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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.'"
addiction is an over used term these days, and it vastly over simplifies why some people spend their life in front of a video game.
If you mod me down, I will become more powerful than you can imagine....
Most of our parents are addicted to television; I don't see any hysteria or treatment programs for them. In fact politicians and advertisers actively exploit that addiction.
Some argue that refined sugar is addictive, too, and most Westerners are in fact addicted.
If you draw the line where the only way to get addicted is to chemically alter your brain (alcohol, tobacco, hard drugs, etc) then sure, there is no way to become addicted to video games. But if you believe that someone can become addicted to an activity that stimulated pleasure release in the brain (gambling, sex, shopping) then you have to make an entry for video games too.
Me? I believe that it's possible to become 'addicted' to video games, but the actual cases are probably so small that it shouldn't receive any more attention than gambling.
No, in all likelyhood labels like 'addicted to video games' are the previous generations ways of trying to understand our modern entertainment cycle. I'm sure their parents were worried they were 'addicted to comic books' or 'rock music'. I just cry a little cry for little Johnny who's mom will take away his Xbox 360 because she's afraid of him being 'addicted'. Parents need to stop guarding their children like pets and teach them to make smart decisions so that when Johnny is 20 and moves out (we're being optimistic here folks), he won't turn into an obsessed World of Warcraft fiend because he can finally access everything his parents never taught him how to deal with on his own.
It's the same as dad's who are sexually overprotective of their daughters, just as it's the same as parents who teach their kids that tobacco and drugs are bad-evil-horrible without giving them reasoning to justify that position, etc.
Teach kids to make smart decisions if you want them to be truly well off.
Most of the cases I've run into of "death by gaming" boil down to extreme lack of self care. Which is often present in addicts - ie, your typical malnourished junkie - but not in and of itself a sign of addiction. To draw an analogy, it's like how drinking and driving can kill you, but doesn't always indicate alcoholism (or even heavy habitual drinking - there are cases of DUI accidents occurring simply because the individual lacked the experience to judge their own level of intoxication). OTOH, it would be irresponsible to claim a lack of correlation between drunk driving and alcohol dependency - the correlation is there, but you can't assume one equals the other without examining each case in detail first.
A better rule of thumb for determining whether somebody is addicted to something is to ask them if they still enjoy it. Most people don't realize that your average addict has long since passed the stage where they want to quit, but are no longer able to. Your average sex addict doesn't enjoy boinking, your average alcoholic doesn't want to drink anymore, and your average smoker would love to quit (and probably has tried to at least once). This is one of the reasons why intoxicating substance use has a high rate of addiction - the brain chemistry gets literally rewired, to the point where stopping is traumatic. People have died from withdrawal, while others have developed psychosis, suffered from hallucinations, attempted suicide, and generally been miserable as hell.
"Addiction" gets applied far to frequently to abuse or overuse of any kind. Human stupidity and lack of common sense must be given their due, as must simple hedonism and self destructiveness. Real addiction is pathological. It might very well be purely psychological, with no chemical basis (or at least no external chemical basis), but on some level it's become a disease upon the affected person, and often times they'll be the first to admit it. Take the bottle away from a problem drinker, and the problem goes away; take the bottle away from an alcoholic and all hell breaks loose.
So, to get back on topic, I would define a gaming addict as a gamer who continues to play to great excess, despite a desire to quit. Somebody for whom turning it off, taking a break or unplugging is traumatic enough to make them jump right back in.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
The standard for addiction is when people give up on healthy developmental goals, understood however makes sense for that person, and opts instead for the addictive behavior or substance.
In other words, when you start to lose thing that matter to you, but carry on with the addictive behavior, that's addiction.
I have seen marriages dissolve because people played MMOs instead of spending time with their family. I've known people who have failed out of college and graduate school, because they became obsessed with MMOs. I play MMOs myself, and I can see it at work. The "secondary world" aspect misses the main addictive element of MMOs - which moves it from obsession to addiction. That's the reward structure: you can play and predictably get rewards.
One can be obsessed with Tolkien or Star Trek, in that the secondary world becomes more important than the real one. Since films, books and television don't offer an ongoing, unclosed reward structure that works to the extent that you put time into the activity, those obsessions don't become addictions.
That's why I think it makes sense to call MMO's addictive. They are always there - they never "satisfy" but promise the next reward, and then the next, and then the next. There is a social reinforcement element to it (which is an aspect of other addictions as well - alcoholism can certainly have a social aspect to it.)
The research observed that while people were playing, they identified the relationships with other players in-game as meaningful, but when they stopped playing, they ceased to describe it as such. To me, that is a lot like a heavy drinker's "bar friendships" - when they stop drinking, those friendships mean a lot less.
The defensiveness by gamers when confronted with this sort of analysis is depressingly predictable, as well.
Most non chemical addictions aren't really addictions but simply obsessive behavior. After a time people get bored, that is why we aren't all playing space invaders on our 2600. Most people who play WoW or any other video game have a goal of some kind, be it to get to the highest level, to have all the greatest weapons and armor, to join a certain guild, etc. Once that goal is met and the player experiences it, usually they don't care much for the game anymore.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
.. Not a lot you can do about it, except wait for the victim to get their act together and come out of it.
You sir are an enabler. You most likely provide the power, the subscription, the food and probably don't care as long as she puts out every so often. If you've watched _any_ of the tv shows featuring the morbidly and often house bound obese, you usually find a loved one or close friend who is enabling them to get that overweight. If you're stuck in your house or even a chair/bed, some one has to bring you the food.
As long as you just put up with it and enable her to just sit around the house playing all day, she will so STOP it. Stop putting up with it and force the issue, is she truely satisfied with the state of her life being tied to the game?
I know I wasn't while I was addicted to a MUD for over a year.
I've played MMORPGs. I played for 3 years. I almost lost my job to playing. I wouldn't go to sleep at night, I would try to get in a few hours at work. I used to dream about the game.
I also set aside my IRL goals to accomplish in-game goals. I quit building my IRL business so I could build my in-game business because it was easier.
Maybe it's not addiction, but the results are basically the same.
You may call me names or whatever because of the extremes I went to. There is a great deal of substance abuse in my family and I believe that my game playing was just an offshoot of that genetic predisposition.
To my credit (I think), I recognized the problem and I canceled my account. My life is back on track after a 3 year hiatus and my business is doing well enough, I may be able to leave my "day job" soon.
If I was still playing, i don't think I could say that.
One side of the issue is this (and it may piss some people off for me to say it), but in-game, it's easy to become "successful". it takes a trivial amount of real talent (intelligence, reflexes, strength, memory, etc) and a trivial amount of time in comparison to real-world pursuits, to accomplish any goal.
To imiprove your standing in the real world takes YEARS of work, day in and day out. I can level (or whatever your game mechanics allow) in just hours. In just a few months of really dedicated playing, I could be near the top of the heap in terms of skills. What real-world activity can you master in a non-trivial way, with a low degree of inborn talent, in just a few months? that's the allure.
It doesn't always stem from addiction. I notice the majority of MMO players are teens and college students who have a lot of free time. There's nothing wrong with wasting a little spare time (hello Slashdot), but there is a point at which it can impact your quality of life.
But that's just my story... fwiw.
For humors sake, let me add...
OMGWTFBBQPWNAGE!!
Oh.. sorry... flashback. :-)
Well, it's that "a lot worse" that makes the big difference, really.
And basically there _is_ a dichotomy, in that one implies physiological modifications, the other doesn't. It's pretty binary. I'm not setting up a dichotomy between light grey and dark grey, but between something which either exists or it doesn't.
There's a difference between, basically:
A) I'd rather be doing something more fun, and it so happens that this virtual world is more fun than bickering with my spouse some more, and
B) I'm getting (physiologically and medically) depressed and nervous unless I light another cigarette.
In case A you're merely back to baseline if you don't, in case B you're genuinely a lot below baseline if you don't. That "going cold turkey from a hard drug is a lot worse" factor.
Case A is merely how the brain is wired to work. Your brain is wired to give you a "man, I'm bored" signal when nothing interesting happens, and a dopamine/serotonin/canbinoid/whatever-apropriate-signa shot when you do something fun. You're pre-programmed to seek pleasure and fun. If that's "addiction", we're all born addicts.
Your cat or dog is like that too. That's why you see the dog occasionally chasing his tail or begging to play fetch, or the cat pouncing on a stuffed toy. Because again there's that natural signal in the brain that says "go do something fun already."
The difference is that we humans built layers upon layers of culture, pre-conceptions and mis-conceptions about what you should be doing instead of that. And a society where you're supposed to, and have to, do something else to even survive. A cat just goes and hunts when it's hungry, and is free to sleep or play the rest of the time. You, by contrast have to go to work now so you can have something to eat next month. But you're not wired for that, you're still wired like the cat. That's where will power comes in. You must move your arse and do what you know you should be doing, instead of what your animal brain tells you to do.
And even before games, there still were people who ignored what they _should_ be doing and did what their brain signals told them instead. The village drunk or the bum living off begging are the same. They chose to go with the short term satisfaction (as in, "meh, it's better than ploughing") instead of long term planning ("but if I go plough, I'll have bread next year.")
Heck, over half the people out there are in their current job because of that. At some point they chose something like, "meh, playing prom queen / basketball jock is more immediately rewarding than learning maths", and now they flip burgers or man the gas pump instead of having a better paying job. Essentially they too did the same choice between (I) something immediately rewarding, and (II) something boring right now, but which pays off later. Or you see millions of fat people around you, because they chose the more fun activities (e.g., eating and sitting on the couch), instead of the boring and physically exerting ones (exercising and dieting.) There's no fundamental difference between that and the choice of a WoW "addict". They all essentially choose to go with the short-term rewarding things, i.e., with following the signals of that animal brain, instead of having the will power to do what they know they should be doing.
It's not a new factor. We're _wired_ like that, and have had people following their wiring for the past 200,000 years straight. All that's new is the hysteria of singling out games.
And at the end of the day, it doesn't change the fact that it's just some normal chemical reaction in the brains. Labeling it as the same thing as drug abuse only serves to obfuscate the real mechanisms and problems there.
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