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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.'"
It seems obvious that the only people who think MMORPGs are addictive are the people who haven't played them.
How we know is more important than what we know.
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....
but I have a number of auctions to check on in Ironforge and a bunch of mining to do. That Jewelcrafting skill won't level on its own you know!
God, schmod. I want my monkey man!
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.
MMORPG's Are addictive. I seen the damage its done. For a majority of people certainly gamers who have learned to control there online time it isnt a problem , agreed. But for those who have stood by and watched Kids go unfed till way to late at night, Having the TV or DVD's parent the children while a partner spends the entire weekend online until its become to much and it wasnt the marriage you signed up for...
Well "Widows Of Warcraft"... its a joke for some people and a reality for others.... or did you think someone made up the term EverCrack because it wasnt addictive...
There are people that Suffer from addictions, gambling, alcohol, Cigarettes some chemical addictions of the body, some mental addictions of the mind. Those people prone to or a tendency for access compulsive behavior often fall into the metal category.
Never before has such a "wide net" been thrown, MMORPG are cheap compared to Cigarettes, available 24/7 in your own home (as opposed to gambling other than online...) and gives you an escapism thats better than the real world...
Anything in excess is a problem, and this problem is sooo easy to get hooked on.
While I'm sure we all first think of those people who can't tear themselves away from wow, MMOs aren't the only culprit. As a teen, my friend and I definitely spent more time than we should playing fpses and rtses. We would probably play 4 - 6 hours a day, to the point where my friend's school work suffered. I would definitely consider myself addicted. You're still in a second world, be it one of trebuchet's and woad raders, or .44s and rocket launchers. (but, for the love of god, please don't let that world be second life). There are definitely high school students who suffer, like my friend did, because of an addiction to video games. They're fulfilling, and parents might not know how to deal with it since it's a newer problem.
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.
I find the Primary and Secondary worlds thing fascinating. Even more so, I find it fascinating that as humankind advances there will probably be a merger of the two. For instance, if you've read Alastair Reynolds' The Prefectyou probably know what I mean. In this story a huge community of habitats orbit a central planet. This community is called the Glitterband. Within it, each habitat is different. And I don't mean different in that one is painted grey and the other is blue. Every habitat has an abstraction core, which when combined with the right wetware and advanced technology in the citizens bodies allows them to live in virtually any sort of environment they please. Similar to being able to queue up anything on the Holodeck, even including changing your basic body type, or having no body and being a floating wisp of energy, or whatever you can imagine.
The cool part here, to me, is that this was originally a Secondary world as taken from Tolkein's theory. But for these people their Secondary world has become integrated with a democracy and a community of other Secondary worlds, all of which participate in this democracy (if they choose to). So in effect, their Secondary and Primary worlds have merged, and if they want... for good.
This is where I see games starting to take hold of this possibility of a merger. You can almost pay for your bills by playing WoW, if you choose to sell gold. What am I say, almost. People do. Lots of them. They literally live off of WoW. I'd even wager that for some of them their Primary world is WoW and their Secondary world is having to feed themselves and sleep, because they probably don't do much else outside of WoW.
No, things aren't nearly to the point where I'd say there can be a true merger. But when it happens, are you going to call these people addicts? What if they are richer, happier, and live longer than you? At what point does it stop being an addiction to WoW, and become YOUR addiction to the 'old ways'?
Just food for thought..
I do not respond to cowards. Especially anonymous ones.
Considering computer games are essentially a simulated world what component of the game is the addiction? And wouldn't that component be the addiction not the game itself?
Some games allow gambling within the game for example. If someone gambles in the game obsessively isn't that a gambling addiction rather than an addiction to the game?
What about item hording that many MMORPG players suffer from? Isn't that obsessive compulsive disorder rather than game addiction?
And the people who compulsively dress up as Furries and Cyber in Second Life. Isn't that just sex addiction?
"civilization iv"
it's the only game i ever played where i would blink once, and it wuld be 6 am, blink again, and it would 6 pm. i had to bend and break the disc in order to have a life
"just one more turn" always turns into 500 more turns
that's some serious video crack right there that game
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One problem with comparing game addiction to substance abuse is that substance abuse only gets more addictive with time. Games are the opposite. The more you play games the more you see the same game over and over and its immersion becomes weaker and weaker. Pretty soon it's boring. Not to mention games won't kill you.
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.
The so-called 'primary' world is already secondary. People live and aspire in a mental world where success tends to be productive of survival in the primary world. For example, the objects you see are all secondary cartoon representations of primary things. There are frequencies of light in the primary world, which are represented by different colors in the secondary world, but there is no color in the primary world. Similar things can be said about many or most of people's beliefs about the 'real' world.
The secondary world is of course strongly related to the primary one. If this were not so, it would be eliminated by natural selection. Many of the other secondary worlds, as discussed here, will change or disappear eventually for the same reason.
Just an observation.
There's something I do that takes up a huge part of my waking life. It involves sitting in front of a computer for long stretches, doing things that, while they differ from day to day in the details, are pretty repetitive in the long run. I don't particularly like to be doing this. Yet when I couldn't do this for a time, I got anxious. Further withdrawal symptoms would have included depression, malnutrition, the loss of my house, my bank accounts, other assets, and eventually, perhaps death. Yet no one thinks I'm addicted to this activity... because it's "WORK".
"A lot of people say games are addictive. Well, they're addictive in the sense that anything you like doing you repeat endlessly. But no one would say, 'Mr Kasparov, you have a chess problem,' or 'Tiger Woods, you have a golf addiction.'"
To escape.. that's the reason.
Life is tough, games are fun. But, like anything else, gaming can be addictive, and if we don't learn to balance our play time with other activities. Well, it's not called addictive for nothing.
In the end, I suspect most people who are addicted to games, are also running away from something about themselves, who knows, low self-esteem, frustrations, etc..., so, really, just like drugs and alcoholism, in the end, addictive gaming isn't going to make things better, it just postpone the day you need to truly deal with the issues which you don't want to face.
But there are actually a few out there, who are hardcore gamers, and have no issues, they are just having plain ol' fun. I've seen actual couples who are both into gaming, and they love it.
So, unlike booze and drugs, gaming isn't always addictive in a bad way.
It is a question of defining one's quality of life and happiness.
Can they be happy, have a normal life and a gaming life at the same time? Do they still go to work, pay the bills, etc...
If yes to both questions, then, clearly, it's not addictive to these folks, they are just doing what they like to do and are obviously able to function well in what is most important for them, without shying from their responsibilities and duties.
and even neglected my classes in university because of it, a lot of other things and whatnot.
now when i look back, i can understand that it wasnt the games that got me addicted. i was passing time with them - as if i was perpetually in waiting.
later observation of other people seemed to nail that idea, i saw many people taking to gaming to great extent when they were in a waiting period in their life - waiting for military service, marriage, between jobs, wake of big decisions about their life etc.
especially in school era, this 'waiting' concept climaxes, because the individual is actually passive, taking in information but not producing anything on his/her OWN initiative and planning. subconscious knows any homework, project, intermediary goal that is set are just temporary, therefore is still aware of the passivity of the individuals willpower.
once the individual is out of school and at the control of his/her own life for real, and when s/he sets a real objective, one soon discovers that all gaming habits change. first it lessens to the extent that it becomes a stress outlet, a relaxation, then some way to rest the mind, then, at some point, the struggle for reaching the objective that is set becomes a game in itself, and the person resorts to gaming less and less.
im at that point in my life. games bore me out of my mind now. and by games, i mean everything. i played everything from defender of crown in 1986 to crysis, from fate of atlantis, star control 2 to europa universalis 3.
then again i dropped out of college and set out to establish myself as an entrepreneur on the new world that is internet. that IS a game in itself.
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This "addiction" subject is really fascinating. Aren't we all addicted to food? If you take food away from me, wouldn't I go nuts too? What about money, women, and cattles? What about life?
Actually, it is possible to be pathologically addicted to sex, food or money. Well, the money one's debatable, but there's some pretty compelling evidence for it. For the food one, you don't have to look that far - you've probably seen such people if you frequent fast food restaurants, even if they didn't stand out from the rest of the clientele. Eating disorders can run either way after all - vast overeating, or self-starvation, and the overeating behavior is classic addict.
The tricky part is that everyone needs to eat. Everyone in modern society needs at least some money to get by. (Almost) everyone needs to screw. That isn't addiction, that's biology, social necessity and plain old hormones.
When you stop eating to live, and start living to eat, then you start calling it addiction.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Do "football super fans" get an endorphin rush when their favorite player on their team? I've seen people get livid if they miss their favorite games. Why aren't these same people concerned for them? Oh yeah...being obsessed about football is "healthy" but a computer game is not.
Because I think it's relevant, I'll post my experience with WoW and my addiction to it.
I want to say first and foremost, I don't fault WoW or Blizzard at all, it was merely a medium that I attached my addiction to. You could probably insert any MMO for me and my story probably would have changed only by date.
Anyway, a great bit of irony starts with when I first played WoW, I avoided the game like the plague because although I greatly enjoyed WC3 and many other blizzard titles, I didn't want to get hooked to it.
Ok, maybe this part makes me a bit unique, and may perhaps only makes my addicting nature to games manifest worse, but when I get a game, I do in a way enthrall myself into any new game I get and play relatively non-stop till I feel I beat it, or get really bored of it. I have to beat a game, and I have to beat it well enough to feel good or superior in some fashion, even if it is self-indulgent.
I started playing WoW like I started playing any game. I could go onto a long story about my slippery slope that got me completely addicted to it.
There were a few catalysts on the way: 1st catalyst was a girl. She broke my heart, yadda yadda, what did I turn to to "comfort" me? WoW. My grades were already slipping, as was my interest in school, WoW was merely a catalyst for getting me out of school. No more school, so what did I have more time to play? WoW. Then the restaurant I worked at closed. I was already long gone at this point, going home early, taking the cut early in the night so I could go home and play WoW is the norm for me practically. when the restaurant closed, I got to play 16hrs a day, 7 days a week for 2 months. glorious by my measure. Then with a pretty powerful intervention, I stopped playing WoW.
I wouldn't say I went through any physical withdrawl, but man, I definitely had some significant "mental" withdrawl. For me, WoW was a nice cocktail of things: Ego, Attention, and Indulgment. I think there is a physical side effect of game playing that ALL gamers get addicted to, its the adrenaline and endorphins that get released turning something exciting, FPS shooters likely get it when they kill someone or go on a killing spree. For me, it was difficult boss kills. Get me a difficult boss, throw me at it for 40hrs of raiding and finally killing it, there are few better feelings in the world than that. THAT is the addiction that MMO "addicts" get. I was in a very real way addicted to the chemical release my body gave me when killing bosses, I couldn't wait for tough bosses to kill. I would say it was highly different for alcohol addiction or other drug addictions that was said earlier to have the brain literally rewired, where the drug of choice didn't have any real affect or any more "pleasure" on the person anymore, gaming addiction is very different, there is that chemical addiction I think, and for me, some of my biggest "highs" were toward the end of my time, and there were significant amounts of smaller "highs" early, and other big "highs" at other times as well, but there was never for me a "meh high" that drug addicts get in their late addictions.
Actually, that's not how (real) addiction works. Addiction to a substance happens when your brain chemistry starts adjusting in the other direction. Biology is largely about self-tuning feedback loops like that. If you have too little oxygen in your arm, e.g., because you do a lot of physical effort, your body grows more blood vessels. And if the brain has to work while disrupted by alcohol, it compensates its chemistry in the other direction.
Addiction is that compensation in the other direction. And when you are properly addicted, it's not as much that your drug is fun, as that life without it is not much fun.
E.g., Nicotine inhibits MAO-B, which breaks down Dopamine and Phenethylamine. It's part of a chemical equilibrium in the brain. When you're happy about something, you get a shot of dopamine, but almost immediately MAO-B is released to make that signal decay back to baseline. Nicotine perturbs that mechanism, so it originally makes you feel better. But soon your body adjusts its equilibrium in the other direction, so now you feel shitty without a cigarette. Eventually those cigarettes do nothing except bring you briefly to the point where a non-smoker is naturally all the time. That's addiction.
E.g., Alcohol is a central nervous system depressant, which doesn't actually mean it makes you depressed, just that it makes certain individual synapses and pathways less responsive. But again, the body immediately starts to compensate in the other direction, and those synapses gradually become hyperexcitable. If you keep doing that, essentially to the point where they fire erratically on their own. See, delirium tremens. So essentially after a while you notice that without alcohol you're nervous, have less motor coordination, have hearth rhythm problems, and the like. Essentially your body just started telling you, "man, I really could use a drink." And again, gradually you need more and more of it, and eventually the first sixpack just gets you back to the normal "sober" point. (Alcohol tolerance really is just the road to delirium tremens, sadly.)
Addiction to something fun isn't an addiction at all. There is no external chemicals perturbing the brain balance. It's just the normal way the brain works. There is no, say, nicotine inhibiting MAO-B so you get artificially elevated doses of dopamine, and forcing the brain to adjust. It's just the normal "this is fun" signal in your brain.
So at best it's just lack of willpower, but not an addiction.
And people get pseudo-"addicted" like that all the time. The village gossip who goes around bad-mouthing the local WoW "addict", is, funnily enough, herself "addicted" to her own "hobby". She gets her brain signals out of that social interaction, to the point where she has to even poke into someone else's life to have a topic. The guy who obsessively watches football or soccer or baseball, to have something to talk about to his group of friends, essentially is again just doing something to feed a similar addiction. It's his way of getting his daily shot of "I'm happy and appreciated" brain mediator. The guy who's doing overtime all week and goes fishing every weekend, ok, he's probably more like keeping himself away from getting an "I'm unhappy" signal at home, but nevertheless that's the same pseudo-addiction. Etc.
There's really nothing special about WoW. If your wife was out gossiping with the neighbours 18 hours a day, well, you'd probably just think some stereotype about women instead. But it would be the same thing, essentially.
At any rate, addiction it ain't.
Except if it were real physiological addiction, that wouldn't happen.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
I agree to a degree what you've said. But the limiting factor of those, at least for me might be money. Cause for me money = time. Working for money takes at least 9 - 10 hours away from my time each day and I ended up tired.
So I get home all tired and can't really screw (no gf in the basement), play pc games, and eat. Now if I have unlimited funds that gives back the 10 hours to play games for example, I probably spend 4 of those hours playing some MMO. But even then I still won't call that an "addiction". Because I really enjoy playing it. I've experienced this during my younger years when I had lots of time lying around, with Dune 2, Doom 2, or Legend of the Red Dragon.
However, based on the description of "addiction" you gave, and I apologize for selective quoting:
A better rule of thumb for determining whether somebody is addicted to something is to ask them if they still enjoy it....
"Addiction" gets applied far to frequently to abuse or overuse of any kind...
My job, life, or lust for a raise at work and having rice for dinner everyday (for an Asian :D) seems more like an "addiction" then my counterstrike gaming. There're many things I don't enjoy but have to do it, like going to the laundromat. While I do enjoy every time I get a headshot in CS.
Just weird to me.
Caveats: I am not a researcher or psychologist. I am an MMO developer.
The major problem I have with the "addictive" label is that it makes a value judgment. There are few things that are "addictive" that are considered good things; the big exception is computer gaming, where the word is often used with a positive connotation. An "addicting" game is awesome! A better word would be "compelling", which has less judgment associated with 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.
One issue to consider is that some people who "get addicted" and lose themselves into a game, particularly an MMO with social connections, have very serious problems with the rest of their life. Often, these people have a case of depression. The interaction with other people online can provide a lot of benefits that help counteract the problem the person is experiencing. For example, if you feel worthless at work because you've been passed over for promotion after promotion, then you probably really like the feeling of being a needed and appreciated member of the party/raid in a game.
If the external condition changes, that can cause a re-evaluation of your situation. If the person above is recognized as a capable worker and gets a promotion in their job, he or she may not seek validation through the game anymore. So, the online relationships may become less important to the individual because they don't need it anymore. I don't see this as any different than forming a new circle of friends when your life circumstances change. The promoted person in our example may start making new friends and have less time for old friends that he or she doesn't come into contact as often. This is seen as fairly natural when we don't include the scary "online" or "gaming" aspect.
Also consider that the person who plays MMOs to the point where their relationship falls apart may already have problems with that relationship. They may be getting something from their online play that is lacking in their offline relationship. Yeah, it's better to address issues head-on and try to resolve them, but many people will avoid problems if they can. The game is just a convenient excuse.
The defensiveness by gamers when confronted with this sort of analysis is depressingly predictable, as well.
Well, sure. People do tend to get defensive when someone points a finger and says, "You're doing the bad thing!" Witness all the excuses that come up during a typical copyright discussion on Slashdot.
Most people can play games without it impacting their life. For the people that do become "addicted", how many of them are using gaming (or anything else) to fill a problem in their life? This is less of a problem with gaming a more of a problem with society. But, it's easier to blame the game than to expect people to change. So, for those of us that can game without letting it rule our lives, it gets a bit tiresome to see gaming demonized so easily.
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
1. The definition of addiction seems to be in dispute given all of the comments on this topic. I would venture a guess that even among scientific professionals, it is not always clear cut. Therefore, trying to turn the topic from an interesting discussion of the addictive nature of video games, to a pedantic quarrel about the specific definition of addiction, doesn't seem very useful.
2. Who said anything about treating video game addiction as a chemical addiction?
Do you think that gambling addiction is a real addiction? If so, then I can assure you, video game addiction is just as real, because I have experienced it. If not, then I think you'd be fighting an uphill battle trying to convince anyone else.
I see where you're coming from now. One thing I've noticed about these "addictions" is that I can survive happily without a pc when it's removed out of circumstance. e.g. no Internet immediately after moving into a house, not taking my pc to uni (I do Computer Science, go figure...). When these happened, I'd get along fine and won't even look back, however, put it back in it's place and old habits from a few months back will sit straight back into place.
So, would and could you just give up your smokes and pc willingly for an arbitrary length of time? Say, 30 days? 60? 365?
If yes, why do you smoke? It's ultimately bad for your health, sex could release more endorphins and what-not into your system (I'm assuming it's closer to basic function needs, long-term partner(s) etc).
As for me (what, is this self-help psychiatry?) I don't think I could give up my pc willingly as a conscious decision. I just wouldn't have a clue as to what to channel it into insteadand that gap will be there. On the other hand, it's not really detrimental to my life, it doesn't replace any friends I have in real-life, I continue to do activities with them.
The problem for me, comes when it replaces other activities and hobbies. As in, they all mostly have to be on a computer. However, I'm a student, I don't have the money to go out parachuting every other weekend (although I do hear you can pay for it by packing parachutes!). (Ooops, did I just try and justify that there?)
If anyone has seen "the thirteenth floor" you will know what I mean when I say this. Computers are in some ways our "offspring" in the sense that we have given computers the abilities that we once naturally possessed. The ability to communicate and in some senses "travel" without physically moving or talking. The ability to shout over large groups of people until they listen. The ability to form communities quickly and powerfully. The ability to know something without asking anyone. Eventually I predict that we will evolve to the point of reversal, engaging in one of two paths. 1) we will become "bionic" in the sense that we will eventually put computers inside us to perform tasks that we original could do. 2) we will awaken to our true "conscious" selves and activate our dormant abilities that only the minority of "freaks" currently exercise in any provable way. In all of this, I guess my basic point is I think gaming is an extension of lucid dreaming. We crave it and we will always find a way to create worlds within worlds. It almost safe to say it is part of the reason we exist.
This whole thread has serious Apples & Mangoes problems.
You became addicted to cigarettes ... because you enjoy them. You have reached a plateau, so you still enjoy them, meaning the activity is not escalating into the next severity class. However, if you found yourself up against an important reason to quit, then the physical-addiction side would kick in.
"Addicted to food" is different, because whole the baseline quantity of cigarettes is zero, there *is* a baseline of food. So attempting to take that minimum amount away creates a logical fallacy because then it becomes a problem again, but in the other direction. (Anorexics have a mis-calibrated food baseline.)
Modern USA *is* addicted to *excess* food, because this is encouraged by brutal social pressures from advertising to Increasing Sales discussions in boardrooms. If you wake up one year and discover you are overweight, and try to cut back, the level of dificulty experienced is the measure of the food addiction.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
Too much vitriol, AC.
Really enriching activities require effort to be put into it first, and that takes an energy threshold.
Part of the experience spread that leads some people to MMO addictions is that it is low threshold. Then they discover it's also a low reward spread as well, but by that point the day is shot again.
This connects to the psychology of Flow. If someone has trouble getting putting that special kind of effort that makes peak experiences possible, then they drift into some other low grade activity.
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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.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
A lot of people can drink - and even do cocaine and heroin, occassionally - without ruining their lives.
As soon as "Driving under the influence (of MMO games)" becomes a societal problem, I'll agree that we should classify these all in the same category. An alcoholic (or other substance abuser) is often physically addicted to the substance they abuse, and this causes additional problems when trying to break the addiction. In addition, the alcoholic also makes poor decisions, such as deciding to drive while their reactions are impaired, which causes direct physical harm to others on a regular basis. Trying to equate someone who plays too many games and may later regrets it to someone causing physical damage to themselves and potentially to others when abusing a substance seems to trivialize the problems of substance abuse.
Now, if you want to compare MMOs to other media, this is a lot closer to the mark. Some people watch TV to excess; the old stereotype was about the husband who came home and watched TV to ignore his wife, causing their marriage to fail. Sometimes introverted teenagers turn to books and seclude themselves from others while reading for hours upon hours; I know I did frequently. Where is your outcry for people who abuse those media? And, spare me the "worthwhile" argument; the most mindless game I've enjoyed had a lot more redeeming value than some of the garbage Star Trek novels I read as a teenager.
And, again, the reason why MMO games are singled out from other games, as they were in this particular discussion thread, is because of the social interaction and feedback that appeals to people. It's the same reason why people like talking on the phone, going to parties, watching football games with friends, or engaging in other very normal, socially-accepted activities that are also very enjoyable. The supreme irony here is the fact that some people think the internet isolates people instead of providing social opportunities.
I know a lot of people in the MMO dev business, so don't take it too strongly when I say that you're in the alcohol business.
Sorry, I'm not. I have friends that regularly get together and watch whole seasons of TV shows on DVDs for hours on end many nights per week. TV shows are meant to be compelling, making you want to watch one episode after another. The easy availability of TV shows on DVD means that you can watch a nearly endless number of shows. So, are DVD sellers also in "the alcohol business"? If so, then you're proving the, "I'm addicted to EATING!" crowd right in that the definition of "addiction" is no longer meaningful if it applies to anything someone likes to do. If not, then what is the significant difference? The only meaningful difference I can think of is the interactive nature of games compared to passive media; and, sorry, I have a hard time believing that all entertainment should be passively engaged just because a few people would rather play games than face the grim facts of their deteriorating relationship (or whatever other problem they're ignoring).
And, really, sports have caused the destruction of more relationships and caused significantly more real-world violence than video games have. So, why are you talking so negatively about MMOs and the like but not sports? Perhaps because the typical MMO player is a lot less willing to break your face than the aggressive football fanatic? ;)
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
You're not owning to the element of MMOs that are distinctive: their unclosed, open-ended, more-time-you-put-in-more-reward-you-get-out nature, and I've seen the consequences of it at work in the lives of people around me, more so than with sports or television or film or books by a long shot.
No, I'm saying that the open-ended aspect is not nearly as important as the social aspects. Even though you can solo just fine in most recent MMO games, if you were to take out all the other people you would not have a compelling game. This is a significant problem for MMO games; you need a "critical mass" of people to keep the game interesting, and if your game falls below that number of people then the world starts to feel empty.
As far as the number of people you've seen affected, I'm going to assume since you're engaging in a discussion on Slashdot and have a 4 digit UID that you're a technologically-minded person. So, you should understand that yes, you are going to see a lot more people have troubles involving technology. A bartender is going to see a lot more people harmed by alcohol than MMOs, but it wouldn't be accurate to treat that bartender's experiences as authoritative when comparing the relative affects, either.
What I have seen is people who had balanced lives before they started playing, but then lost those balanced lives.
As people on Slashdot are fond of saying: correlation does not imply causation. Did people lose their balanced lives by playing the games as you assert, or did people have lives start to become unbalanced then become attracted to MMOs where they found a way to avoid dealing with their increasingly unbalanced lives?
Calling them "compelling" is disingenuous in the extreme, because it pretends that it is the fictional, fantastic nature that keeps people playing for 20 to 60 hours a week over several years, when you can log into any end-game forum and see that it really is about camping, high-end-raids, drops, and that entire cycle of seeking the next item.
If progress were the only compelling part of the game, then Progress Quest (http://progressquest.com/) would be just as compelling as WoW. It's not, although it's a humorous take on these types of games. The advancement that you focus on is only really important in a social context. Gaining levels and killing different colored enemies with bigger numbers has been a staple of computer and console RPGs since Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy were introduced. But, once you add the social element of MMOs, that's where the advancement becomes meaningful. My 70th level character becomes more impressive when you compare it to other characters in the game. In some cases, it's to show who has the biggest when looking down on lower level characters; in other cases, it's showing that the player is the "minimum height" required to join with other people to engage in those high end raids. The person solely concerned with loot and not with the other people in the group quickly find themselves without the group required to get all that cool loot in the "end game".
I'm not some school-marm who doesn't know one end of the controller from another: I've been playing MMOs since the days of LPMUDs and DikuMUDS, and I've seen the way they can play out.
And, to continue the metaphor, you're not dealing with some mustache-twirling villain looking to make a quick buck selling crack to unsuspecting children. I've done a lot of soul-searching and investigation into these issues and have read available information. I've had many friends from my MUD playing days fail out of university; I could say some failed out because they played too many MUDs, but really they were looking for any escape from their problems, including D&D, partying, or any of the other things they did in addition to MUDding in lieu of schoolwork. Some just couldn't hack college, but felt under a lot of pressure to attend college by their parents, for example, and they used MUDs and other a
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
I compared you to the alcohol industry, and I think that comparison is accurate. Beer and wine manufacturers do not design their products to exploit alcoholism - yet they continue to market their products to populations who are, in fact, alcoholic. That 90% of the population can drink alcohol responsibly doesn't make alcoholism any less real.
As I said in a previous post, the comparison is wrong because there are no problems such as "driving under the influence" or "liver poisoning" with MMOs. Alcohol can be physically addicting, while MMOs have no physically addicting properties by definition. There are also significant positive elements to participating in online interaction as explained in Nick Yee's studies; alcohol has no similar benefits besides some possible health benefits in strict moderation. So, in my considered opinion, the comparison is incorrect on just about every level.
In the end, if you're not willing to take a psychological researcher as an authority in this area, you must be fairly set in your opinion and discussion will devolve into circular arguments. I hope you can continue to reach out to the people you've seen have troubles while playing MMOs; I also hope you can keep an open enough mind to understand that their core problems may be something beyond just the nature of the game.
Have fun,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog
This means that you need a critical mass of people who are, in fact, playing 40 to 60 hours a week, a hardcore contingent, to provide much of that sense of persistence and mutual recognition.
No. MMOs need people to be online, but we don't need them to be on for long periods of time. During "peak hours", a game has between 10-30% of the total active accounts online once it has matured. So, people will be online during most of the time. Also note that "critical mass" is much lower than "expected populations" for a well designed game. For my own game, Meridian 59, critical mass on a server appears to be about 30 or so players online, so in my case I don't need to snare a large number of people to keep the game reasonably healthy.
Also, note that the average person in WoW spends about 2 hours per day in the game. (Reference: Blizzard vs. WoWGlider lawsuit, quote at: http://elitistjerks.com/f15/t28385-blizzard_wins_lawsuit_against_wowglider/#post812739) If we were looking at a true epidemic here, I would think that the largest game would have figures that were much higher than the average hours of TV watched if we accept that TV watching is not similarly addicting. The 40-60 hour per week people are statistical outliers, many sigma away from the average. In WoW, every person playing 40 hours per week needs 3 people playing only 1 hour per week to balance things out to the average.
And, carefully consider what you are saying. Your core argument in this post is that socializing and feeling like you have social obligations is bad. Few rational people are going to agree with that position. The fact that people do engage in social activities online is a good thing. The fact that people do stupid things in social situations, such as when trying to find a potential mate, doesn't mean that the activity is generally harmful. It means that some people just need a bit more help than others.
Have fun,
Brian "Psychochild" Green
MMO developer's blog