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First-Person Account Of Video Game Addiction
The Evil Couch writes "Jive Magazine, an entertainment magazine based in Atlanta, has just released a feature article that the editor has spent over a year investigating on gaming addiction. Starting from being on the outside of the gaming community, she has gone from being a somewhat normal person, to being one of the higher level characters in Anarchy Online. 'People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.' Sounds like a happy ending to me."
I once had the Everquest on my back, but I kicked. Believe me, these addictions do screw up real lives...
:wq
Drug addicts, can eventually become wrapped up enough in the life style, that they can become dealers, or sometimes get freebees.
Play Everquest long enough, eventually you can sell your character for megabucks on Ebay.
More proof, that evil begets evil.
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...is it possible that this guy was just addicted to video games for a year and now is trying to rationalize it by writing an article about it?
Having all my money going into arcade games was morale destroying. I believe that there is no difference between being addicted to video games and VLT's (slot machines).
It's not whether you win or lose, it's just that you have to keep playing. It's a vaguely sexual feeling -- that you might be found out, that you'll be "in trouble."
Profoundly depressing, actually. After a couple of years I managed to stop, but there was no self help groups back then, nobody to talk to (and who takes a 12 year old that's spending $50 a day on video games seriously anyway??)
If you're addicted, step back, do whatever, throw out the computer. Quit two, three, four times or as many as it takes to get it out of your life. And don't go back.
The baby's fine -- please stop sending business cards.
These "people" are pathetic. They are simply people with zero self-esteem, zero drive, and who are intrinsically lazy. They have the willpower of a doorknob. I know this is gonna be modded "flamebait", but it's very simple. It's not a physical "addition" and it's insulting to people with real additions. These are just lazy fucking slobs who use "addiction" as a crutch so as they don't have to get their fat asses off of the sofa. Any serious problems that strike these people and their families are brought on by themselves. It's that simple.
It seems a bit irresponsible for her to dismiss gaming addiction as "just another amusement park". Clearly some people don't have the same willpower as she does, and for them gaming addiction is a real problem that causes them to become antisocial and lose touch with their friends, their jobs, their lives. The very word "addiction" means that the compulsion is stronger than the person's resistance. Any kind of behaviour which resists one's better judgement is damaging, IMHO.
Obsessive-compulsives can get addicted to video games.
Film at eleven.
[PowerPoint] is a tool for capitalist presentation
...between online roleplaying and other games, even online ones is the amount of time needed to get "into the game" every time you play.
If I compare my Everquest addiction (which is over) to my Counter-Strike addiction (which is being revived) I'd say that I can pop in for a quick game of CS, but just as quickly log out again and go off to some social activity, whereas EQ would keep me tied to the screen.
The problem with EQ (and AO, DAoC, whatever) is that you need on average around an hour just to get going in the game. You need to get to some place where you can kill something, find a group, wait for friends, etc etc...
Once you enter the high level game in any online RPG you will have to sacrifice even more time. 24-hour non-stop playing sessions of a 50+ member guild for some rare item are not uncommon in the very high end game.
THAT's when your life starts going down the drain...
What about posting 7000 different version of that link to that damn script you post ever 5 minutes. Does that make you a bad husband/wife?
Well, one could argue that something like Everquest (or pot, or masturbation, et. al.) that's considered a "mental addiction" gives great pleasure. This pleasure is caused by the release of endorphins in the brain (which is actually what nicotone does too; it increases endorphin release).
So really, I don't consider there to be any difference between traditional addictions like nicotine and less conventional ones like Everquest (which btw, I DON'T play)
Well lets see when was the last time one of your family members jumped in a car totally blitzed on EQ and rammed it into a three other cars?
That'd be never I'm guessing.
When was the last time your father had too much EQ and beat the crap out of your mother on a family vacation?
Again I'm guessing never.
When was the last time one of your family members had too much EQ and beat one of their kids with a golf club?
Again, I'm guessing never.
Don't compare the horror of alcohol addiction to a video game until you've lived through it. The entire notion that they're even remotely as damaging is insane.
i was somewhat addicted to games when i was a kid. then i went to college and took up computer science. now that i understand the algorithms and stuff behind the games, the magic is gone.
now i wish that someone could suggest a game for me to get addicted to.
Gyrate Dot Org - "Where high-tech meets low-life"
You have an excellent point that there are three different forms of addiction which should be regarded as very different:
Combined and Physical addictions tend to be narcotics-related and tend to be understood in a simplistic way by non-addicts. But the war on drugs hasn't had a new twist since the rise of ecstacy in North America; fighting drug addiction cannot hope to attract the funding or media attention it once did. So now purely psychological addictions are en vogue.
I'm not suggesting that some addictions should be left untreated, but it is important to keep their power in mind when making judgements about the sufferers. Right now the hot addiction in Canada is gambling. Should I feel as sorry for someone who goes through mood swings when they stop gambling as someone whose heart stops when they go off heroin? Should I wish the government to devote equally proportional tax dollars to each? Should I spend as much of my time worrying and learning about each?
Since I fit in the class of "addicts", I figured I would post my thoughts and observations of myself..
I think the social interaction is very much undervalued here. When I was in college, I worked two jobs to pay my way, so "free time" was rare. However, from both of my jobs I could get on the internet, and I wound up spending entire days playing MUDs and chatting on IRC. Thanks to the wonders of screen, I could go from home to class to my jobs, and simply reattach to my running IRC session. Sure, I had no girlfriend, but then again, none of the girls I knew would have enjoyed being taken on a date involving a 3AM moonlit stroll through the campus, since I got off work after the bars and resturaunts and such closed. Chatting online gave me a chance to talk to people instead of staring at a terminal in an empty server room late at night. I even picked up speed typing skills to boot. I greatly valued my social interaction with these "virtual" people.
Only, these people are no more "virtual" than I am! I have known some of them for almost a decade. Some I have visited in person, and had a blast getting to see the so-called "virtual" person. Others are in other countries, places I'll never get to go but love to hear about. Calling these people "virtual" is an insult to their real world counterparts.
I now work 9-to-5 as a software developer, and I don't get to IRC from work. I don't have time at home on the evenings to play games much, but I still chat with my friends on evenings. Perhaps people might call me an "addict" still, but I don't let it interfere with other things I want to do.
If you lost it in all that rambling, the point here is twofold:
1) social interaction is social interaction. Ask yourself what benefits do you gain from constraining people to be in the same place at the same time (aside from the possibility of sex)?
2) The internet provides a useful source of social interaction. Turning it off (regulating it, in other words) because some people can't handle their addiction won't help anyone.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
In other words playing video games does not automatically make you an addict if you practice control and don't use them to fill an emotional void of some sort. Just like having a few drinks at a bar with your buddies doesn't make you an alcoholic.
Is the phrase "Moderation in all things." really so hard for the modern world to understand?
On a side note, if a severe beating is the penalty for cold blooded PK'ing in South Korea I wonder what they do to cheaters? And is there any chance we could adopt it here? :)
SONY. Because caucasians are just too damn tall.
I don't usually post on /. - i come here to read the humourous trolls and the poorly moderated comments (everyone should browse at -1 and make their own minds up who is talking sense).
/. and only take 10 minutes of my time.
Anyway reading this, there seems to be a lot of holier-than-thou comments, about the weak wills of people etc. But who is it hurting really?
Lets see, the economy? it is unproductive in that sense true, but people aren't cogs in a machine.
Their loved ones? well they may be ignoring them, but it's a free choice, if you'd rather play a game all night (after night) than play with your spouse, something isn't right with the relationship. Maybe in their game they meet people they would never talk to in regular everyday life.
Themselves? well, perhaps, in YOUR opinion, but quality of life is a relative and subjective thing, at the end of the day they are free to choose what makes them happy (see mr goatse.cx for proof that people enjoy many alternative recreational activities to extremely painful looking extremes).
It seems to me people are too quick to condemn others choices, we're all addicted to something, even if its just our/your way of life in general. i especially enjoyed the post further up putting down the gameaholic way of life that ended with a sig linking to free porn. Games may damage your eyesight eventually, but that bloke will go blind a lot sooner.
btw i quite intensely dislike rpg's myself, massively multiplayer or otherwise, all the trolls and goblins i need are right here on
There's a tendency in talking about this to either a. defend the substance ("it's not the game's fault! It's the personality of the person/their lack of willpower/etc! Anything can be addictive!") or b. attack the substance ("won't someone think of the children..." etc.). Both are somewhat wrong-headed. It's naive to think that the game/whatever has nothing to do with it - some things are intrinsically more likely to be part of addictive behaviour than others. Some games are more addictive than others, and MMPORG's seem to lead the pack (there's a lot of possible reasons - their open structure, the psuedo-social aspect and the sense of competition and fear of getting "left behind", the enormity of the game-zone, etc.) MUDs and MOOs used to be the culprit, probably for similar reasons. (The whole "endorphins" explanation that gets tossed around, like the article has it, is really overextended. There are limbic systems far more extensive than that one at play, and it doesn't explain the nature of addiction any more than talking about the digestive system explains world hunger. And other, more 'neuroactive' games, don't show the same addictive effects as the frankly slower Everquest and company.
Even though many people play FPS's a lot, I haven't seen the sort of destructive fall-out from them that I've seen with other games - I don't know of anyone who failed out of school or became an antisocial shut-in because of Quake or Counterstrike.
In a sense, people who really like video games but would never let them interfere with the normal functioning of their lives (personal and professional) abuse the term "addiction" when they describe themselves as addicted to the games. I found the article underinformed and somewhat irresponsible - the realities of addiction are far more complex than a little controlled "experiment" will illuminate.
As a professional game developer, I know first hand what it is like to be addicted to video games. In fact, my job requires it. Imagine working 10 hours a day (if its not crunch time) on a game and then going home and playing yet more games to make sure that your competition doesn't have an edge on you. We jokingly refer to this as "market research". Your whole life is based around games.
It sucks. I did it for about 7 years and then just got burnt out (as did a number of my colleagues). There is so much more to life than games. I feel sorry for the up-and-coming developers who want to prove to the world how badass they are. They pour their heart and soul into lifestyle which ultimately benefits a publisher that couldn't give two shits about you.
Now that I'm older and wiser I've learned to not take my job home with me. Sure I'm not as caught up on what happens at the end of the fifth level of TimeSplitters 2, but I'm a whole lot happier for it.
gaming 'paraphanelia' (posters, artifacts, clothing items with game logos, etc.)
Dude, if you're paid money for this advertising shit, game addiction is the least of your worries.
Single player games tend to have an ending,
... just like in real life.
and you can learn how to 'beat the game'.
When you've done it enough, you move on.
Multiplayer games add another dimension:
you have to compete with other people,
but there's usually just one objective,
so everyone involved gets bored eventually.
However, persistent online games never end,
and there are literally hundreds or thousands
of ways to compete against the other players.
You could spend your entire life trying to be
the best at everything. (Note: some people try,
and we call them addicts.)
But think about this: There is no real winner
in a MMORPG
(Maybe that's why they're so compelling.)
This is a topic I have thought long about. The question that always pops into mind is "What drives a person to extreme behavior?". With that question in mind as it relates to above story, I came up with this: people become consumed with the act of creation. In a MMORPG, the creation is that of an alternate, virtual life, replete with status, relationships and accomplishment. The person is rewarded frequently for success, and is continually challenged to improve. I liken this to the type of "addiction" or obsession that a painter or sculptor must feel at the end stages of creating their latest piece. I dont think it would be at all uncommon to find out that an author in the midst of a creative burst can write without rest for hours and hours, without ever feeling tired or hungry. I know that personally I get that feeling when programming or solving a complex computer issue. The act of creating that program and the feeling that the solution, the final act of creation, is just around the corner, is an amazingly powerful one. In most peoples "real" lives, the time and opportunity for meaningful creativity are very limited (the soul is crushed!) and it is human nature to seek creative expression. The MMORPG readily provides this outlet.