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The Real Story Behind Gaming Addiction
Gamespot is running a feature looking into the facts behind gaming addiction: what it is, whether it exists, and why the need still exists for objective research into the issue. Quoting:
"[Richard M. Ryan, a psychologist and professor of psychology, psychiatry, and education at the University of Rochester in New York] thinks the lack of quality research into video game overuse will be rectified with time as games become more sophisticated in the ways they satisfy people's psychological needs. 'We have a lot of people, some in the media and some in the sciences, who are too ready to make very strong claims about video games, whether we are talking about aggression, addiction, or cultural estrangement, based on very little evidence. I think that is especially how the media often sells stories. Some commentators exaggerate risks, and on the other hand there are defenders of games who deny any and all problems and attack any perceived bad news. Games are relatively new in our culture, and such vacillation between hysteria and denial I suspect often greets any new phenomenon, from hip-hop to the Internet to video games. Both sides usually have some part of the truth, but it may be a while before at least we as scientists, much less as a society, have a coherent understanding.'"
Someone in the comments of the article mentions that there isn't that much of a difference to someone addicted to sports and someone addicted to gaming. However, people don't die from playing sports for 18 hours a day.
my band is more brutal techno punk than yours
based on very little evidence. I think that is especially how the media often sells stories.
Really ?? I can't believe my eyes. /sarcasm.
Yes, I'm left. You have a problem with that?
In TFA it mentions examples that have (or probably have) been used in the past to demonise computer games - the Chinese kid who killed for game money and that special American family who's son murdered his parents for taking Halo 3 away from him. The article (thankfully) mentions the probable underlying mental illnesses that contribute to these sorts of crimes, whereas the Jack Thompsons of the world see games as the cause of crime, rather than as a changeable variable that could have been television, film, a newspaper, food, a car, a curfew, and so on.
I'm extremely pleased to see increasing research in games and their effect on our minds. It would be naive to suggets that they don't have any affect on us at all, and I for one am interested in seeing some (hopefully) independent research with meaningful results.
You can advertise in this sig from as little as £99.99 a month!
People have played games for thousands of years. The only difference now is they've got more sophisticated. Even more recently, I remember people who were seriously addicted to RPGs in the 70's from Tunnels and Trolls through D&D to Traveller. People were muttering about video game addiction in the late 70's too and there's been a ton of research on it since then. I can't help but thnk this is just another case of someone really not being aware of the history of their pet subject.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
over 2 decades of experimental psychology research indicates that being exposed to violence leads to more violence. Practically every social psychology text book out there cites statistics that place violence in the media and increases in real world violence as the second strongest correlation we have - second only to smoking and lung cancer.
Research shows again and again that playing violent video game causes physiological desensitization upon viewing real world violence (e.g. videos of cops shooting people and prisoners shanking each other), violent video games increase aggressive behaviors in children, and that even the presence of a toy weapon in a room causes aggressive thought priming.
I could tell you the real story behind gaming addiction but I need to lvl up my human mage to lvl 80.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
That's PEW PEW ridiculous. I can PEW PEW PEW stop PEW PEW whenever I want PEW PEW PEW to.
No folly is more costly than the folly of intolerant idealism. - Winston Churchill
see here is the issue: many times these game worlds (uo, eq, wow)offer a more fun experience than you could have otherwise outside of it for many people. it takes money to have fun in life; to travel, to club, et al to the rest.
yes, you can work harder to make more money to do these things, but it's not always that simple. a steady income during the day, log into a dragonslayer at night is too enticing for many people, and why not? it makes sense for them to do so. the alternative is not as appealing, whether that be watching tv, reading a book, or even improving yourself to make that money in order to have that type of fun.
because, let's be honest here, improving yourself doesn't necessarily more financial success. it might, but it doesn't always. so what path is more guaranteed to provide 'fun' for the average person?
i would probably say dragon slayer.
My view on gaming addiction is that, just like any other form of escapism, it is merely a symptom caused by various physical, psychological and social factors. In many cases, the subject would be addicted to something (possibly more harmful like drugs or gambling) anyways so the addiction is actually "good for him" in a certain sense. You can just grow up from gaming, unlike booze or crack.
I don't know what mod your post deserves, so I'll post a Whoosh comment, but at least one that's not sarcastic.
We spend thousands of hours grinding *moves*, which includes pawns.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I find it very curious how addiction studies focus mainly on male dominated activities. I am sure if females did it it would not be called an addiction.
Shoe fetishism is rarely called an addiction but I have seen women who spend their whole selves looking for the ugliest shoes.
Yes they do. People HAVE died from taking sports to extremes. Long distance runners who die from exhaustion or getting lost. Weight lifters who are crushed under weights. What about racers who go just a bit to fast? Taking the sport to extremes, same as gaming for 18 hours is extreem.
Except that I gamed for longer then that this easter weekend and did NOT die. Sure, I took some brakes for the toilet but more or less spent a full day from dawn to past midnight in the game.
Anyway, wouldn't it be more logical to connect addiction to games to addiction to being a sports FAN (as in a watcher of sports)? Is Holland alone in coming to a standstill because of mysterious illness whenever the national team plays?
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
People with opinions at the extreme ends of the spectrum might not be right, and the truth lies somewhere in between? Please, give me more of this brilliant analysis.
Compulsive shopping is most certainly regonized as an adiction. As for OCD, that is often called a woman's disease.
And gaming hasn't been male dominated for a long time. According to some survey's there are even more female gamers then male gamers.
Certainly in the MMO I play voicechat seems to be female roughly 1/3 to 1/2 the time. Considering that some females might be reluctant to reveal their are females online and the percentage of females playing Lotro might be as high as half the population if not more.
Stop being such a sexist prick.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So far, everything that our youth had a fascination with and was hardly, if at all, understood by parents has been demonized and blamed for all sorts of problems.
Think back (ok, read up in your history books) about so called "bad books". Tom Sawyer and Huck Finn twisted and warped young minds in ways that are all too similar to what is now attributed to games. They set bad examples, they make kids act out what they read, they have no moral, show no ill effects of bad behaviour... then the kids that read those books grew up and, lo and behold, they didn't turn out to be maniacs and generally unfit to lead a normal life. The hype dwindled down, and now it's part of "America's cultural heritage".
Fast forwards to radio. It was new, it was exciting, kids (and even some adults) spent hours in front of the box listening. When Wells' "War of the Worlds" was broadcast, people went into hysteria. And promptly, the radio was the source of all evil. It would cause us to be unable to discriminate between fiction and fact, it would twist our poor minds and warp us... guess what, the radio generation grew up, they didn't turn out to be morons, and the hype went away.
TV was next. The picture boxes that ruined our eyes (ok, those old ones maybe did), that showed us braindead stories and turned us all into zombies. The TV generation grew up...
D&D. Anyone remember Patricia Pulling, the Jack Thompson of the 80s? Yet D&D gamers grew up and they don't run amok in our streets fighting imaginary orcs and dragons.
Now it's games. And the gamers will grow up and we'll find out that it's not so bad... in other words, just give it time. In 10 years, nobody's gonna talk about it anymore. But don't worry. We'll find a new scapegoat when our kids go nuts due to poor parenting and mobbing in schools.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
I don't know what mod your post deserves, so I'll post a Whoosh comment, but at least one that's not sarcastic.
We spend thousands of hours grinding *moves*, which includes pawns.
But would you be content taking a pawn, resetting the game one step back, and then repeating the move for hours on end? Would it provide the same false sense of progress?
No whoosh here :)
If I was a kid, and ended up practising and playing tennis or golf for the majority of my day, got really good, was able to compete and win tournaments and make money, I would be considered a natural, a child prodigy with a promising future.
Likewise, if I played chess every day for as long as possible, got really good and started competing and winning tournaments internationally, making money etc. I would be seen as a great example of skill etc.
If I live and breathe business, every hour of every day, driving myself to make a fortune, to become wealthy and successful, I would be applauded.
Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it.
So, if a kid spent the majority of his waking day playing games, gets exceptionally good at it, and was able to enter tournaments, win prize money, travel the world etc., would we then talk about his addiction, or would we be talking about his achievement?
It seems to me that what really matters is the result of your "addiction", and the public's perception in terms of its "worth", not the fact that you're addicted. These stories about "game addiction" look at the worst examples and apply them to all, and that makes as much sense as looking at a sports star who burns himself out as an example of what sport does to you.
Most of this is likely spurred by the opinion that gaming is simply a waste of time. When the value of gaming (in terms of wealth generation, improving mental ability, skill etc.) increases/becomes more well known, the less we'll hear about the evils of game addiction. So, bring on more studies to look at gaming's benefits, and bring on more investment into pro-gaming.
'If Christ had tweeted the sermon on the mount, it might have lasted until nightfall.' - John Perry Barlow
I suspect this may come across as slightly trollish, but hear me out:
The principle difference between gaming and TV is interaction - a higher level of engagement or involvement, and thus immersion, that a passive medium like TV can't surpass.
When discussing addiction, I think it's worth noting that - according to the criteria used by most detractors - TV is also addictive. However, it is not considered harmful enough to be of equivalent concern. You're not likely to die from all-night sessions of Battlestar Galactica or whatever.
I think the real issue is about more than just addiction though. I think it's down to the level of passivity or activity required to engage with the medium, and the control over the experience.
TV viewing, by its very nature, trains us to passively accept whatever is fed to us. It's in the nature for society to accept and promote whatever maintains the status-quo - a survival trait, if you will - and something which encourages passivity is ultimately a benefit to that. There are also mechanisms for controlling the viewer's experience - you can't choose to change the ending to a film, for example.
Gaming, on the other hand, requires engagement, activity, evaluation and decision-making, even in its more basic forms. It also trains people not to let things be, but to strive to overcome obstacles and improve their environment. Whether this encourages socially positive or negative actions depends on the type of game in which the person engages, which in turn is influenced by their social predisposition. It enhances rather than suppresses their psychological traits. There is also less opportunity for control over the medium - the way in which a person experiences the game - and so it could be a threat to social and societal stability.
(I invite you to don your tin-foil hat in response to the above paragraph, but I've tried to avoid making a conspiratorial point.)
It's no surprise that gaming has a highly addictive potential to those who are thus predisposed. The question is; would such an addiction be a problem? Where TV addiction is generally harmless to others, I think games serve to enhance the strengths and weaknesses already imbued in individuals by our society. The root causes of game-influenced behaviour are therefore much more fundamental than the game itself, and blaming games for the actions of individuals who are already thinking far outside the accepted norms of morality is a bit short-sighted.
Meta will eat itself
How common is sports addiction anyway? I've never heard of people staying up until 3am to kick a soccer ball around several times a week or pissing in a water bottle because they couldn't bear to be away from the tennis court for a couple of minutes. MMORPG addicts behaving like that are a dime a dozen; sports addicts, not so much.
According to your criteria, second-hand sports addiction is very common. Guys will stop in the middle of sex because their stupid hockey game is on, or they'll find an excuse to go find a TV on their WEDDING DAY because the soccer game is on. Preachers hide mini tvs in their pulpits so they can keep track of the football game while they're preaching. Is any of this any better?
But to call it addiction in today's legal and social climate is to help "enable" the people who do it, just as calling morbidly obese people addicted to food would. It's time we took a real look at addiction, and admitted that there is always a choice involved - even for those who claim they can't stop. You can be darned sure that if you held a gun to their head, and told them that you'll pull the trigger if they don't stop, they will, if they've just seen you blow away the person next to them for the same reason.
To claim that there is no choice involved, ever, is to open up the door to pedophiles claiming they're "addicted" to having sex with 3-year-olds. Well, if they're "addicted", then they can't help themselves, and we have no right to punish them ... do you REALLY want to go there? Especially since there IS more evidence that pedophilia is an addiction than that gaming is... What about the person who shoplifts because they're "addicted" to bling? The person who defrauds millions because they're "addicted" to a certain social lifestyle and the endorphin high it gives them to lord it over eveyone? They don't need to be treated for addiction - they need to grow up.
Treat a kid like an adult, and they'll usually behave like one. Treat an adult like a child, and they'll behave like a child.
So, why are so many adults behaving childishly? Follow the endorphins. "It feels good" / gives an endorphin high - is NOT sufficient reason to lay a claim of addiction. The phony "disease" of kleptomania is just one example of how we make poor impulse control socially acceptable by mislabeling it. If you have poor impulse control and decide that you don't want to delay gratification, that's your choice. Live with the consequences. Drink yourself to death, eat yourself to death, game yourself to death, pile on credit card and mortgage debt to your financial ruin because you want it all, and you want it NOW - if you don't care, why should anyone else? But don't excuse it by saying you're addicted. After all, you LIKE it that way. Don't ask others to bail you out until you've learned the hard lessons, because only YOU can learn them, and that means YOU have to decide you're fed up with things as they are. Nobody else can make that choice for you, ever.
Treat a kid like an adult, and they'll usually behave like one. Treat an adult like a child, and they'll behave like a child.
Too many adults in this generation never really grew up. "Psychological addiction" is a joke. Label it what it really is - poor impulse control - by people who refuse to take responsibility for ruining their lives. THEN maybe we'll be in a better position to actually treat it, by confronting people with the fact that they need to learn to take control of their lives instead of playing the victim card all the time. Example: impulsive eaters are claiming discrimination because they're now being charged for the second seat. They should shut their mouths ... actually, they should have shut them 20 years ago, after that 5th piece of cake. Funny how we don't accept that with little children, but in adults, we slap the "psychological addiction" label on it, and poor impulse control is suddenly socially excusable. Fuck that - and
But would you be content taking a pawn, resetting the game one step back, and then repeating the move for hours on end? Would it provide the same false sense of progress?
Well, maybe if it improved my ELO rating...
xkcd is not in the sudoers file. This incident will be reported.
Before we start blaming the latest Scapegoat Flavor of the Month (games, television, comics, that devil invention radio, the interwebs, those swinging rock n' roller Elvis hips) we need to ask ourselves this: when someone becomes addicted to [something], is there something missing in their lives that this addiction happens to be artificially replacing? If the cause of the addiction is not explored, treating the symptoms becomes that much harder - if not impossible. Now excuse me while I go farm more gold for my level 80 mage.
I thought the entire internet unanimously agreed to boycott gamespot for firing editors because they didn't write good reviews for a big advertiser?
Did that all get cleared up?
Greg Stuetze is currently creating a documentary covering the topic, /afk. You can learn more about it at http://www.afkthefilm.com/ (I am in no way involved with it)
you know that video game addiction exists
i don't know if it's just a certain kind of mentality that can't escape this sort of absorbing foray into micromanagement, but for me, it was basically an experience of "just one more turn"... i look down, the sun is setting... i look up, and the sun is coming up
how the hell did that happen?
i had to destroy the cd the game came on, if i wanted to keep a relationship and a job
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Nick Yee
http://www.nickyee.com/ I came across this guy's work about six years ago when I took part in a survey on.... MMO addiction. I'm surprised no-one seems to have mentioned him so far.
in all of the endeavours you mention, 99% of people don't make any success in the field
and this bit is especially ridiculous:
"Hey, be addicted to real drugs and write incredible novels, poetry, or music, and you'll be applauded for it."
nobody takes drugs and makes great art. rather, some great artists, after already having great talent, enter a stage of self-destructive hubris, and start wasting their talent on drugs. classic correlation!=causation
your understanding of the relationship between art and drugs is kind of like the cargo cults of the south pacific: that if you build bamboo control towers and bamboo radar arrays, airplanes full of cargo will magically appear out of the sky. saying that taking drugs will let you make art is exactly the same sort if foolishness
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Games are in no way addicting...
As an afterthought, the only reason why I have time to read/reply to this is because WoW is down thanks to a horribad patch.
Are "game addicts" really addicted to gaming per se?
Maybe they are addicted to high-adrenaline activities.
Maybe they are just bored or frustrated and looking for something to do, and when they are denied that "something" - whatever it is - they show symptoms normally associated with withdrawal.
Knowledge is how to play a game, intelligence is how to win, wisdom is knowing what game to play.
The fact is that a few psychologists had patients with a problem, and suddenly a large number of them were expertly qualified to treat this problem. They've done the same for years with internet use, arcade games, hacking, and a problem of the year going back decades. They act as if the thing is addictive and the person is a victim of a disease. They make big money treating people with whatever happens to be their favorite technique whether or not it works. They can't know whether it does or not because there's little to no data supporting a given treatment, they don't have to promise results, and the attrition rate is such that they'll have very few left at the end as failures and almost certainly none coming back a second time. If any do come back, they'll find that the psychologist ash moved on to their next area of expertise, the next big (income generating) addiction.
There's no doubt some people form obsessive and/or compulsive behaviors (with or without the actual disorder) over some things. But the thing is arbitrary and becomes the focus simply because it's what the person first chose to spend time with. Such a person needs treatment for their own predilection, not for being the victim of their activities. Furthermore, they treat these "addictions" as if they were just that. But an addiction has a clear medical description beyond obsessive and/or compulsive behavior. These psychologists are neither trained to determine whether the physiological changes have occurred or to treat for them if they have.
Unfortunately the largest professional organization for psychologists in the US is the same one that writes the book for making diagnoses (which can come and go with social pressures), and is comprised in majority by the psychologists whose income depends on finding (and competing for) patients -- clinical psychologists. To bring home the point of the arbitrary nature of their mutual income support system, the diagnoses they create and describe are often different from similar diagnostic instruments from elsewhere.
That sums up the reason I refused to join that particular organization.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
I can quit playing solitaire any time.
mark "verbiage carefully chosen"
How common is sports addiction anyway?
Exercise bulimia could be an example. Granted, it's a bigger, more complex problem than just 'really liking exercise', but thought I'd throw that out there for the sake of argument.
Sweet informative mod.
Once I got my ADD sorted out, video games became much less addictive. In my case all I needed to do is remove artificials from my diet:
The Lancet: Food additives and hyperactive behaviour
For many people it's more complicated but it's a great place to start.
if you look at a PET scan of a male mind, its a few bright spots, the rest mostly dark. if you look at a PET scan of a female mind, the whole thing is lit up in a low warm glow. in other words, the female mind is very balanced, while the male mind is highly focused. this results in all sorts of sexual differences in psychology, but when it comes to addiction, which is a sort of highly focused feedback loop to begin with, it means the male mind is in some ways more predisposed
for example, you mention shoe shopping. well, that same woman with the pile of shoes also has a boyfriend and a job. meanwhile, the guy addicted to the videogame has lost his job, has lost his girlfriend, and is still playing WoW in his underwear at 4 AM
in other words, the real yardstick of addiction is supportability: does it get in the way of maintaining a valid life outside of your obsessive pursuit? as long as the woman with 5,000 shoes is gainfully employed and in a relationship, no, its not addiction, or, if you still want to call it addiction, its not dangerous. likewise, if the guy can play WoW 8 hours a day while still maintaining a job and a girlfriend, its not dangerous addiction either. but thats not usually what happens with guys. they usually fall off the wagon completely, due to their more focused nature to begin with
the male WoW addict never leaves the computer monitor except for bathroom breaks and cheetos for 48 hours straight without sleep, failing all his courses, and having no relationships. while the female shoe shopper is fully aware of her need to be gainfully employed to support her shoe habit. supportability makes all the difference
real addiction, clinical addiction, what makes addiction dangerous, is when you pursue the activity at the detriment of being able to support yourself. and in this regard, many "male" pursuits are in fact more dangerous, more "addictive" in the sense they are dangerous addictions, than traditional female pursuits
just look at a PET scan, and you will see why this is true, for basic psychological differences between the sexes. men have a lot more to lose for being addicted than women, simply because their minds are more predisposed to be locked into obsessive feedback loops with activities that can interfere with their ability to support themselves, by taking up inordinate amount of absorbing time and energy. women, with a more balanced psychology than men, take up pursuits that can take up slices of time and energy, but never really force the woman to lock themselves in their parent's basement
i'm talking in broad strokes of course, but hording shoes is a lot different, in terms of committed time and energy, than building a level 63 WoW character
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Games are relatively new in our culture,
Bullshit, horseshit, pigshit.
Games have existed in human culture since the dawn of history. "Addiction" to games has existed just as long.
But as long as it's not on a TV screen, instead of calling it "addiction" we call those people "Professionals".
there are millions of hunter s thompsons in regards to self-destructive behavior. thats nothing rare or unique. hunter s thompson, meanwhile, IS rare and unique, but not because of his self-destructive behavior, but because of his communicative skills, on top of his self-destructive behavior
but people glorify his self-destructive behavior, when thats not what makes him a great artist
my whole point is that the glorification of the self-destruction is wrong
if you want to be a great artist, you'll create art. anything you snort along the way is baggage, not some intrinsic part of your art form... which is exactly what you said. i'm just trying to do away with the glorification of self-destruction
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the essential source of your failure to understand the human condition is that you view us as vessels of purity that are corrupted by exposure to some foreign agent. when the truth is that we are born raging pits of violent behavior, and we are gradually tamed and civilized. go view a roomful of toddlers for 15 minutes and come back again and tell me with a straight face that violence is something that we are introduced to. no: we are born violent, and we are taught social ways to mitigate and control our violent tendencies
in this way, violent media is actually a way for us to jettison our violent impulses in harmless ways. catharthis. but, for the already deranged 1% who were set off by violent media (and would have been set off by some other bad excuse, if no violent media existed), violent media is merely a trigger for a defect already inside them. meanwhile, for the other 99% of us psychologically normal, the violence we exert on a keyboard is violence we will not exert in real life. that, in actuallity, violent media DECREASES violence in society
and if you still don't believe me, please, demonstrate to me how things were so peaceful and buccolic in say, ancient rome or with the ancient aztecs. pffft
fact: the more violent media we have, the more peaceful society is. its called catharsis. 1% of previously defective individuals being set off by violent media in sensational ways notwithstanding
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
This is the common problem of the "Sound Bite Culture" that we have.
Flip on the TV or radio (excluding NPR here, but lets face it, NPR listners are not the majority) and you will mostly hear a bunch of bullshit, no matter who you listen to. Talking heads cherry-pick quotes and figures from studies to make their point. "Experts" are encouraged to come on with their findings as quickly as possible, even talking about preliminary studies with small numbers of people, and then the "sound bite" of them talking about this one minor study, gets touted as fact all over the place.
Essentially, every side, of every issue, is out there painting a distorted collage of "facts" to support their way of thinking, and there is very little encouragement to look at an issue in depth and allow the hard realities to actually influence the way people think, just this game of picking fatcs to support already foregone conclusions.
This is what passes for political and social discourse in this world.
Case in point. There was a study on heart disease a while back, it was widely reported as showing a link between heart attacks and pot smoking. I saw it all over the news. Then... I read a more in depth article about it. It was a study of about 450 people, about 20 of which were pot smokers. The main factor it looked at was whether they had their heart attack within so many hours of the last time they smoked (and it wasn't even the main purpose of the study either), and didn't mention at all the frequency of smoking. This was a flimsy and hardly well thought out correlation, wasn't even the focus of the study, but I saw the "sound bite" ALL OVER the media for the next couple of days. They didn't even care to talk about what was actually being studied!
Its like the TSA. They go around talking bomb detectors this, and milimeter wave that, and look at what we catch. However, nobody wants to talk about the fact that there is nothing that would indicate any manner of credible threat. They say "oh look... bojinka plot". What they don't do is actually pay attention to the details of the plot that indicate A) a small group of people were responsible for several bombings as part of their testing B) It took years of work by dedicated people JUST TO FAIL and C) With those people now in custody, there is no real evidence that people like them occur often enough and capable enough to pull off these plots enough to even make the checkpoints we had pre-9/11 financially justified.
but... once again... the sound bite rules the day.
Games are addictive and make people violent. Unless you can come up with a sound bite thats more sensational than that... well... thats just the "new facts". Reality be damned.
-Steve
"I opened my eyes, and everything went dark again"
Wow, who shit in your breakfast cereral this morning? A rant worthy of Bill O'Reilly.
You remind me of my college friend who didn't believe in such things as depression and mential illiness. "If you are sad, just snap out of it. Don't be sad anymore! Grow up!" This was the rather unhelpful advise he often gave to a mutual friend of ours who is diagnosted bi-polar.
Then my friend had a break down in his mid twenties. Lost his good paying high stress job (likely a big trigger), his wife, and eventually his house all within a year. Seven years on he still hasn't recovered, can't seemd to hold a low paying job for more than a few months, and is living off his parents. He thinks differently about our bi-polar friend now.
It's easy to throw stones at other's problems and issues, trivializing them, judging them. That is, until you have to deal with such issues yourself...
Lol, how about the successful treatment rate for drug dependency? Roughly 10% across the board, AA, NA, CogBehTherapy, Rt, and surprise, surprise,surprise, no treatment. Is it a case where there is actual success, or do 10% of the people with substance dependency just quit, and treatment methodology has no bearing on it?
there is no such thing as a fount of absolutely impartial, absolutely trustworthy information. so go ahead and watch fox news... then listen to the bbc. then pravda. then read a chinese news site. then a venezuelan one. then an iranian one. finish it off with pbs
in this way, by being exposed to as many different half truths as possible, from as many different sources, do you begin to actually see the real truth
meanwhile, your prescription to stop exposing yourself to the media actually makes you more vulnerable to propaganda, because you have nothing to judge against what little slivers of info that do reach you
this is the value of a free press: let anyone publish any goddamn lie they want. the truth will bubble up the surface, atop a rotting festering pit of lies. this is only possible with a free press. in countries without a free press, you are breeding weak flabby partisan minds who can not know the truth
a free press, sleazebuckets of media (which is the way its always been, by the way, there was no glorious past of impartial media), is really the only way it can ever be. because there is no such thing as an absolutely impartial and trustworhty news source. they all pander to our lower instincts. and only through repeated exposure to this bullshit do you develop a healthy bullshit meter. and we all need that, badly
so bring on the lies, the half truths, the propaganda, the demagoguery from all ideological sides. atop that festering pile of bullshit we will sit, with a good lock on the real truth. its the only way to discover thr truth, the only way media can work. the more free it is, the more festering lies out there, the better for your understanding of the truth. paradoxical, but true
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
... but feel free to mash some buttons while you wait.
8==8 Bones 8==8
I don't know about anyone else, but after I play GTA I notice myself driving a little more aggressively. But after I play Assassin's Creed I somehow manage to avoid skewering random people with my sword. Go figure. I guess all my social behavior filters are in place.
When a gamer does something unstable, all bets are off and gaming gets blamed like "rock and roll" got blamed for the sexual revolution. After a while almost everyone will be a gamer and then that will stop, just like you rarely see people now blaming rock and roll for Sally's teen pregnancy.
My guess is that gaming probably affects us in the same ways anything else we experience affects us.
Right?
Oh, whoops, violent crime rates have been falling like a rock the entire time video games have been getting more realistic.
You can claim that video games are directly tied to aggressive behavior, but *real world* evidence flatly contradicts that assertion.
"Seven Deadly Sins? I thought it was a to-do list!"
your search for the "real truth" belies a cognitive weakness of yours. you either have a fantastical devotion to the "truth" being something like the da vinci code or your average hollywood potboiler political thriller. when reality is always much more mundane. conspiracy theories are the mark of a weak mind, or wonderful entertainment, but are never the truth
or you already have it "figured out", and you are attempting to fit the facts to your preconceived notions, "the truth" as it were. and you are unsatisfied, because your preconcieved notions are wrong, fringe. and so you react to the media antagonistically, all of it, because you can't find the support for your wrong ideas that you desire
people who reject ALL of the media, and speak of "the media", as if it were some monolithic edifice allayed against them, are really speaking of their own fringe ideological identity, not about the reality of the media. the way you speak belies the fact that whatever problems media companies have with the truth, you have greater problems with the truth. it is you has the problem, not that bogeyman (dum dum DUM), "the media"
as for 9/11, i left work at the world trade center building #5 at 9 pm on monday 9/10/01, heard a guitar player by the fountain in the dark, looked back at him, then up at the towers, and went into church street subway station and went home and went to sleep, and woke up late to my telephone ringing off the hook the next morning. i never made it back to that job. what happened? some islamic nutjobs highjacked airplanes and flew them into the towers, out of simple spite and hate
that's the truth. really. sorry there is no hollywood plot twist involving jack ryan and the illuminati
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
a real artist does not speak of their identity as an artist as if it were a movie role. no one with real pain speaks of "the pain" as if it were character development. if they could put a word to "the pain", they'd probably lose their artistic drive in the first place, and would have never become an artist were it that easy for them to grab onto and rationalize their drive
that you CAN put word to it means you are something else entirely: a poser. you think being an artist is about adopting a shallow lowest common denominator image of "the artist"
if you want to be a real artist, lose the act, and focus on you art. a real artist has no such narcissistic ideation of self. for a real artist, there is only his work
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
#1: no one can know the real truth. everyone's conception of the truth is fuzzy, out of focus. so the problem is your stated goal: that because you can't get to 100% truthfulness, the effort is not worth it. no. your yarstick for measuring success on understanding the truth is the problem. and by using your insane yardstick for truthfulness, it just means you won't get anywhere near the truth because you have impossible standards. the solution to your problem is to stop applying such ridiculous standards to what the truth is or is ever supposed to mean to you or anyone else. no one will ever satisfy your demands on that subject, so drop your ridiculous demands
#2: you are 100% correct: you need to spend hours reading different sources to understand the truth. but you have it completely wrong on who's fault that is. there is this insane attitude of yours that you need to approach every news story like a scientific research paper. question: how much do you a read story? answer: as much as you are interested in it, no more. question: how much will you understand the truth of a story? answer: as much as you are interested in it, no more
let's make believe for a moment that there really is a 100% impartial completely trustworthy news source out there. ok, a scenario in this alternate reality is like this: some awful event happens, but you're not interested in this awful event. so you skim two sentences and move on and barely give the event a thought. now i come up to you 3 hours later and ask you the truth of what happened.
guess what: in this hypothetical world of a perfect omnipotent media, there is still no way you can know what the truth is. because understanding the truth is dictated by how much effort you devote to the news story, REGARDLESS of the quality of your media. the ultimate yardstick of you understanding the truth isn't the media at all. its your own interest level
It was a sociopolitical attack that had a lot of factors, perpetrated by a group that we created in the middle east to do our bidding before we left them in the cold.
so if my girlfriend wears the dress i told her not to wear, its her fault when i beat her face to a pulp. this is the mentality you are supporting with your understanding of how responsibility and accountability works in regards to al qaeda
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
if you poll a thousand random americans about the population of china, the answer will be a statistical bell curve centered on the actual population of china
the idiots cancel each other out, to each degree of idiocy, in either direction
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
your example sites an unknown quantity. of course a statistical averaging of an unknown quantity is meaningless
meanwhile, the population of china is a known real nonobscure quantity
and i'll support my assertion:
there is a once popular game show in the usa called who wants to be a millionaire. you are asked trivia questions, each one of increasing obscurity for more cash, and given 4 choices. if you are having difficulty, you can phone a friend, have the 4 choices narrowed down, or have the audience polled
this last option is an exact analogy to asking a bunch of random folk a trivia question like what is the population of china
their accuracy over the lifetime of the show?
95%
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Who_Wants_to_Be_a_Millionaire%3F#Lifelines
and it makes sense. like i said before, the answers will bell curve. idiocy is random, it does not skew in a particular manner. the idiots randomly cancel each other out, and become noise, while anyone with the real answer will stand out as a signal against the background noise. involving quantities like a population count, they simply bell curve to the right answer
its really quite a simple concept, i don't know why you can't grasp it. perhaps you don't need to brush up on your statistics, you just need to brush up on your grasp of common sense reasoning
perhaps we should poll a thousand random people about the accuracy of random trivia polls. i think you would be one of the idiot outliers who would be canceled out to background noise ;-)
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
One more level and I'll stop...I promise. **LEVEL UP** ok now I can't stop because I need to kill more mobs until at least I'm half way my exp bar so next time I'm near leveling up... **LEVEL UP** ok now I just need to grab some mats so I can get my flying mount next time I'm on.....**14 hours later and 10 level ups** I can't stop now I'm on a roll, plus my guild will be on soon and we can go raid yay.....
Speaking as a recovered WoW player, yes video games can be very addicting. For that matter, I'm still addicted to them, I still have urges to play WoW, to get that fix, even though I quit 6 months ago.
I can indulge in other games from time to time, secure in the knowledge that I'll get bored with it eventually, but WoW, with no ending, no limits on how much i can play per day, and designed to keep me interested no matter how many hours I put into it, nearly destroyed me.
It may not be addiction in the clinical sense, but its still self destructive behavior, and its damned hard to quit, or even acknowledge you should.
PS: This isn't meant to imply that every gamer, or every MMO player, is like me, just that some are.
Liberte, Egalite, Fraternite (TM)
and not one person has mentioned the hilarity of this article being posted ONE STORY above an article about the "New Bionic Commando?"
I'm disappointed, Slashdot :(
this is an unknown quantity
your continues grouping of this completely bogus analogy belies the fact that you don't understand the subject matter
the subject matter is the ability of a smattering of random people to correctly guess nonobscure trivia. as my example of poll-the-audience on "who wants to be a millionaire" demonstrates, this is 95% accurate. because, yes, the random guesses cancel each other out as noise, and those with an inkling of an answer is then revealed as a valid signal. you didn't even mention this in your argument, because its too damning a proof of your incoherence on the subject
you obscure the essential point by saying because you don't have an exact answer, or you don't have a statistically valid sampling, that this method of finding a good approximation of the truth is invalid
In fact, poll people about the number of planets in the solar system. You'll probably get an answer between 8 and 9. But I guarantee you it will not be an integer value, say 8.713452, which will be a fairly strange answer for the number of planets.
again, you are focusing on nonessential aspects of the essential point here. you are focusing on minor laughable mediocre issues, like the fact that the number of planets is fractional when averaged. really? you think that's a valid point that somehow disproves the larger issue?
nothing you have said counteracts what i am saying. you say the age of the earth or the chinese population won't be exact. again: why do you think this counteracts the issue here? do you think anyone with the slightest common sense thinks you will get an exact factual answer? especially since these "facts" themselves have a +/- built into them. even the number of planets: some insist pluto is still a planet. you will get an APPROXIMATE value that has some validity. it won't be wildly divergent. that's all i am saying. and you think by saying i can't nail the answer on the head, that there is no validity at all to this phenomenon. what?
you have a mind which seems focused on brittle process-oriented thinking. you can't see the forest for the trees. you think all of the minor niggling points you bring up somehow amount to somehow sort of disproving of the essential thrust of the observation that a random smattering of people will actually reveal a pretty good guess on nonobscure trivia questions
and that's the truth
please, by all means, dismantle the "who wants to be a millionaire" example
you can't
you lose
be a man and admit defeat
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
I have a handmade chess set, so I wanted to distinguish apart from grinding *pawns*.
But except for your facile humor point there, chess study work is EXACTLY "take the pawn, examine, take it back, study in light of the consequences of taking that pawn, interpose an inbetween pair of move, THEN take the pawn AGAIN, repeat."
It is in fact this "boring phase" that keeps Attention Shorted Web2.0 types from playing chess anymore.
My first Journal Entry ever, in 8 years! http://slashdot.org/journal/365947/aphelion-scifi-fantasy-horror-poetry-webzine
I was an addict.. A hardcore one.. And there's many reasons why people become addicted. For me it was because I worked days, my husband worked nights and after my kids went to bed I had nothing to do, no social life... so my game (Im not sure it is ok to use the games name but its VERY VERY POPULAR)became the means to my socializing. Then you get so wrapped up if you are a guild master that you don't even want to take vacation because it may all "fall apart" if you don't log in every few hours. I played 15-20 hours a day weekends and from the minute I walked in the house until two hours before I had to go to work. Everything in my life fell to the wayside, husband (who by now I didn't get along with becaue the game became my main focus), kids, house, everything but work, because if I didn't work how was I going to pay for 4 accounts (each of us in the house had an account by then). It almost cost me my marriage and it took a toll on my relationship with my kids. I am still playing 4+ yrs later(the whole family still does) but I am not obsessed with it and we play it as a family. There are days I don't even get on for a week or so at a time, but I understand how people get sucked in, I was there. I had to learn to realize it is only a game and I also made it a point to not run or be of "major importance" to any guild that I am in because you can become trapped. I have limited myself to a guild that is run by my whole family with few gaming friends we met and know as a whole live similar lifestyles as we do. I have learned to just say STOP.. put the mouse down and turn the computer off. Some people are not that lucky...
I just have no desire to stop playing. At all. Ever.
Any pleasing and distracting experience is a potential addiction. So, yes, gaming is addictive.
And the act of playing games can itself be harmful. RSI, time sunk (opportunity costs; responsibilities neglected), and stress. In small enough doses these things aren't bad. But the more pleasing the gaming experience and the more distraction you need, the greater your inclination for larger doses.
Delay of gratification (known to some as "spannungsbogen") is something we should all learn and practice from early on. Teach your children well.
I've had periods of extreme gaming immersion, sometimes with great negative impact. The most recent bout was roughly eight years of FPS (Tribes, CS, and UT2K4). Part of what predisposed me to this was, I believe, the bullying I experienced growing up. Made me more inclined to engage in fighting. Specifically I had a chip on my shoulder and wanted to beat the shit out of people. Not in my daily life, but I loved doing it in video games where the entire point was combat. And I got good at it and it was really gratifying. I earned my peer accolades ("OMG HAX!") and ranked well on the stats servers. But there was a cost: Years of chronically elevated cortisol and epinephrine (adrenaline) levels primed me for health issues. Then some stressful situations that might have been taken in stride instead threw me over the top.
I liked the adrenaline at first. I am now overly sensitive to it.
I know the plural of anecdote is not "data", but I just wanted to share my experience with those on a similar trajectory. Moderation, my friends. Gaming is not without its effects.
Gambling == gaming also, so do you think calling it "gaming addiction" is a little confusing?
FAQs are evil.
Anyway, the truth of the matter is that video game addiction does exist. How rampant is another story, however, some people do get addicted to games and it has cost some their education, jobs, girlfriends and wives, friends, their health and in a few extreme cases, their lives. With that said, if people want to "do games" like you would do any other drug, then let them. Until the FDA, CDC, or some wing of the Department of Justice. I think the BATFE is just itching for ANOTHER letter to add to their already out of control name, BATFEG.
if the iraqi kills the americans because his parents were killed (by sectarians in iraq, but nevermind that detail for the moment) and in your mind this is inevitable, then by the same token, the americans overreacting after 9/11 is equally inevitable
or perhaps you believe only americans should be held to responsibility and accountability, and arabs can't be held to those standards?
so which is it?
1. arabs and americans are feral dogs, incapable of extricating themselves from a cycle of violence
2. arabs are feral dogs, and americans should be pantheons of responsible behqavior (ie, you're a racist)
3. arabs and americans are capable of extricating themselves from mindless violence, and they will
i'm going with #3. how about you?
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
my man mansu musa has just built the statue of zeus in djenne and built a gold mine in timbuktu. now i can wage war on the persians. i just to need to build 4 more skirmishers. dang! i have to lower science research again, my income is so low because i built too many cities. i can't wait 36 turns for feudalism. hmmm maybe i can trade music for feudalism with the koreans. if only that bastard wang kon wouldn't hold it against me that i won't convert to judaism...
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
the addiction, the life, the search for the cure, it finds U