Craig Ferguson, and my own recent gaming problems
The people around me know that I’ve really taken a liking to television’s Craig Ferguson. This is a funny, funny man. Clearly a fake Scottish accent, but we’ll forgive him that. Since the start of the new year I’ve been having some bad experiences with gaming: endlessly grinding in World of Warcraft and playing Civ 4 for 19 hours straight. Certainly not the worst ever, but I tend to be hard on myself since I’m trying to write a book on “game addiction.†I originally watched this clip when it aired, over a week ago. It inspired me to refocus, and to write the earlier post, “Does it have to be cold turkey?”Â
Still, Craig says it better. I’m very serious, this video starts out slowly, but is worth watching.
I kept telling myself that I could learn to manage my play, but it just wasn’t the case. I realized that each attempt was an almost involuntary play at getting more game time. The same thing happens in the mind of a recovering alcoholic. Craig remembers when he heard about the new 100-something calorie Guinness. He thought, “I should go on a diet!†I hear about an honor system revamp and think, “I should get a high warlord dagger!†If you really have a certifiable problem, then the consequences are pushed to the back of your mind. You’re don’t think about the bitchy adolescents, the painful grinds or seeing sunlight at 6am after a 22 hour gaming session – you’ve got a thinking problem, and your brain is desperately trying to convince you to play.
Don’t think that I’m anti-game. I’m not. Gaming isn’t the same thing as ingesting or injecting drugs. Games can and often are used to self-medicate, yes, but they’re fundamentally a form of entertainment and expression. We need people with the vision to create alternate realities, like in games; otherwise we’ll always be living in the same boring world. Games, books and movies inspire people. They’re a driving force in struggles against racism, hunger, poverty, and other ills that arise naturally in the human condition.
And, of course, addiction is one of those problems. I don’t think that we can blame the people making the game (unless, of course, we’re talking about Rockstar Games – those guy are bastards). And I don’t think that we can blame the form. Games might be all about sex and violence now, but they’re bound to progress. Just look at the movie and television industries. The big culprit here is a lack of understanding. Society in general has a bad understanding of both games and addiction. We don’t get games, so we fear them. We have this perception that addiction is a lack of morality, and easily cured by a stint in rehab. Like Craig said, that’s horseshit. I’m sorry if I offend, but it’s the blunt and honest truth. I’ll pull the expert card – addiction is a complex mix of factors, and it’s different for everyone. Sobriety isn’t just about a month or two in rehab. Sobriety is a lifelong affair.
People recovering from an addiction need something. Get away from the computer if you can. If, like me, you’re stuck spending all day writing a groundbreaking and insightful book about videogame addiction, then use your familiarity with computers to your advantage. Personally, I’ve actually started using the gym down the street. Since I am tied to my computer, however, I chose to transform it into an exercise machine. This last week I downloaded 8 minute abs (an excellent program). I’ve also grabbed language learning CDs, books on tape, and movies that I’ve been putting off for ages. Michel Thomas has my favorite language learning CDs for French, Italian, German and Spanish – I’m not as fond of Pimselur or Ultimate for language learning. Rosetta Stone can be helpful, but personally I could only use it after I was at least a little familiar with a language. There are also all kinds of relaxation, hypnotherapy, and self-help materials out there. If gaming really doesn’t work for you, then take my advice; there’s a whole world of other options out there. You can start to pursue them right now.
More than any of it, if you really do have a problem, then find support. Like I say in the cold turkey post, and Craig Ferguson says in the above movie, recovery is a lifelong process. A bad recovery program will say, “well done, off you go!†Finding a consistent friend works, and it doesn’t cost a thing.
Neils Clark :: Mar.01.2007 :: Games ::
I think you are right. Great insight.
Thank you, Chuck. I appreciate it.
Very good post, very good link. I have spent 1.5 years in WoW, deeply sumberged but never “really” addicted, as I found the pull was the fun factor, and my mind automatically thinks “hat next”, thus the gear grind just never happened because my mind couldn’t see the point of amassig virtual stuff. I could just walk away from the game with no more than a sour feeling in my stomach as I remembered a guild feud. Having left WoW, I am still thouroughly interested in people playing WoW, and people leaving WoW and their respective experiences. A book about these experiences, an analysis of how exactly WoW fools our minds and pulls our attentions, would surely be interesting. I have spent a rather large amount of time analysing my only subject — myself, trying to catch that elusive feeling that made me play the game, and apply it to what others tell me. WoW is a very, very intriguing way of finding out just how our brain works. It’s not a chemical that our body reacts to and gets addicted to; it is a series of visual inputs that our _brains_ react to, and this is the reason I find it so much more interesting an addiction than other chemical addictions.
What does WoW trigger in our brains that is so utterly compelling that we forget the world around us? The fake achievements? The “collecting” instinct? The dress-up instinct? The group feeling? How is our brain filling in the gaps so that the guild feels as important, or more important, than our friends? Are there external reasons? Is the world around us so complicated that a WoW server feels more at-home and cosy? Do we feel so anonymous in a world of 5 billion people that we flee to a smaller one? Are we so lost in all the choose-yourselves in the real world that a world of eight selectable professions is preferable? Or is everything aspects inherent of the game itself? Can people in small village-societies get remotely adicted to WoW, or is it just a huge city phenomenon?
You touch on some of the really key issues, Zimeon.
There’s the brain issue. Real addiction. The game might stimulate someone’s brain in just the right way… that they physically do start to need it. Other people can play 2-3 hours, three times per week. They’re great at monitoring themselves, so they’ll never let it get out of hand.
But the brain issue - whether or not someone is really addicted - it connects to areas that we’ve never really seen before. There’s the post that I made yesterday: could we be addicted to sitting? Nutrition and diet are important, often neglected things (especially when we’re raiding).
Could the deep emotional parts of our brains confuse playing a game with real experience? I explore this in a couple articles, linked in my papers section, with an idea called, “media experience.”
But aren’t games like Warcraft, in a new kind of way, real?
These worlds are becoming less and less fake. One researcher found, a few years ago, that Everquest (the WoW equivalent at the time) had a higher GNP than many of the poorer countries in the world. There was more money in EQ’s economy than in a real country, filled with real people. More recently, a cool guy named Thomas Malaby has said that these worlds are ongoing (they’re available to play most of the time), and starting to incorporate more elements of our everyday life. There are real people, fighting us or selling items in unique ways.
In some ways, we really do leave the real world, a “primary world,” and enter one of a few, “secondary worlds,” like WoW, or EQ, or CoH, or Eve, PotBS, and etc. etc.
And these worlds are all kinds of easy. It’s not just easy to select from a short list of professions or classes. It’s easy to mine 5 tonnes of iron ore, then heft it through jungle and desert to a place where you can smelt it down. There are a hundred prohibitively difficult things that just require a click or three.
>>Can people in small village-societies get remotely adicted to WoW, or is it just a huge city phenomenon?
My friend Aaron actually went to Southeast Asia to study kids playing MMO games, like WoW or EQ. He asked them, “If there were a MMO world which perfectly re-created the real world, where would you play?” They said that they’d play right there, at home.
I am positive that our brain confuses playing a game with a real life experience, at least in matters of pure feeling, and for a while. It’s very true that the MMOs are real in a fashion – the feelings the game triggers are indeed very real. One could picture a person who by some reason or another is economically independant, sitting in a room all day, playing the game, having his food delivered there, and being perfectly happy with having all human interaction and feeling of success via the game. But if wouldn’t work.
If the game had a more direct interface, not only a screen and a keyboard and mouse, but also could stimulate our nerve system, the illusion would be perfect and I guess nothing else would be needed. However, as the interface is now, reality is bound to catch up with us. Whereas some could go through life without a human touch, most can’t, and no matter how many emotes, our bodies will after a while realise that the game is as empty as artificial sweetener, and start craving for a real human touch and look in the eye. And in order to get that, as we know, you have to tackle, and learn how to tackle, the real world. Which is why WoW is ultimately an illusion, and an incomplete illusion at that.
My current thought on the WoW problem is this emotional trigger the game pulls. These touch something very basic within us, and those who get hopelessly hooked are probably those who simply cannot trigger this with the real world, thus they start to physically need the only thing that can give them the kick of happiness – World of Warcraft. What I find most interesting now is not so much why WoW managed to trigger these things, but why the real world fails to.
MMO games may not allow us to touch, feel or taste some objects, though I do think that they stimulate a host of physical responses in us. During PvP, a lot of players have reported that their bodies prepare for real combat. With big auctionhouse sales, or big gear drops, some people become far more excited than if they’d just gotten a RL pay raise at their RL job. There are limitations to the range of stimulation possible, but it’s certainly there.
And a desire to play may be linked to a game’s ability to satisfy a variety of needs, you’re right there. My research showed that most players at the endgame had unique preferences. Even of those fit into the “addict,” category, no two had exactly the same set of preferences. A lot of them displayed a preference for goal-oriented raid guilds (these were predominantly PvP guilds in DAoC, as I understand it). Still, every player seemed to be looking for something tailored to them. We all learn unique play styles.
mmmmmm intresting.
Well, i admit im a major WoW addict, I can only play it every other weekend (visitations to my dads) but i play it constantly then. miss movies, miss tv, miss driving paractice time, ext cuz im too busy playing.
However, if i had unlimited access it wouldnt be as big an issue. Sure I would probly play it more then I should, but I have no problem logging out and reading a book/surfing the web/ext. Many of the things people report missing b/c their on the game, i dont want to do weather im on the game mor not, so no biggie.
Can people be truely addicted? Sure, but their morons, and they useually end up getting whats coming to them. If someone can become obsessed enough with the game that the dont eat/sleep, then i can’t say I feel sorry for them when they kick the bucket…..
Becoming “truly addicted,” in my view, doesn’t have much to do with someone’s intellect or moronhood. It’s a matter of nature and nurture. Everyone has a unique brain chemistry and upbringing/history, and sometimes this nature and nurture can rob somebody of their ability to choose whether or not they play.
You don’t feel sorry for somebody who doesn’t eat for a day, gets no sleep or poops their pants while playing? How about the person who totals a new BMW, the guy who loses his wife and kids, or the lady who loses a really nice job? We don’t have enough research to say that it’s JUST a gamer’s fault, or it’s JUST a game’s fault. Even if we did fully understand gaming addiction, and could scientifically blame gamers for being morons, I would still very much feel sorry for them.
This perception is hurting people. Some people can binge, and it’s not a problem for them. These people have balance in their lives, and they’re self-aware. Some people want to play less, but can’t. There are a thousand different reasons for someone to start playing badly, and having this problem is completely legitimate.