Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
I refuse to play MMORPGs any longer. To be honest, I think that they encourage and reward "addiction." I refused to play MMORPGs .. until FFXI. As a Final Fantasy nut (I've played and finished every US-Released version of every FF game on the console it was released on) .. I wanted to skip it .. but thought .. "eh .. what the hell."
MMORPGs require a high level of investment in order to produce rewards. Oh .. I have to grind for 5-6 hours a day to level, and then I get a sub-job, but in order to level my main job I have to grind levels for my sub-job, and I have to quest/craft for equipment to level the main job, or camp NMs, etc. etc. Plus, they're social: you're making friends, a virtual lifestyle, that is SO much more rewarding (discrete/measurable awards at that), and appealing than the Real World.
I literally spent 6 months in game. That's actively playing the game, logged in, leveling, crafting, etc. Not sitting idle on 'bazaar' or anything of that nature. The only times that I was logged in and not holding a controller or typing on the keyboard was when I was in the kitchen whipping something up, or (maybe) outside having a cigarette (but still eyes on the TV).
That was over a calendar period of 9 months. I spent 2/3rds of my life for the better part of a year plugged in to that game, sacrificing school, social life, and the only reason why I didn't explode was I barely ate enough to keep me alive.
'Addiction' can be a very abused term, however, in the case of MMORPGs, that's a lot of what drives them. You need to be 'addicted' in order to be successful.
The worst part is, I managed to keep my character well-equipped, and leveled up, and I never managed to make it to level 75 RDM. Burned out @ 73. Even had most all of the other jobs leveled up (every job to 10, lot of jobs to 20/25, and NIN, WHM, BLM, DRK, SMN all up to 40). Finally stepped back and said "Can't do this anymore."
Lot of my (then) non-gaming friends didn't understand, then started playing WoW. I still get hassled about not playing WoW with them (and now Age of Conan), but I know I have a problem and like any other addict (be it alcohol, or drugs), I know better than to tempt fate, because it will just suck me right back in.
The difference is, "normal" games have an END, and a "save state." I can mess with Gears, or Dead Rising, or almost any other game for a few hours, maybe even upwards of 16-20. I can knock Halo out 24 hours after launch, and it's done. It's finished. Or play through a 6-hour session of Blue Dragon and walk away, come back later. MMORPGs are persisting, you're missing out when you're not plugged in, and on top of that, they do NOT end.
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.
.. 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.
"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.'"
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.
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. :-)