Slashdot Mirror
Coping with Gaming Addiction
Several readers submitted this story in the Washington Post about gaming addiction in adolescents and adults. The main sources of the story are two people who get paid for solving this problem, so they have an incentive to make it sound scary and widespread, but on the other hand, most Slashdot readers probably have a... friend... who spends too much time playing video games.
Here's a hint: if you're one of those idiots who insists on giving your kid a name with "unique" spelling, at least don't pick a "gaye" name.
John
pay me to do a slashdot addiction survey. please.
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insert sig here,here, and here
I have a friend who plays them addictively... I watched him kill bugs for an hour in Everquest to build experience points (I made fun of him till he quit). I'm sorry but that's just a waste of time.
I think he's addicted to these games because it gives him a sense of accomplishment, something that doesn't come so easily for him in the real world.
could be that way with a lot of gamers...
How many addicted gamers do you know who have a life you would call satisfying away from the computer?
Oooh! Doom 3! [CARRIER LOST]
I do quite well with it, thank you very much.
try and play doom3 on a radeon 9200 . that should scare you away from video games for a few weeks.
Marge, get me your address book, 4 beers, and my conversation hat.
but instead, play games all day.
Can have a problem with just about any activity.
If you don't know someone who's addicted to gaming or online chat, I'm sure you know someone who's a work-a-holic - not just a hard worker, but someone completely obsessed with the trivialities of their work.
A lot of people are addicted to television. People who literally can't cope properly without it. You've seen them. I saw plenty them the last time a hurricane knocked the power out around here.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
I don't have a video game addiction, I only make them, play them, and spend every waking moment thinking about them ...
This goes with spending all my free cash on them, dreaming about them, and of couse the occasional pleasuring my self over them.
- MOSKIE
Call me when they have something to cure a slashdot addiction.
When I was growing up, a lot of kids spent all day watching TV. They'd come home from school and watch TV. Weekends meant watching TV. Guess what, its not games, its kids. When a young person can find something entertaining to do (homework tends not to be entertaining) they'll stick with it. I'm an avid gamer (at the age of 29) but it is not an addiction. Gaming is more entertaining that any TV show I've ever seen, and at least online gaming involves SOME interaction with other people. Of course the best alternative would be some sort of sport.
Am I the only one who thinks that the best solution is to simply take away the games or the computer?
Gamers anonymous would rock, atleast I could get some cheat codes and strategies while being "helped"
who is dangerously addicted to Warcraft III battlenet games. He works shifts and when hes not working, hes playing the game... and swearing constantly, banging his fists on the desk and using the F word quite excessively. It scares me and my cat. When I've had enough, I log into the good ole Linksys and block ports 6112 through 6120 and the problem is solved for a little while. At this point he does something constructive, like laundry or cleaning his room. This a good solution for those who have control over their home networks. :)
"So the Perkinses turned to Jaysen's therapist, Kim McDaniel, for help."
Uh, he's already got a therapist? Oh boy...
Worked for me when I was addicted to multiplayer starcraft and got myself within a hair of getting my ass kicked out of the University. I told my friends to drag me by my hair if needed if they ever saw me walking down the stairs that went to the computer lab where starcraft was installed in every computer... it's hard to resist the temptation of hours of uninterrupted 8-way starcraft...
I'm not addicted, I've /quit games hundreds of times
I can stop whenever I want. Whoever says otherwise, I'll blow his head clean off with a BFG10K.
"A door is what a dog is perpetually on the wrong side of" - Ogden Nash
I'm sick of there being addictions to everything. Dr Pepper addiction. Sex and the City addiction. The fact is people are lazy and have no will power and allow themselves to form habits.
Want a REAL addiction? Try crack or heroin or be quiet and learn some self discipline.
"Its not a problem until you can't afford to pay for it anymore."
Keep playing them. You didn't really want to quit anyway right? Atleast you're not on the street beating people up for money because you have a $100 a day coke habit.
On the otherhand, if you actually want to try the great game of "life", it can be rewarding as well. Not to mention, when you level up and collect gold pieces in real life, you can buy mroe video games!
(currently addicted to civ)
Wasn't it just a few years back that people who played games all day and neglected the rest of their lives were called 'lazy'?
I'm so glad that we now have a label for this kind of behaviour that helps show that it isn't their fault.
.
These are breasts; this is source code.
Why do you have a problem with those two things belonging to one person?
It's pretty simple, parents need to take responsibility too.
but i enjoy it more then watching tv because its more entertaining to emulate something then watching yuppies in a reality tv show...
An addiction is when your "addiction" creates negative consequences in daily life. An example would be having to play before going to school, and constantly being late for class and failing the class. If you play for 13 hours straight, eating while you play over a saturday night because nothing better is going on or you're going through a social life slump, that is not an addiction.
There's a easy way for parents to get their kids over a gaming addiction: Install Linux.
Thank you, thank you, I'll be here all week.
Things you think are in the Constitution, but are not.
i'm not an alcoholic. i'm a drunk. alcoholics go to meetings.
The only way to get rid of a temptation is to yield to it.
-Oscar Wilde
I have argued many times that kids who are addicted to video games and play them all day are diagnosed as having ADD these days. Honestly, I know there were kids 15-20 years ago being diagnosed with ADD, but the number has skyrocketed. I have a friend who is a teacher (4th grade) and she says almost 1/4 of her class "has ADD".
These kids just need to get out more, and experience the wonders of being outside, and using their imaginations to play games. When I was a kid my mom only let me play games for a short time after dinner in the evenings. When it was nice out, I had to go out and get exercise. Kids these days are (on average) heavier, lazier, and play more video games. I honestly think most kids who are misdiagnosed with ADD are just not getting enough exercise because they're addicted to games. The 30 second attention span is gone, screw that now we have a 2 second attention span. You see it in games, TV, movies...
Let's get these kids outside and have them exercise and use their own imaginations to have fun, and not make them go on ritalin or some other drug (not sure if they still use ritalin) just because they aren't getting exercise.
Poor guy. I understand the problem. A lot of sports, when practiced intensely, are linked to drug abuse. This poor kid is probably doped up to his eyes. His parents must, for his own good, take him off these dangerous sports fields and let him stay home! Why not buy him a couple of video games?
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Mad science! Robots! Underwear! Cute girls! Full comic online! http://www.girlgeniusonline.com/
"I used to be heavy into basketball," he says of his days before Socom. "Now I've been playing basketball again, I've been going to high school football games. I've been going to that youth group with friends. . . . We're trying to keep my schedule busy."
The article doesn't make clear what the difference between being "heavy into" something and being addicted. Isn't this kid just trading one "addiction" for another? Who's to say basketball isn't just less interesting to him than Socom (his video game of choice)? When was the last time you got out your crayons and colored in a coloring book? Perhaps he grew out of basketball?
Parents can discern between misuse and addiction if they notice two important telltale signs in their children: withdrawal and isolation.
Translation: If your child is not interacting with people you can see, [s]he's addicted. By definition you can't play a multiplayer game and not interact with the other players on some level. How many online gamers do you know that sit around in empty games? So aren't they seeking the company of others? As for people playing single player games being withdrawn and isolated, compare with reading a book: both spend hours alone engaged in a single activity and not interacting with others. Why aren't books considered addictive?
She founded Online Gamers Anonymous in 2002, after losing her son, Shawn, to suicide that same year. He had become addicted to EverQuest while being treated for depression.
The depression is what killed her son, not the game. There was a point in my life where I played Counterstrike over 50 hours a week, I just flat stopped one day and started doing other things that had greater appeal to me at the time. I didn't get headaches or a nervous twitch or classic signs of addiction withdrawl. You know why? Because it wasn't an addiction. Pulling the same thing with caffeine is a different story.
Mostly, it seems to stem, in most of the addicts I'v talked to, from a combination of state run education and depression. Most techies aren't preppy, and infact most of them have had a lot of bad problems early on in life, especially with social rejection and the realization, subconsciouncly, that things were fucked and had to cope with them.
State run education comes in when it makes learning boring and monotonous compaired to videogames and TV. Really, the kids who play videogames are far better prone to be self-learners than slowed down by everyone else. Lord knows when I switched to learning on my own I started learning 3 or 4 times faster, and that's been steadily increasing over the past 2 years. Kids who watch TV just learn take what they're given and sit there until ordered to do something.
I think, mostly, it's getting them away from the games, advertising, TV and this whole screwey culture for a good 3 or 4 months. You'll notice that the kids who have no TV tend to have fewer social problems and fewer problems in life in general, namely because their identity of reality is based off of something solid. When you spend 6 hours a night watching TV, it becomes part o your reality. When you play games, likewise, it becomes a part of your reality. Gamers tend to become more dependant on their medium, namely becuase it integrates more throughly into their reality. By playing games (not shitty arcade games or football, we're talking the heavy stuff, doom, quake, evercrack, ect, games that require thought to win), you begin to understand intrinsically how a lot of things work and how to think through situations.
The last reason, I believe it happens, is becuase kids get something, psychologically, they don't get from the rest of their reality. If they have no control over their lives, then they may like playing a major RPG game or engauging in something that makes them feel important and in control. Same goes for adults. Some kids get a sense of social acceptance through the internet by playing games with other people. It can also be a heavily spirtual, if even tribal, experience where kids can hit an almost meditative, sublime minerva-type state. I know that, for quite some time, that was why I played games. It's hard to get to that high, but baby when you hit it is it ever so gooooooood (especially when you've got music pumping).
As for that article, it's truely scary. They're equating videogame addiction to crack addiction (which isn't as nearly as bad, imho, the word evercrack is satire afterall), then talking about "guides" to help parents "identify" the problem, from the sound of the article, it's the same thing with school teachers usingdugs to medicate problem kids. Really, it's about learning to like other things. When you're all consuming desire for 13 years is supposed to be slow, boring learning and sleep, games can become the number 1 thing you do. This becomes a problem, because kids just can't develop into real people like that, unless they're in a gaming clan inwhich older people usually talk to em' and help to set em' straight.
Candy-Coated Knowledge
I attended an instructional technology conference last month where a doctoral student presented her research into Never Winter Nights. A brief discussion followed where several "former gamers" commented, I being one of them.
When the session was over, one of the other recovering gamers approached me and told me going cold turkey was really difficult. He then asked me how I quit. The only answer I could give him was, "I got married."
I'd rather have someone respond than be modded up.
There are some pretty clear differences between a "hobby or passion" and addiction. I believe psychologists start using diagnostic language like "addiction" when the activity in question starts to interfere with the other aspects of your life, like holding down a job, paying bills on time, keeping up with friends, etc...
Also, just because someone "bounces back" from an addiction doesn't mean they don't have a problem... alchoholics, compulsive gamblers, and others may have a cycle of trying to give it up every so often when things start get get really out of control, then relapsing once they've gotten their act together.
My father in law was an alchoholic, but had been sober for over a decade when he died. He told me that drinking and going cold turkey were both possible for someone addicted to alchohol, but that the sign of a true alchoholic is that they can't drink in moderation. The idea of drinking only one or two drinks per day is inconceivable to them... and I believe this is true for other addictions as well. This is why 12 step programs don't talk about being "cured"... you're always an addict, and you're either clean, or you're not. There is no middle ground.
The measure of addiction is not the impact it has on those around you- it's about your state of mind, and how easily you can quit. Your example of someone quitting a job and playing Evercrack until they're broke is a perfect example of this... outside circumstances (poverty) forced them to stop. I can't think of a better description of addiction.
-R
I grew up with the quake world generation. In college I remember playing 8 hour stretches on CTF servers. Now that i'm an adult 29y/o with a job, bills, kids I just can't have the fun I used to. sometimes it's depressing. My 11 y/o however would willingly mutalate himself for an extra hour of warcraft. The way I solve this is simple turning it off and kicking him out of the house to get an hour or two of ruff housing sun and fresh air. Now that he is in junior high he joined the football team and has learned the fun of interacting with others. He also uses that same competitive spirit that his games once satisfied on the field. so it's all about focusing that energy.
ok.. so a few short paragraphs into the article i see:
"So the Perkinses turned to Jaysen's therapist, Kim McDaniel, for help."
wait a minute. this kid already has a therapist? so he already has issues?
so much for being worried about such a wide-spread problem.
remember, video game cartridges don't kill people, sticking a fork in a toaster does.
abcdefghijklmnopqrstuvwxyz
I'll go thru phases where I'm obsessed with a game and *HAVE* to finish it. That is, assuming it has a "finish". Then, I won't touch any game for a month or so, sometimes longer.
Most recently it has been Mech Warrior on the XBox and NWN: SoU & HoTU on my Linux PC.
It looks to me like everyone I've ever met has SOME form of an addiction. It could be cigarettes, soap operas, "reality TV", blogs, junk food, talk shows, golf, their car, religion, you name it. (Funny how so many revolve around television.)
Addiction is normal, relax and stop enriching psychologists needlessly.
-Charles
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
"Ordinary" games such as first-person-shooters provide this sense of progression to a lesser degree. The more you play the better you get and when you perceive the progress you get your serotonin rush. However, after a while you get tired or hungry, your performance suffers and ends the reward of continued play. MMORPGS are less skill-intensive and continue to reward the player for button-mashing until they can no longer keep their eyes open.
The community of MMORPG players can also reinforce this addiction, by providing a surrogate to a "real life" community, thus making it easier to withdraw from personal contacts and harder to start them up again. Cults use much the same technique to make it difficult for members to leave and rejoin the larger community.
How many times do we have to go over this?
BLAME THE PARENTS...
First it was Ozzy Osbourne records, then D&D, now video games.
Case in point... This woolley lady...
The mother of a 21-year old EverQuest addict who killed himself last Thanksgiving morning is filing a lawsuit against Sony Entertainment on the grounds that the addictive nature of the game weakened her son to the point of suicide. Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola, Wisconsin says that her son, Shawn, was so addicted to EverQuest that he surrendered everything - his home, family, and job - to play the game.
Shawn had more than his share of personal problems - in fact, if you've been reading this site for a while, you can practically recite them along with me. He was diagnosed with "depression and schizoid personality disorder, symptoms of which include a lack of desire for social relationships, little or no sex drive and a limited range of emotions in social settings." He was also an epileptic, and according to his mother, his last eight seizures were due to computer use.
Woolley's lawyer is the "colorful" attorney Jack Thompson, who is most famous for the 1990 debacle over rap group 2 Live Crew. Thompson attempted to get the members of the infamous rap group thrown into jail because their album As Nasty As They Wanna Be contained numerous instances of words that he just didn't like.
Elizabeth Woolley wants a label on games like EverQuest, to warn people of the potential dangers of playing them for extended periods of time. This has two problems with it:
Woolley herself had no need of such a label, as she was fully aware of her son's mental and physical problems, and knew that his game playing was getting out of hand.
Neither Woolley nor her son were likely to heed such a label if it did exist previously, since they both seemed to have ignored the epilepsy warning that came with EverQuest - the same warning that is voluntarily printed in the manual for practically every video game on the market.
Lets blame Sony for making the game, Walmart for selling the bullets, Ozzy for making the records, and leave the innocent parents alone.
There are alot of gamers out there... Im one of them, I go to lan parties, have a ton of cyber friends, but I also have a girlfriend, a job, a car, and many friends in RL... because my parents taught me the ability to differentiate between REALITY AND FANTASY
I wish more parents would do the same.
Fire in the hands of the village idiot is no tool, but a weapon of mass destruction
Every month when the welfare queens get their welfare check, the supermarkets are flooded with "the ghetto'.
I swear that most of the little girls are named after cars (Lexus, Diamanti, Kia, Allante, Sonata) and most of the little boys are named after DuPont products or similar sounding words (Jermal, Nylon, Teflon, Kevlar)
It's a shame but when I hear some fat mama call Nylon and Kia, I can't help but laugh.
I'll call a counselor straight away to help me with my game addiction.
Right after I beat this level, I mean.
JMDWhen all else fails, feel free to panic.
Any negative results those people experience are because of social and mental problems they have...not because they play games. If someone took away their computer, they'd spend all of their time reading, watching TV, working out or staring at a wall. They are depressed, suffer from OCD, anxiety issues, self-esteem issues...lots of things.
For example, if you know a man who washes his hands every 30 minutes, gets up in the middle of the night to wash his hands and mostly stays at home so he is able to wash his hands at regular times do you say that he is addicted to washing his hands? No, you recognize that he has a mental disorder and get him treatment. Does that make hand washing bad? No, its not the activity, its the illness that should be corrected.
I've been playing games for years and have managed to get an education, maintain a successful career and enjoy a healthy social life. Why? Because I'm a healthy person. I like myself and those around me, I enjoy my days at work, my evenings with friends and family and my evenings gaming. My gaming groups are just friends I hang out with.
In my time gaming, I've come accross people with social problems, anxiety problems, depression and severe self-esteem issues. I think the reason they turn to gaming is because it allows them to interact with others in a social enviornment where there is a barrier that keeps others at a safe distance and keeps their problems secret. They get a chance to be judged just on their gaming skills and their chat humor. They usually find people who like them and maybe who share their problems.
I spend a significant amount of time gaming and will continue to do so until I no longer enjoy it. I do not consider it an addiction and never will. For years, I've played games or read books instead of watching TV. While roommates and family have come home and watched mindless sitcoms and gameshows, I was in the other room reading or slaughtering my enemies. I think my time was better spent.
At least when you're playing Madden NFL 2004 you know your dad won't yell obscenities at the other team, shit on the ref's car hood after the game, or beat you for not "giving it 110%". There's no chance of your coach molesting you, or of losing your first adult teeth to a cleat in the face. And the other players won't stick pine cones up your butt when you join the team.
Freedom: "I won't!"
Switch to linux, with an ATI card =)
He plays...*gasp*..."sometimes up to six hours a day."
Amateur.
Joking aside, if he spent six hours a day watching tv it would be considered no big deal. If he spent six hours a day reading slashdot, it would be...okay it would be pretty freaking weird...but still it would be considered no big deal.
But no, he plays games, which, as we all know, are the devil. They have warped his fragile mind. He needs psychological help! Yadda yadda yadda.
Like the violence on TV is different from the violence on a game, and like...seeing...violence makes you an evil monster.
Hell I've been to LAN games that started on friday and didn't end until Sunday around five o'clock. Went to work the next day, did fine. Is it an addicition? No, because I didn't bust down the walls trying to get my fix at any time during the work week. I don't do it often. It's a hobby. It's fun.
God forbid you're not a vapid consumer of "Friends" and "Will and Grace". Games'll rot your mind, you know.
Now go watch some damn TV.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
Poor sap. He has three accounts. That's right. Pays for three seperate accounts, spends LOTS of bucks buying weapons, scrolls etc. on ebay, and even payed for three months on another account to try and hook me into it. I played the game when it was first released, but since they patched the cool die-in-someones-house-get-ressed-loot-their-stuff bug it got kinda dull, IMO:) He plays every night at least three hours straight. If he misses a night he gets depressed and call in sick to work. Sometimes he'll call me to talk about his expoits. Oddly enough, he quit drinking almost exactly the same time he started playing the game. UO is almost the only thing he uses his computer for, besides email and ebay. He upgrades once a year. Guess I can;t complain there as he donates his old one to FreeGeek, a local non-profit. If this ain't addiction, I don't know what is.
_____ "If liberty means anything at all, it means the right to tell people what they do not want to hear." -- Orwell
Ob. Penny-Arcade
You probably shouldn't click this.
Cannabis is not addictive. I was a tobacco smoker and it was very difficult to stop smoking for more than a few hours (as any tobacco addict knows).
:D
I stopped smoking cannabis for 8 years and it didnt bother me. I took cannabis all day every day for a year and then stopped one day for three months with zero withdrawal symptoms.
As I am now older I take (not smoke) cannabis for pain relief. Its the herb that keeps giving
Bush and Blair ate my sig!
The opportunity cost of those 13 hours is in itself a "negative consequence". The time could have been spent in activities which can ameliorate, rather than reinforce a "social life slump". Withdrawal from society has a tendency to exacerbate such conditions.
If you spend most of your free time (free meaning time that you have to do whatever you like with) playing games because that's genuinely what you like doing. Many Americans have this obsession with games somehow being bad. It's ok to spend 4 hours at the bar chatting with people and drinking, it's ok to watch 3 hours of TV, but playing games? Must be something wrong with you!
Different peopel find different things entertaining and for some, games are the most entertaining. There is nothing at all wrong with that.
Part of the problem is we have a cultural overemphasis on being social. Being an extravert is seen as good and normal, whereas being an intravert is seen as bad and problematic. Now it's quite the opposite in, say, Japan. There being a quite introvert is valued and being an extravert is frowned upon.
This isn't to say that no social contact is healthy, we are a social species. However different peopel have different amounts they like. Just because someone is generally an intravert and doesn't want to be in social activities all the time, that's fine.
As the parent noted, it's only a problem and thus an addiction if it starts interfering with your life. If you are late to work and missing important events all the time because you are playing games, you have a problem. If you choose to spend your free time playing games, you do not have a problem.
From kindergarten through 12th grade, my mom yelled at me until my homework got done. I got pretty good grades and ultimately got into Cornell (with my mom also yelling at me to get the applications done all the while).
I went as a physics major since I got a 5 on the AP and aced the regents. Within one year I got so molested by engineering calculus that I was asked to leave for a while. At the same time I was getting sucked into playing the early network games (early 90's, on Macs... Spectre, in case anyone recalls). It got to the point where my friends had an intervention and removed the hard drive from my computer! I still ended up leaving for awhile, joining the USAF, living it up in California for 4 years while traveling the world, coming back to Cornell as a Psych major, and did OK.
My point is- Even though she meant well and I know she loves me, my mom didn't know the first damn thing about how to instill discipline in me at all! All she taught me how to do was to work in response to a very negative stimulus, and when that stimulus was removed (and suddenly), I was completely unprepared. To this day I struggle with motivational issues (and I verge on game addiction, but only when a cool new game comes out for OS X, which fortunately is not that frequently, heh).
So don't be so quick to blame the parents, unless you also have a plan to train them on how to instill motivation/discipline in their children. Unfortunately, there is no "parenting class", and as parents like to joke among themselves, "you are the best parent your kid will ever know." Most parents care a ton about their kids, but the natural skill seems to vary...
I bought a Mac
in bed.
Here you go... See "Ariadne" and the end of "Norrathian Scrolls".
An addiction is when your "addiction" creates negative consequences in daily life.
No, silly, an "addiction" is when you spend more time/effort/money than others think you should, doing something they don't approve of.
Freedom: "I won't!"
I still don't know who is more to blame: the children's parents, the game creators or the whole society ?
:x
:) Our society is evolving, lately there's been an explosion in the computers field. It made the Top 3 news, I might say. What are news about? Politics, social events and technology. The technology field is mostly covered by IT. There's plenty of geeks in the world. This phenomenon, severe game addiction, is not something particular that occured in just one place, it's something global that's affecting the whole human society. Parents should do "something about it." Children are given too much freedom. It's a dangerous world we live in! I'm definately not saying you should never let your kid out of the house. That would be the stupidest thing ever but you should try to understand why other children aren't smoking and make sure yours won't either. Same goes for drugs,
In many cases, games are similar to drugs because they are drugs, exactly as the article said. They give the player just what he needs: power!
Only today a friend installed Wolfenstein - Return to The Castle and I started playing for a bit, to see how it would behave on her hardware. Result? I tried to get past the same guards for 3 times and still didn't make it. I wanted to try again but she reminded me there was no time to play. When Doom came out, I had no idea that there were "cheats" for games so I finished it on my own. Few people believe me and that gives me a bit of self-confidence, I did things that others couldn't. In Wolfenstein, I only wanted to pass those guards, then I would have quit the game. Killing "the bad guys" and destroying monsters, saving the world and sometiems getting the girl sounds like fun, doesn't it? Who wouldn't like to be able to do that? The idea is that games tend to give you a reward for anything good (according to the game story) that you do. Delightful! The moment you do something good, you're rewarded. The moment you do something bad, you're punished, but it's OK, you can start over again. That's the world of the games, a perfect world. If you take the ability to replay a scenario, your game pack will never even reach the shelves. How many times have you done something very insignificant but very wrong? Wouldn't you like to go back and fix that? I have a feeling even the Pope wants to repair some things he did. In the real world there's no such thing as on-the-spot satisfaction. The story of the game moves on very fast, otherwise it wouldn't be playable while in the real world it takes a lot of time to get the reward for your actions.
Games can contain cool monsters, blood, weapons of mass destruction, space ships and abilities you never had. Let's face it, very few people will deal with any of the above in a life-time. This is what makes games attractive. Let's not get too Matrix-ed, but our actions are based on cause and effect. Our minds can hardly comprehend the fact that for something good that you've done, you'll have to wait days, months of maybe years to get the results. If children would understand that, everybody would have straight-A's in school, wouldn't they? They'd understand how useful what they're being taught will be in the future but there's no such thing as waiting days/months/years in games! Everything you do is rewarded on the spot, in a few minutes or hours. There's no greater satisfaction than doing something constructive and quickly seing the results, that's something basic in human behavior. This makes games similar to drugs. Their purpose is to relax you. Drugs do about the same (apparently). The results should be about the same
Sometimes games cause addiction, it's fun to save the world and get the girl, isn't it? In my opinion, everyone is to blame but in different manners. Game writers shouldn't make games so addictive, but they have to make money out of something, don't they? Blaming them is like blaming the tobacco industry for the fact that your child is smoking (which I'm doing right now
And that's where the problem comes in. We've blurred the use of addiction in society until the abstract definition of addiction - the need to perform some behavior compulsively - determines the connotation of the word. The only meaning of the word addiction that applies to physical reality is that version that arises from biological adaptation to the ingestion of substances, which some people (alcoholics, for one) are much more prone to. Continued use develops continued need, and soon, their bodies (literally) depend on the substances for normal functioning, as they have stopped producing sufficent amounts of affected neurotransmitters on their own.
The other connotation of addiction is the one we refer to in common speech - when a person repeats behaviors, regardless of the consequences or his/her own inclination to do so. So we speak of those addicted to shopping, grooming, sex, or any other behavior a person focuses on for what others would deem an unhealthy period of time (this behavior is almost always a vice, or capable of becoming one in excess). This is where our definitions overlap and the problem first appears. Any thought or behavior is necessarily biological. What's more, for all of human history, people have tried to resist pleasure, such as eating or sex, that is innately tied with both biological reward and negative consequences. And in this way, the reward and the strong drive to perform the behaviors that bring about this reward are abstracted on the basis of their biological similarity (the same brain rewards both behaviors) and the strikingly similar behaviors of those deemed addicted (when you want to do something, you do it). But when we do this, we overstep the bounds of the word addiction, and soon we start regulating all human behavior associated with pleasure, negative consequences, and an obsessive quality (games, sex, etcetc) into the category of addiction. Now, if you think that a reasonable definition of addiction is one that can apply to any pleasure-deriving activity, including every vice, that's your opinion. It just happens to be a very wrong one.
Listen, it's hard not to do the things we like. They make us feel the same (happy) as heroin makes heroin addicts feel (happy). And for all of human history, we've been trying to figure out how to supress the human tendencies towards pleasure that can hurt and destroy us. But when we talk like this, we cheapen the real meaning of addiction and blur the only real use of the word, and we replace deeper understand of human action with trivial and shallow definitions we read in magazines. I used to smoke cigarettes, I occasionally smoke pot, and I love math. When I quit smoking, I felt nuts, like I was losing something that my body depended upon. When you're a smoker, you can't remember what it was like to be a non-smoker - to go a day without thinking of a cigarette. It was the hardest thing I've ever done, and if you non-smokers could imagine that suffering, you'd know what we mean we when talk about addiction (and why we get angry when this pop psychology bullshit shits on our plight). But when I stop smoking pot, I feel upset that I'm not doing what I like to do, I feel urges to smoke, and very often, I will smoke once or twice again before starting my real month off. But I don't feel like I can't think, that my head is being smashed, or that I can't register anything other than my shaking and desire for a cigarette. There is a biological reality to real addiction. The rest is human behavior and the same old virture and vice discussions we've lived with for years. While this is necessarily biology, it comes naturally from human behavior, and is not caused by physical adaption to external agents and chemicals that act upon the biology of the body. This is a critical distinction, and not one easily understood by half-rate scientists, people who read magazines, and those who've never wanted a cigarette.
If you spend six hours a day watching TV and I am your friend then I am going to tell you to get out more. I don't consider that normal. If you spend six hours a day reading Slashdot then not only am I going to tell you to get out more but you are also a good candidate for one of those internet addiction programs. In fact the only situation I can think of where it is considered normal to sit there like a vegetable for six hours or more is work :)
This is different than someone who goes to LAN parties, which is basically a social function. Like you said, you went to a LAN party and then went to work the next day. This is like a late night party with a lot of drinking. It doesn't necessarily indicate a drinking problem because there is no pattern and it isn't necessarily interfering with the rest of your life.
Kids who spend six hours a day playing video games are missing real life experiences. I know this from experience, because I was a compulsive gamer when I was young. I think this problem should be recognized so that kids and their parents can starting doing something about this problem.
henceforth known as a "Ghetto Name". A Ghetto Name implies a lack of education or sophistication
on the part of the one who gave the name. By no means is having a Ghetto Name indicative of anything
negative about the individual unfortunate enough to bear it.
The list applies only to those of us who are native born black Americans. I will leave the list of Red Neck names or
Trailer Park names to Jeff Foxxworthy or someone else. This list is mine.
#1. If your name is misspelled, it is a Ghetto Name.
#2. If your first name includes an apostrophe, it is a Ghetto Name.
#3. If your first name includes the sounds "eeta", "ona", "eekwa", "onda" or "eesha", it is a Ghetto Name.
#4. If your first name is an adjective or an adverb, it is a Ghetto Name.
#5. If your first name is the last name of a former president of the US, it is a Ghetto Name.
#6. If your first name consists of a regular name preceeded by "Ne", "La"
#7. If your first name begins with the sound "My"/"Mi", "Ty", or "Shy"/"Shi", it is a Ghetto Name.
#8. If your first name consists of a monosyllabic word repeated two or more times, it is a Ghetto Name.
#9. If your first name is the same as a City, State, Country or Emotion, it is a Ghetto Name.
#10. If you have never known of another human being who bears your name, it is a Ghetto Name.
LK
"Hi. This is my friend, Jack Shit, and you don't know him." - Lord Kano
it always amuses me to listen to gamers go on and on about television. just because television might be more braindead than video games doesn't justify video games themselves. television does have its perks, such as staying up to date on news, documentaries, and who could forget the history channel? well, i could actually, but that's another story.
:/ turned out i really liked it though. i also decided i wanted to make games that told stories and had battles.
to avoid all of the typical flame posts, i wanted to share my experience with games. when i was about 8 years old, i saw a commercial for zelda on the tube. i got really excited, and i wanted to buy it with the money i had saved up. i didn't remember what the game was called, but i knew the package had a sword on it. i ended up purchasing final fantasy 2 (4j).
essentially, video gaming got me into all sorts of stuff. graphics design, creative writing, physics, computer programming, software engineering, math, and music to name most of them. i ended up gaining enough interest that now i am at a nice private university majoring in computer science and math, with a minor in vocal music. of course, i'm sure my experience is a bit more unique than others. however, in a world of apathy where it can be hard to get people interested in things, it would be a rash decision to remove the one thing they are passionate about. i've been addicted to games (not online games, mind you), but to eliminate them seems silly. i considered my addiction an opportunity to balance my life better. it would be wrong to say addicts can't be cured. with a bit of self-discipline and some encouragement, you can learn to set bounds on the things you love.
but then again, maybe i was not as addicted as others.
There's much to be said for the damage TV can cause (mostly to do with spoon-fed repetitive messages hitting your ears), but video games have their own distinct type of brain-abuse. My discovery of this was realized this last year when I connected my old NES (after not having played any games of any kind for about 10 years) and experienced nostalgia by plugging in my old "Contra" cartridge (which I'd spent 14 hours a day in front of for years as a kid). I started to play it and it was like I'd never left the damn thing - I hit evey jump, killed every enemy and basically finished the game on 1 try, without a certain code from the old days :- )
This was 10 YEARS LATER!!
My point is that (according to psychological theory) the way we learn is by developing pathways through our neurons which give us reflexes and reactions to certain stimuli. Video games (the old ones at least) have VERY specific reflex requirements to VERY specific stimuli (How many seconds do have to kill that alien - usually less than 1/2...how many different ways to kill him...without the EXACT same thumb twitch?)
This obviously results in focused but deep pathways in your neurons which will never be overwritten - a permanent fixture in your brain.
So while some people may not call being a master at "Contra" for the rest of your existence a waste - I regret it and would much rather know how to play the piano (for example) in exchange for that mental real-estate.
Yeah, someone once told me to get a life, so I did. RL is as boring as the Sims, but it's even slower-paced, and the speed-up key can only be used once a day, and it only works at night, when you're at home trying to game, rather than you just pusshing fast-forward during the day when nobody's home!
And there's no fucking save/restore feature either! Sepend six weeks setting up a menage-a-trois with you, your boss' wife and just one lousy goat, and you might as well pull out the old .45 and reroll.
RL is teh suck. I wouldn't even warez it.
FIRST, there is an activity enjoyed by a relatively small segment of the population. This activity is mysterious to the mainstream, perhaps it's a little beyond their ability to adapt to.
THEN, the activity becomes more popular. What was once a relatively minor thing becomes a phenomenon. The people currently In Power (tm), being old farts who have a hard time adapting to change, notice the phenomenon and are threatened by it. It is mysterious and strange, and like The Thing, it must be destroyed.
THEN, despite their best efforts, they fail to destroy it. People really like it, and tell them to get stuffed. They assume that people just don't understand the terrible thing they're doing to themselves, and they try to figure out a way to frame it so that they can bring social pressure down on the phenomenon.
THEN, usually, they invent some imagined syndrome, some terrible ailment caused by the new phenomenon. Recently, thanks to Hollywood's fascination with Heroin, "Addiction" is the popular ailment. The mainstream applies the ailment to the social phenomenon in an attempt to stigmatize it.
THEN, the stigma makes the phenomenon more popular. Inevitably, the phenomenon becomes mainstream, and the mainstream gives up trying to kill it off.
Examples: Rock and Roll, television, education, marriage (really! back in the years of the early church, it was considered bad for the soul), bathing, reading, printing books in the vernacular instead of latin, Science Fiction, video games, disco, folk music, and new age thinking.
Extreme example that hasn't gone mainstream yet: porno. Porno may never go mainstream in this country because of the puritan curse (the mindset passed down from puritans for the past several hundred years that sees sex as dirty and dangerous and sinful).
Interesting side phenomenon: goody-two-shoes types who were never really into the phenomenon (whatever the phenomenon might be) who deal with their guilt by buying into the ailment theory, and who try to claim social status by telling everyone within earshot that they've "overcome" their ailment.
Amazing irony: television, which is now mainstream, is considered "okay" to spend six hours or more a day with, remote in hand, brain in neutral. But when a person plays a video game (which engages their mind and imagination) for six hours, they are immediately pounced on by the "gaming as addiction" idiots.
Interesting side result: kids raised in gaming-friendly households will end up happier, smarter, and more alert than their television-addled counterparts.
Farewell! It's been a fine buncha years!
" How many times do we have to go over this?
BLAME THE PARENTS..."
No. Let's not. For a change, let's look at the issue as something complicated that can't be explained away by scapegoating somebody for it.
Articles like this always drive me nuts. When I was working on EverQuest Companion, one of the chapters was devoted to game addiction. My research for it entailed reading approximately 300 pages of psychology papers, interviewing people affected who had family members addicted to EverQuest, interviewing a psychologist who is working on game addiction (something only a handful of people are working on in North America, by the way), and reading a book by Doctor David Greenfield (who has so far conducted the largest study on Internet addiction). The research for that single chapter was massive, and longer than the entire manuscript for the book.
When I read this article, though, I can tell that all the reporter has done is interview a psychologist and throw in some pop psychology. And, as a result, a lot of wrong impressions have been given, and expressed.
Let's begin by dispelling a couple of myths:
1. There is a certain personality type that is more susceptible to addiction.
WRONG. The larger studies have actually confirmed that this is not the case, and that any personality type can become addicted. The only determining factor that seems to make any difference in how easily one becomes addicted is technical knowledge - it's easier to become addicted to the Internet if you know how to use it.
2. It's actually a simple matter, and there is one cause.
VERY WRONG. Every case of addiction is different in some way.
3. Game addiction doesn't really exist, and it is just people being lazy.
WRONG. Game addiction is a psychological addiction, and it is not only very real, but can be very damaging.
So, from my research, game addiction can be defined as this: a coping mechanism gone horribly wrong.
Computer game addiction is very similar to gambling addiction, but it is a coping mechanism. It just isn't a good one. There is no single reason for computer game addiction, simply because everybody who becomes addicted has a different trigger.
For example, in the case of Shawn Woolley, his trigger seems to have been mistreatment at work. He had epilepsy, had been playing recreationally and had a massive seizure, and then his boss (whose wife had epilepsy) forced him to work overtime even though Woolley could barely function. Woolley stormed off the job in disgust, and the addiction started shortly after.
(I know this because in my research, I got a full timeline from Liz Woolley, who is actually very grounded in reality. All of those problems that Woolley was suffering were actually symptoms of the addiction - the one thing that just about never shows up in articles about the case is that the Woolley family spent around a year and a half trying to get Shawn help, and NOBODY would recognize that it was even possible to get addicted to a game, and those who did only treated the symptoms, and not the addiction.)
The addiction cycle works something like this: You have the trigger. For argument's sake, let's say you're a student and you have a late assignment. This is very stressful, so you play some game X to relieve it. But, when you finish playing, since you were playing a game instead of finishing the assigment, it is now even more late, and the situation is worse. This causes even more stress, so you play a bit more to relieve the stress. And thus it becomes a cycle, and soon you need to play the game just to feel normal.
It isn't a simple issue, and there isn't a broadstroke cure. It also isn't some sort of disease, where everybody who plays a certain game will probably become addicted to it. That's horsesh*t, quite frankly. In fact, statistics collected by Nicholas Yee regarding EverQuest indicated that more people believed they had a problem than actually di
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
He shit on MY car after I beat him at the game. Sore loser.
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
I used to play rogue spear a lot during college, especially online. However, I seemed to always manage to get homework and papers completed well enough to finish 158 hours in 4.5 years including summers. But the thing I liked about Rogue Spear was I could get on and play against the computer or others in games that typically lasted less that 10 - 15 minutes. So after reading a chapter or a handout, I'd play a game or two, then get back to work. Or read while people were messing around and the game loaded. Play, get killed and go back to reading until the game was finished.
Last year I used to hang out with people every saturday night that would Role play from about 6PM until 9 PM. I never saw the point and usually played Risk, watched a movie, shot the bull with others that didn't RPG and then they would order out pizza and break out HALO about 9 - 10PM and we'd play 4v4 halo until midnight or 1PM.
However, two people that continueally played online games and halo failed out of school. (most had graduated and had full-time jobs or worked part time and were in Grad school). They both ended up selling their X-boxes and one got to come back this fall. His present from his grandparents: an Alienware Laptop. A $1000 Dell would have been fine for school use, but Alienware is designed for gamers.
I was engaged at one point. I worked as a free-lance web designer during college and continued to do so to pay bills, but I was burned out of doing it after 8 years. I kept applying for jobs in the morning. Sending out resumes online and in paperform to local companies hiring, then in the afternoon I'd sit, watch TV, and play Rogue Spear: Black Thorn. Oftentimes forgetting to do chores like vaccuum. Ticked off my fiance (that worked a part-time job and was trying to start a wedding planning business that I helped with in the evenings and on weekends) to no end. Sometimes when she had a big wedding or was sub-contracting with someone else, I'd spend my nights playing the online game.
In pre-marital counsiling (required by the Church), she would bring it up. Ultimately it really wasn't a factor in our break-up. That was due to my Majors being International Business and German and to find a job meant leaving Springfield, Missouri which she didn't want to do.
Its something I watch out for. I like to play computer games, but anymore I get extremely board playing the same games. Its been fun dragging out TIE Fighter this past week. I've been thinking of getting an X-box, but I even hooked up my old Sega Gensises to the 65" HDTV I have and played it for about 4 hours one night just for kicks. (Okay two-nights, an old friend came over and we drug out mortal kombat).
I can remember playing Knights of the Old Republic and it logging I spent 48 hours playing the game over about 3 months at my friends. Then someone said I needed to play it again and do it dark side and I said, "Yeah, just tell me what happens because I've spent about 40 hours too long playing this game." I know someone else that spend the combined total of 120 days straight of EQ and had to quit. That certainly becomes and addiction.
At least when your playing Basketball, or in my case ice hockey, you are interacting with real people and getting excercise. I'm sure a lot of childhood obeseity these days are linked to kids doing nothing but watching TV, playing video games, as well as diet.
What really broke me was I spent 1 semester in Europe, Germany specifically. I had my iBook, no games, no TV in my apartment (I wish I had a TV so I could have listen to more German), but went out almost everynight for dinner from 7PM - 10PM and either watched Soccer or revived the lost art of conversation and debate over a smoke, tea and/or wine.
"The problem with socialism is eventually you run out of other people's money" - Thatcher.
If I am a gaming "addict" and I game 2 hours a day, every day, at times that don't interfere with some other part of my life, who the hell cares?
If someone smokes 3 cigarettes a day, who the hell cares? That guy is smoking less than a pack a week! I get more secondhand smoke than that!
So no, my argument is NOT faulty. Time and quantity is the heart of the whole issue. If your "addiction" doesn't interfere with your life, your job, or alienate your family, then its not a big deal, and YOU should get to worrying about something that actually matters, rather than spending your dissaproval on a moderate and in control habit.
Makes me sick. I've seen alcoholics that can take a quart of vodka A DAY, or a pack of cigarettes at ONE MEAL, and you talk about fiddling nothing habits? Addicts don't stop. Thats practically the definition. A smoker doesn't HAVE three cigarettes if he's addicted.
If you can't drag someone from his computer, if he gets the shakes when the power goes out or freaks out when the cable dies, yea, get him some counsiling, but just because he games 6 hours a day, that means NOTHING.
So spare me your moralistic babble. If I read 12 hours a day, which I do sometimes, you'd think it was great, but I've had a hell of a lot more trouble putting down a book than I've ever had turning off a damn computer.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I was addicted to this one game until my old machine died. I can't remember the name of it, but I would play for hours. It was a top down perspective shooter and you basically shot the hell out of these onrushing aliens, trying to stay alive and gain power-ups. If someone knows the name of this game, please let me know.
he was happy, he was not {getting drunk, doing drugs, making babies, killing, thieving, raping, pillaging}
Are we supposed to spot the one which does not fit in? I found it. Making babies. Am I a genius?
Come on. When you typed "making babies" in a list of disasters that include "killing, raping, doing drugs etc...", didn't anything stop you? Didn't the thought occur that creating life is not as bad as destroying it?
And the worst is that your post has like 6 replies and nobody seemed shocked by that. Am I the only one?
It would be nice to be sure of anything the way some people are of everything.
So now, games don't just cause people to run out and go on murder sprees. Now, everyone who plays video games is "depressed" and "avoiding social situations".
Let's see. I work a full-time job, I have a fiance, I've got a lot of friends I hang out with multiple times a week, I'm the happiest I've ever been and I still play video games.
Why? Because I hate dancing. I hate clubs. The mall is only so fun. And I'm a geek.
Hello people! Video games. Note the second word. Games. Something people do to have fun. Not always done in groups.
Thank you and leave me and my precious Sims2 be.