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The Science of Game Addiction
Gamasutra has a report on the state of game addiction science. From the article: "Yes, South Korean and American gamers have died from exhaustion. Yes, this makes bored journalists and unpopular politicians very happy. China has already thrown a fair bit of legislation at video games, whether or not games are the problem. On the other hand, such legislation might fail to address the real problem. In this article I explain addiction simply. Then, I talk about research that attempts to connect addiction to gaming, and some clear problems in that research. One caveat: this article is not going to make anyone into a trained clinician."
right after I play another turn of Civilization IV.
The Blaster Master Fighting for Truth, Justice, and Evil Pie since 1979
Say what you like about EverCrack or World of Warcrack, but MUDs have still got to be the most addictive substance on earth. The first time I logged into one, I saw "Hey guys, i've been playing 32 hours of nonstop MUME!"
A few years later, I got to read a restraining order obtained by the University Computer Science department against a former student who had been haunting the labs over the weekends, unbathed, and occasionally sleeping under the terminal.
Did I mention most MUDs are free to play?
The moral of the story, though, is that we need get back into the real world once in a while. Get away from the computer, go back to the dinner table, and roll some dice!
Trying to use sarcasm in text-based forums does not work.
Once you define the word "addiction" broadly enough that you can become "addicted" to gambling... a process with no chemical interactions we weren't all born with... you can become "addicted" to anything that you happen to find pleasurable. Playing EverQuest. Bird-watching. Playing Puzzle Pirates. Exercising. Playing Civilization IV. Watching soap operas. Does this mean that the creators of soap operas need to "understand that a problem exists", as this article exhorts game creators to do?
Unfortunately, these days I spend more time at work than I do gaming; eight to ten hours in a stretch! In fact, though I've nearly died of exhaustion several times, I think we would all agree that there are only a few people who are actually addicted to their jobs.
I gotta play more, so i can get more loot, so i can play more, so i can get more loot...so i can play more...
Take the greatest greatest injection of herion you've ever had and multiply it by a thousand and you're not even close.
... for a chat with a therapist addiction.
The article links to http://www.netaddiction.com/clinic.htm which charges $95 an hour to councel you in a chat room about your addictive behaviour. Talk about cultivating a prime target audience.
It seems to me this could all be pretty easily solved. I propose the following solution: in an MMORPG, once an account has been logged in for, say, 8 hours in a 24-hour period, the character slowly gets less and less XP. By hour 9, the character gets half normal XP, and by hour 10, no XP at all. Other punishments could be added to taste: can't chat, can't emote, can't gain new quests, NPCs won't respond, etc. This could even be explained in-game as a negative buff, call it "exhaustion" or something.
This would have the following benefits:
1). MMORPG addiction? Solved.
2). Gold farming would take a hit as well.
3). Would provide incentive for inactive players to log out instead of sitting AFK for hours.
4). Would help curb account sharing.
Before anyone points it out, I know MMORPGs aren't the only thing one can become addicted to. I also know that those truly desperate could get a second (or third) account and keep right on playing. But hey, baby steps...
Andrew Lenahan http://www.starblind.com/
This is a pretty good article. I'm a bit surprised that they didn't cover Dr. David Greenfield's research, though - he's dealing with online addiction with a sampling of around 15,000. Also, Nicholas Yu (I think I got that name right) dealt with MMORPG addiction with a sampling around 4,000. Both of their research would be helpful, and probably easily found using Google (I'm just back from class and a long walk home, so I'm not looking anything up right now). I found the work of both of these people invaluable when I was writing the addiction chapter in my EverQuest book.
Robert B. Marks
Author, Demonsbane in Diablo Archive
... is that it's mostly because the Internet is new, and a foreign concept to the older generation.
Do we ask if people are "Addicted to Golf", even though I know execs who probably would show signs of addiction if you replaced "Golf" for "Internet" in questionaires. Are you "addicted" to hanging out with our friends? Are you "addicted" to your spouse?
"People should spend less time online and more time reading". Or subtitute reading for "Playing Outside", "Hanging with their friends", "visiting grandma", etc. It's extremely common it seems for the older generation to complain about new things to do with your time that aren't what they used to do.
How many men in the past have nearly lost or actually lost their marriages because they spent too much time fishing? Or working in their shop?
Besides, we might as well get used to sitting around on the internet. It's all we'll be able to do after the older generation destroys the environment and there is no "outside" to go play.
What morons. I guess I can say I am addicted to World of Warcraft, but come on, take a break. I eat, sleep, drinkwater, even pee when I play. But these people gotta have some kind of mental disorder to play so long and so much that you die from it.
Click Click Bloody Click PANCAKES!
This article makes a point journalists like to forget: that anything fun can be addictive. This includes making yourself feel important by bashing something you don't understand. Now that we know this, let's see if we can get the /. trolls and Jack Thompson a support group!
You are reading a copy of my copyrighted post.
I attended a session at Game Developer Conference in 2001 or so, titled "Addiction in Online Games". It started out pretty good - it was about reward patterns that tend to create "stickyness" (addiction) in online games. For instance, rather than using a fixed-per-time reward schedule, use a slot-machine type schedule.
;)
Then it turned all touchy-feely. "Well, we know we *can* make games addictive, but *SHOULD* we." All the developers took turns trying to prove that they were more caring and concerned than the person who spoke last.
Then, Alexey Pajitnov, the creator of Tetris (!!!) stood up and said in a thick Russian accent: "What the hell are you people talking about? I cherish the times I've been addicted to games. What else am I going to do - read some stupid book?"
Got things right back on track
I think that there is a good point here. Isn't there a certain amount of a social acceptability criteria that creeps in through any of these studies? Currently computer games are seen as "tolerable" by the majority of the population, but certainly not an acceptable replacement to television!
Lets look at this logically with a different context, say camping. I am sure that there are people who love camping, spend 36 hours on a weekend with minimal human interaction, turn up to work tired on Monday morning and then spend 4-5 hours per night planning their next trip, checking equipment, purchasing supplies etc. So I put it to you, how is this different to most "addicted" gamers.
Well the answer is that camping is seen as "good for you" because it gets you "outdoors". It is seen as wholesome and family friendly. Because of this, "addiction" to camping is negligible (or non-existent).
I think society is struggling to come to terms with computer addiction, a term I use loosely to include the current spate of addictions, such as gaming addiction, ebay addiction, email addiction and coding addiction (although this isn't something you will hear about because this is generally good for society or at least the financial bottom line). Society doesn't see using a computer for recreational purposes on the same level as watching television with arguments such as "it doesn't encourage interaction with other people" and "it's not exactly something you can discuss with someone the next day". Well I don't feel this is true any more, primarily because I believe that my online friends are as real as my rl friends. And with the increase in the number of gamers (particularly thanks to WoW) I find I can discuss, maybe not strategies, but at least what attracts me to the game with my work collegues.
So I respect the research that is being undertaken to determine the cause and hopefully the cure to these addictions, but in some ways, particularly that psychological way, I don't think you can look for any particular addiction. Gaming is an easy target when it comes to addiction because it is legal, cheap and trivial to access. How about looking for people who have similar addictions to, say, knitting, surfing, chess and rogaining! This will give you a much better understanding of a "addictive personality".
So if I extract the concept of psychological addiction down to its core, it means the undertaking of some task/activity to the detriment of the rest of life, such as family/social activity/work/finances/spirituality or all of these things. I think the danger is asking WHO defines what is "normal" in all of these areas. If you want to be a bachelor(ette) and play computer games solely for your recreation, do it. If you want to play WoW on a Sunday morning instead of church, it is your choice (a particularly interesting choice for those clerics). If you are healthy, happy and content with your life, chances are you a not addicted.
Please note that I am not disparaging those addicted users or the concept of addiction, I'm just pointing out that we have no clear measure of psychological addiction in the same way we do of physical addiction. And those with alternative lifestyles may considered to be addicted when they do not simply meet the simplistic concept of "normal".
"People should spend less time online and more time reading". Or subtitute reading for "Playing Outside", "Hanging with their friends", "visiting grandma", etc. It's extremely common it seems for the older generation to complain about new things to do with your time that aren't what they used to do."
Indeed very much so. Grandma still reminisces about how she had to be sneaky about reading a book, because her parents kept trying to make her do something more productive.
In fact, here's one I found even funnier: one of our professors at college, an old man, read a text to us where someone was complaining about "youth nowadays" and how they dress all wrong, show no respect to their elders, have bad manners, and generally everything is going down in a hurry. You know what was funny? The text was written by some ancient Greek, before Christ.
I would say that nothing changed much in that aspect. If you went back in time all the way, you could probably find a couple of tribal elders complaining loudly about "youth nowadays" and all those new bad habbits. Like fire and cooked food. They must be addicted to that stuff. Or about how the youth wear their antelope skins all wrong.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
It's not the first time I see that dopamine explanation being thrown around, and this isn't even the most scientific one. But then maybe it just had to be dumbed down for Joe Random to understand it.
But here's also the problem I have with the dopamine explanation waved around more and more these days: it is also dumbed down enough to paint a wrong picture to Joe Random and make it sound like it's drug addiction. In fact, like it's the poor man's marijuana substitute. Which makes for good lobbying and propaganda material. However, the problem with that picture is that reality is exactly the other way around.
Yes, among the many chemicals in your brain, your brain also releases one to signal "I'm happy". It's not a drug, it's not being rewarded with marijuana-like hit, nor whatever stupidities are thrown around. It's just the normal working of the brain and one of the many kinds of signals it uses. You get the same kind of signal when your program finally compiles, or when you get praised by your boss, or whatever. The busybody complaining about youth and their internet addiction gets the exact same chemical signal when his paper is published, or when he's found a good listener, or whatever else makes him happy. (Because again that's the natural "I'm happy" signal.) The bushman in south africa, who never heard of computers or Internet, gets the same signal when his arrow hits an antelope.
However, the brain also contains the opposite mechanism, to bring the chemical levels back towards zero. You're not made to stay perpetually happy. You may get a big signal when you're awarded a promotion or you've won the lottery, but immediately thereafter it starts to decay towards zero again. So you get to work at getting the next moment of happiness, or work even harder at maintaining the current one. Whatever it is that makes you happy, whether it's some social interaction or learning some new stuff or buying new stuff or playing a game, you'll have to do it again or some more.
It's not even limited to humans. Animals too are "wired" exactly the same, so they'll keep doing some things and avoid doing others. When your cat finds a nice raised spot to sleep in, rest assured that said cat gets the exact same "yay, I'm happy" signal. Or if you're into dogs, that dog gets the exact same sigal when he's got near the pack leader (i.e., you) and better yet gets some attention from the pack leader. It kept wolves from getting split up.
So what really remains is that:
1. people keep doing stuff they like. More precisely: _anything_ they like. There is no discrimination in that signal saying "oh, I'll fire for video games only". Hence painting it as a "video game addiction" or a "golf addiction" is subtly wrong. Unlike, say, alcohol addiction or heroin addiction, which can be satisfied by only one thing, here there is no such discrimination. You could do anything else pleasurable to the same effect. There is _nothing_ there that says it can be satisfied by video games only. Just because someone is stuck in a rut doing what they already know that makes them happy (and non-gamers have their own ruts there), doesn't make them addicted exclusively to that thing.
2. Whether it's one activity done for 6 hours a day, or 6 activities done for 1 hour each, it's still the same chemical mechanism involved. If you're gonna define it as drug addiction, then whether it's 6 hours gaming, or 2 hours gaming and 2 hours fishing and 2 hours taking photos in the park, it's still 6 hours of getting the exact same chemical hit. The human notion of "yeah, but the second is a balanced life" may be good and fine, but from purely the dopamine point of view it's still 6 hours of getting dopamine hits. Being balanced or unbalanced about the ways to get it doesn't mean you're not getting it just the same. So if your point is that a balanced life is better, you need a better explanation than the dopamine one. The supposed "dopamine addiction" does _not_ make any kind of point about a balanced life being any better, as far a
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Definition: Addiction is a compulsion to repeat a behaviour regardless of its consequences. I guess "consequences" is the key word. How does one measure what a "bad" consequence of something is? With gambling it could be finacial or social or both. With Video game or tv it could be the removal of one from intercation with others. But there can be good consequences, a family spends time playing video games together, how much different is that then playing Sorry or Monopoly as a family. Is it an addiction if it does not have any or little negative consequences? but it could just be the definition of the word consequencses in World in which you live in.
"If you like Battlestar Galactica, you're probably a huge nerd." -Stephen Colbert