Slashdot Mirror
90% of Gaming Addiction Patients Not Addicted
phorm writes "BBC is carrying an article which states that 90% of visitors to Europe's 'video game addiction clinic' are not, in fact, addicted. The problem is a social one rather than a psychological issue. In other words, the patients have turned to heavy gaming because they felt they didn't fit in elsewhere, or that they fit in better 'in the game' than elsewhere in 'the real world.' This has been discussed before, with arguments ranging from gaming being a good way to socialize, the clinical definition of gaming addiction, and claims than males are wired for video-game addiction."
I just stopped playing ufo: enemy unknown in dosbox, to refresh slashodot.
#
#\ @ ? Colonize Mars
#
...or at least that's what I'll claim if I am ever confronted by my employers about my internet usage logs at work
No sig for the moment.
Why do people still listen to the media is beyond me. Every single year they come up with something that is either A) addicting and damaging to minds B) corrupting the family/children/society or C) is somehow harmful. Be it rock and roll, cell phones, video games, comic books, etc, the media always comes up with some "studies" to back them up while two months later showing studies that prove just the opposite is true, why haven't people realized that the media has cried wolf far too many times and just tune the crap out?
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
So, is this saying that they are not addicted or that they are addicted because of social issues?
Copyright infringement is "piracy" in the same way DRM is "consumer rape"
the addiction industry is out of control in this country. somebody ought to stage an intervention.
One reason...It use to be that these people could join a club and usually a "geeky" one: A Chess club, a remote control aircraft club, a rocketry club, a science club, an electronics club. These kinds of organisations are disappearing and the activities are being labelled as dangerous or complete social death to get involved in, leaving a void which is being filled with idle gaming.
These posts express my own personal views, not those of my employer
Yeah, I'll say. I just got done having a three hour bitch fest yesterday with a friend of mine who's BF is 'addicted' to World of Warcraft. She doesn't have a lot of experience with boys (much more with girls -- no comments on this please!), and I've had to mother her a bit on why a boy can sink twenty or more hours a week into a video game and says it "helps me relax and challenges me", but afterwords can't come up with anything better to do than "go bowling" ("where"? "Umm... I'm sure there's one around somewhere"), or "go for a walk".
I tried my best to explain how men are so much more visually oriented than girls, but it's a hard concept to really explain. It's not that they're addicted to video games, it's just that the game provides more visual action than the real world so they're more strongly attracted to it. Girls read books, boys watch movies--Boys play video games, girls play board games, that kind of thing. They really are wired different and it's damn frustrating.
I often find myself wishing for video games that helped build social skills for these kind of boys -- the ones that are awkward and introverted in public, but if you can get them to open up they're nice teddy bears. I don't think they'd want to play it though, unless it involved blowing up or shooting something. :( Like The Sims -- awesome game, but the only people I know who play it are other girls! Am I hoping for too much here? Is there some way to use some visual medium to help boys crawl out of their shell?
#fuckbeta #iamslashdot #dicemustdie
So 90% were nerds, not addicts.
to devote or surrender (oneself) to something habitually or obsessively. ie. addicted to gambling
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/addicted
Most people devote a great deal of their time socializing and thus become comfortable socializing. It's part of normal human development. We are social creatures. I tend to think that addiction starts when it causes problems in your life.
The problem is few have studied the long term impact of not learning how to socialize with someone without a LCD screen and a Internet connection. I could potentially see problems arising because not learning how to socialize only makes someone feel even more alienated.
Can you see the potential downward spiral that could apply to this situation that is typically reserved for drug abuse?
is it possible to be a sex addict?
aren't we all sex addicts?
isn't this the only way to ensure the survival of our species?
show me a roomful of intelligent, platonic, perfectly personality matched non sex addicted couples, and i'l show you the extinction of homo sapiens in 1.4 generations
show me a roomful of sex addicted drunk raving idiots, and i'll show you 6 billion homo sapiens in a couple thousand generations
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
have you found a magical fountain of information which is omnipotent, completely unbiased, and always on topic?
Slashdot. Duh!
Some (admittedly anecdotal) evidence. Don't tell me you never did these things, too:
* "farmed" mobs/bosses/instances/etc in WoW for a random, rare drop.
* loaded and reloaded the barbarian highlands level in diablo II umpteen times to farm for random, rare, drops
* got feelings of joy at the sight of one color triggered at a particular point in the game
All these things seem like more "pulls" on the slot machine, waiting for the lights and sounds to let you know you won. Is there potential for gambiling-addition-like issues in videogames? Yes. Am I terribly concerned and am I going to stop gaming? No.
I don't have an alcohol addiction, I just feel like I fit in better when I'm drunk. So that means I'm not addicted, right?
I don't know how many gamers out there share the same feeling as me, but I don't game to get away from the real world, or that I am addicted, or for other stupid reasons.
It's sad to game! I game because it's the cheapest form of entertainment. From the days of the QEMM, a fixed money you spent on a box will last you god know how many hours.
I have a decent job now, and I still game a lot. Not because I am addicted. If I can spend a weekend on a boat, or in the garage tuning my Skyline GTR, or even just a Golf GL, I would. But I can't, so I game.
If I feel the urge to earn myself that Golf GL, I would. But I don't, so I game.
Go to school.
where should they have fit in ?
working 7 to 19.00 every day, in a thankless job that demands way more than it pays ?
or, they should have fit in sleazy bar corners, wasting their life away with sluts (male or female) ?
or, they should become career bitches (male or female) and waste their life away in that manner ?
or they should have fit in with a family. but then again, they have to create a family first, and creating a family has SO much overhead and effort in these days that you can maybe compare it to swimming across english channel.
or, they should have fit in with the immense crowds that are sedating their brain through football spectatorship, or in front of dumb tv shows each night ?
or maybe they could have fit in with their peers, who are entertaining themselves with the MODERN entertainment form that is called gaming ? you know, fitting in WITH YOUR PEERS, as countless generations in the history of mankind has done ?
well. they are just doing that. i think a lot of people, but especially 'experts' need to shut their traps about it, and get to accept this as a normal stage of human civilization.
Read radical news here
As an experiement re-read TFA substituting the terms for "games" "gamer" etc to "sports" "sports fan". Try it.
After logging in slashdot still does not take you back to the page you were on. It's been that way for 20 years.
Beersh de stoppen de suverde heur fleefum wantum. Bork bork bork!
If you want to see addiction, visit a golf course.
It's a real problem. Successful executives have been lost to golf addiction. Forbes Magazine once commented that more executives have been lost to golf than alcohol. There are people who skip work to play golf. It's not a joke.
I'm not surprised that hobby clubs are dying. As you say, face-to-face was the best way to acquire knowledge prior to the Internet Age. But now it seems like an extraordinary waste of time - invest three hours with people you barely know to maybe get the same information you can now find with two minutes on Google. If your goal is to learn about and discuss your hobby then the Internet truly blows away the hobby club.
But, as some of us realize, face-to-face meeting is still valuable for other reasons. You're more likely to learn something you didn't know that you wanted to know. You develop relationships that provide support outside of the narrow topic of formal interest. And humans are hyper-social creatures that thrive on the richness of face-to-face interaction.
The desire for face-to-face relationships has already led to the Internet being used as a source to find them: online dating, flash mobs, meetup groups. Maybe, with the Internet becoming more common than the telephone and a greater appreciation for what's lost without face-to-face interaction, there will be a rebirth of hobby clubs organized and supported with the efficiency of the Internet.