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Defining Video Game Addiction
1Up has a feature discussing where the line should be drawn when it comes to game addiction. The author speaks to researcher Neils Clark about some of the common characteristics of addiction, and how the high level of immersion in many modern games contributes to the mind's ability to drown out mundane tasks. We've discussed game addiction many times over the past several years. Quoting:
"If we're not all dribbling addicts, then why are we playing so much? Clark puts this down to a theory proposed by The Lord of the Rings author J.R.R. Tolkien — primary and secondary worlds. The primary world is our own real life. The secondary is the fictional world: literature, film, videogames, and so on. 'It used to be that the imagery and artistic intent had to be fully available before you could really "find" yourself in a written story,' Clark says. 'Immersion has progressed to the point where entering a world [inside a game] is almost automatic. At the point we're at, playing healthy not only means understanding immersion but [also] recognizing that these secondary worlds are designed to be more fulfilling than the primary. Learning to balance them is its own technology. It's something that humankind is in a process of developing, even if on a subconscious level for most gamers.'"
Fun isn't the right word. I was addicted to WoW for a long time, and while the game starts out fun, by the time I was raiding seven nights a week (five nights on mains; two alt nights on weekends), it wasn't usually any fun at all. What drives people to keep playing, in my opinion, is a complex and unending stream of carrots and sticks. I've heard guildmates say hundreds of times, "I just need that last piece of gear, and then I can quit happily," or "once this last boss goes down, I'm done with this game." But WoW is set up in a way that that seldom happens. You just can't acquire loot fast enough to be "done." (Raid bosses are generally once-a-week deals.) There's always something else on the horizon, and just before you can get that last piece of Tier X armor or whatever, a whole new dungeon is released with more purple pixels to acquire. This grind is bad enough on a single character, but most WoW junkies I know maintain several. There's always something to waste your life doing in that game. I think that's the crux of most WoW addictions: that phantom sense of accomplishment. The feeling that you've done something to progress your character over the course of that night. To most reasonable outside observers, the whole thing seems insane--and it is--but it's that sense that you're doing something with lasting effect that seems to keep most people coming back.