Author George R.R. Martin helped create one of 2022’s best games, Elden Ring, but the man himself hasn’t played it. The author said on The Last Show with Stephen Colbert that he has an addictive personality and no longer plays video games at all. Not only that, but playing Elden Ring would take him away from writing the long-awaited Winds of Winter, he admitted.

“I have not played it because people seem to want this Winds of Winter book [laughs]. I have, unfortunately, a totally addictive personality. I did play video games a long time ago. I played games like Railroad Tycoon and Master of Orion and Homeworld,” he said. “I would get sucked into it and weeks, months would go by. I’d be sitting there in my red flannel bathrobe going, ‘One more game, one more game!'”

So Martin decided to “go cold turkey” and stop playing video games altogether. That said, Martin said he feels “very gratified” to have worked on Elden Ring, a game that enjoyed enormous critical and commercial success upon release earlier this year.

Martin worked on the lore and backstory for Elden Ring, devising the history of the game’s world 5,000 years before the game’s story begins.

Elden Ring has sold more than 16 million copies worldwide, and it is the best-selling game in the US so far in 2022. In fact, the game is predicted to outsell even Call of Duty: Modern Warfare II to become 2022’s best-selling game overall in the US.

In other news, Elden Ring was just recently updated to fix a bug and address general balance. For more, check out the latest Elden Ring patch notes.