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Videogame Developers Are Making It Harder To Stop Playing (wsj.com)
Videogames have gotten harder to turn off, mental-health experts and parents say, raising concerns about the impact of seemingly endless gaming sessions on players' lives. From a report: Game developers for years have tweaked the dials not only on how games look and sound but how they operate under the hood, and such changes have made videogames more pervasive and enthralling, industry observers say. The World Health Organization in June added "gaming disorder" to an updated version of its International Classification of Diseases, warning about a condition in which people give up interests and activities to overly indulge in gaming despite negative consequences. It is expected to be formally classified in January 2022.
Many games today are free, available on multiple devices, and double as social networks. Where once games were played and put away for a while, now game companies are routinely delivering new content aimed at keeping players constantly engaged. Some new content is available only for a limited time, a maneuver that tugs at people's fears of missing out, psychologists say. "Videogames are engineered specifically to keep people playing," said Douglas A. Gentile, a research scientist focused on the impact of media on children and adults. "They're designed to hit the pleasure centers of the brain in some of the same ways that gambling can."
Many games today are free, available on multiple devices, and double as social networks. Where once games were played and put away for a while, now game companies are routinely delivering new content aimed at keeping players constantly engaged. Some new content is available only for a limited time, a maneuver that tugs at people's fears of missing out, psychologists say. "Videogames are engineered specifically to keep people playing," said Douglas A. Gentile, a research scientist focused on the impact of media on children and adults. "They're designed to hit the pleasure centers of the brain in some of the same ways that gambling can."
We could still be plugging quarters into the machine.
It is in the interest of every business model to get more customers, and to get current customers to use the company's products more frequently.
It is in the interest of society to regulate business, through government interference, when it is determined the business promotion is to the detriment of the current societal belief set; but damn, everything's not a disease.
Gaming Disorder.?.? Just, wow. It's not your fault, you poor addict.
There are certain groups that are really angry that young men are choosing to enjoy video games rather than go out in the world, get married, have children, and participate in society in the way they demand.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
It's also seemingly somewhat generational. Some folks deride games but feel nothing is wrong with vegetating for hours in the evening watching television, playing cards, or some other equivalent waste of time.