, and stick to it. Discipline is the only way. Reward yourself when you stick to the plan (don't play the game, though, reward as in grab a chocolate bar or something). And of course set aside a sensible amount of time for FM in your plan. If you stick to your plan then you can stick to your gaming schedule too.

Technical suggestions... A few. You can uninstall and create a non-super user account and use that all the time. You can corrupt your FM install which forces you to reinstall, which increases the level of guilt because it takes much longer. You can write a script that terminates fm.exe the moment it starts, and run this script on startup (and permission it appropriately so it can't be removed).

But none of this works without discipline.

[wally13]

He could come see you x42bn6 im 100% sure you could turn him away from fm forever

[x42bn6]

Here's a silly script that kills fm.exe every 5 seconds, forever (you need 5 seconds as cmd consumes loads of CPU cycles without a pause). It does create an annoying process thing on your taskbar but there are utilities out there that will allow you to minimise it to the system tray instead.

:loop

taskkill /IM fm.exe
ping -n 5 -w 1000 0.0.0.0

goto loop

Save it to kill.bat and put this in your startup folder in your Start menu.

It might corrupt FM (which could be a benefit), of course.

There are more devious ways because you can kill this process and play FM, but I'd argue you have bigger problems if you do this...

[x42bn6]

He could come see you x42bn6 im 100% sure you could turn him away from fm forever

He would be more tempted with the awesomeness of my suggestions.

[kanoute-ozil]

Thank you!

But where do I find kill.bat? I am sorry but I am only a stat major student and not awesome at programming! I am guessing that I would have to put the loop condition at the start.

PS: I have a mac if thats important.

Once again, I really appreciate everyone's help.

[johnhughthom]

You can email Steam support and ask them to delete the game permanently.

email@support.steampowered.com

[x42bn6]

Thank you!

But where do I find kill.bat? I am sorry but I am only a stat major student and not awesome at programming! I am guessing that I would have to put the loop condition at the start.

PS: I have a mac if thats important.

Once again, I really appreciate everyone's help.

A Mac? That won't work. If you want to go down this route, give me a second...

[kanoute-ozil]

"If you find addiction to be an issue, you may wish to speak to a medical professional."

I have. But I haven't found his advice on this issue very useful.

"You can email Steam support and ask them to delete the game permanently.

email@support.steampowered.com"

Thank you! If they can permanently delete the game, I will be delighted!

All your help means a lot more to me than you can imagine. This has been a very big problem for me, and a solution to this would be invaluable for me.

[x42bn6]

"If you find addiction to be an issue, you may wish to speak to a medical professional."

I have. But I haven't found his advice on this issue very useful.

You might want to get a second opinion, then.

You have to remember that it is your willpower and your willpower only.

[fat Lion1]

You can check in and out at anytime, but you can never leave.

[Nocuous]

I have an addictive personality myself. My own solution, which I learnt from my older brother who had similar issues, is to go cold turkey, and then keep a diary of everything your giving up (It's better to go for many things at once, even things you mightn't be addicted to, just to make it a bigger deal, eg. you might throw in fast food or gambling even you aren't actually addicted to either), and tick off every single day you abstain. You soon become so engrossed in that activity and so determined to keep it up, that you won't even feel a desire to go back on it. My brother even managed to kick cigs doing it, so I really think there's something to it. I know this sounds silly, and it's annoying to have to explain to people at times when the offer you ****, but it really does help. I add video games to main only during exam periods, but it really does help, that's all I'll say.

EDIT - It's probably worth mentioning that my thing can be a bit of a slow burner depending on how addicted you are. So you might go 1 week off it, then a weekend roles around, and you play it again. Then you stop for a couple of weeks, but a rainy Sunday gets you etc. So if your desperate, maybe go with a more radical approach, but this little idea might be a goer for the future.

[Soccer]

Deleting the game permanently is just treating the surface, not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is addiction yourself. Have you tried practising restraint such as limiting yourself to, say, 1 hour of game everyday or 10 hours of game maximum per week?

[welshace]

the best and easiest way is to ask a friend or colleague to change your steam password and not give it back to you until such a time you feel ok with it...

that way you cannot get hold of fm even if you wanted too..

I did this during my masters degree and you wouldn't believe the spike in productivity lol

good luck whichever route you decide to take

[Redbyrd]

If you find yourself playing when you don't want to--find a moment when your will power is stronger and delete your save game files. You probably will not enjoy starting over every day.

[nickdc]

This is why I suggested for FM13 Suggestions thread an option to limit your own game play. Say two matches in any 24hr period, or a certain amount of time - then once reached the game auto-saves and is locked.

I had problems last year and deleted my 13 season save. Problems had occurred, such as 18 hour gaming sessions and buying 25 youth players in one go. Still not sure which was the biggest problem...

Anyway, try telling yourself you're just manipulating nothing more than statistics which are merely represented by sprites. Yes you love your main man striker, but he's not real.

What was that? Oh, apparently he says he is. Honestly, I only wish he'd do his washing up more often.

[bolulu]

Join a medical advice website. This site is for football related subjects, not "Dear Aunty" stuff.
Enough already!
Signed.
Mr. Sympathetic.

[Ollep7]

Hah that<s funny I<m at UC residence in Toronto right now.

But really now, try to focus and get away from the game. Make a schedule for yourself. I guess you're taking medication against OCD? If not, check a therapist, that's a sure bet! Good luck.

[mastema]

Someone mentioned having a friend change your Steam password until you're done with school; that might be a bit extreme since you may still wish to use Steam for more casual games.

What I'd suggest is getting a parental control application and have a relative or friend set a password w/out you knowing it and blocking the FM executable (is it called "executable"? sorry don't know much about macs) from being able to start.

[MSCCG]

Deleting the game permanently is just treating the surface, not the root of the problem. The root of the problem is addiction yourself. Have you tried practising restraint such as limiting yourself to, say, 1 hour of game everyday or 10 hours of game maximum per week?

That's not quite true. Having access to the behaviour is a very important part of it, as you can imagine. For example, because there is no way I can access cocaine, I will not be able to use it. Whether I want to or not, it doesn't matter. Withholding access and removing the positive consequences of undesirable behaviour is a perfectly valid and useful way of curing addiction. Your suggestion might actually make things worse, because it increases anticipation for playing and also increases anger for having access to the game taken away many times.

I don't get the part about not being able to uninstall steam. I've done it many times...

[johnhughthom]

I don't get the part about not being able to uninstall steam. I've done it many times...

The point is, it's easily reinstalled.

[dking]

There are drugs you can take for thinking about FM too much?