His employer got wise to the scheme and put Bracke on probation. When it was time to log his progress in the brokerage’s internal system, he would just make something up: sent an email to this client left a voice mail message for that one. He did the bare minimum amount of work required to pay his bills.
By his estimate, he started playing video games about 90 hours a week. He eventually got in touch with his ex, hoping she would take him back, only to find out that she was dating someone else.
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When Bracke was 24, he decided to get his real estate license and move from Indiana to Virginia to work at the same brokerage as his brother Alex, a decision that led to another breakup with another girlfriend and a deep sense of loneliness in a town where, once again, he had no friends. “And I kind of just thought that was the way of the world.” “And the time I used to spend hanging out with friends was gone, because they had moved to different areas,” he says. It felt a lot like high school, but with work instead of classes. “It did not strike me as weird at all,” he recalls. His life there fell into a familiar rhythm: He woke up, went to work, returned home, played video games until late and repeated the whole cycle. Eventually, he was failing most of his courses, so he dropped out and moved back in with his parents in Ossian, Ind., a town of about 3,000 people, where he got a job at Pizza Hut. He strategically ignored knocks at the door and text messages from friends to make it seem as though he were at class. He started seeing a therapist and taking antidepressants, but by his junior year, he was playing video games all day and seldom leaving his room. After a difficult breakup with a longtime high school girlfriend and the death of his grandmother, Bracke sank into a period of severe depression. If he skipped class or played games until 3 in the morning, no one seemed to care.
When Bracke went to Indiana University Bloomington, everything changed. Besides, he was doing his homework and getting good grades - what more did they want? They relented.
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When his parents complained, he told them it was no different from their habit of watching TV every night. Then he would head to the den and play on the family computer for a few more hours before bed. After school, he would often play video games for hours with his cousin and a small group of close friends before going home for dinner. His homework was easy enough that he could complete it on the bus or in class, which allowed him to maximize the time he spent gaming.
At school, he got along with just about everyone and maintained straight A’s. Ultima Online, World of Warcraft, The Elder Scrolls - he would spend as much as 12 hours a day in these imaginary realms, building cities and fortifications, fighting in epic battles and hunting for treasure.ĭuring his childhood, Bracke’s passion for video games, like that of most young Americans, didn’t cause him any serious problems. In his teenage years, he became obsessed with more sophisticated shooters and a new generation of online games that allowed thousands of players to inhabit sprawling fantasy worlds. When he was 5, he loved playing Wolfenstein 3D, a crude, cartoonish computer game in which a player tries to escape a Nazi prison by navigating virtual labyrinths while mowing down enemies. Charlie Bracke can’t remember a time when he wasn’t into video games.
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