Slashdot Mirror
Fighting the Scourge of Gaming Addiction
speby writes: "With the growing popularity of LAN parties and other such channels to game (which the article at Wired doesn't mention) is it possible that gaming has become a real addiction? How can a person become addicted? And why?"
Of course you can become addicted... just as you can become addicted to smokes, or scratching your nose, or giggling in an irritating way. What's the news flash here... I just don't get it.
Skivvy Niner? Email me!
HEY! Look left just ONE MORE TIME!
Ever play Dr. Mario? That'll get you every time.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
I am testing the network bandwidth
but I have to get back to unreal tournament...
Thanks to file sharing, I purchase more CDs
Thanks to the RIAA, I buy them used...
because you had a hard day at work and you need to blow off some steam. so you load up HL or Q or URT and start killing people..it is very good at releaving stress.
the best one though is GTA3....I realy hope that the PC version is multiplayer.
I am the Alpha and the Omega-3
Before it was called an "addiction" is was called a "hobby".
There's usually a direct relationship between gaming addiction, level of responsibility (social, family or work), and the amount of non-medicinal controlled substances used.
As a 'pusher' (game developer), I hope they never find a cure. :)
komi
The ultimate goal of science is to unify all forces of nature to a single law that can be silk-screened onto a T-shirt.
I only have 5 game consoles, and I only upgrade my computer once every 6 months! I mean, it's not like I have more games than books or anything...
I'm in control, I can quit whenever I want! Y.. You don't think I have a problem, right?
...
/Right?/
How about a thread commenting our addiction to slashdot?
Pretty much anything has the potential to be addictive- "everything in moderation" is the key I think!
People with 'addictive personalities' can become addicted to ANYTHING.
Period. End of story.
"And like that
The people who play that define "game addict".
The last game I played was Metal Gear Solid 2. Nice game, but my wife got addicted to watching it because of the stupid long movies. When I finished it, she asked me to play it on a higher difficulty level so she can watch it again. :-/
I'm a addicted to gambling... and believe me, when you got $100 riding on a Q3 tournament, it's addictive!
---
Programming is like sex... Make one mistake and support it the rest of your life.
The Net alone is a real addiction, Gaming is just one branch of the tree.
--- Metamoderating abusive downgraders since my 300th post.
Maybe it's not the games at all, but rather some substance or situation commonly encountered by gaming.
CRT radiation - maybe this is why nobody wants to play games on LCD screens.
Caffeine - Consumed in great quantities at LAN parties.
It's also possible that the chemicals in a brain without sleep could be addicting.
I'm sure Ive left something out (I've only listed three because I need to get back to Civ3) anyone else with some other thoughts?
Too busy staying alive... ~ R.A.
When you use that quake/doom interface to actual manage your production servers and to kill processes. That's when you know you've gone TOO FAR.
That summer, I almost cancelled a week long vacation to Virginia Beach because I wanted to stay at home and play the game. And no, I didn't have a laptop to take along with me.
But in the end, someone in my family became very ill just before the trip and that shook me back to reality (and I did go to Va.B.)
Not that i would agree with doing thi, but I wonder if there have ever been any cases of suing a game company for creating an addicting game and ruining the gamer's life. I doubt that anyone could win such a case considering they can't even remotely try to pin 'violent tendencies' on 3D shooter manufacturers
A rabbit in the hand is worth 4 in the cage
I've been addicted. It wasn't to EQ, it was actually to a MUD, ages ago, called World's End. I used to spend 8-10 hours a day on the mud, even during school (higschool at the time).
I'm no longer addicted. Why? The IMP (DM) of the mud made my life hell for a while, and eventually the mud shut down. I went through withdrawal; it sucked. But I'm okay now.
What do I think we should do? I don't know. What helped me get through figuring out how to live IRL was my friends. We can't exactly keep giving people friends. However, if you know someone who is addicted, keep inviting them places. Make them get away from the computer. Don't let them talk about it.
I'm not anti-gaming. Gaming is good, in moderation. We need to be careful; in today's sensationalized world people have trouble stepping away from the bright lights and high action of games for real life. However, it's necessary if you want to be a functional part of society.
We'll never be able to solve this problem, but the good news is that you can kick the habit. I'm proof, it can be done.
Must have missed that study on the popularity of LAN parties....
Anyway, I'm relatively certain that some people simply have easily addictable personalities. If they don't get addicted to porn, their job, or casual sex, they'll find something else to fill the hole. Computer games have become part of our society. Years ago they weren't. Is there any surprise that some percentage of easily addictable people find their addiction in games rather than illicit drugs? If you live in a white bred suburban utopia and have beliefs again drug use that doesn't suddenly make your personality change such that you are no longer easily addicted. It just means you fall prey to gaming or movies or anime or books rather than cocaine or heroin or women.
But the good thing about it is that it is self limiting- you play the game, you reach the top, or you get bored and you stop.
The bad thing about EQ is that it was deliberately engineered to play slowly- it can take person-months to get to the highest levels- most normal games are about a man-week (30+ hours). I found it boring; too slow to level and arbitrary, but I have a friend who was really into it.
I think he's kicked his habit more or less now; but many people have had the habit for a year or so. I doubt that the same MMRPG idea will work with these eversmack heads a second time around nearly so well.
Real drugs don't get people habituated in the same way- people end up using more and more of the drug- with games this isn't so possible, although people may play it very intensively for a while; but eventually it won't be enough and they get bored.
-WolfWithoutAClause
"Gravity is only a theory, not a fact!"I only leave /. to feed the baby.
endorphuns (sp?). If you do it and you like it, your brain is likely releasing them. After that, you likely miss them and want more.
Most people play games to win. In order to win you need to practice. In order to practice you need to quit your job and play full time.
Been there, done that, lived out of a car because I was addicted to MUDs - 10 years ago.
Wrecked my education, but taught me how to program in C. Overall, I'd rather have learned in school and have gotten a degree back when I could attend school full-time.
In the final analysis, almost anything can be called an addiction if it routinely interrupts life's basic components, including school, work and relationships, he said. The important thing is balance.
I doubt very much that gaming is physically addicting. But I don't doubt at all that -- for some people, in some contexts -- it can be psychologically addicting. That's not unique to gaming, of course, but it's certainly worth being aware of.
Please note that right now I am slashdot-addicted. I have a digital design final exam in less than 2.5h and I am sitting here reading/posting on slashdot. Shame on me.
If it isn't gaming, it's another thing.
[Score:-1, Offtopic)
I didn't know what to do with all the time on my hands. So I picked up a copy of Diablo. I don't remember exactly when she left me, but I know I had at least 3 battle.net characters that could fucking own on hell level!
After I got bored with Diablo, I thought it was over, but things only got worse. My next girlfriend became an ICQ whore. Chatting with all types all over the world until god only knows how early in the morning. I found this great thing called EverQuest and I haven't really seen her, or my shoes, since.
The downhill slide having begun, I was hooked. My CS skills are feared far and wide at LAN parties and my tollerance is so high that I can stare at a CRT for hours without blinking. Even those old ones with the 72 mHz refresh rates.
These days, it's just get up, stumble to the fridge in the morning. The whole time I'm thinking about what the proper Civ3 build order is for a city on my cultural boundry. I lay awake at night thinking about optimal artillary placement in Empire Earth.
If only Betty Ford had a program that suited me ... with phat net access and flat screens.
-- RLJ
This "Slashdot" is far from my native land. When I click, no rocket fires. When I push my arrow keys, I do not sidestep.
Longing to frag, I wait.
I don't play many games but once every year or two I'll play a strategy game that will keep me glued, bleary eyed, eating only junk food, drinking only soda, for a few days. And I'll emerge from my cave, delete the game, vow to never waste that much consecutive time again, and move on, thinking that I'm an adult now.
That is classic addict behavior, which is why it feels so good.
sig is
I'd say online games are far more dangerous than singleplayer games. If you're playing Quake for instance, you first play for fun, but once you get 'hooked' and get to know more people, you're beginning competition. For some, being the best becomes everything - It's 16 hours a day training some moves or improving your aim in Quake/UT/CS, collecting items and gaining experience in EQ/Diablo 2 and so on.
Once you get admired by others, it's just a bigger incentive to train/collect more intensively to become even more popular. Even if you're not popular, trying to become it may develop into some kind of addiction.
-- The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'.
I'd love to offer up my opinion, but I'm too busy playing return to wolf. I plan on taking a break in 10 mins, but I want to get a quick game of tribes 2 in. Maybe sometime tonight after my clan's quake 3 match, although my friend just gave me a copy of Civ 3 and I really wanted to check it out.
Perhaps tomorrow I'll post after my 16-way Halo LAN. The folks that are coming over said they may want to play a little UT, so perhaps after that I'll offer up my opinion on how rediciulous gaming addiction is.
Lucky for us that the game software industry provides an important source of tax revenue for the gov't; otherwise, they'd create a Game Enforcement Administration and raid your next LAN party.
I looked into the abyss, and the abyss looked into me--and we both winked.
Anything is an addiction to people who aren't into it looking at other people who are. When I was young I spent lots of time plugging away at my computer (C64, Atari 800XL, etc.) and this was unhealthy and not right to anyone who wasn't into this themselves, but sitting in front of a TV for 5 hours every night was perfectly fine.
Personally I'm sick of people addicted to their SUVs and shopping malls, driving on highways and listening to "radio", reading their addictive newspapers and addictively rearing kids. Poor people need some guidance.
It's a diminishing-returns reward system. Just like gambling (which, coincidentally, takes the form of games). The very things that make games fun and "addictive" to average people make them truely addictive to certain types of people. Certainly not an addiction similar to cocain, where the very makeup of the brain itself is being changed, but a psychological addiction, which can be just as harrowing.
So, the question we should be asking ourselves isn't "Is it addictive?", but "How do we prevent people from becoming addicted?"
Feminism is the wild notion that women are human beings.
If your gaming causes you to ignore loved ones to the point whe it affects the relationship in a dangerous way,
causes a you to stop doing something that is required (IE go to work, pay bills... etc)....
or it becomes an excuse for not doing what you KNOW you should be doing (i.e. I should be studying for a exam... but I NEED to show off my l337 counter strike skillz..
Problem
Hey, all of us gamers (myself included) go off on a bender every now and then, but when gaming becomes your life rather than just a part of it.. then.. well
get a life.
is the only thing that keeps me away from my beer.
All Troll + "offtopic" mods are meta moderated as "Unfair", because you abused the system.
minesweeper was directly responsible for .4 point drop in my overall GPA.
of course it isn't a chemical addiction like nicotine or heroin (maybe they will prove that it is some day) but anything that alters your state of mind could potentially become an addiction, like, just thinking about people who spent ungodly amounts of time on things in highschool:
* gearheads building their camaros and firebirds (i think it's hondas and accuras today)
* weightlifters and obsessive athletes
* musicians who play guitar all day and cut classes
no one ever called these 'addictions' did they?
the first and last groups were at least crafting something, the other group just wasted lots of cycles damaging themselves.
gamers seem to fall into the 'obsessive athlete' category. i can see why this would be a pointless waste of time. if they were actually writing code 5-10 hours a day for fun, then at least they'd be learning something applicable in life. advancing your character is just as useless as being able to bench press 5,000 pounds.
my $0.02
https://www.accountkiller.com/removal-requested
My Coworker and I were EverCrack addicts, we've been roughly 100 DAYS (time you're logged in counted up).
:)
;)
Well, I'm still clean now, but oh boy, the new Expansion is out and my Coworker might become an addict again!
Games can be very addicting, but so can be other things. You just need to be able to control yourself. Just relax, breath, and picture yourself as jobless-EverCrack addict attending to fan faires... hunting people in purple bunny outfits...
that helps !
/wave
(purely sarcastic and irconic
Before you email me, remember: "There is no god!"
I don't know if it's an axiom yet or not, but I firmly believe that the couple who games together, stays together. The Wife and I regularly play MUSHes, MMORPGs and other games together.
I've just found that it is vitally important that you both have equally-powered computers. I could only live for so long with "But your machine is more powerful than mine!" before I caved in and upgraded my belov'd Box'O'Fun. :-)
-EvilMagnus
I always wondered why they looked the other way in highschool when it came to students using tobacco, crack, pot, etc, but using school computers for games got an automatic suspension. At least the schools understand the dangers of gaming!
by addiction we are talking about it causing problems. who cares if you like and want to do something a lot, as long as it doesn't cause problems. it does not cause me problems to play my favorite games now and then... or even to buy a game system with several games and play them with my friends. i can say that it is possible for it to be a problem for some though. but I think there are deeper problems behind that which cause these people to rely on games and personal entertainment so they don't have to deal with the conflicts of other people and daily life. THAT is a problem.... but I don't think the word addiction is suiting... I think antisocial behavior and fear of human interaction are the real culprits.
Please help! I'm stuck inside my virtual reality headset!
When I was in college, I "lost" several of my friends for a few weeks because they discovered a MUD (Multi User Dungeon for the uniformed). They spent every waking hour down in the computer labs, only coming up for food when the delivery boy came. They neglected class, sleep, and basic hygeine, all so they could power up these non-existant characters which they would eventually no longer use years down the road. It was a pretty pathetic scene, and a couple of them actually dropped out of school because of it.
There's a difference between playing a game all night once in a while and completely cutting off friends and family. In terms of mental disorders, it becomes a problem when you cause distress to yourself and those around you. I learned early on to walk away from the computer once in a while, and I completely avoid MUDs and MMORPGs because of their potential to addict. It's fun to escape once in a while, but when the escape becomes your life you need help.
Electronic Frontier Foundation for online civil rights information
...about the difference between addiction and behavioral disorders.
;-) sure is more fun than washing your hands seventeen times an hour. ( and no flames from OCDs - like ray romano says, nothing worse than complaints from compulsives - check the stove, write the letter, check the stove, write the letter.... )
cocaine is physically addictive. heroin. methadone. nicotine we think.
gaming is a learned behavior that needs to be managed thru behavior mod at best.
but addiction? highly doubtful.
or maybe endless gaming is the manifestation of OCD for the wired set
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
While a gaming addiction is another niche type of addiction, I would guess it is similar to other kinds of addiction especially net addiction. Of course, I suppose it depends upon if you are addicted to LAN parties or solo online or whatever.
As well as the Computer Addiction link mentioned in the article, check out netaddiction.com
and Center for Addiction and Mental Health.
Perhaps enough suggestions to netaddiction.com will get them to post a Self-Test like they have for online traders and online auctioners.
Jesus saves....And takes 1/2 damage.
I am addicted. Have been, and am currently on ZOLOFT because of this.
To read more of my Addiction, I almost lost my wife and job. www.themudjournal.com has my article (The Mage, or Winston) called "The Addiction" and it is about the most addicting game of all..
MUDS.
To become addicted
www.mageslair.net port 7060
I can program myself out of a Hello World Contest!!
From the article:
;)
The "EQ Wids" commiserate over tales of woe (one husband insisted on playing the game in the delivery room while his wife gave birth) and offer each other encouragement and company.
In my honest opinion, if you can't stop playing a video game to assist/be with your wife during labor, then chances are you have several other problems that are much deeper-rooted than your addiction to video games!!
Seriously though, as much as I love video games, they don't come before my family, friends, or my health. If you can't pull yourself away from a game for the things that really matter in life, then you do need to get help.
Sounds like a good place to pick up chicks...
Wah!
I am addicted to a couple of things and one of them is Games, although i am less addicted since i started using Unix only, but still freeciv and freechess are a bit addictive...and the 4 years a kept playing the massive multiplayer games like Ultima Online and Planetarion before where pretty hefty addictive.... :)
;P
and there for it was my Atari-ST for which had about a 1000 floppy disks with games on it...and some other stuff ofcourse
But after all i learned how to use computers pretty well, i learned some programming and wrote a Arkanoid version once and now i have had some Sysadmin jobs and now i am Programmer or so they say, i still lack good hacking skillz...
Still i think my game addiction wasnt really bad for me, only it made me forget there was a real world out there although i dont really lack social skills, i have a handfull of friends and i go out to the pub since i was 14 and i still do now when i am 22...i have a girlfriend...so life seems pretty oke...still i live in a fantasy world, but i dont think thats cause of the games....
Now i am addicted to more things like IRC, Smoking and Sex...
I learned a lot of nice people tru IRC which are really very nice,
IRC also keeps me from doing my work at 100% cause i can use it at my work
Smoking yes is a bad habbit i guess....and Sex well figure....
Overall aslong an addiction doesnt harm you in the real world around you and you can live a life you want to everything is great....
Quazion.
Just because i have a multiheaded computer, and am playing starcraft in one monitor, and reading slashdot on the other while listening to ripped music tracks from various games, doesn't mean that i'm addicted, i can quit any time i want. *hits F10* See? There, i stopped!
It seems to me that there was once an episode of seaQuest that involved a fusion reactor accident that sent them into a future in which there were only two people left on the planet because everyone was so addicted to video games that they never left there houses much less spend any time making new little people. They eventually had to crash the planetary computer so that there would be no more games, and the couple could get to no each other and rebuild the human race blah blah blah *hits F10* DIE ZERG SCUM!!!
Opportunities multiply as they are seized. --Sun-Tzu
I wouldn't go as far to say games == crack, but I would say that I suffer from a slight addiction. It actually works a lot like a drug. If I'm really stressed out, I can play unreal for a little while and feel a lot more relaxed. I "get my fix". I think that I then start to rely on games to make me feel at ease. I play games even when I'm not having fun or would/should do something else that I like. You could call it compulsive. It's not to hard to control, tho. Not like alcoholism or anything. But like most addictions, you have to realize you're addicted before you'll ever do anything about it.
"Question with boldness even the existence of a god." - Thomas Jefferson
That's what is interesting about this question. Most games have some sort of "payoff" device that is implicit when you play it. When you get that payoff, whether it is the final goal or some sort of intermediary plateau, you take a breather and appreciate your accomplishment. If a game defers that payoff and continues to promise it, it will become more and more of a time-sink. THis fairly much appeals to the natural structure of human motivation - it's *designed* to generate obsessive behavior.
I've been pretty successful at keeping a Civilization-like-game addiction under control. When I fall off the wagon (Masters of Orion II, Civilization III) I spend a few weeks playing until 1:00 am and obsessing about the game during the day. Then I get embarassed and ashamed at the time I'm wasting on a persuit that leads nowhere. I'm a writer for cripes sake; I've been published in lots of places and I could produce and sell more if I put my mind to it. The time I spend in front of a computer gaming could be productive as well as enjoyable.
Stefan
It fullfills the basic need we all have for ***competition***... Which is also the reason most here read slashdot; not so much for the stories themselves, but the competition that results in the forums!
Of course, there is no problem with letting off steam, as long as nobody is getting hurt. But isn't that the hidden "catch" in most addictions? You aren't hurting anyone else... until the "problem" becomes a problem.
Someone who plays games here and there, to have fun, is not addicted. But someone who thinks all day about playing their favorite game when they get home from work, school, etc. and then spends the majority of their evening playing that game, has a problem.
If nothing else, they are locking themselves out of society, because they choose to stay alone or with a select group of people so often. People who have 16 hour gaming binges are not addicts, but when they have them every weekend, and have 8 hour binges throughout the week, those people are addicted to gaming.
Again, it isn't a big problem for those of us who are not addicted to gaming, but when the number of game-aholics starts increasing, the number of able-minded contributors to society decreases accordingly. Eventually, as with any "popular" addiction (nicotine, alcohol, gambling, sex) once the number of addicts reaches "critical mass" the society as a whole becomes affected.
What's a second? An hour? A day?
It has much more to do with
the Earth's rotation than with cesium.
I've been running Counter-Strike servers for a couple years now. One thing I've always done is provide nightly player statistics for the previous 30 days. I've seen people hit over 14 solid days of gameplay in a given 30-day period!
Assuming that these people sleep every once in a while suggests that they're playing CS nearly every waking minute. Currently, the "worst" player on my biggest server has logged seven days in the last thirty.
One guy's longest single session was 9 hours! Wow.
It's like The Sims, only someone is playing you...
games are an escape mechanism, do the math...
I always have an intense addiction to a game until I come close to mastering it and I'm done. I just tend to burn through things like games, but the games seem to be getting better.
To escape reality.
"It's really destroyed a lot of marriages," said Tony, whose wife had an affair with her make-believe husband.
Man, this is a sentence I wouldn't expect to see anywhere but The Onion.
Use Ctrl-C instead of ESC in Vim!
...but I know quite a few people who are addicted to MMORPGs, Everquest and UO in particular.
Addiction is something that, for the most part, exists on a chemical and/or psychological level. From what I understand, the general opinion amongst people who study these things is that a chemical addiction (lets say, nicotine) is easier to break and eventually beat than a psychological addiction (lets say, your average sexual fetish). In my opinion, gaming as a whole is neither a psychological or chemical addiction because, I believe, for the most part gamers can and do go for extended periods of time without gaming. Be it a holiday away from home, final exams, whatever. I consider myself an avid gamer and, quite frankly, there are times when I simply can't be bothered to game.
But, I have friends and family that are players of UO and Everquest and I believe they fit the profile of people who are psychologically addicted to the experience. Their personalities change, sometimes drastically when they do not get their fix. The amount of money they are willing to spend, not just in monthly fees but in expansion packs, strategy guides, virtual items on eBay, etc seems almost silly when your realize the money spent goes towards existence in a virtual society. To top it all off, these players are not only often doing very little in the way of "having fun" in the game, they spend a great deal of time downright unhappy with the whole ordeal. I know no less than five Everquest players who have sworn it off out of anger and frustration, only to sit right back down in front of the PC and play some more. If the EQ message boards are any indication, the number of people in the same mindset numbers in the tens of thousands.
It becomes an addiction when you no longer feel that you want to play, but you need to play.
My sigs always suck.
There's a fine line between an addiction and a hobby. Gaming generally is on the "addiction" side, but if approached correctly, can be found on the other side of the street.
Of course, classic gaming has been stigmatized, and those who practice such often find themselves in the warez camps. But the intention is pure. Finding a hack to get that old commodore game to run on your AIX box with sound is a modest accomplishment. Also, browsing garage sales and auctions in search of archaic hardware now could be your own personal goldmine 50 years from now, when such stuff is harder to find. Surely being an expert in such matters is admirable.
And, many games teach you about life. For me, it's roller-coaster tycoon. Others are brought in by the extremely popular civ set. Making quick decisions and taking calculated risks are skills that are marketable in today's type of work force.
Lastly, there's those people who using gaming to become better at there career. Race-car drivers, Air Force pilots, and the like have more training resources available to them because of the gaming industry. Those of us unlucky enough to not have such careers, can become more well-rounded by using these games to learn.
Of course, you can find just as many negatives as positives. I'll leave that argument to someone else. I've got to finish my work so I can go home and play my playstation 2.
Free unix account: freeshell.org
Perhaps the best test as to whether you're addicted to a game is whether you still enjoy it.
If you honestly enjoy playing a game into the wee hours of the morning, you're doing fine. If you do this 30 days in a row, and you're still having lots of fun (and you still have your job) - you've got yourself a happy life (and what game is this?). I wish I had a hobby like that.
If you stay up because you feel like you have to level up one more time, you're addicted - quit playing.
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
The Detroit Free Press covered MUD addiction several years ago, relating the experience of a working stiff who's wife (~40) and two kids (teens) lived in squallor and spent every waking hour (that at least the kids weren't in school) in muds.
Gaming addiction isn't new, there was a game which was so addicting that it was assailed as contributing to the ills of a nation and was outlawed and serious effort was pursued to erradicate it. You know it as Mah Jong.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
And I'm addicted to gaming. It's not just me. In the game I play (Asheron's Call) most of the people I play with, play at least 8 hours a day. This is above and beyond the 8 hours of work most of us put in. Add it all up, and that means 8 hours to sleep, eat, be social, and drive to and fro. Do I have a problem ... of course. Do I want to change it? No!
Clinton made me a Republican. Bush made me a Libertarian. Trump is making me question reality.
This is all so true. I have found myself regularly addicted to various pursuits since I was a kid. I have found that the games to avoid are the ones with more long-term goals/payoffs. For instance, I'm not really addicted to UT or Q3. On some particular night, I may find it hard to tear myself away from "just one more" deathmatch, but that's it. Eventually I go to bed and I may not play again for 2 months.
But then there are games where that's not possible. We all know the examples (usually RPGs, quest style, or puzzle games in general).
Basically, here's what to avoid (I'm not a shrink, but this works!): Any game or activity with a non-determinate payoff pattern. In other words, avoid random (or semi-random) reward systems. UT doesn't fit in this category because I generally know how long a match will play and I usually have a good idea of who's going to school who. Zelda? Forget it. You never know when you're going to find the very next quest item.
This is basically the same problem as an addiction to gambling. Don't subject yourself to the overall patterns, and you should be ok.
Oh, and to everyone who thinks this isn't a real problem, good for you. It just means you haven't been bit yet. Good luck ignoring the problem though.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
Gather round, and let me tell you a tale. I take you way back to the fall of 1999. I was a music major at UMass. I loved the school, hated the department. I scrounged up some cash and picked up a copy of starcraft.
Whoops. I became so enthralled I would ditch my friends, play till 4am, say, 'well, I might as well stay up all night and then go to class', stay up till dawn, and finally crash just as I should have head out of the dorm. I had no social life (I used to leave parties to play) and was flunking out, but because, I reasoned, no one liked me (probably because I hardly ever left my room, if then only to meet the delivery guy)so I might as well sit and play. It's a catch-22 if ever I heard one.
This story doesn't have a fairy-tale ending. I lasted 2 semesters and got kicked out, eventually coming enough out of the hole to apply at the New School in New York City and get a job. It's like being an alcoholic. Yes, I still play games, but spend a good portion of the time trying to avoid sitting in front of my computer. Every once in awhile I regress, stay up all night with Deus Ex or what have you, and seriously regret it in the morning.
I don't have an 'addictive personality,' simply because, as someone said, I don't find everything addictive. Cigarettes and computer games. That's it.
All I'm saying is, this is real. Take my word for it.
Triv
So, I'm guessing the submitter is looking for affirmation from fellow gamers that it's not an addiction, etc. My advice, if you find yourself playing games for hours on end, leaving work or school early to play games (this includes playing them while you work), or spending more time playing a game than interacting with people you probably have some sort of addiction.
Find something else to do for a couple hours out of the day. Maybe exercise. Maybe read a book. Hell, take up drinking and go to a bar. Leave the game alone a while just to make sure that there's not something else out there you're missing.
Gaming seems to be a rather unfulfilling addiction. Sure, it doesn't physcially harm you (except for maybe RSI), but there's not the added chemical side-effects of the additiction you get from alcohol, nicotine, or narcotics. If I'm going to sink time and money into an addiction... I had better get a buzz.
and I have been a Slashdot addict for 3 years. I started out easy - I would only check the site once or twice a day. That slowly progressed into 4 or 5 times, and now I check it almost every 5 minutes just to make sure I get the latest story. I even post comments!!!
This thing has taken control of my life, I cannot stop it. Every minute that I am not on Slashdot causes terrible pains in my stomach as I know I may be missing the next opportunity to first post. I even have dreams involving wild dances with CmdrTaco, Hemos, and CowboyNeal around Jon Katz's dismembered remains!
Please, help me if you can; let me join Slashdotters Anonymous!
While I didn't play on many arcade machines when I was younger, I spent countless hours on my C=64, and then on my XT, playing games. True, my case was mild as I wasn't able to monopolise either the TV or the computer, but I am sure there were others who had problems with severe addiction.
One of my favourite episodes of News Radio is when a "Stargate Defender" arcade machine is brought in to the office and Dave recalls the time when his SAT scores suffered because he stayed up all night playing that game. It's funny because it's true.
ian.
ian
Why don't they write an article about TV addiction. Lots of people watch more than 5 hours a day and consider this normal. I read an article once about people's metabolism while watching TV, It's the lowest it can get, its below sleep level. At least while gaming you are using your "god given" faculties, and the Zombies is inside the Display unit.
Help fight continental drift.
Some people get bored with everything eventually. I went through a stage where I was "addicted" to sex. About 3 times a day with my girlfriend for several months. The novelty wore off and I moved on to other activities. Once you run out of things you want to do in the real world, then all that's left is fantasy worlds. Games provide that. Or they at least provide us with a safe way to perform tasks that we really wouldn't want to do in real life.
The article refers to 1000 EQ Widows. Let me rant for a minute about this. They must be spending too much time online themselves in order to find sites like that. Also, I'm so damn sick of every girl thinking that we need to spend every minute together in order to have a relationship. Hell, the poor guys probably got sick of cuddling for hours on end while watching Titanic.
So why cares about this besides some overprotective soccer mom concerned about how she's going to look in front of her parenting commitees when they find out her kid would rather playing "games" instead of taking part in wholesome activities like football, where the object is to run face first into a member of the opposing team in order to knock him down.
Why must it be that all 6 billion people are expected to be exactly the same when viewed through the eyes of a psychologist. These are people who make their living by judging others by their own standards instead of any scientifically proven formulas. They're the same ones that will contradict themselves by saying that you have a "syndrome" if you aren't the same as other's in your peer group, but turn around and criticize you for doing whatever your friends do. Fuck em.
Wow, I need to go let some steam of in a good game of GTA.
When you find yourself spending too much time playing a game, just delete it, that's what I do.
Otherwise I find myself saying "I have a few free minutes, I'll play a little Diablo II" and the next thing I know it's 2am.
I'm addicted to Slashdot. I read and read and read and I can't get enough of Slashdot. I check every minute or so and if I see a new article it is like winning a trophy. I spend every waking hour looking for new articles that I haven't read on Slashdot. Help me. There must be more like me.
it's making me play it hours upon hours!
-- Viva FreeBSD --
I maintain that root reason is the fact that random rewards systems in general are the most effective among all reward systems. It was certainly on my psychology test in college.
:)
Anyway, competition can provide semi-random rewards (assuming that chance plays some part in the game in question), so in a sense, I agree completely with you.
As far as the competition in the forums, I wouldn't go there. It's called 'trolling' and 'elitist bullshitting'.
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
JMO...
Sticking feathers up your butt does not make you a chicken - Tyler Durden
It happens, I happen to know two people like this. He says its the only thing he enjoys and just let him be. I just think his life is ruined.
We've had this out on Slashdot several times before in the last few years: apparently playing video games dumps a load of dopamine into the brain. This effects men in particular. Dopamine is an extremely addictive drug. A quick search on Google for "dopamine video games" returns lots of links to many reputable web sites.
I know from own experiences on and off since I was a teenager how bad this addiction can be. It degenerates to the point where you have to have a "quick fix" of a game so that you can get on with other things. Without playing, you completely lose your ability to concentrate on other things. I remember when Quake2 was popular at the office: as the day wore on, the people involved became less and less productive as they waited for 5pm to roll around and the games could begin. Some people were so bad that they couldn't even come to work without first having a game on heat.net (RIP).
The 3 analogies you mention just don't work, since they all involve people creating something. The people playing Everquest aren't creating anything, they're just playing a game.
And just because it's profitable doesn't mean it isn't an addiction. We've all heard the stories of people losing their wives, friends or their minds through an over-zealous commitment to their work.
If one plays a few games with the guys after work, that's okay. But when it starts to take over other aspects of one's life, it might be time to get some help.
If these walls could talk they'd probly still ignore me. --MF DOOM
...not that the label helps anything. I mean, there's no really clear line between "addiction" and "bad habit."
Multiplayer RPGs are the worst in this way. They give you little rewards every once in a while, for staying on longer, and they tend to be open-ended. In that way, they are designed just like gambling machines: designed to give you random rewards that condition you to want to keep playing. Also, hardcore players, rather than being ridiculed, are respected for the in-game power they develop, so there's social pressure to play more, rather than to play moderately.
I experienced that sort of weirdness when I was developing Beng the Battle Engine, a chat-room RPG battle engine. I thought the sheer repetitiveness of the gameplay (and total lack of graphics, story, or setting) would make it at best a side toy for people to play with when the conversation slowed down, or while waiting for someone they wanted to talk to to show up. Imagine my surprise when a few people basically moved in and spent 8 hours per day or more.
They'd level up past the point I thought anyone would ever get to in just days. I was disturbed. I mean, I was proud they enjoyed it, but I didn't think that much play was healthy. Of course, they didn't continue like that forever. It's just not that good a game, after a hundred hours or so, you've seen everything you could ever see, and then the novelty of being the toughest guy in a game with only a couple dozen players wears off pretty quickly. Some wandered off, and some picked up the source code and started hacking on it, which gave me a lot better feeling about the whole thing.
But it makes me worry about better games. If a cheesy IRC-based micro-MUD can suck away hundreds of hours like that, how far off can the name "EverCrack" be? And there's better stuff coming out all the time!
Maybe the fuckwits who have turned this planet literally into Hell itself, maybe if they'd not make it such a horrible place to exist...
...then maybe people wouldn't need to escape from it so often.
And barring that, playing video games is hardly the most destructive escape a person might choose. Damn. These people could be trying to find a vein to inject shit into their bodies, not staring blankly at a Everquest screen. Enough with the complaints already.
Now I'm married, with a great job, a great apartment, etc. I got Civ3 and I really love it, but it hasn't killed me, ruined my marriage, etc. My point is that the Substance of Choice is usually not the key problem in addictions. The problem is usually something in the abusers character or circumstances.
"Slashdot is about legos and staplers." -Cmdr. Taco
Anyone remember the ST:TNG episode I'm thinking of? It was a horrendously bad episode, but relevant here.
Here's what I wonder: why wasn't holodeck addiction rampant? Can we expect gaming addictions to do anything but multiply over coming years (especially as continuing revenue models catch hold more)?
Let's not stir that bag of worms...
This reminds me of an old roommate of mine in college. He had this little portable CP/M like contraption with a 2400 baud modem which he would dial into our basic school account (92 or so) and telnet out from there to MUD. Anyhow, this is what happened.
He because SO addicted that he would be awake for 20 hours at a time playing (but actually making it to class) then sleep a few hours (6-8). So the time he was awake actually rotated around the clock, which occasional disruptions caused by actually having to make it to class.
This burned him out in about a year and he went back to where his family lives.
I had a problem for a few months, but was able to shake it off quickly, but not before racking up a new character to level 50 in 36 hours of straight play on "Silly Mud" (which was the last time I really played on a MUD)
Burn Hollywood Burn
I believe that computer gaming has advanced to the point where the environment of a game (beit fps or rpg) can be so submersive that addiction is possible. I am not saying that today's eye-candy is to blame, but simply that pc's and consoles are so widespread now that an industry has arisen to support large "all-gaming all-the-time" communities that just weren't possible in the 80's or early 90's. Q3 and Ultima Online are prime examples of such a standard. Everyone knows there are certain someones (hey, don't look at me!!!) who spend every spare minute playing that special something.
;]) or find something else to waste time with.
Instead of blindly saying "They're addicts", though, I think it's worth looking at two things:
1)How much does it interfere with their lives
2)What would they be doing otherwise
For some, gaming might be a form of escapism, much like reading is to others. No one would say, "She's a book addict!", but they might say "She's a social outcast." It's the same deal with RPG's or MUD's.
Lots of people turn to gaming simply to procrastinate, too. If there weren't such great products they might simply watch TV(that other, less worthy form of addiction
.
Nice guys don't finish last. In reality, they're abducted halfway through the race.
Man, that was embarrassing... surely many fellow Civilization I afficionados will sympathize with me when I tell "my story": first time I saw Civ was at a friend's home where I was guest for a week. I happened to sleep in the room with the PC (a 286/10 MHz, enough for Civ 1). The first game lasted about an hour, and the computer beat the socks off me. I didn't let myself down, and started a new game... and played it without stopping for 3 days. I was pretending I would go to sleep, but then I would sneak out of the bed, turn on the PC, and play until people started waking up in the morning. Then, I would pretend "I just wake up, so I turned on the PC to play a little bit..".
When I finally finished with the game (I will never forget the replay of my game, seeing my Roman empire expand and take over all the land, ahhh, the pleasure...), I had all those settlers, phallanx, chariots, cannons, roads, irrigation etc. in front of my eyes, and as I fell asleep I was dreaming of the wholething!
Since then, I still have "addiction nights" where I spend one whole night playing FreeCiv. Now, this is maybe not real addiction, but when I start playing, nobody better interrupt me!
Sigged!
I can quit whenever I want to... *twitch-twitch*
Build Your Own PVR/HTPC news, reviews, &
I don't know how redundant this is but I just thought I should mention my roommate. He plays EQ for more than 12 hours a day, and he has definitely quit going to classes this semester. He usually starts playing at 2PM ,when he wakes up, and most of the time, when I wake up to go to work/classes at 6:30AM he is still playing. His family lives about 100 miles from here so he goes home every weekend. The worst part is that he hasn't told his family he isn't going to classes anymore, so he comes back to school only to spend every waking hour of the week playing that game.
Yesterday, the EQ servers were down and he was going insane in the room. When the servers came back up he sat in front of the computer for over two hours watching the a patch squeeze its way through our 56k dialup. True story..
The bottom line is that if you have an addictive personality (much like my roommate has) games can be a very serious business.
July 1, 2024
Republican Presidential candidate Jenna Bush finally responded to the controversy surrounding her supposed gaming habit in the early 2000's. Unnamed sources, all claiming to be former college friends, have stated that Ms. Bush was an all-night gamer, playing Quake III, Tribes, and other games popular among the youth at the time. Since then, gaming has become strictly prohibited and all users, manufacturers, and distributors of these games have faced enormous fines and prison sentences.
While not explicitly confessing to game use during her college years, Bush said "when I was young and irresponsible, I was young and irresponsible".
Miguel Jesus deNaranja, currently serving a 75-year sentence for game distribution at Microsoft Maximum Security Detention Center near Austin, expressed outrage towards this statement by the President--his former classmate and supposed gaming partner. "I can't believe she is being such a hypocrite about this. She used to frag my brown ass all night long back in the day." Bush denies deNaranja's statements and claims to have never met him.
--"What is the sound of one belly slapping?"
Riiiiggghht!
And let's help out those poor souls in the stadiums and sports bars obviously addicted to football. Nor should we forget those addicted to model railroading. Oh, and TV, too! And reading certain websites. Yes sir, anything you do on a regular basis is an addiction and you should seek help.
Now I just have find a way to break this addiction to my job, and I'll be set!
Chelloveck
I give up on debugging. From now on, SIGSEGV is a feature.
First it was money, then it was power, then it was sex, then it was alcohol, then drugs, then books, then sports, then MST3k, now games. None of these things are necessarily bad in and of themselves, it's just that people are prone to addiction. My parents are both recovering alcoholics, so genetically, i've got loaded dice. I've noticed many addictive tendancies in myself, and tried EXTREMELY hard to moderate them. I'm doing pretty well. It's the people who don't see their own tendancies that are in danger, with ANY of the above. They start, and can't stop, and feel like the rest of the world is against them when really it's that they've gone in too deep to have any real perspective. Gaming is no different, and no worse. There is no reason games can't be used, even heavily, without any major problems. Like with booze, a major binge every now and again within a pattern of responsible use is fine as long as it doesn't screw up your life or the life of anyone you care about. Offtopic. . .MADD==Mothers Agains Dungeons and Dragons. . .
You are not the customer.
The assumption is that this is bad. But, is it really? Is it any worse than sitting in front of a tv when you're home?
"Would it kill you to put down the toilet seat?" -- Maya Angelou
The truth is, the world is pretty fucked up. And we get into our little inward worlds to try and ignore that. Some of us are workaholics, others watch TV incessantly, etc. Every different thing has it's angle. Video games are addictive especially to the technophile crowd because face it, we geeks like flashy stuff (no rhyme intended). We want feedback, interactivity (another "duh"), eye-candy, excitement, etc. But when it comes down to it, these are just desires that get filled the same way as anyone else fulfills them: abuse. I would argue that 70% of Americans are television addicts.
The point I'm getting at here is that we are a nation of hedonists because we don't need to worry about the consequences of our consumerism, apathy, etc. (bear with me as I get a bit political) Not to induce a guilt trip here, but I don't think anyone in Somalia has a problem with buying too much crap, watching too much TV, or spending too much time jerking their thumbs in front of CRT's. But they have all their own problems to worry about: AIDS, drug warlords, starvation, etc. What do you do in a situation devoid of all pleasure? It probably would involve heavy, heavy drugs. I, for one, would not be able to sit through 6 hours of Metal Gear Solid while two gangs have a firefight next door.
My point is, people find outlets for their frustrated desires everywhere. Very seldomly do they have the courage to actually seek out the root causes of those desires. Here in the States, I think most of people's anxieties are caused by:
- working too much and taking it too seriously (ie. "miserable-ism" as termed by the Situationists)
- depending on others to make decisions for them ("pathological fascism" as called by Deleuze & Guattari)
- rampant commercialism driving down our self-esteem (and driving up demand)
To relieve this we watch: movies/shows about cops, criminals, rich people, sexy people, futuristic people, fantastic people, etc. (I'm talking mainstream, here, not "Clerks"-style stuff). All these movies/shows whatever romanticize these roles that only a few of us get to ever do. Since we're NOT those people, we feel more like a piece of shit, thus leaving us vulnerable to subconsicious suggestions that Diet Coke will instantly bestow us the sex appeal of Victoria Secret models.
So of course we want to feel like heroes, or drive ultrafast cars, or be the super-killer-soldier with the most frags: video games fulfill those vicarious pleasures because the media industry has successfully planted all those desires in us already!
So naturally, the best way to break a video game addiction is to withdraw from Hollywood/Viacom/AOLTimeWarner/Disney in every conceivable form. Or at least develop enough of a cynical veneer to be able to look someone in the eye and say, "The Matrix was good...for a Hollywood film."
[pink beam of light]
It's just something I have to do all the time. :)
I am getting very tired of the term addiction being overused these days. True addiction is a very harsh thing. Try picking up a Heroin habit for a couple of months and you might see what a real addiction is. If someone stops playing EQ before they level up, do they start having withdrawl? No, they just go to bed or go listen to their girlfriend/wife bitch at them for playing too much.
roche
Bah Humbug!
Slot machine addiction: put money, time in, get reward (money, but you can proove that you'll never win was much as you spend .. casinos wouldn't exist if you could)
... social addictions ARE physical addictions .. you simply develop a dependance on the way those chemicals in question fire off in your brain while you are indulging in your addiction. Plain and simple.
Video game addiction: put time, (maybe money) in, get reward (cool graphics, bragging, whatever)
You can be addicted to ANYTHING
"Old man yells at systemd"
This actually happened to me for a while in my junior year in college (~91). It started when I was working in the computer lab and would usually get bored and finish all my homework. Soon the MUD took the place of doing the work as well as it should have been (didn't actually slip so far as to fail anything). Luckily, I realized what was happening after a few weeks and gave it up to do more productive things--like the papers I had due. The other problem was that I was one of the few people at the school with a computer that could dial-in so I started doing it back in the dorm as well. Luckily, my friends were big into having parties and after a couple of those and some new girls the MUD was forgotten.
Now when I see this sort of things in my friends (obsessive online chat, MMORPGs), I just don't understand it. The novelty of it is interesting for a while, but I think most people realize there are better things to waste your time on--at least I did.
-J
Unless when you stopped playing the game(s), you could think of nothing else for days on end, but the game, and you lost sleep, paced endlessly, and basically had your entire life ruined for weeks, not able to perform normal functions, in a pain that lasted to some degree at least 6 months or more, if not for ever, then you weren't addicted.
Just because you could stop doesn't mean others can.
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
The karma cap of 50 is so low that users are not
going to be doing what you claim. It takes very
little time to cap it off and then you're done.
(Karma cap rant: The cap is implemented in a rather unfair way. Imagine two people starting at zero karma. Person 1 then gets 97 positive
mods in a row followed by 3 negative ones, giving him a total of 47. Person 2 gets 30 positive mods, then 10 negative ones, then 30 positive ones, then 10 negative, then 20 positive. His Karma is now capped at 50. But out of the 100 modded posts both of them have had, clearly person 1 is the more positively modded poster, with 97% positive mods, while person 2 had only 80%. I think karma should be implemented as a percentage rather than a raw count. The mistake the karma cap tried correcting was that the volume of posting affected the karma, which made abusive excessive posting a path to high karma. But, using a score that indicates the ratio of posative vs negative mods would have fixed it too, but in a more fair way.)
Don't label something "offtopic" unless you know the topic well enough to tell what's on topic.
Ever wondered about the difference between the successful guys and your rather pathetic self. Ever wished you could get off your butt and accomplish the things you want to do? I certainly have, and it has occurred to me many times that the difference is willpower.
I completed a masters degree on my own, mostly at home unsupervised. Now I'm trying to do some work on open source projects but I mainly surf the internet and play Empire Earth when I'm on the computer. I don't really have any less motivation - just less willpower.
I do need to do those things - you have to relax now and again. The difference is, when I come home from work I start playing and don't stop until I have to go to bed. When I have the willpower, I can just say right, now I'm going to stop and do some real work.
The trouble is, I don't know what makes the difference - some days I can do it, some I'm a slob. Two things come to mind. Sometimes I'll stop gaming to lie down and relax, meditate a bit, that definately helps. The other thing that helps is Linux. No I'm not talk about how good it is - the simple fact is, once I boot into Linux I can't play those fancy games. And of course, once I get stuck into something useful it's just as "addictive" as the gaming - ever tried to stop coding when you've only got one bug to go?
I remember many people addicted to IRC in the early 1990s when there was one IRC network and it only had a couple hundred users online at anyone time.
IRC stood for I Repeat Class in those days. Is anybody addicted to IRC anymore?
Chris
Forget everquest, although I know someone addicted to that one. He looks at everquest screenshots whenever he's at a computer w/o eq. My weakness it nethack. I just started playing and I got it bad. It's hard for me to sit here right now and tell myself I need to do my homework before I even think about firing up nethack. I missed sleep the past two weeks, I even skipped an entire research essay to play it. I read rec.games.roguelike.nethack, they got it too. I'm still strugglin to get beyond the gnomish mines, but I ain't quittin until I get that first ascention...then ascentions in the other classes...then with conduct...
Damn you, you had to mention addiction...looks like I have to do calc early in the mornin before class again.
--Roy
If your partner is accusing you of being addicted, prove that you're not--- set a goal-- 1 day, 3 days, a week, whatever, and just don't play. After all, it won't kill you to get some nookie and sunshine..
So long, and thanks for all the Phish
This explains why I been playing Counter-Strike since beta 5.
It's my excuse at least.
I'm not addicted, I can quit at any time.
>twitch
Fortunately, a mishap between my hard drive and Windows XP has rendered my computer completely Microsoft free.
I am safe now.
At least until I figure out xwine.
(/local/home/curiosity)-#who -u|grep thecat|cut -c 44-49|xargs kill -9
Take it from me and most of my friends, this used to be a huge topic when MUD'ing was a big college activity.
There were tons of studies done then and nothing has changed in the intervening 5-10 years.
In more recent times, this has been replaced by Diablo/WarCraft/ and I am sure it will be the same in the future.
It is certainly true, addictive personalities become addicted by nature. Just ask any gambler/substance/ about this sort of problem.
And the worst part is, there is no cure.
you're "in a harry" to get back to unreal tournament.
I'm not addicted... I can quit Diablo2 anytime I want. I just don't want to.
You have to hand it to modern psychologists/psychiatrists and our victim-based society: we sure are convinced that everything else is the problem these days. Not addicted to booze yet? You will be. Never spent your life savings gambling? You will soon. These evils are SO powerful and SO irresistable, that no matter how smart, how responsible, how lucky you are, in the end, they will get you too.
Or is it the easy transfer of blame factor that works so often in 'addictions'?
(For the record, this is coming from a 10-year pack-a-day smoker who just quit 5 months ago. I just stopped one day, because I decided that I didn't want to smoke anymore. And in 5 months I reallY haven't wanted to since.)
Endless arguments over trivial contradictions in books written by ignorant savages to explain thunder in the dark.
This should come to no suprise for most of the posters here. In fact after reading through posts, it seems that this thread produced more humor posts than not pointing to the fact that this addiction is well known.
Back in the MUD/MOO/MUCK days I used to give free access to some seriously addicted people. At the time I thought I was helping because now that person would not have to spend so much money on internet access. (Flat rates? what were those?) Of couse now I see that I was not helping.
The gaming addiction boils down to escapism. People who may not have a good grip on reality are able to have a better control over their online lives than their RealLife lives. They may not be the classical addictive personality, but they can still get hooked. Games that are most addicting have some sort of social interaction that can take the place of face-to-face interaction, i.e. MUDs, MMRPG, and for that matter D&D.
Of couse the addictive personalities can become addicted to just about anything.
"Those who make peaceful revolution impossible, make violent revolution inevitable" - JFK
So if I were addicted to a video game, and I put in cheat codes...
:)
Is this like light cigarettes?
-Wrexsoul
--- Need web hosting?
First off, I'm not an addiction specialist, but I don't have first hand knowledge of how it works, and I can probably input some valid commentary on how games can be addicting.
How it Works...
From my understanding, mental / psychological addiction occurs when someone's coping skills become atrophied (for lack of a better word) due to lack of use. Usually, this happens when something else replaces those skills, such as drugs, sex, alcohol, etc. These things allow the person to not have to cope with whatever stresses they would normally have by allowing them to artificially not have to deal with (i.e., cover-up) the problem. For example:
Meet Jon. Jon works in the IT feild. One day, one of his (l)users decides that he's going to "FIX" the Oracle machine in the server room. The user "FIXES" the machine and Jon walks in 15 minutes later and discovers this.
This is where the stress occurs. For purposes of this example, Jon can only choose one of two responses:
A- Go confront the guy and discuss it.
B- Go smoke a doobie.
Consequences of those actions.
A> Jon gets to get frustrated, angry, etc. He puts his coping skills to use!
B> Jon gets fried. Ignoring the fact that he's fried at work, he hasn't had to deal with those feelings and that stress. He thinks to himself "Ah.. that wasn't that bad. THis pot thing's neat! I'll try it next time I need to feel good."
Cycle B is pretty viscious, and hard to escape from.
Now applying this to videogames is pretty simple:
Video games allow people to vent stress by killing things, or otherwise focusing their attention AWAY from the problem and somewhere else, very similar to the effect of drugs. Jon goes into the server room, finds things broken, goes and unleashes some of his hellfire on the electrons that exist in Q3A or whatever, feels better, goes and does some work.
Granted, his reaction was TONS better than going and toking up, but there comes a point where you can't go into your room and play 10 rounds of UT to get that stress to go away. If that happens and you end up a quivering ball of strife, you have a problem.
- Sometimes you're the pidgeon, sometimes you're the statue.
It frustrates me greatly that people try to claim victim status when they are victimized only by their choices.
According to the listed standard, I think I could be described as sleep addicted, food addicted, air addicted, and for that matter addicted to converstations with my wife and playing with my kids!
I enjoy computer games. I know what it's like to drag my butt in to the office and lack productvity all day because I was up until the wee hours of the morning playing video games.
My point is this. We make many choices which reflect a person's values and priorities. When I watch the movie or stay up late playing RTCW, I pay the consequences. As a result, I choose not to do that very often! When I choose to do that, I blame myself, not some psychological condition.
Choosing to value the wrong things is simply a lack of discipline. Lack of discipline is a character problem, not an addiction over which the person has no control.
The problem is a lack of will, and the consequences are simply the results of bad choices.
Take control of your life by taking responsibility for your choices, values and character! Choose to put down the controller, or even to get rid of the console.
Get involved with people. It's harder, and hurts more, but is far more rewarding than having the perfect score in Pitfall!
But Herr Heisenberg, how does the electron know when I'm looking?
I can't tell you how many people I know or heard of who failed out of college because of games. I was lucky enough to pull myself out of it, but it is seriously an addiction. I've been playing games since atari (forget which one) and I've never stopped. After doing terrible in school, I finally found a good balance between "real life" and games. Believe me, no one loves games more then me, but you have to unplug and learn to apprecite "small doses". Most effictive for me was having people hide my game cds (yes, I'm serious) so I could get work done. Now I just play one level, or a round or two and then turn it off. Another piece of advice would be to limit the kinds of games you play. For example, there is no way you can keep up with first person shooters, turn-based, and blizzard's electronic crack games. Just choose one type, or one game at a time (ID all the way for me baby!). Also, think about how much coding you could do with that time!?!
This lisit sums up my first 2 years of school
You know you are addicted to games when:
1) architecture and buildings make you think of quake levels
2) you fall asleep in class and dream about shooting your teacher with a rocket
3) you know if its more efficient to use your initial money in starcraft to train a drone or hold it for a barracks
4) you refer to your friends by their game handles
5) you've played ever version of counter-strike
6) you sell game characters or items on ebay
7) you can fire up doom or wolfenstein (I) and navigate every level perfectly
8) you visit bluesnews more then once a day
9) you've beat every level of mythI+II on legendary without losing a single man
10) you have beaten all of the "might and magic" games
11) no one can beat you in street fighter
However, with paper and pencil (and D&D's new d20 system) I can port my character to any number of game systems. I'm not wasting time I'm just developing a new recreational...hmm...fantasy....
ok, it's a waste of time, but I'm having fun!
(PS. anyone can get hooked on anything. Heck, some people get hooked on their significate others and never want to game again...I call those people losers)
"Only one thing, is impossible for god: to find any sense in any copyright law on the planet." Mark Twain
Yes, gaming addiction is real. So is information addiction. It's pathetic the amount of time I spent sucking down worthless piles of information on the net.
/., k5, Drudge, Shack, .5e, x-e, penny arcade, SA, POTD, Filthy, The Atlantic, TNR, HowStuffWorks, Ars, Onion, Blogdex, CNN, check e-mail, rinse, repeat until dead.
Fark,
The 2 hour morning web surf through my first two classes and before the shower is probably the most depressing after its over.
The only thing worse than having a day go by in front of the computer is having that day go by with the end result being that you got farther in a game or read a bunch of meaningless drivel by some web admin or forum-goers. See, I'm doing it right now!
The only way I feel like I'm using the computer effectively is when I'm doing homework or coding a personal project. Everything else is worthless, except maybe a regular check of the daily news (since I have no TV.)
I spend days, hell, weeks sometimes, away from the web and realize how stupid it is and what a waste of time it is. Too bad I never learn.
Don't even ask about what happened when Quake 3 fit itself into this routine two years ago. I finally got over that one this semester when my cable provider decided to suck. I should be thankful.
--
Usually, game addiction is most prevelent in people who have no previously existing social context in an area other than thru gaming.
... burning down the house!
One of the reasons I first became a game developer, in the 80s, was that I had become addicted to gaming (RPGs mostly).
So we see it pop up more in people who gain socialization thru LAN parties, and especially when they go to a new High School or College where they have few friends who are not in the gaming community.
However, it's not an addiction that's easy to kick. Usually it can be solved by other more powerful drives (getting into a long-term relationship is one of the best), but in practice you may need to move away and not socialize with other game addicts and take up other interests if you wish to break the cycle.
My favorite view of it is what happens in The Sims at a LAN party
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Now like any other industry, in this business people want to make money. The cynical will point out that one way to nake more money is to find more things to treat. Think of your typicasl consultants who keep trying to come up with news services that you might "need". That being said, imagine this is mental health.
Thus while there are many conditions that do need to be addressed, like why do people kill other people, abuse the rights of others, etc. it is easier to go after the easier fish like the soon to be listed Gaming Addiction Disorder. In most cases a diagnosis like this is junk science.
Very simply there are bazillions of things that can give a person pleasure. You can then get stuck into some sort of a positive feedback loop, especially if there other sources of pleasure are lacking in your life. To then name each one as a separate disease is with a matching chemical imbalance is short sighted at best.
To phrase it in electronics terms, there are un-implemented communications protocols in the human interaction interface. The missing protocols may include things like "Shake Hands", "Smile", "Show interest", "Flirt", etc. These are skill sets, not chemical imbalances. The Brain is a software/wetware combination that is capable of reconfiguring itself, sometimes with weird results. But you can bring things back in line if you get the correct items.
All these things are the equivalent of Software issues, not Hardware Issues. And they keep identifying the problem as hardware (chemical imbalances).
That they keep making money off it is merely extra brownie points for them.
To sum up, I think "Gaming Addiction" is not really an addiction in the classic sense of the term.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
A lot of people are jumping up and down claiming that addiction is bad and that one should not have this problem. Can you ask the successful entrepreneur how many hours they spent working on or coding that project that everyone said would fail? How about the virtuoso pianist? But would we say they were wrong to spend that time? I don't think we would. I definitely would not.
Addiction can be really helpful. I think a lot of these people who get addicted to games, ebay, chatting, etc. have a very introspective personality or don't have a large social circle. It's not their personality that's flawed but just their lifestyle. Having known a bunch of people who've gotten addicted, I can say that it just takes time or the right change. This girl I knew really was into chatting. Once she met a guy she really liked, she pretty much got over it. Similar things have happend to a bunch of other people.
And to leave you, how many of you guys go to Chapters or Barnes and Noble regularly? If you do, you probably know of people who go and spend all their freetime there. They are addicted to reading. I guess context makes all the differenec.
Certainly, it's only one factor. But it remains very important. For example, although this may sound strange to many of you, I have a relatively urban background - I grew up in a big city, where there were many different things that one could interest himself in, not to mention a much more elaborate cultural life (cinema, ballet, concerts, etc) and international diversity of population.
Following my move to a disappointing small town, my lifestyle for a long time sank into compulsive gaming addictions of all kinds. It still persists to some degree. Certainly, this was possible when I lived in a more interesting place, as well, but it was usually short-term and relatively benign. But this place lacks the sophistication that I have come to subconsciously expect from my environment - it's all relatively monotonous, the people are all relatively similar, and I am not a very mobile person so I cannot necessarily get up and go somewhere and do something. As a result, I am of course more inclined to stare at my monitor, playing games for hours on end and neglecting some facets of real life.
Find something else to do for a couple hours out of the day. Maybe exercise. Maybe read a book. Hell, take up drinking and go to a bar. Leave the game alone a while just to make sure that there's not something else out there you're missing.
Actually, in my personal experience, sex works best. Constant frequent sex with a partner of the appropriate gender for you. And a little food and alcohol thrown in at times.
Fight fire with flamethrowers.
-
--- Will in Seattle - What are you doing to fight the War?
Wait, the object here is to do 'what' to my gaming addiction? I thought this story was a place to get more links to feed my craving. There's all this stuff about making gaming addiction sound like a BAD thing.
-j
I wonder if we will now see Surgeon General Warnings on games Warning: May be addictive, possible side effects including pasty white skin, anti social behavior, wrist problems and eye strain.
Thankfully I'm not as bad as some people in the article, but I get rather obsessive about games. It was worse a couple of years ago.
:) It really pulled me back into the real world. I still played games casually though.
My drug of choice was quake2. I dreamed about it when I was sleeping. I watched and analyzed demos of the masters playing.
And when I wasn't playing, I was thinking about it. Whenever I had to go outside, for instance, I would look at my immediate surroundings and try to find the quickest/best route through based on quake2 physics and its anomolies. (double jump, bunny hop, etc) It was affecting my life.
But then, something marvelous happened that cured me of quake2. I got a girlfriend.
But my personality makes it easy for me to fall into this sort of thing. For instance about a week ago, I discovered my roommate had brought gotten a copy of Super Mario 64 from somewhere. I just finished getting all 120 stars. For those that aren't familiar with the game, this is a major undertaking in such a short time. And as a result my life over the past week has gotten shittier. I have no clean clothes, there's garbage all over, etc.
After reading this article and the responses, I have decided that I can't play games casually. Any time I pick up a game, I'm in danger of losing control. I've decided that it's in my best interests to stay away from games for the forseeable future.
I used to bulls-eye womp-rats in my pants
In America, we encourage overconsumption. This doesn't sit well with our puritan ethics, though. We used to pride ourselves on being frugal, and frown on greed. Now we celebrate it. 'Nothing in excess,' said our puritan forefathers, but a modern capitalist economy depends on overconsumption.
So now we segregate out certain behaviors, amongst all of our excesses, as the real evil, the real excess. These we call addictions. Anything we don't approve of can become an addiction, with it's connotation of loss of self-control.
Calling something an addiciton is a way to oppress the group that enjoys that thing. It was used in the 30's with marijuana (a mexican word: americans used 'cannabis' tinctures, and not generally for recreation) and again in the 80's with crack cocaine. Why are the penalties for crack posession so much stiffer than cocaine? Couldn't have anything to do with the demographics of their respective markets, could it? The ruling class protects it's own.
Intelligent members of our society tend to get singled out for special attention. Capitalism demands of it's smarter servants that they be crippled in some way, lest they organize and replace the current oppresive system with one that makes sense. I don't think I need to point out how oppresive our educational system can be for people with a free mind.
So now gaming is an addiction. Are we not supposed to enjoy the fruits of our labor?
This isn't to say that I haven't at times felt a bit of the old obsessive compulsion around gaming. But people who haven't been brainwashed into believing that we lose our free will to so-called addictions know that with willpower, patience, self-love, and time, anyone can change any of their behaviors they want.
Most people never enter a self destructive donward spiral with any of the potentially addictive behaviors or substances they try. They find a way to do the thing they like in a way that doesn't interfere with the rest of their life.
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Notice it's only an addiction once other people don't like it anymore? It's a hobby if it's only slightly annoying. :P
The ease of addition is simple, your body produces chemicals to react to the environmients, even simulated ones. This occurs especially in "action" games where adrenaline pumps with each round fired/guard killed or KO'd/level completed. The great ability to adapt also comes in, your body gets used to the chemicals present inth blood stream and begins to rely on them, much like smoking (as said earlier).
Even in the quieter aspect of games where the body is relaxing, your body still produces endorphins (sp?) to "reward" you for letting your body settle down and repair itself, furthering your "chance" of survival.
In both cases, the body gets used to the chemical balance and needs it eventually, causing what some call addiction.
Addiction is the wrong term. Addiction has severely negative connotations. Just because you do something very much it isn't necessarily an addiction. Reading, exercize, traveling, etc. are all legitimate pasttimes that you will never hear termed as addictions.
Gaming has simply gotten to the point where it can be considered as a serious hobby/activity.
And I'm not saying this to defend myself. I game only now and then. But I definitely don't think this is negative (especially when you consider many things people do that are not termed addictions).
I practice violin very much. Am I addicted? Well, I like it very much. But you wouldn't call it an addiction.
But because it's "normal" doesn't mean it's good. Someone else posted that somebody who spends all their time working as a lawyer would be praised as a "hard worker". Well, (disregarding the obvious jokes about the value of lawyering) anything that takes you over and locks you into a specific set of behaviours is bad. The great thing about being alive and human is the potential for doing new things. Doing the same exact thing for hours, days, months, years... that doesn't just make you an addict, it makes you uninteresting.
Whether you're an alcoholic, a crackhead, an obsessive EQ'er, or Bill Gates, it just isn't healthy to devote every waking moment to something that diminishes your capacity to be an interesting human. Obviously, whatever behaviours these types of people engage in give them some short-lived boost to their self-esteem, but at the expense of their lovability.
Do you want to be loved? Stop being so damn boring then, and take a fscking walk. Read a book. Hell, write a book... just do something different! Try to find a little balance in your life.
That goes for you, too, Gates.
I've got a bad attitude and karma to burn. Go ahead. Mod me down.
Why should we do something more productive?
When all we're working for in the end is
...FUN & GAMES !
Is
Symptoms of game addiction include falling behind in school and work and basically deferring everything else in your life so you can play, she said. Compulsive playing tends to mask underlying problems such as depression, anger and low self-esteem, said Orzack, who said she was once hooked on computer solitaire.
Quite contrary: Compulsive (meaning doing it when it's no longer enjoyable) ANYTHING (be it jogging, game playing, gambling, masturbating, whatever) is usually a direct indication of depression, etc. Most people attempt to avoid this fact though by twisting the reality around: When I see a guy who lays at home smoking pot all day, I see someone with some mental health problems. When many others see the same guy they see an evil victim of pot who just needs to stamp the habit and then he'll fly straight. How utterly absurd.
I think the term addiction is being misused in this case. Addiction used to be a meaningful medical term. Some substances are addictive because they build a physiological tolerance, requiring greater use for the same effect, and which, if use is stopped, turns around into physiological withdrawal symptoms. What you're calling an addictive personality is really an obsessive-compulsive personality. The obsession is the inability to get away from the whatever mentally, the compulsion is to engage in the behavior the obsession leads to. It's significant because addiction means bad and it is used to vilify all sorts of things that are really value neutral. Plenty of OCD types clean obsessively but you don't see anyone talking about "Cleaning Addiction" or suggesting that cleaning is intrinsically bad. No functional difference between that behavior and playing Everquest all night.
It Is the Nature of Information to Transgress Artificial Boundaries
I'd imagine that the EQ designers got a raise when it was discovered that it was highly addictive.
I suspect that this would also hold true for many other 'products' eg. Magic:TG, Pokemon etc.
It is just the mind-set of out consumer society. Most businesses exist to make money. What's the easiest way to make money?, create a 'drug' and get people addicted to it.
'Welcome to Rivendell, Mr. Anderson...'
Yeah, since you put it that way, all any addiction is the lack of the will and sheer determination. Even alcohol, drugs, etc.
From personal experience (not as an addict to anything, but just using games as an escape) is that for some people the game becomes a proxy for life. This actually makes it worse in some ways than a drug addiction which 'merely' alters your brain chemistry. The game not only alters your brain chemistry via the reward mechanism, it creates a feedback loop because the more you play, the better you get at triggering the reward mechanism. IE, you get better at the game in question.
It's easy for you to say it, but can you do something similar? It's not such an extreme analogy for me to propose that the 'Game of Life' in the US is hollow and empty with a materialistic reward and positive feedback system analagous to a game. In such a situation could you just throw it all away and throw yourself into a monastary with little positive feedback, little material gain, and very little encouragement?
It's easy for me to see how someone stuck in a game might see the real world as emptier and less satisfying because there is less order, less feedback, less reward, less gain than the online world where they have already mastered or can imagine mastering the rules and becoming proficient. You are asking them to become happy; can you be happy if I asked you to throw away your life and live as a monk or hermit?
GPL Deconstructed
I was literally stopped in the middle of the street jaywalking by another lawyer who wanted to tell me I was his hero for finding a way out. They want out; they just can't face the pay cut. Grad school was a 90% cut from what I would have made the next year--and worth every penny. (I also had to give up the 35 hour work week . .
I razzed another lawyer, a litigator, about eating the fish rather than the red meat at our 20 year reunion. He can't *digest* it, it makes him ill due to his stress. So why does he continue? He can't give up the money and lifestyle.
A great many lawyers are caught in a living hell. They give up everything to stay in--family, health, sanity (yes, I know at least one who just plain cracked). And for what?
Yes, I am still a lawyer, and have kept my licenses. I'll take antitrust issues and other matters which really want an economist with a law license. But I'll dig ditches before I return to general practice.
hawk, esq.
I think it all really depends on the personality. I have a friend who divorced her husband and left with the kids because he would never leave EQ. Everytime I saw him he was sitting in front of the computer.
It got to be really bad. But the extreme to which he took it was totally based on how much he didn't want to deal with real life. I have met a few DND players who put tremendous game time in because they don't have to deal with reality.
I'm not saying all gamers get addicted because they are trying to escape reality, don't get me wrong I like a good 8 hour DND game. But the extremists may not be happy with life in general to begin with.
My very own father had a huge problem with this. Back in the days before AOL went $19.95 unlimited access, they brought out a game called Air Warrior, where you could play with hundreds of other people at the same time. For free.
As the date when AOL would switch to Unlimited Access came closer, my dad was playing Air Warrior more and more, ringing up some rather large bills.
When they finally switched over, my dad became a complete addict. He would sit on the computer for days at a time. He wouldn't talk to us, you had to twist his arm to get him to the dinner table. It was bad, but it only got worse. Soon he stopped going to his job. He was a travelling salesman, so he made the times & dates of his appointments. His usual weekly routine was thrown out the window, and we could barely afford to keep living. Instead he just racked up the credit card bills.
Then he got a new job, and started to kick his habits. We moved to a big city. It seemed the worst had passed. He no longer even wanted to really play, because he knew just how bad it could get. Then one night I was playing the game, and he came home from work, and just sat behind me watching. Then he began to tell me what I should do. He got so into it, I just handed him the controller and said "Here, you play."
He told me no, he didn't want to. But I just walked away anyways. Later on that night I came downstairs to find him once again playing the game. He played it all night. The next morning he had to make a trip across the state, back to our home town. My sister went with him. He was too tired to drive, so he had her drive. The van was overloaded. While he was asleep in the passenger seat with no seatbelt on, and my 14 year old sister (at the time) was driving with almost NO experience. The van's axel broke, and they were thrown from the vehicle. He was crushed by the van and died a few hours later.
Gaming can become a very very serious addiction. Even though I sufferred through my dad's, I have still had game addictions of my own. Though I can seem to somewhat control it because I remember just how bad it can get.
Who's to say gaming is bad & working is good?
Maybe we've all got it backwards & we're supposed to be maximizing the amount of fun we have instead of maximizing the amount of numbers in a bank account somewhere?
I geek alot, EQ, DAoC, RtCW, MGS2, you name it; as a result I don't have alot of other time to do things other people might consider "normal". But ya know, I've got friends I've made in EQ & the other games, that I've had for years now that are way closer than most people I know in a strictly non-gaming sense. Who's honestly qualified to say which is 'better' for you?
I take it you've never been with a woman who wanted sex 24/7/365. See, they can actually DO that, physically. After five times in a day, it starts to get less fun for me, and after five times a day for a week, it starts to HURT, and it gets boring.
Now, if it was a DIFFERENT woman every time...
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
Anyone (old enough) remember the 8-12 hour D&D sessions over at a friends house starting around Saturday at noon. I sure do. Played that all through out high school. And afterwards for a while.
Now when that stopped being popular I got hooked on the MUDs - played for about 5 or 6 years. Then it was CIV - and actually planning on picking up 3 soon.
I work hard - usually about 50-60 hours a week and some weekend hours once in a while. And married with a 3 year old at home. But I still play when I get the chance. Can anyone say stress relief? :)
FreeBSD: Nothing runs like a daemon with a pitch fork.
Been there done that, I failed one class at uni and almost failed another due to being up all night playing utopia instead of
a) doing my assignments
and
b) spending time with my gf
On occaisions I got so addicted to it that I would spend from friday afternoon until monday morning about 3am playing it (neglecting sleep or getting very little and setting my alarm to wake up at exactly the right time to get various bonuses etc.)
You can find some more relevant articles from the BBC, academia, more academia, the parent report, evilminion.com, and self psychology bboard. Also see the journal of electronic gamblin issues.
You know I don't really want to get into whether or not gaming is addicting. Obviously it can be for the wrong kind of person and for other people it just isn't even a question.
:). Why is it god damn acceptable for men to be annoying obssessed with sports to the point where they know every little stupid stat that never stood for anything anyways but it's not acceptable for me to have every weapon dmg/ratio memorized in Shattered Galaxy.
/warning rant coming
What makes me sick is the damn symptoms everyone talks about and what they think is so bad about computer gaming to much. "Oh my god he sits in front of the computer screen for 5 hours doing nothing but playing that stupid game that will never amount to anything, he needs to get a life". This is just disgusting when someone says something like this all there really saying is "I don't think thats very enjoyable therefore he's a looser". Well you know what? I hate sports they're boring as fuck to me. I don't go around calling people who drink beer and watch football all day on sunday loosers (well at least not because of that). If just makes me want to smack someone around (see people make people violent not games
"Oh he has no friends nobody even talks to him". Bullshit I bet most of these people have more friends online than the average "real life" person has had in his life. Their retort is that dosn't count of course online people are "fake". WTF? They're fake? Why because you can't play football with them? Are they made of plastic simply because you can't see them? Maybe the average persons empathic skills are so pathetic that they have to make up with physical closeness but not everyone is that way.
Oh and don't even get me started on the he dosn't go outside argument. Why are people suddenly seen as loosers because they don't like to have a mental masturbation everytime they see a pretty flower. Then they get all uppity about so said person having no appreciation for beauty. Hello have we forgotten beauty is in the eye of the beholder? Just because they think the outdoors is boring and nothing special dosn't mean they don't think other things are beautiful and awe inspiring. Anyone seen those spell effects in Dark Ages of Camelot? That's fucking beauty right there that god didn't see fit to put on this natural earth. I never get to walk down the sidewalk and see a total dumbass get smited by a huge fucking hammer from the sky crackling with lighting all around it.
/rant off
So basically same ol same ol. People want everyone else to join their "club" and get all uppity when they're different. What's even worse is some people think this is the worst part about gaming. They totally neglect the fact that there are actually some poor souls out that do get geniunely addicted and have real problems that interfere with them enjoying their lives.
Take that poor kid that wrote the essay for instance. The kid sounded as if games had really messed him up. He failed school. That's a problem when you end up doing something really bad that you would of never chosen to do w/o the addiction in the first place. The kid seemed pretty upset about it true but he seemed more upset that he thought he was such a looser. Sounded to me like so many people had told him that he was a looser that he was starting to believe it. Maybe if his family would of concentrated on urging him to do his homework instead of making him feel like a looser snail who needed to crawl into the shell of gaming he might of passed.
Jartan
I never said that you aren't still personally responsible for your behaviour. Even if one can successfully argue that "once Johnny starts playing CivII he won't be able to stop until he's passed out", you've still got to acknowledge that Johnny can make sure he doesn't start playing in the first place.
Secondly, I never said that *you* (and by definition, everyone) will become addicted someday. My statement meant something more like this: "Good luck hiding from the problem because it's likely that you, or someone you know, will be affected adversely by this in some way". I probably wasn't clear enough on that point.
You know - maybe we *are* all automatons who ultimately aren't responsible for our actions. From a scientific point of view, that may never be disproven (assuming you can somehow quantify responsibility in a scenario). But a pragmatic viewpoint is that we can not afford to think like that. Ultimately, your own point of view will guide your to an opinion on this much more than external evidence. The hard core atheist science types will see what they want, the religious types will see what they want, and I'll see it my own way. But that's a rant for another day...
Please mod this post only if you think others should/n't read this. I have enough ego^H^H^Hkarma. Thanks!
I installed Civ3 last weekend, and haven't been doing much else this past week. While playing the game, I didn't think about food or sleep. I was so absorbed with the game that it was all I thought about.
Too bad I have my university-exams also this week. *priorities!*
"-Just for fun!"
Internet Chess Addict's Home
Get a life, Chess is Life, Life is Chess, therefore I am. -Wargames-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
> finished it, she asked me to play it on a higher difficulty level so
> she can watch it again.
She's not alone. When I was in student apartments, my daugter (about 6 at the time, I suppose) kept asking me to play the "kitty game"--nethack. She thought being followed around by the cat was really cool (ok, so she's right
hawk
(steps up to microphone) Um, hi. My name is James, and I'm a gaming addict.
True story: On a Saturday afternoon soon after getting Sid Meier's Alpha Centauri, I started a new game. My friend was going to call me to go out to dinner, so I figured I would have just a few hours to play.
Gradually, the light from the window faded, but I barely noticed. My friend never called, and there were no interruptions, so I kept playing.
After a while, I stopped for a moment, and realized that: a) I had to go to the bathroom really bad, b) I had a splitting headache, and c) I was ravenously hungry. I look at the clock, and it's 4:30am!
That's right folks, 14 hours straight, and I didn't realize it until afterwards. But I can't blame anyone besides myself.
I didn't even win that game, I ran out of time fighting Yang and Sister Miriam, trading planet busters.
When I think about how pumped full of adrenaline I get playing FPSs normally, (You think an area is clear and suddenly you get shot from behind, you spin round, changing weapons, the blood still ringing in your ears and your heart on overdrive), I wonder how many game tournaments I could play FOR MONEY before I had a heart attack....
Seriously- I mean when the stakes are higher and not getting shot equates to real money- what kind of state are you going to be in? Would this make the game better or worse? Too damn real if you ask me- probably real life marines get less stressed in combat.
graspee
Boy this story makes me think of this article... They seem to have taken it off of "The Onion" but I managed to find it in the Google Cache!.
Error: PANTS NOT FOUND. Press <F1> to continue.
Local Woman addicted to Work!!
"She gets up every weekday and goes to work!" explains neighbor June (last name withheld). "I hear she even bought her car, and choose an apartment close to the office to facilitate her addiction."
It has come to this. Except days where her office is not open and the occasional vacation, Mary spends eight hours a day, 40 hours a week, sometimes more, at her place of business.
"I never thought I had a problem. Really, if they didn't pay me, I don't think I'd be here this long."
Mary has even been known to stay after work to finish "important" things, skip meals, and form relationships with her coworkers. Her marriage was in risk for a while when long time team member John began to show an interest.
Mary explains, "It was all a joke! We'd pretend to flirt. I was never serious! John KNOWS that." But her husband, Mark, has different feelings.
"Work just takes all her time, she comes home exhausted. That John fellow was looking at her funny at the office party she dragged me to, " states Mark. "I just hope we can work this out."
.....
In Soviet Russia, asses suck this joke.
I agree that people in any environment can become addicts. Furthermore, someone could start an addiction for any reason ranging from curiosity, search for solstice or whatever. One unifying relation between most people addicted to anything is the inherited gene which one or both of a persons parents endowed them with.
This theory has not yet been verified to be 100% correct, but most people in recovery for anything know to warn and educated thier children about the dangers of an addictive lifestyle. Education is the first step in prevention, but for some people (especially those pre-disposed to addiction), nothing will teach them better than hitting a really low point in thier life as a result of addiction.
I don't think that it's a true addiction, but I have seen people who have taken gaming to the level of obsession. The difference between addictions and gaming obsessions is that with obsessions, the only withdrawl effects are irritability and really REALLY wanting to know how it ends. Kind of like a compulsive reader. I'm sure you know people who pick up a book, and can't put it down for anything until it's finished? Some of them read a couple of 300 page books a day. I remember reading the whole Wheel of Time series (when there were only 7 books) in a week and a half. I don't see anyone calling those people addicts. I think this is just another attempt to put a limit on videogames.
I have been so into playing UT in the past it
has been a really bad influence on me. It
chews up all my free time and then some. I
would lose lots of sleep, play during work,
setup servers at work, write scripts to manage
my servers at work etc.. Sometimes I think
I really need to stop but what is the
alternative. What else would I do with my
time that's as fun?
My apartment is very small and there's really
not a lot to do there. UT is a place where I
can go and run around and blow some people up and
have fun. I just can't do that in real life
(well, I probably could but no one would
argue that's a better option.)
set softtabstop=4 shiftwidth=4 expandtab nocp worlddomination
My first *two* college roommates flunked out after getting addicted to text-based chat havens, which are kinda like MUDs except without plots or goals. This was in '94, when few people had even heard of the internet.
All i know, is that i played GTA3 a couple of weeks ago, and i'm still jonesing for my fix of pig-beating.
As with drugs, computer games are dangerous, because they remind us that most of the time, life is shitty, its based almost purely on luck, and you don't seem to get any of that luck. Playing computer games is a way out of this shit hole, a place where anyone can be a god. (with cheats of course). Sometimes i wish that i could type something in that would allow me to beat the crap out of those stupid lucky people that have everything i don't.
This comment does not represent the views or opinions of the user.
I remember once I played civ for an entire weekend without talking to my girlfriend (now my wife). I was addicted to Descent to the extent that my brain would play sections in my mind as I went off to go to sleep. And don't get me started on X-Com. Interesting, all my addictions were in the DOS era. Out of curiosity, Anyone remember a game called ASYLUM?
At other times, I was addicted to the Internet Chess Server, in the days before it split off into the ICS adn the FICS. My socialization time there seemed more important that spending time with my girlfriend (yes, still the same one).
Computer games are extremely engaging, and there is very little physical stimulus telling you to stop. Kind of reminds me of the Victorian arguments against masturbation.
When it gets too much? When it negatively impacts your ability to earn a living. When you have no RL friends. When the game is your only solid topic of conversation in a crowd where not everybody plays.
Of course, I also remember meeting a friend during a class who introduced himself as liking games and particularly civilization. So yes, games can be the bridge to satisfying RL relationships.
At some point in a friendship you have to render aid, and then it helps to have local friends when you're in a spot!
Remember too, that even relationships aren't everything. YOu've got to be able to entertain yourself, too.
One day I asked myself what I will remember about my life if a significant portion of it would be spent playing civ. And that was the end of my addiction.
Without meaning to cram my values down other's throats, I do think it is important to exercise and be outdoors. Our bodies were designed for hunting, after all. Activities that energize the senses are healthy.
On the other hand, I would like just one weekend and get into a real interesting game.
Just so long as you don't get fanatical and say there is only one way to "Get a life" What's "A (good) life" anyway?
You were a moderator with 5 points. You should have read the moderator guidelines before you did any moderating
Theraputic, yes.
;)
Slashdot could never be addictive because there is a Karma cap.
Slashdot can be addictive, because you can create a new Account.
Instead of "I pushed the button, gimme the cheese" mentality I developed, I actually got myself "conditioned", if you will long ago.
Talk about Love/Hate: Assembly Language {shudder} and Syndicate Wars. Wasted so much time playing SW, had to "slap myself silly"...turned it around by only playing when I finished early or on several occasions got so pissed off at Assembler that I started to play SW.
Long story short: While playing on many occasions after getting frustrated with Assembler/Calculus, I would get an inspiration and instantly quit and go back to work.
Sometimes when you want to solve a problem (programming, math, life, whatever) you have to "not think about it".
Oddly enough it is the art of distracting yourself with shiney objects...heh, I like shiney objects...oh, don't forget the blinkey lights, too!
Heh, addictive personality vs compulsive problem solving personality...yeah, I'm messed up...but just a little.
(Oh, and Descent 2 for 18 some odd hours straight, oye. Worst thing I ever saw was a buddy of mine would play DooM ][ for hours, while his drop dead gorgeous GF would sit and sulk about it. And, yes, I did beat him with a clue stick. Did not work, tho. Oh well.)
Heh, I babbled on and on while staying on topic.
Wonders never cease. What is the next artic... uh, not that I have a problem, mind you.
Moose.
Have you read the moderator guidelines? Well, have you, PUNK? (and I want a Karma: Gnarly option)
Well, considering that Everquest appears to be much more than just a simple lifestyle choice....
--- http://foo.ca
get a life. get a {girl,boy}friend. see the sunshine.
That's quite ironic. I was just having dinner at one of U of T's dining halls, and a friend of mine mentioned that he hasn't been out of his room in two days, for any reason other than food; he's been playing Civ 3 ever since he copied it off of someone.
I seem to recall something about this about 20 years ago when Pacman started getting popular. I know some of you probably don't know what Pacman is, but it was this computer game that got popular and lot of people spent a lot of money and time playing it in the arcade and there was concern that this addiction could be serious. It's been about 19 years since I've heard about anyone being a Pacman addict.
About 20 years ago, there were all these people playing this game called Dungeons and Dragons. There was a lot of concern that they were addicts and spent too much time playing it. It's been about 19 years since I've heard about anyone being a Dungeons and Dragons addict.
Translation: This too will pass. People get in to cool games. I used to love Asteroids. I used to love Dungeons and Dragons. I used to play this game called RoboSport 'til all hours of the morning with my cousin when I was an undergrad and he was in law school. He now has his own practice and I've been quite successful in my profession.
I don't buy into this being a particularly bad thing. Each game that causes this kind of thing is a fad, and fads pass. Maybe another will come later, but it comes and goes. If it becomes a problem for some people, trust me, there'd be something else there for them that would be a "problem" if the games weren't there. It's the people with the problems, not the games.
For instance, I once played an online game (Utopia) and was pretty good (well, really good, false modesty is stupid). However, to be *the best* you had to spend an inordinate amount of time on it- it was time based, so the best thing to do was to log in frequently. (It also helped to be able to spend a long time every few days, but that's beside the point.) Because I was (am) a HS student, this was pretty tough. So I'd get up before school, keep the game open all evening.. you know the drill. Anyway, what finally broke my "addiction" was going on vacation. No access to the game for a couple of weeks. (BTW, that is the best way to break an addiction, just don't do it, cold turkey.) I just decided not to play after that. Anyway, when EQ came out I WANTED to buy, looked cool, type of game I'd enjoy, but after hearing a couple stories of addiction (real, honest to go medical addiction) I figured I better not fuck around with it. Long winded way of saying know yourself... if you have a chance (think you do) of getting addicted don't buy the fucking game.
No sig for you.
I would like to put a spin on this and suggest that gaming isn't an addiction, but rather the exclusion of other forms of media.
Think of a typical day. You might get up, read the paper, go to work, come back home, watch some tv or do some work around the house, make or eat dinner, watch some tv or read a book. This is the stereotypical americain behavior pattern. It's rather well accepted.
However, a hardcore gamer replaces all the other forms of entertainment with one, an absolute focus, a single directional pattern, shall we say. His day following waking up includes playing a little bit, then going to work (or school, whatever) coming home and playing some more, dinner if he is so inclined, and playing again until he finally sleeps. Rinse (hopefully) and repeat.
Games are thus far the most advanced achievement man has made to create an artificial reality, and isn't that the purpose of most of our media? TV? Movies? Papers are informative, but some games can mimik the 'news' in their own respective worlds.
Conclusion: hardcore gaming is a result of combining all other forms of entertainment into a single, dominant form. It has proven to be the most effective, whereas TV and Movies lack interaction, games prevail. Where radio lacks visual stimuli, games prevail. Where going out and playing baseball limits the number of people and the actions therein, games prevail. Nothing has come close.
To make a pun demonstrates the highest understanding of a language
Over the years I have noticed a great difference between the kids in school and college that just stop living and only want to play computer games and the professionals that on top of a long work day go home straight to the computer to play 4 or more hours (myself included, ouch).
So far I think the kids in school and college are doing much worse. The are pretty much isolating themselves from the real world, they are not even bothering to keep up with their school work because the game world to them is more rewarding.
Those of us already out there and working use gaming as a way to relief from stress. Sometimes a half-hour session of Quake III Team Arena is the only thing that keeps me from staying grumpy after coming back from the office.
Still there is a very minor group that are pretty much stuck into the gaming world too just like the kids in school.
At one time I was worried that I was spending too much time playing, and then one day I realized that for the last few weeks I was not averaging an hour a day of gaming, especially 3D shooters. Real Time STrategy usually mean spending at least 2 hours, so little by little I have stopped playing these.
Of course, I also know programmers that go home and play 3D shooters for 6-10 hours straight. I guess there's one in every company!
Pedro
----
The Insomniac Coder
Ok, first of all, if you're a highschool student, sitting infront of a computer for days at a time, not bathing, etc.. Then 1) you have parents taht arent doing their jobs. They're supposed to raise you, show you life, and unplug the box if it gets out of hand. I'm sorry, but "he just wont leave the computer" is bull. For the most part, parents have much more power than that. 2) It's probably better than what he WOULD be doing if he were off the comp. when someones life is that messed up, its not the computergames fault. Soemthing else was going on, and that was a safe excape tool. he could have joined a gange or started drugs instead.
We aren't allowed to do anything anymore - everything thats any fun at all has been banned by authorities. TV is crap, its not safe to go outside because of guns and air pollution, even going for a drive might get us killed. So we stay at home and play a few games, for something to do... and get called addicts?
Gimme a break.
The gambler of course, is addicted to gambling, even though he loses everytime (and is eventually shot)
The nun is addicted to her religion.
And the radio is the tool of addiction by a bedridden war veteran.
Now its not to say that all addictions are bad, as one could argue that breathing air is a necessary one. However, it becomes 'bad' when it negatively affects you and those around you.
Can gaming be as bad as crack? Sure, if you sacrifice your sleep, your friends, your family and perhaps your own sanity to it. Does it sound hard to believe? About as hard to believe as people willingly ingesting crack cocaine (i've yet to meet a crack addict who truly enjoyed their habit, and yes, i've known several).
-
Its just the games that have changed. Everquest is no more addictive than Quake, which is no more addictive than Civilization, which is no more addictive than Nethack, which is nore more addictive than Zork, which is no more addictive than TinyMud, which is no more addictive than pac man, which is no more addictive than space invaders, which is no more addictive than combat, which is no more addictive than pong. Each had their addicts that had the journals, the "Wired"s of their day, all claiming we'd all end up "game-heads" by the end of the century...
well, the century is over, the games are still around, and so is society. Unfortunately, so is Wired.
And its not so much a psychological "mystery" as so many have tried to paint it as. If it was, then Psychology Today would still be arguing about it like they did over the Pac Man fascination.
Yes, a gamer can be in a "zone" where nothing but the game matters during that time, but that "zone" as an ASC is the same kind of zone that anybody gets when concentration on a single topic is at a high (literally and figuratively). Its the same zone that hackers get (see "Peopleware"), its the same zone a musician gets when the music takes over his body and spirit, its the same zone an author gets. Sometimes the zone is productive, sometimes its an escape. But the zone is the same.
Basically its like this. Reality sucks. Its hard. Its painful. Its a fucking bitch at times. For geek guys, its full of bitches. Games are fun. Games have rules that don't change. Games have NPCs whose behaviour can be relied on.
So play games 'cause its easier than reality. People suck 'cause they and their expectations are always different from one day to the next. Games don't change. 'til you download a new update. when YOU want to, not when "they" do it.
And you keep playing games because games stay fun and reality never improves. (now mind you, the fact that you never do anything to change your reality because your always playing games doesn't help, of course, but when you're playing games, you can't see that).
And they knew this 25 years ago when Pong hit the streets. Hell, you think Thompson and Ritchie would have gone to so much fucking trouble making an O/S for an empty computer to play Space War was done for the "intellectual excercise of it"? Hell no. They were addicts who needed a fix. They just managed to get better and keep up with reality as well, as most of us do. Usually its because you finally get bored with games, and you keep thinking "the new games suck...they aren't nearly as good as the games I used to play".
Irrellevant Postscript: Back in "the day", I was a moria addict...'til i got a D in English 102. I saved the graveyard scene (you could do that, at least on vax-moria), and modified it so that it said "Rest In Peace : My English Grade" in the tombstone.
"But remember, most lynch mobs aren't this nice." (H.Simpson)
-- Joe
You speak of LANs as if it is a new thing? I've been LANing for years.
-Valiss
Shit, you simply can't say to some woman: "So, what shows/video games do you like?" Maybe I'm wrong, though. Maybe those are the kinds of people that you're attracted to, but that's fine with me! My point is: what shape society takes is your responsibility. Ted Turner and Michael Eisener don't control it, yet.
[pink beam of light]
The psychology that motivates gamers has been thoroughly studied, as basically the more addicitive a game is, the more successful it is. Gamasutra has an a related article on Behavioral Game Design which is a high level overview of how to think in order to effectively lure in your audience.
I've wasted a good half a year on an old school text based MUD, and as such stay completely away from EverCrack et al. as I just can't afford to devote my time to virtual characters.
And as for 'weak', often it's not so simple. People respond to different stimuli, such is diversity, but some respond more strongly and some respond so strongly that short of intervention they cannot step back from it.
The tough part is, we don't come with an owner's manual for ourselves when we turn 18, complete with specifications: Alergic to peanuts, will have chemical addiction to alcohol, excellent mental focus for business, will be able to run marathons until 48, etc.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Substance Dependence (Link)
A maladaptive pattern of substance use, leading to clinically significant impairment or distress, as manifested by three (or more) of the following, occurring at any time in the same 12-month period:
(1) tolerance, as defined by either of the following:
(a) a need for markedly increased amounts of the substance to achieve Intoxication or desired effect (b) markedly diminished effect with continued use of the same amount of the substance
(2) Withdrawal, as manifested by either of the following:
(a) the characteristic withdrawal syndrome for the substance (refer to Criteria A and B of the criteria sets for Withdrawal from the specific substances)
(b) the same (or a closely related) substance is taken to relieve or avoid withdrawal symptoms
(3) the substance is often taken in larger amounts or over a longer period than was intended
(4) there is a persistent desire or unsuccessful efforts to cut down or control substance use
(5) a great deal of time is spent in activities necessary to obtain the substance (e.g., visiting multiple doctors or driving long distances), use the substance (e.g., chain-smoking), or recover from its effects
(6) important social, occupational, or recreational activities are given up or reduced because of substance use
(7) the substance use is continued despite knowledge of having a persistent or recurrent physical or psychological problem that is likely to have been caused or exacerbated by the substance (e.g., current cocaine use despite recognition of cocaine-induced depression, or continued drinking despite recognition that an ulcer was made worse by alcohol consumption)
I'm sure you can all imagine situations where any or all of the above criteria would fit.
I don't know that I'd call myself an addict of online computer games, but certainly a heavy user. If anything, I'm addicted to online topical discussion forums (fora, for the overeducated) like Slashdot. :-) Still, in the last ten years I've spent more than a few hours at online roleplaying games.
:-) Okay, that one's pretty cheezy. They also can lead players to learn how to min-max and hack the client software. ;-)
:-)
We all know of the negative consequences of online games, but I haven't seen much discussion of the positive ones.
First, they motivate players to become better typists.
Second, roleplaying helps players to exercise their imagination -- and learn to express it (especially games that allow players to build and decorate their environment). It also can teach players to reflect upon their own personality.
Third, online RPGs can be very social. In the games I play, I spend as much or more time chatting and cracking jokes with my friends as I do "playing the game". Nearly all of my "real life" friends are people I met first in online games -- and we get together pretty often. I have met over 60 of my 'net gaming friends more than three times.
Fourth, online games can be broadening. I have gaming friends on five continents, and learn new things all the time about how people live elsewhere. Plus, somebody I know is bound to be online pretty much around the clock.
Finally, for all that these games can be destructive to real-life marriages, they can also help build them. I know of a (very small) number of real-life marriages that arose out of gaming relationships.
Online games are what we make of them... in short, society in miniature. For good or for ill.
to not becoming addicted to games is to mask your game addiction with other, stronger addictions. Start going to LAN parties at you local coke dealers house. Install a beer fridge next to the PS2. Go hang out at the arcade on the seedy side of town where you can score drugs and points. Then who will care if your addicted to games?
I think that everybody here is pretty much agreed. Anything can be addicting, it's not the substance or game or whatever, it's the person using it. And psychologists can prove anything they want, with a minimum of data. I think it was Mark Twain who said, "There are lies, damn lies, and statistics."
Damnit, Jim, I'm an anarchist, not a F@#$!^& doctor!
Blaming the game is, to an extent, just as much a mistake as an alcoholic blaming their problems on the alcohol. Ultimately it was a collection of bad decisions that led the person down their path. Certainly in the case of drugs and alcohol there is a biological and psychological element.
There is a certain psychological element to games like EverQuest as well. The simple, repetitive behaviors of trade skills and combat can be habit forming. Nonetheless, such patterns are much less controlling than a biological addiction instigated by chemicals.
I recently canceled by own accounts under the observation that my time spent playing them is time better spent programming and studying. After all, I feel that I built myself and my career off of such late night sessions...and without them I wasn't really moving forward.
Granted, in my career I play a lot of games. But I could play a couple hundred other games in the same time I could get a few levels playing EverQuest. I could also read, program, paint minis, or otherwise diversify my time.
I suppose I see these games as relatively simple to break out of when compared to biological addiction. I think that people who play them to the exclusion of their families, school and other priorities suffer from a combination of lack of self-awareness as well as a need for escapism. School is hard. Families are hard. And playing a game lacks the same kind of responsibility.
I have absolutely no interest in trying to interdict on other people's gaming behavior or direct their interests. If someone else wants to burn their life away focusing on a single interest so be it. My own self-realization is, however, that my time is best spent elsewhere. That I enrich myself as a person by diversifying my interests and I enrich myself as a programmer by spending my weekends working on a project instead of camping Guk.
Even as a gamer, I feel that my time is better spent playing a diverse number of games on different platforms than playing one game to the exclusion of all others. After all, the argument that I'm gaining a unique social perspective or learning a particular kind of design technique sort of falls flat after a month or two of play.
Brandon Reinhart
3D Realms Entertainment
Programmer, Duke Nukem Forever
Brandon Reinhart
you know i don't have kids or nothing, but if i did i'd rather watch the back of their head as they gib/crack skulls/cast spells, instead of wondering where, what and with whom they are doing the newest street drugs.
Addiction is something that is compelling and
you couldn't do without. I know a lot of people
who play games, but never meet anyone, who wouldn't switch off the computer, for anything genuinely exciting or important. Games just fills in tedious space, which other might fill with
sport, or television.
If spooses are having problems with their other
halfs prefering to play games than spend time
with them, then it has to be said that they just
aren't much fun to be around anymore.
Finally someone who gets it right!
This so called "addiction" is nothing more than another excuse by those who can't cope with reality.
Although it may sound callous, I do believe this is a sign of weakness.
Gaming/gambling addictions are NOT the same as a drug addiction in that there are no real withdrawal symptoms when one tries to quit. With drugs, the withdrawal will almost kill you sometimes. Theses are real addictions, that must be treated properly.
The reason gaming "addicts" don't quit is because they just can't summon enough willpower to just get up and leave. Once they do that they're fine..
So stop all the whining about being addicted. You're not.
thank you for clarifying it, perhaps for the lesser of mind.
-
...anything can be addictive. Mineral water, sports, pot, heroin and hookers all alike. (This is actually the first time i use the words pot and heroin in the same sentence).
And I think it is most weird that this news item actually appeared below the item about the "World Gaming Tournaments"...
+++ath0
Between my studying addiction, computer game addiction, food addiction, clothes-wearing addiction, water addiction, spending time with friends addiction, programming addiction and sleep addiction, I spend almost all of my time satisfying one addiction or another.
Oh, and I've been trying to kick the air habit for years now!
sic transit gloria mundi
You are missing the entire point! We are not talking about anything precise, this is the hysterical, media propagated idea of addiction that has nothing to do with anything relating to medicine or science.
It's the "Are your kids addicted to Counter Strike?? It's more likely than you think! Find out at 11." type of addiction.
I am sure you can plainly see that this way is a lot more fun than your dry and unimaginative "diagnosed dependence" - who is going to be screaming "Please God, won't somebody think of the children??" with your way of looking at things?
sic transit gloria mundi
I am a computer addict --well, to some degree, I am.
Even the Politburo concurs with Process of Elimination http://process-of-elimination.net
The Game
It's the only one I ever watched.
It seems to me that we strive to create things that, if sucessful, become addictive. I think it's the nature of humans, to seek pleasure. That we can't control it is one of our great, tragic, and sometimes fatal weaknesses.
SDMI: Finally! Music that won't rip or burn! Brought to you by the fine folks at RIAA.
Of course it's the game that ruined your life. It's not your fault.
People need to stop blaming things (games, drugs, etc) and other people for what happens to them and take some responsibility for their own actions.
The book you speak of is most likely the DMS-IV. The Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders.
As for OCD and addictive personalities? Well, first the evidence in the literature for an "addictive personality" is very slim. There is no listing for it in the DSM-IV. It's a pop psychology term that early researchers looked in vain for. There is some research that says early childhood hyperactivity may be linked to alcoholism (Hechtman et al., 1984) Same with antisocial personality disorder (Jones, 1968). But not an "addictive personality" type. You're sure to find lots about "addictive personalities" in the self help section though.. lucrative biz that is. Do a search for it and most of the sites you're likely to find are not research sites, but sites selling self help books.
Like most issues in life, it's a mix between many things. In this case environmental to a large degree and genetic to a smaller degree.
Josh
geek w/ a cog. sci. degree. But that shouldn't stop you from doing the research yourself.
ye old references:
Hechtman L, Weiss G, Perlman T (1984), Young adult outcome of hyperactive children who received long-term stimulant treatment. J Am Acad Child Psychiatry 23:26 1-269
Jones, M.C. (1968). Personality correlates and antecedents of drinking patterns in adult males. Journal of Consulting and Clinical Psychology,32 2-12.
I've found a very effective 1 step program for video game addiction...
:)
Read every Slashdot article and all comments
Addiction doesn't always have to stem from something physical - I could become addicted to something as simple as wiping my ass. People get addicted to work, drugs (the kind with no physical addiction), and then of course I'm addicted to air, I don't know about the rest of you.
Restating the obvious since nineteen aught five.
karma cap rant: what you're saying is 100% correct, except for the fact that 47 karma is exactly as valuable as 50 karma. once you can post at +1, what is the point?
The karma cap is a good idea, if only to prevent people from playing slashdot like a video game, trying to "max their score" by any available means.
Don't say addiction to loud, because thats when the begin the heavy regulation of the product. LAN parties rock... Long live games and gamers...
--BSOBN--
50,000 years ago our basic occupation consisted of finding an animal that looked tasty and pursuing it until it was dead. Persistance, obsession even addiction were rewarded by a nice mammoth meal that made us stronger and better able to compete.
Men in particular are wired to concentrate on one thing for long stretches of time to the exclusion of all else. It's what makes us good hunters, race car drivers, computer programmers and geeks. I'm not saying that women aren't also affected by this. They are, but not nearly as often (the group is afterall the Ever Quest Widows.)
With apologies to Rob Becker who has based a one man play on this and other "philosophies".
If electricity is produced by electrons is morality produced by morons?
My roomate and I have been roommates for 4 months, but friends for 15 years. We are both IT professionals, but have very different lifestyles. We are in our mid twenties and have been working for several years.
We used to have similar interests when we were 11 and 12 (ie video games), but his never changed...mine did. I like people, sports, nature...all the standard "normal" things people enjoy in life. He is still like a 12 year old...
He on the other hand divides all waking time after work AND on weekends/holidays split approximately 70:30 between computer gaming and TV. When I'm not around, the apartment is like a dungeon. Lights off, windows and curtains closed. The only light is the endless flickering of the CRT or TV. It is like a high-tech purgatory. We're talking 8 hours per day weekdays, 16 on weekends...
Garbarge piles up, dishes pile up, instant food wrappers (anything that can go in the oven) pile up, personal hygine and health are given no thought at all..
Unless I cleaned up we wouldn't be able to get into the house. It stinks because he he is too lazy?/busy gaming? to do laundry or clean up his old food.
I on the other hand, have an active social life. I date regularily and play on a number of sports teams. I don't try to judge my friends lives, but its hard not to when you live with someone this different.
This guy hasn't touched a woman in 6 years, has gained 150 pounds and has lost all but vestiges of the social skills he once had. Thus, some serious resentment of my friends and girlfriends has built up...of course he feels like crap when I bring home 2 different woman a month and all he can do is lock himself into his room and pretend that others don't get laid and laugh and enjoy human contact, love and affection...
Because he is my friend, it tears me up to see the guy waste his time...YES waste his limited time on this planet. He has been power gaming for 15 years and counting..
Games might be FUN, but he has no friends, terrible health, and a grim, sarcastic outlook on societs. It is twisted; he'll sit there and curse at Everquest for hours on end, more stressed out than work could ever make him, but will continue to play.
I have tried to invite him out and to get him involved in anything and everything else, but everything seems very threatening...
His idea of socialization is inviting someone over to watch HIM play games!
I have buddies over to watch Hockey (which he likes), but he would rather play Return to Castle Wolfenstein because he's "..almost done this level..."..."this level" of course lasts another 4-5 hours. LOL
He is a very hard person to talk to, and has difficulty dealing with problems head-on...he is very much in denial about the twisted nature of his lifestyle...I have brought it up once and he got super angry and defensive "I thought you were my friend, don't call me a loser and judge me ever again!"
I DONT KNOW WHAT TO DO. I want to intervene in some way, to help improve his quality of life, (as well as reduce the impact on mine...living in this environment is DEPRESSING! I can't stand to be at home).
So what if I've posted 1423 comments to slashdot?
sulli
RTFJ.
Just like any other activity, hobby, etc., gaming can be addictive, if you have the right personality for it. It's not like a drug, which anyone can get physiologically addicted to, but if you are they type of person who enjoys spending time on your computer, it's certainly possible to become addicted to a game.
;-D ), so my obsessive tendancies don't hurt others' feelings. I can happily while away the hours playing my game of the month without feeling guilty for avoiding anyone. There ARE advantages to being a loner, ya know... ;)
;)
Take me, for instance...I'm obsessive-compulsive. When I "get into" a new game, it ain't pretty...I will spend all my free time, and a lot of time that really isn't free, playing it. For a while. Then, one day, I'll just wake up and won't feel like playing it anymore, or something new will come along and I'll become obsessed with that instead. Once that happens, I can go back and play the old game like *normal* people do, once in a while and for reasonable stretches of time, not obsessively for hours on end every day. Fortunatly (or unfortunatly, depending on how you look at it), I don't have a girlfriend or a social life (yeah, I'm introverted too...
Yeah, I could probably get treatment for my various mental disorders, but why? All they'll want to do is load me up with happy pills, and there's no way in heck I'm taking mood-altering drugs. I'd rather be an obsessive-compulsive introvert than a Prozac giggle-zombie, thank you very much.
DennyK
A master programmer passed a novice programmer one day. The master noted the novice's preoccupation with a hand-held computer game. "Excuse me," he said, "may I examine it?"
The novice bolted to attention and handed the device to the master. "I see that the device claims to have three levels of play: Easy, Medium and Hard," said the master. "Yet every such device has another level of play, where the device seeks not to conquer the human, nor to be conquered by the human."
"Pray, great master," implored the novice, "how does one find this mysterious settings?"
The master dropped the device to the ground and crushed it under foot. And suddenly the novice was enlightened.
This is exactly what I did after playing Half-Life life non-stop for about 8 hours. I was "master of my domain" and shattered the CD and uninstalled it from my system. Haven't touched a video game since. They just don't go well with my obsessive personality.
Man, I'm so glad I never got obsessed with .5e. Your user classification system alone fits so well into the evily addicting MUD archetype.
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ts just the games that have changed. Everquest is no more addictive than Quake, which is no more addictive than Civilization, which is no more addictive than Nethack, which is nore more addictive than Zork, which is no more addictive than TinyMud, which is no more addictive than pac man, which is no more addictive than space invaders, which is no more addictive than combat, which is no more addictive than pong. Each had their addicts that had the journals, the "Wired"s of their day, all claiming we'd all end up "game-heads" by the end of the century...
You are absolutely right. In any momemt of time there are people who cast things they don't like/understand as social problems. They didn't realze they are, in fact, part of the social problems. Like this guy:
"The pop-singers should be responsible for kids' misbehaviors....yes! TV and Internet are responsible too.....hell, why do I need to talk the the kids!"
Addiction: A pathological relationship with any substance, person, event or experience that has life damaging consequences
:)
:)
Yes, you can be addicted to people, emotions (worry, rumination, etc.), events (gaming, coding, etc), as well as substances. The key is that the relationship with the addictive target is unhealthy (pathological) and that it causes harm in your life. I interpret this quite broadly. If the addictive experience causes me to have an unbalanced life, that's pathological. If the experience causes me to be out of touch with myself and my feelings, that's life damaging.
In attempting to recover from my addictive processes, I had a simple test. Am I engaging in this activity to avoid some other feeling that I really need to feel and/or resolve? If so, the process has the capacity to be or become and addictive process.
Addiction is usually about trying to avoid painful or unpleasant feelings (mostly from childhood - anyone identify here?) rather than to experience them, grieve them, release them and move on to a healthier life. It's about trying to find some process that reliably produces a good feeling (food was always reliable for me), unlike real life experiences which have ups and downs.
Gaming can certainly be a reliable method of avoiding other things. It sure can be an addictive process. I have lost myself in that world many times.
I guess the ironic part of healing from addiction is that one works toward having a more balanced life and developing and nurturing healthy relationships with other human beings -- things that, stereotypically, are not the strong suit of the computer geek. (No flames please, I said 'stereotypically'
All those admonishments to go out into the big room undernearth the blue ceiling and to get a more balanced life really do have their value.
I still spend waaayyy too much time in front of this here glowing box, so I'm not trying to put myself above anyone else, but I do try to spend as much time as I can IRL. There really are some good things, people and experiences out in that big scary world.
Nurture and maintain your F2F relationships, experience some variety and come join me, here's your
permission slip.
Enjoy yourself, your friends and your life.
War is Peace. Freedom is Slavery. Ignorance is Strength. - George Orwell or George Bush?
http://apocalypse.org/pub/u/lpb/muddex/mudaddictio n.html
Well, a widely used, and fairly good, operational definition of addiction is something like: continuing a behaviour in spite of consequences .
The very important issue here is consequences.
For example, someone may smoke cigarettes every day, and feel very uncomfortable if they can not smoke for some reason. This person is dependent on cigarettes, but as long as they are able to go to work, form meaningfull relationships with other humans, not commit crimes in order to smoke, and otherwise not have their monkey f-up their life, they are not addicted. Doesn't matter if they can stop or not, as long as the rest of their life is working.
Likewise, if someone plays EQ all the time, but the rest of their life is working, then they are not addicted; even if they find it hard to stop playing. They are dependent, but not necessarily addicted.
And yes, a person can become addicted to almost anything: games, alcohol, drugs, shopping, even sex or slashdot.
No matter how enjoyable the activity, if it is disturbing other areas of your life, and despite that you can not stop, then you are an addict.
The game itself is exactly like Nethack with pretty graphics added, from what I could tell. Once you're done playing you can hit the "payout" button and it gives you whatever money you've earned or have left, or you can have it give you a memory card which you can use to continue your character later.
A great way to capitalize on the addictive power of Nethack/ADOM style games in the land of Pachinko, it seems.
You know, when you read it in that context, yeah, it sounds a whole lot like love :)
Slay a dragon... over lunch!
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Gamers have two jobs
...when I was 14-22. *grin*
"Rub her feet." -- L.L.
Space invaders. Stay alive for X seconds, move on to next level.
Fight or flight its all the same
Live to die another day
--Ryan
We all know gaming is addictive. But from what I've read here gamers and Internet junkies alike are saying the same type of thing people say about violence in society when trying to shift the blam in directions other than their own: "It's the same as it has always been, people have always been like this..."
A study of children 8-12 showed that Television was addictive, not like anyone didn't know that. The study actually focused not on what the children were watching as in CONTENT, but what they were taking in; the amount of stimulous they were receiving.
The average number of times a picture on the screen changes, or a camera angle is switched, or there is a *flash* on the screen, today versus 20 years ago, has increased more than 1000%. Music videos are a good example. The average music video displays more than 60 "snaps" per minute; for you Math buffs, that's once every second!
The behavioral study concluded that for each of these "snaps", the mind is triggered into an alertness similar to that of a danger-mode response. Similar effects have been observed in animals when placed into unknown environments.
The amount of adreniline introduced is very small, but long-term small doses have been known to cause an addiction. The system adjusts, assuming the heightened state is normal.
Video games have the same effect. Cut-scenes in RPG games, battle sequences, lighting effects, quick flashes on the screen for almost every camera-angle change are all designed to keep the mind in this state. First-person shooter games have characters which move faster in their environments than most people even could. This is to trigger the sensation of urgency (which is probably why so many people just run into the frey and get slaughtered).
So yes, I agree that for the modest gamer (1-2 hours a night), it's most likely just an escape from reality, a chance to just stop thinking consciensly for a while.
In today's paper where I live, front page, was an article about local Internet gaming clubs which operate 24 hours a day. Local government, police and parents are worried because their 13-25 (some patrons are up to 60) year old kids are spending up to 18-24 HOURS in these places, sometimes forgetting to EAT.
What are they playing? CS mostly, some other first-person shooters included. Police think they might be places where gangs recruit kids but only because of one incident where a kid got killed at one of these Internet Clubs. The kid had done something to expect retribution by his assailants but police aren't convinced.
But I digress. These clubs have VERY high speed connections, 20-30 high-powered PCs with nice screens and sound-systems, and servers worthy of Enterprise systems. The number of these clubs has increased over the last year from 3 to 20 just in the major metropolitan area. Like I said, some kids are going there until late, some just don't leave. If thats not addiction, nothing is.
I don't think it's nearly as bad as local police think, these kids aren't actually hurting anyone (except me when I play against them), they just get engulfed by the games. One kid when interviewed said, "I sometimes look at the time and say WOW, IT'S BEEN 8 HOURS SINCE I'VE EVEN MOVED!"
I mean, I like CS. But 8 HOURS? Maybe I'm just not good enough to play for that long without getting kicked off a server...
I think it's worthy to mention: Thes clubs are making a KILLING. After the initial cost to open, all they pay is rent, electricity, and the odd system upgrade. They are almost always PACKED. Anyone interested in starting a franchise? We'd be bigger than McDonalds!
"You are not a beautiful and unique snowflake."...Tyler Durden
But the damn game keeps locking up and crashing on me. How the hell can I get addicted when I'm rebooting ever 15 minutes?
Executive ability is deciding quickly and getting someone else to do the work. --John G. Pollard