I’d love to talk to Josh. I’ll talk pretty much anyone’s ear off if given half the chance.

The thing about gaming - is that some online social spaces (ala the WoW) are just that. They’re a place where you can meet and greet - but also play a game that (if all’s working right) is satisfying. But all of that is pretty new for your average pleasure-seeking human. When older people can just plug a VCR-like thing into their TV and have a face-to-face conversation with somebody 100 miles away, regular people are going to start to have a hard time balancing real living and digital living. How real and how fake is it?

We *are* creatures with an inborn love of certain kinds of rewards - which is why a failure to understand this intersect between reality and illusion is going to catch a lot of people off guard. It should never be about bringing down games or labeling gamers - that doesn’t *help* anybody. Especially when gamers congratulate someone for their Season 4 Arena weapon in Warcraft, and then the next week ostracize people who lose track of the basics as “irresponsible jerks,” or “undependable” when they’re quitting the game because work just gave them a final warning on skipping out.

There’s a balance to these lives, and it’s something that gamers around the world are learning the hard way. I’d rather gamers, game designers, legislators, journalists, PARENTS, worried people - all understand games before we rob them of their serious potential.

Anyway, I could carry on. We should talk sometime.

I will spare you the same tirade, which is odd since for as long as I’ve known you I don’t think we’ve ever really discussed the matter. I will let it stand that, for as much as I believe gaming can be addictive, I believe everything in society can be as well. We should not blame the catalysts, but blame ourselves for evolving into creatures of effortless desire and achievement. People are the problem, so instead of bringing down gaming, we should look into changing ourselves, and helping those who have these problems.

….That is very much paraphrased.

-(((nik)))

the the game gets you on another level, not only can you pit yourself against the environment you also go up against other players.. this leads to more addictions, being better than other people and thus getting better gear to be better than other people … Its similar to a spiral of decline, except you get caught up in this single focus that you have no concept of time or what is going on around you.

Many times I have logged on at 6pm and suddenly its midnight. You get so engrossed in what you are doing, and this is the addiction (in my opinion).

And if you feed of this then and are driven by it, finding something else to do that gives you, not a buzz or a fix in a Drugs sense, the same satisfaction proves to be hard.

On the other hand MMO’s have become the most “anti social” social game. Give some one the internet, TS or Vent server and 1 game and people from all over the world can meet in one place, to chat, laugh, and share a common bond / goal. They play the game because they enjoy it, but they also enjoy the company of the other people that play it. When you are not playing the game, yes you miss the game but you also miss your “online” friends..

Not really sure where this was going, but I liked the points people raised.

Something I’ve been talking about recently is that game addiction, like you say, absolutely has many faces. Most of the people studying addiction just want their research to make for interesting headlines. If they can publish a study that says that “8.5% of children playing games are addicted,” as the “National Institute of Media and the Family” recently did, then they stand a good chance of getting government funding, academic attention, all that jazz. The problem with this is that they aren’t actually contributing to our knowledge of whats happening in a useful, “we care about helping gamers” sort of way. They’re not distinguishing these different kinds of “addiction” that you mention.

Instead, they’re probably causing more harm then they are good. When we focus on stuff like addiction and violence, what we’re ultimately doing is playing on the fears of a society that largely doesn’t understand gaming. A lot of them are all too happy to write off gaming as something for weak-willed addicts and violently troubled children. We need to move the focus to what you’re talking about - how much of this is chemical, and can games pull in and addict otherwise healthy people?

While I truly embrace anyone willing to step up and research game addiction, I’m torn on whether this stuff is going to help us in the long run. It could bring funding to the area, but is that funding going to help?

There’s too much good stuff in your post, Andrew, but I don’t want to make a TLDR. Thanks again for the post.

It seems like FPS addictions are being overlooked or ignored in favor of MMORPG addictions, and that while MMORPG addiction has a lot of ties to social avoidance issues or ego trips and are easily written off as such, FPS addictions have more to do with the action and adrenaline.

Authors are taking special care to disassociate video game addiction from an actual drug addiction but the fact is our brains produce chemicals in response to stimulus, and FPS video games provide a particular stimulus to create a particular chemical in our brains, and that it’s the kind of chemical people crave more of at the expense of other rewarding hobbies that don’t have the same effect.

Maybe the same effect happens when people play sports but atleast it causes excersize and has practical limitations, such as the sun going down or getting tired, but with a computer there aren’t as many limitations. The rush keeps me wide awake long after I’d normaly be tired.

When characterizing video game addictions I think people have to consider that there are different forms of video game addiction, and that some types aren’t so far removed from drugs.

That’s here, if you missed it: http://neilsclark.com/archives/108

Something that I’ve been getting more and more worried about is general gamer health. Nobody’s really talking about it. We’re getting into the intimate details of Karazhan and our PS3, but nobody’s really figuring out how gamers can play AND maintain their bodies.

But I’ll leave that to a full on post (and maybe an indulgent rant).

If you were to go see a therapist (which, if you’re honestly worried about your play, you ought to seriously consider) - then the first thing they’d look at is whether you’re functional in your life. It sounds like you’ve got a job, but is everything really well-squared away? Like, have you bathed in the last week? Then, over time, they’d work with any other side-problems which you might have. If you look here:

http://neilsclark.com/archives/106

You’d see that most therapists believe that most serious addicts have serious underlying problems: depression, bi-polar, whatever. I’m not convinced that a gamer ALWAYS has to have those problems, but with a completely out of control gamer, I’d tend to agree. And with those crazed and self-destructive gaming fiends, taking away the gaming isn’t always the best choice.

Gaming sits in this grey area - it’s not exactly just entertainment. There are people to please, and dramas to avoid. That can keep a person playing, even if they’d really rather spend some time looking for a job. This became most apparent to me when in a recent gaming binge I found myself unable to focus on the Late Show with TV’s Craig Ferguson.

And I like that show! In fact, I realized that I liked a whole lot better than my current game of Civilization.

Man I could turn this into a huge tirade…

But I won’t!

If these comments sparked something for you, then good. If not, feel free to post more. And good luck Iain.