Video game addiction

Games
41

I agree with the above.

What games actually do, imho, is give you sheer, unadulterated happiness.

How? The reason is simple. A psychologist called Mihaly Czikzhentmihalyi (sp?) discovered (I think in the 60s and 70s) through extensive questionnaires with statistically quite large samples, the secret of ordinary human happiness, and it’s laughably simple - basically, if you go through life setting measurable goals that are just outside your comfort zone to attain, and then attain those goals, and then move on to pick a new, slightly higher-level goal, etc., etc., etc., you will be happy.

It’s exactly this progression of increasing powers and ever-increasingly-difficult goals that games give you in a miniature, abstract form, and that make them so addictive - little jags of happiness as you set and attain mini-goals, constantly excelling yourself in skill, the attainment of lewt, the discovery of new stuff, etc., etc.

Of course, theoretically, we should all be getting that kind of happiness in real life, through our careers, family, etc., and most of us probably do, but sometimes life isn’t so forthcoming, things are difficult, and it’s nice to have a happiness-producing substitute.

But of course, addiction is an ever-present possibility with videogames. I find myself always having to keep a weather eye for the symptoms. Avoidance of real life stuff, avoidance of social life, irritability when forced to not play, etc., I recognise I’ve had these at times. But as someone pointed out above, I used to get it with books and comics too, when I was a child. (In most fiction books, of course we live the “hero’s progress” vicariously.)

For me, addiction gets particularly heavy with MMOs, much heavier than with single player games. With a single player game, I might get addicted to it for a couple of days at the most. With an MMO in the first flush of love, it’s a several-week addiction in the course of which I almost can’t be bothered doing anything else at all. This has happened to me twice now, 3 years ago with City of Heroes, and at the moment with LOTRO.

It’s a sweet, and pretty harmless addiction, but I do recognise it is an addiction, and that it’s a possible danger.

The upside is that you do eventually get bored with any given game at some point - the craving stops one day, quite of its own accord. Not so with drugs - the craving continues until you actually stop taking the drug.

All this with the caveat that people can vary tremendously.

42

Very insightful observation. I’d appreciate it if anyone had any links to this research. I’ve long thought about what it is that makes games “fun”, but this is better than what I’ve been able to come up with.

43

Wiki article on some of his work.

The point about losing self-consciousness is quite important. Playing videogames, especially MMOs, one gets into “the Zone”, into a flow-state of constantly achieving measurable goals that just stretch one. This state is comparable to meditational states achieved through other means.

Another, more highbrow way of looking at it would be to look at Nietzsche on the Will to Power, and combine that with evolutionary psychology. Basically the ordinary sense of self is the seer of problems (configurations of matter that are problematic from the point of view of the achievement of some desired state of affairs). When the problem is solved, bingo, that sense of self disappears for a moment, and a kind of natural state of pure, functioning, perceiving animalhood is revealed. To that raw being, there are no problems, there is just the thrill of being alive.

Then the “ego” creeps in, and thinks “hmm, maybe this could be like this instead.” A kind of enthusiasm or obsession builds, and is discharged in victory (the reconfiguration of matter to the desired pattern), leaving the being again blank and free for a moment.

44

Video games ARE NOT DRUGS.

Case in point - how many crackheads post about their backlog? Yeah man, I’ve got a stack of rocks here still in the shrink wrap. Just no time to smoke it all, and real life keeps getting in the way.

Yes, video games are worse.

45

Actually Jane McGonigal talks a lot about using games to create more happiness in the world. A number of talks at GDC this year centered around the idea of using game-type systems to get large amounts of people to do stuff they normally wouldn’t that would make them and others happy.

Apparently when human beings dance, it makes the happiness centers light up. McGonigal has been doing a fun little game called Top Secret Dance Off, where each week there’s a dance challenge-- like “Dance in a crosswalk.” The players videotape themselves fulfilling the challenge, and then rate each others’ performances. The more points you get, the more points you can give in the next challenge.

Akoha is actually trying to make a business out of it. You buy cards from them that have serial numbers on them. Register your cards with them, then complete the challenges on the cards, like “Give someone a book.” You give the card to the person you did a nice thing for and challenge them to do the same thing for someone else. If they do, and they begin playing the game, then they buy cards, do nice things for other people, and give you points for completing the challenge multiple times.

So if you got “addicted” to these games, would that be a bad thing?