This is made worse in my mind for games that are essentially single-player yet have some sort of online element that means you cant just hit pause or save & exit whenever you want. You have to keep on going for longer than you want until it is "safe" for you to stop.
In the old days you could just exit out to the pause menu or save so you could go to the toilet or answer the phone or talk to your family and your in-game activities were safe. You could pick and chose when and how you wanted to play.
Now you cant stop when you want, because if you do you'll just be left "idle" in-game. This means that you're prey for other players or NPCs in game, and you risk losing your character's progress and you're back to the start (sometimes there is a significant time-investment to this progress so understandably you dont want to risk it). You can only stop when you get to some sort of safe-place in-game, which means you have to play longer than you want to.
So you get situations like where if I am playing a game and my wife asks me to come and see something or make a cup of tea or something, I have to ask her to wait until it is "safe" for me to stop. I feel like I am prioritising the game over my wife (and I guess I am to an extent).
I dont like this.
I really wish games would allow you to just quit whenever you want without risking your in-game progress.
There are tens of thousands of games you could be playing, and only a fraction of single-player games have anything like this. If you don't like the small fraction that do, choose other games. I can't even think of any single-player game off the top of my head that I can't pause or save and quit progress at any time.
In dark souls you can quit any time you want save for when you're being invaded. And you can get rid of invasions by playing offline, or leaving yourself in undead (or unkindled) form.
Dark Souls doesn't quite fit the above complaint because you can save and quit whenever you want, including in such bizarre circumstances as falling to your death (you'll load on the last safe ground you stood on) or in the middle of combat (enemies will be reset when loading).
> I really wish games would allow you to just quit whenever you want without risking your in-game progress.
I love how the Nintendo Switch allows you to pause any game, any time immediately. Even during load screens! And you can suspend the console. Although I don't know what happens when the battery runs out.
I which they would enforce something like this for PC/steam games. But of course it won't help much with online "real-time" games.
> Although I don't know what happens when the battery runs out
What you'd expect- you lose any unsaved progress. Some games have autosave, though, so it's not like you usually lose a huge amount. Also, the battery life in suspend mode is pretty long, IME. Generally several days at least.
I get what you mean, but I have "strengthened my will" against this, I suppose.
There are games like the Dark Souls/Bloodborne series, where you can "quit" anytime, and if you restart, you are in the exact same spot as before. In the worse case, you get killed by roaming enemies/other invading players (it's mainly a single player game with multiplayer elements) - but I die in these bloody games anyway, so I don't care so much. I rationalize it by saying that all you lose are some in-game "souls" (currency) - so yeah I go make that tea for the missus.
In games like The Division/Battlefield 4, where you are part of a multiplayer team and trying to complete a "mission/quest", it's a bit more difficult. It's annoying for the other players if you bail out or go AFK (Away From KBD). So you have to pre-book your game time in short batches ("I'm doing this mission - 45 minutes"). Of course you can leave if you are playing with strangers. Usually the games automatically pull another online player in.
Most other games I play are single-player RPG's (e.g All Bioware / Bethesda RPG's e.g Dragon Age, Skyrim etc) allow you to save or pause.
I can't remember anymore, but even in WoW it wasn't that big a deal to just bail out when needed.
This isn't a new thing though. When the SNES Classic came out I picked one up because it had Secret of Mana on it. I completely forgot about not being able to just turn off the game when I want to stop since the only way you can save is by staying at an inn. I honestly haven't played a single player game that came out in the past 5 years (other than Secret of Mana remake) that would prohibit me from stopping whenever I want.
My big issue is multiplayer games (namely FIFA and Rocket League). If I just stop mid-game I lose rank, which means I may be stuck in a match longer than I would like to be.
I actually remember this being worse on games from the 80s and 90s because some of them didn't even have a save option at all (say River Raid) so you had to start over from scratch any time you stopped playing. Or games like Metroid or Zelda on the NES where you had to be at a save point or you'd lose all your progress since the last save.
Today it's always online games, if you're in the middle of a level/mission the only option you have is to quit which if it's a competitive game leaves your team at a disadvantage, plus some games penalize you if you habitually quit early. In some games, like BF1 or the recent CoDs someone can immediately come back in to take your place if you are playing in a casual game mode, but the more competitive game modes won't allow someone else to join (Breakout in Halo 5 for example).
Game companies optimize for sustained gameplay, often without ever thinking about the people that lie behind the bits. What you described is one of the best strategies there are. I see no counter force, other than regulation, that would prevent this process from just keep getting worse and worse.
You jump to regulation as the only thing to solve this? You could just not play those games. There's literally thousands upon thousands of alternatives that don't do this.
I would equate trying to regulate against "sustained gameplay" to trying to regulate/force timeouts in all basketball games, tennis games, etc. It's absurd.
I think vice laws aim to accomplish good but needlessly limit freedom. More importantly, I think comparing gaming to addictive substances seems very naive.
If people were all reasonable all the time we wouldn’t need laws that prohibit them from driving under influence, stealing or plain murdering people.
If excessive sports and exercise were a problem on any large scale, I would advocate for regulation, too. My feeling however is that people rather tend to need incentives for exercising at all, so I’m not holding my breath on that one.
Freedom is not absolute if you are living as part of a society.
I don't think anyone proposed imposing regulation on the consumer, only on the provider. There is a lot of regulation on that side already, and some of it is actually rather welcomed.
For example, if I compare the amount of advertisement that TV channels are allowed to show in Germany vs. in the US, I am certainly for regulation... (back when I still cared about television)
I agree on that comparison. Since I regularly consume an american TV show as part of a community, I get to see the ads too. For the 20 minute episode, there is 10 minutes of ads, just over 1 minute each 2 or 3 minutes, roughly.
The same episode on german TV has three ad interruptions. One 5 minute one in the middle, a overlay ad about 5 minutes before the end and a zoom out during the credits showing ads to the side (the later two circumvent the normal limit of ads per hour and spacing requirements.)
I think it's a poor comparison. Equating ads to playtime? Sure you can tangentially involve DLC as an "ad" but it's a big stretch.
Regulating length of ads is silly too. You can just purchase the show and watch it with no ads. Or don't watch the channel. Or watch different content.
Seems the above comments are generalizing to justify controlling media consumption. Regardless of which side regulation comes down on. I see a very slippery slope.
I don't see why regulating the length of ads is silly at all. Several countries have been doing it for many decades. It works really well and has not led to any slippery slope, and made television much better overall. I have direct comparisons available from living in several countries during my lifetime--do you?
The slippery slope has been going down the opposite hill, actually, in America: It's amazing how much less rights a consumer has in the US compared to, again for example, in Germany.
The "well just don't do/consume/choose X then" argument is extremely shortsighted. If X is provided by commercial entities, then those commercial entities will, together, converge towards maximum profits with no regards for the consumer at all. Regulation is necessary as a counteractive force. A prime piece of evidence actually comes from your own post: "Don't watch the channel". Ok, I switched the channel on my cable box, now what? Ah, still the same.
Slippery slope is not in regards to ad length. It's about the desire to regulate "sustained gameplay" mechanics in games.
You act as if the only media you can consume is via cable. There's virtually unlimited options in our age for media. The majority of it is free, not counting cost of internet.
X(media) is not provided by solely corporate entities. If someone wants to have a half hour ad(or infomercial) in their content, people will watch something else. It's shortsighted if there's a monopoly on X so your choices are limited. But that's the furthest thing from the truth in today's age in regards to media.
It's not really. The limited amount of adspace, about 10 minutes full screen and 4 or 5 minutes side, some banners, have greatly increased the value of ads on TV.
More expensive ads also means the ads are of much higher quality and less annoying than the US ads.
Buying the content is of course always an option but this is largely form an era before buying content was even an option or required extremely expensive VHS players.
My child enjoys Fortnite Battle Royale. I wanted to buy him Fortnite until he somehow got a free trial for a few days. All the loot boxes really put me off it.
But they are inherently addictive (as in, they are meant to be and it is widely known that they are). You generally want to limit children's exposure to addictive things that bring them nothing at all. It's their formative years, after all.
Why doesn't someone form an NGO or non-profit that assigns addicictveness ratings to games? These things can easily be quantified and labeled in a way that parents could easily understand.
Do you have any examples of games like this? I know there are singleplayer games that require you to be online even when playing solo(i.e. Diablo 3), but when you're solo, you can still pause the game. Curious to know what developers don't allow such actions.
They're single-player in that you play on your own, but you play on your own with a lot of other people playing on their own. So you could be on a server doing your own thing, and if you see another character whilst playing, that could be a human person doing their own thing, or it could be a NPC doing their own thing (but with the option of interacting with other human players - chat/trade/fighting etc)
It is essentially a single-player experience but on a shared playing area.
If that makes sense!
Its kinda cool, but this forced you-can-only-quit-when-we-say-so thing is not cool. Why you cant just safely despawn when you pause or exit I don't know. I guess it is there for "realism"
Let's say your in a game with PVP, are you saying you should just be able to "safely despawn" to avoid a fight that you think you're going to lose?
Just because you personally have a problem with the way some games work doesn't mean every single game designer needs to shape their programs to your preference. If you don't like it, play a different game.
It's not that I hate it or the developers for implementing the mechanic. It's that it's not always conducive to a person in a relationship or with children. You can always dismiss the person as the problem by telling them to play something else, but clearly those people don't want to play something else.
We understand why (in some cases) you can't just quit at any time. Like you said, that means someone can avoid a PvP fight or a lopsided ranked match by disconnecting without repercussion. It sucks sometimes when you can't help but disconnect at the drop of a hat, and I don't necessarily think that those types of mechanics are the fault of the developers.
For example, I was playing a ranked match when my partner fell ill. They were making it fine for a while, but I was asking if we should go to urgent care. They flip-flopped multiple times on going over the course of 10 minutes. Then I plainly asked, "Do you definitely think that you need to go? I don't mind disconnecting to take care of you, but if I do and you decline, I'll get penalized for no reason." It makes sense that I would incur a penalty for dropping the match, but it still sucks.
The point is that if the developing company can find a way for quick disconnect that doesn't interrupt the spirit of gameplay, it would be a boon for a lot of players. I know that competitive/ranked modes are pretty much off limits for me during most of my play time, but that doesn't mean that I don't want to play against people who are trying their best.
Imagine it's kind of a shared singleplayer experience. You play a game by yourself against computer controlled enemies, but you might see notes left from other players, and the ghosts of their last moments. Later you can use special items to hop into a game (co-op) or invade a random player's game (pvp).
> 2. Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities
This needs to be further qualified, such as by "over extended periods of time". If you spend a weekend prioritizing gaming over other life interests/activities, it's no different than having a crunch week at work and prioritizing work over life interests/activities, neither of which should be considered a disorder.
Edit: This is shoddy reporting on TechCrunch's part, the official WHO ICD listing [0] qualifies it thus:
> The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning [...] The gaming behaviour and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.
"For a diagnosis to be made, the negative pattern of behavior must last at least 12 months: "It cannot be just an episode of few hours or few days," Poznyak said. However, exceptions can be made when the other criteria are met and symptoms are severe enough."
If you are rich and no need to work, you hire the servants for your daily meals, hygiene, excretion, and/or remainder for take some sleep, playing game all day long for everyday isn't a disorder.
In the US the university experience allows a ridiculously care-free existence for many students, temporarily. A while back a friend in university was stuck with a deadbeat live-in GF that he couldn't get to leave. He ended up getting a copy of GTA Vice City and focusing on it until she voluntarily left without a fuss a week later. The GTA franchise in general aren't extremely addictive games, but the negative impact of chosing to spend free time with a game as apposed to a GF or family can cause real problems.
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this.
As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't get enough sleep because I can't stop playing. As soon as I come home I am on, and I won't get off until the early hours of the morning. It's a mixture of reasons why I guess; it keeps my mind off of reality, I enjoy the satisfaction of winning frequently, and it fulfills my desire of being in a progression based system. Achievements, knowing that my actions will eventually unlock achievements and level-ups, it keeps me going. I can't play games that don't have progression systems of some sort because I feel like without progression, it's a waste of time. Sure you can kind of get that in the real world, but it's harder and takes so much longer. Why do that when I have an easy alternative sitting on my desk? I really want to break my addiction to gaming as it really does affect some parts of my life, especially academic.
Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit.
Games can be a fantastic story-telling medium, a competitive environment where you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents, a lot of pure fun, or a way to spend time playing cooperatively with friends. All of these can be worthwhile activities in different ways.
Grinding mindlessly to make some numbers go up is not worthwhile at all. Playing a game just for the progression that you wouldn't play otherwise is a sign of addiction and can have a substantial negative impact on your life. I love games, but some self-awareness about what they are actually doing for you goes a long way to making them a part of a healthy, productive life rather than something that destroys it.
- a competitive environment where you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents
- playing cooperatively with friends.
- Grinding mindlessly to make some numbers go up
All of those are different things that it's possible to enjoy. I would hesitate to say any one is more "correct" than the others, other than how socially acceptable they are.
>Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit.
That might be clear for you, but it's not for everyone. The way the OP describes his motivation for gaming sounds extremely similar to people with gambling addictions.
Self-awareness isn't enough for everyone. Some people are just wired to respond to that dopamine hit from progression systems in an especially strong, self-reinforcing way. They need more help and one of the first steps to that is endorsing more ethical game design that doesn't go so heavily into building addictive feedback loops.
Sadly, these people are effectively destined to be exploited by one thing or another. From crack rock to food or sex or anything else that they find enjoyable.
I'm not in the same boat as the person you are responding to, but I do play a lot more videogames than most people. I'm a huge fan of clicker games, because to me they represent the essence of modern life and I find that hilarious. What you call "nothing but an empty dopamine hit" is really just most things people find valuable in life.
For a lack of a better word, modern video games are increasingly "manipulative" when it comes to incentivizing players to play more, and without sounding conspiratorial, gaming companies probably benefit a whole lot from gaming addictions fueled by progression systems like you mentioned.
Compare that to classic games like Earthbound where an in-game character will bug you repeatedly to take a break if you play for too long. An extreme and nostalgic example, but mostly my point is that developers are much better at developing "hooks" in a gameplay loop that keeps a player going now in addition to games being way more stimulating.
> As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are
I appreciate that you're sort of equivocating here to preemptively deter the critics, but I'll take a stronger stance. Gaming is indisputably "addictive" in the layman's sense, even if people seem to get grumpy over using the term "addiction" for anything other than substance abuse. Regardless of what we call it, the detriment to daily life is similar.
I myself experience some minor form of game addiction: I played World of Warcraft about a decade ago, and even though I only played for two years and even though I was the furthest thing from a hardcore player (I never even got a character to max level, I just loved making alts), to this day I still get occasional and inexplicable cravings to play it. These episodes aren't prompted by anything I can perceive. It feels like a tugging in my heart, the same sort of ache you might feel when you watch a loved one suffering yet are powerless to help them. I've played a whole damn lot of games in my life, but that's the only one that I've ever jonesed for.
Same. It's the strangest thing - I watched porn from around 14 years old to about 4 years ago (when I was 22), and I had intermittent cravings until about a year later (23), when they stopped completely.
When I gave up social media (although I've since relapsed and am now back on it), I didn't have cravings for it after a while.
But with WoW.... I literally have a craving every couple months, without fail, even though I only played for about 2 years from 2004 to 2006.
With MMOs it might be the melding of an addictive feedback loop with actual socializing. Most WoW addicts I've met seem to have pretty tight relationships with their guildmates or in-game friends. You hear something similar from people who quit smoking, about how they miss the social aspect of taking breaks to go outside and chat.
After you quit smoking you can just still take breaks and go outside with your still-smoking friends though. After you quit an MMO it's really hard to get the same amount of social time with your former mates, especially if they still play.
Personal question I know, but do you have ADHD? I think there is a relation between motivation and 'wanting' dopamine 'infusions' that also plays into why people with ADHD might thrive in that environment.
Because people who don't play games think it's weird that others are interested in things they don't like. So there must be something wrong with them.
There's a good reason why many psychologists and psychiatrists were against the inclusion of this in ICD-11 and why the DSM5 does not list it as an officially recognized disorder either.
FWIR sex/porn addiction is a suspect concept for many psychologists just like "masturbation addiction" is. One wonders whether such ideas are based in psychology vs. social attitudes of certain people similar to the attitudes those who think "masturbation addiction" is a thing.
I’m told that the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) was created to help epidemiologists in different countries share data. It may be, and I’m speculating here, that it’s rather easy to get something added to it, as long as there are enough researchers somewhere in the world who want it added.
Someone here must know a little more about the process by which new things are added to the ICD.
Because there is no larger “addiction disorder”, and trying to create one would have a messy and complex definition compared to distinct definitions that happen to share some features.
Yet the same organisation that seems to care so much about giving every little addiction it's own name also lumps every variety of autism under the same umbrella term.
Each addiction clearly and openly differs in the object of addiction.
Whereas, with autisms, we don't yet know how to analyze symptoms well enough for there to be a bijection between set-of-symptoms and underlying-autism-variant; indeed, we can barely even separate autism's causes and effects, if at all.
The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling. Defining the disorder by the pathology rather than an obtuse collection of symptoms which have a tendency to overlap and merge might be too much for psychology, but it’s the scientific thing.
> The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling.
No, it doesn't. There seem to likely be some similar key mechanisms involved, but the shared mechanisms aren't the whole story, otherwise someone addicted to something would be addicted to everything.
We give different diagnoses for different allergies, even though allergies have a common key mechanism.
I don't think so, gambling is based on the risk/reward thrill, coupled with the fact that "if I just hit the big one, I can do other activity that I want to do, but can't afford". I don't feel like many people go into the casino like, "if I win it big at $5, I'm gonna go play 100 dollar a hand blackjack!"
Video games don't have that risk/reward in as nearly as a tangible sense. Though you could argue that games like EVE Online, where in game resources have a direct comparison to hard cash. Ie, you can grind up a capital ship in game, or you can theoretically purchase enough ISK (in game currency, about $11,000 USD in this case) to buy one outright.
Video games have less risk/reward, are focused internally, and have more greed and achievement. If I'm able to clear this raid, I'm able to get X, which will allow me to do Y in the same game, which will make it easier to attempt Z, etc. No one plans to play 5 dollar blackjack so they can play 100 dollar blackjack.
For what it's worth "Gaming" is broad enough to capture pretty much any 'non-chemical' activity that can be addicting.
There's a somewhat grey area between "Gaming" and "Gambling", but I think it's fair to consider "Gambling" a subset of "Gaming" where the games actually pay out money (or something of monetary value). This probably doesn't match the WHO definition though.
There are people that spend most of their available hours staring at screens of graphs while trading various tokens in order to achieve the highest score... but of course we call them professionals not addicts.
There are people that spend most of their available hours playing video games against other players to get the most kills, wins, ... but of course we call them esports athletes.
For some people it's a job that generates income for others it's an addiction that impairs proper functioning.
What I heard on the radio was "do you lose your job, lose your wife/family, yet continue to play?"
So what about the case where playing the game IS your job (which is a growing field?) What about the case where your wife/family is playing it with you?
I'm not denying there might be some underlying destructive problem, but to my layman ears it sounds more like something someone is interested in that contradicts what another believes to be "properly functional."
It should be: "do you lose your job, lose your wife/family, BECAUSE YOU continue to play?"
IE, instead of helping your wife do important things, you play a game. Instead of going to bed so you can wake up for work, you play another round, and as a result of not getting enough sleep, your performance suffers. Addiction is basically a mis-prioritization of resources due to abuse of brain chemistry. Worse, it is typically a feedback loop: "She left me, now I am sad, but the game activates my dopamine response, providing some semblance of happiness"
Trading on an exchange is zero sum for the active participants and has secondary benefits like increased liquidity and less volatility for the passive participants.
Gambling is negative sum for all participants. The house is always going to win. The jackpots are just a user acquisition expense to trick even more participants into playing.
> There are people that spend most of their available hours staring at screens of graphs while trading various tokens in order to achieve the highest score... but of course we call them professionals not addicts.
Not really, we call them workaholics (e.g. work-addicts) if they're so compelled to work that they can establish boundaries between it and the rest of their lives.
Do we? In some professions (eg. investment banking, medicine, corporate law, fashion, entertainment) long hours are so ingrained in the culture that the rest of the world doesn't even bother to call them workaholics, because it's exceptionally unlikely that anyone from the rest of the world knows them on a personal level.
I stopped playing mainstream video games last century when, after a 'quick network game of Starcraft and maybe a bit of Quake on a Friday afternoon at the end of the work week', I emerged from the dungeon we'd made at work for the purpose, only to discover it was Sunday morning, and more than 24 hours had gone by since any of us had even thought about what we were doing.
That was my personal wake-up call. Now I only play MAME games that require, max, 10 or 15 minutes of investment .. and then I simply stop.
I sort of miss the arcades of the 80's, which didn't seem to really propagate this addiction as readily as the current madness does.
Arcades absolutely did promote addiction, they just sucked at it compared to today's games.
In a classical arcade, you walk into a darkened room filled with animated CRTs and strange noises. They literally have blinders, designed to shut out your peripheral vision so the game is the only thing in your consciousness. When you die, you have 30 seconds to insert more coins and continue, otherwise you have to start all over from the beginning. Pretty much everything about this is designed to trigger your adrenalin-based threat-and-reward reflexes.
If modern computer games are more addictive, it's only because they've figured out how to trigger even more powerful primal instincts. MMORPGs and MOBAs add a social aspect, and very often a cumulative acquisition aspect (experience, gold, credits, etc). Simulations and worldbuilders like SimCity, Minecraft & Factorio engage our higher brain centers like planning and optimization. Mobile & casual games have figured out how to squeeze gaming into even smaller timeslots within our lives.
It's also interesting how gaming & gambling have converged. It used to be that a slot machine was a machine where you pulled a lever and tried to match up dials. Now you walk into a casino and it basically looks like an arcade, with lots of computerized gambling games on backlit LCD displays, while Internet games like CryptoKitties let you play & trade with real (well, fake) money.
> they just sucked at it compared to today's games
Games these days are far far more interesting than most movies, TV shows or other forms of entertainment. With photorealistic rendering coming combined with AR they might even override the need for exploratory travels outside pure relaxation stays (i.e. if you can visit Alaska/Antarctica/Japan/Petra/whatever with photorealistic graphics, would you really want to travel there? I guess you'd rather go to some beach or clubbing place to unwind instead)
I don't disagree with your premise about games being far more interesting than most other forms of entertainment, but I cannot take you seriously when you say that any form of rendering (no matter how photorealistic) can compete with being in a different place with different people. That is a complete experience, and would need to be simulated with far more senses and to a far higher degree than is currently possible to even come close to the experience that travel will give you.
In fact, I'd say that the "I'm here now and I can't be anywhere else for a while, I'm really stuck in it and everything is exciting and new" aspect of traveling really cannot be emulated by a medium that you know you can stop consuming at will, at any time.
For me, deciding moment was announcement of World of Warcraft at the turn of the century. I knew that game was going to be everything I hoped for, and that it'd ruin me. Even though I haven't actually tried it out to see if it's any good, life of my many friends was, from a personal judgmental perspective, ruined by it.
I had the exact same experience. I'd played a bunch of games online and some weak mmorpgs like Knight Online, so I knew without a doubt if I played Wow I was done for, as it would press every button I had. And after hearing from my friends how great it was and how much time they spent playing, my resolve not to ever touch it strengthened. To this day I've played many mmos and mmorpgs, but never Wow. How weird is the world we live in where games are actually mentally physically and psychologically DANGEROUS? Where rather than eagerly awaiting some new game we fear it? At least I'm not the only one, as selfish as that sentiment is.
And sure the case can be made for personal willpower, and it's my own fault for being too weak to play it without becoming invested. But as others have pointed out these games are made to addict us. They are custom talored crack for the brain. I've seen so many friends lose jobs, friendships, all kinds of relationships... and I've seen the same with literal drugs such as alcohol, crack and heroin. I hate to advocate for regulation but we need at least some protections here because when a gaming company's bottom line depends on how much time we spend in a game you can be sure they are going to milk us for every second they can,for the most part.
Very similar experience here. I played Anarchy Online in lower secondary school so much it started to affect my grades. I started upper secondary school at the same time as WoW came out, and even though everyone else in my class and my best friend was playing it, I decided to skip it.
When I started university, I was renting a house with a guy who basically sat inside playing WoW all day, didn't socialize much (other than us and our friends at the house) and didn't study much at all. Meanwhile, for the first time, I started being social outside the world of computers.
That year my grades took a hit from socializing and drinking instead, but I don't regret that. They recovered the next year and stayed good.
WoW really felt like a big threshold for gaming to me. I'd seen the same problems with Anarchy Online and other games, but nothing was close to the scale of popularity and level of addiction that WoW had.
Something similar happened to me...I stopped playing games when my girlfriend at the time cut the power breaker off to the computer room to stop my WOW binge. I had been playing for 36hrs straight.
When Everquest came out I watched the gaming group I used to play Warcraft and other games with turn into depressing addicts basically overnight. I’ve never played an mmorpg just because of how terrible that was to watch.
PSA: Playstation has a 'Family Management' feature where you can limit game time played on sub-accounts. You can set time limits per day and the action to take like auto-logout. It reminds the player as they get closer to being out of time.
I don't think we know the effects of modern video games on younger (aka developing) minds yet. Many of these games hire psychologists [0] to help engineer game play to keep people wanting to play because if they get bored and move onto another game it could be a loss. I don't think old school games like Zelda or Mario were engineered this way.
Think about a game like Tic-Tac-Toe and how after a certain age it becomes boring. Now add leaderboards, points for certain types of wins, customizable X's and O's, customizable game boards, avatars, seasons, etc. The game is the same but now you have multiple games encompassing the game of popular 'skins', points, 1-upping competitors, etc.
All 3 of the article's points could be applied to any hobby / passion driven profession.
Next up...
Guitar disorder
Karate disorder
Baseball disorder
Fast forward 10 years...
Someone coins the term "hobby disorder" after detecting numerous patterns of people wasting their life away on doing things they enjoy.
Fast forward 20 years...
Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and a few large tech companies took over everything).
<tinfoilhat>
Sounds like a good way to begin the journey towards even more income disparity between the 1% and the rest of us.
But there aren't many people (as far as I'm aware?) who forgo self-maintenance to play guitar more and more. Games are uniquely positioned to get someone hooked in the same way that gambling is, because modern games are so well optimised for triggering dopamine release. It's certainly fuzzy, but there's a line between "I do this thing in most of my spare time because it's my passion" and "I neglect important aspects of my life because I'm spending so much time doing this thing".
I think so. I was really addicted to playing the guitar when I was younger. You get that same dopamine release from learning a riff or finally getting through a solo without messing up (which you may end up trying 100 times in a row). Then once you pull it off, you do it again, and again and again because it feels good.
The same thing happens with any skill based activity. Like learning a 120 move form in Karate, or pitching a no hitter (where every single time you prevent a hit, you get that hit of dopamine), etc..
Or programming where you might spend 15 hours a day consumed with it, forgetting to eat, etc., where you might get hundreds of dopamine hits during that time frame. Each one being triggered by your app doing what you wanted it to do.
Some people have a ridiculous amount of determination and will not give up until they do what they set out to do. It doesn't matter if it's a video game or not, the activity will consume them. Video games just make it easier for more people to get addicted, but that deeply rooted dopamine cycle will affect you no matter what you do. If video games didn't exist, you would find something else.
This is really funny. How much have you "innovated" while gaming? You are living under the thumb of entertainment media already. You're trapped in your time waster instead of innovating.
Everything is a time waster until you know, investments pays off. Playing an instrument is a time waster until it turns into something you can market. Its difficult to judge future benefits of current actions.
> Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and a few large tech companies took over everything).
Dumb question here: why is not having to feign passion for every single corner of technology (just to even get a chance at a foot in the door at each particular company) a bad idea?
I started playing Starcraft and watching it about 2 years ago. I’ve always had an obsessive mind and had stopped playing games since high school. It’s reached a point where I almost dedicate every free moment to playing. Games are incredibly addictive and it can be hard to stop. Back when I didn’t play I never understood why people play games so much. Games used to be only for geeks and boys but now everybody plays them. They are addictive and I think it’s a growing problem.
Starcraft and RTS is general is a great game that rewards higher-level strategy thinking, attention management, and a number of other skills. Becoming proficient is no joke, and pros need to spend more of their time practicing than traditional sports because there is less of a physical tax from practice.
But it's just like any hobby. If it's not your profession, you need to make sure you're not putting your long-term health or the health of your relationships or other responsibilities aside just for quick shot of pleasure or adrenaline.
For Starcraft specifically, I've probably played 2k hours of SC:BW and maybe 3-4k of SC2, so I'd agree it is no joke and practicing is quite important. I managed to reach the top 2% of MMR by grinding out numerous games (as Zerg, FWIW), averaging 2.5 h/daily at my peak. I would practice economy/production (macro) and build orders outside of my matches, then bring those in to the competitive 1v1 ladder and figure out all the weird rush builds that needed to be scouted for/prevented.
I actually am trying to cut out games, however, since I find the stress on the wrists/hands that comes with coding + piano + gaming to be too much. So, when push comes to shove, I just end up watching some SC pro matches these days, as opposed to putting my wrist health in jeopardy.
That's awesome! Reaching Master League in SC2 is quite an accomplishment. I did it myself with Zerg and then Protoss, but only barely and only in 2 seasons.
The high intensity, unreachable skill ceiling, and quick feedback loop of Starcraft really taught me how improving a skill needs to be an active process. You don't just get better by grinding out games (at least not efficiently); you need to study your own play, find weaknesses in it, and work on them methodically. Having that background has helped me in other kinds of skill acquisition.
Yep I've had the same problem with counter-strike, SC2 and LoL. All my mind would be devoted to the games and I'd live in a state of ignorance bliss about my career, building up networks, building up any skills whatsoever.
How about addiction to social networks, status updates, fake snapshots pretending one's having a dream life and for virtue signalling? Being glued to a smartphone for that is more profound than basement-dwelling gamers.
Why is suddenly some fringe gamer "epidemics" treated as more important (WHO level? seriously?) than vastly more prevalent smartphone-based social addiction?
As with anything run by a huge, unaccountable bureaucracy, some special interest group has no doubt done a more effective job of lobbying for this status. I'm sure monies will be allocated, etc, etc.
If the WHO hasn’t started looking at social networks and the like, it’s just a matter of time. Why should there be a hault in studying the effects of games just because there hasn’t been enough studies on social networks and phones?
Why is every researcher treating addiction like it's bad behavior that needs to be avoided in order to be cured, instead of researching ways for humans to keep on getting the satisfaction, while curing the side effects?
(I know "curing the side effects" sounds bad, but it's basically what we want).
It may not be possible. Addiction is a disease of our systems governing attention and motivation: Normally those systems should adapt so that we pay attention to those things which are most relevant to our long-term well-being, and so we are motivated to act in ways which sustain our well-being and success.
Addiction occurs when a pattern of exposure to an acute stimulus activates our reward system in such a way that our attentional and motivational systems are subverted to cause us to seek out more of that short term reward, at the expense of our long-term happiness.
The "satisfaction", as you put it, is the subjective experience of that overwhelming, system-breaking reward signal. To get that experience without the resulting behavioral consequences would require us to fundamentally augment how reward affects the brain. It's doubtful it's possible to do that with addictive stimuli without causing wide-reaching effects on general learning and adaptation.
Sounds like a "happy pill" compared to which any other reward mechanisms pale in comparison. Or, in the opposite direction, a "sad pill" compared to which no reward mechanisms can work.
True thanks for pointing that out. I'm addressing this as a self identified video game addict. I feel that pull to play in my brain every day. I just try to not live in denial telling myself that spending all my time gaming is a healthy and constructive way to spend my time.
I've seen this behavior in my peers and in myself. Almost always among the addicts like myself you get two responses. "Yea no doubt lmao" or an exhaustive list of other addictions like television, cigarettes, Facebook, etc. trying to rationalize it to you and themselves. I'd like to point out in these cases it is far beyond a hobby. It is self-destructive. Going a day or more without eating or sleeping. Pulling an all-nighter because you just cant seem to get away from it. I've literally seen league of legends ruin a friends future because he couldn't study over getting in just-one-more-match. In my perspective video game addiction is an undeniable truth. And those vehemently opposed usually have a self-image interest in opposing it.
That’s fair, but at the same time, nobody can diagnose addiction over the internet. There’s just too much critical context missing.
On top of that, as someone who has gaming as their primary hobby, seeing questionable armchair diagnosis brings back to memory shades of the anti-game hysteria that plagued the late 80s into the 90s. The feeling is decidedly “oh god not this shit again”. I’d be willing to wager a lot of the “Nintendo generation” that grew up on games is going to have a visceral reaction to what appears at first glance to be another attempt at demonizing them and what they do for fun, let alone the developers.
Put another way, if Tetris had been released today, I’d expect people to start banging on about addiction and how the developers are doing something wrong by releasing something so "adddictive". That deeply annoys me.
It's not the fact of calling shenanigans; it's the vehemence with which it's being done.
There's an inflection point beyond which "[he] doth protest too much, methinks" becomes at least as parsimonious an explanation, if not moreso.
EDIT: Not to say that's happening here, specifically, but ... gestures around there's definitely some emotionally-driven reaction to this idea, amongst (and probably also behind) some of the criticism.
Nowadays that society is more liberal in its acceptance of nonconforming behavior, referring to addition is one of the most effective ways of getting general acceptance to curtail people's freedom, so it's no wonder that people react with alarm.
The vehemence might be due to the silliness of the idea as well as how it is an outgrowth of cultural attitudes people have towards gamers, not just denial.
Don’t draw conclusions about peoples aggregate behavior based on comment threads. I don’t disagree that this topic touches a nerve for some people, but those people are garunteed to be over-represented here.
What about television disorder, Netflix disorder? BBC News seem to be implying that 20 hours per week is too much [1]. I feel like most people that watch TV/Netflix/Youtube etc. would easily watch more than 3 hours a day. They also claim that if you're putting too much meaning on your online friendships that this is a bad thing. For many, their online friendships are the only ones they have, or they will be better and will be longer lasting than their school friendships.
Which is hilarious. Because a single game of American Football is like 3 hours, and its "fine" to watch every game throughout a season, often multiple times a week.
Ehhh... no thanks. I'll stick to my games. Nothing against Football or sports, but DAMN those things are huge timesinks I don't personally want to be a part of. I generally just spend a few minutes reading the scores / major plays so that I can continue to have conversations with my coworkers (I do see the importance of smalltalk and being able to keep up socially, so that's the level I try to stay at with sports).
Spoiler alert: pretty much every hobby eats up a lot of time. I'm not convinced any particular hobby is better or worse for you, aside from health-mandated fundamentals (ie: a bit of exercise and time in the sun).
Through, if you say hello to them or ask them questions during that time, they will not yell at you. They don't demand to be tiptoed around like gamers do. They also don't swear loudly and randomly during that time at teammates. They are able to join family dinner preparation with everyone else - they don't do "just one more game" ad-infinity. They can tell when their favorite show ends when they want to not be disrupted, which is usually 20-40 minutes you in advance when it movie ends and you can expect them to join.
They are rarely seriously angry, excited and annoyed after watching TV, possibly with exception really involved sport match. That have impact to other people in the room, who shockingly, dont particularly enjoy dealing with that.
I like games, but gamers often feel entitled to behave the way that is considered rude in pretty much everybody else.
The problems you listed are absolutely issues with people watching sports as well, but have nothing to do with the subject material. It's a people problem and can be resolved on that level. Let's not pretend that this is somehow unique to gamers or sports fans or really any other involved hobby.
i expect Wikipedia Disorder as well for people who are too curious and read too much. So basically any deviation from the normal boring person is a disorder,says the thought police.
Yes, and anyone looking for help in managing their lives will get slapped with any such term and made to feel like deviants.
I've been "diagnosed" with all sorts of things. ADHD, ODD (obsessive defiance disorder), asperger's (ASD 1), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), and I'm sure I qualify for others. The thing is, there was always this search like that to look for what was the ultimate cause for my distress. And then, after all that searching, nothing came of it because I grew as a person. And I think there's a small thing there, which is that if you have a diagnosis, you have an excuse, and oh, you'll have loads of friends with similar diagnoses who will encourage you to whine and wallow in it and make excuses, and there will even be competition as to who is the worse for it.
Video games are fine for some people, but for nerd-like personalities they present far too great a temptation to supplant real life goal obtainment with virtual status/achievement. I think its helpful to make people aware of this tendency, and unhelpful to wave it away with a comparison to some more widespread non-nerd past-time like watching TV or sports.
> to supplant real life goal obtainment with virtual status/achievement.
If you achieve a world first in an MMO, that achievement is as real as winning a sports championship. Even if you don't do something with a competitive component, some gaming achievements are as real and can be meaningful to the individual as something like climbing a mountain that everyone has climbed before. I don't agree that it is any way helpful to just characterize games as some kind of fake activity that requires special attention. Other nerd-like activities would be anime watching and book reading. I would argue both of those have examples of extreme addiction.
The diagnosis criteria makes clear that the problem is when you start sacrificing normal life functions to get your fix. Lots of marriages have fallen apart while one partner was out playing golf. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on something, what separates a disorder from a hobby is when you are letting other responsibilities suffer.
The difference is temptation. Climbing a mountain is arduous. Addiction is not likely to be a problem. Even reading becomes kind of a slog. Video games are engineered to feel effortless and supply a constant steady buzz (or dopamine hit or whatever).
Being world No 1 in an MMO may be a real achievement, but for the millions of mediocre players, being a mediocre but persistent sportsman is likely to lead to far greater life outcomes as side effects. (And, again, physical limits stop the temptation becoming all consuming.)
How precisely do you define "nerd-like" personalities and what is it about them that is susceptible to having a "gaming disorder"?
I feel like there's not much that would separate a gaming disorder from addictive behavior in general. So much so, actually, that to grant a special term for a video game related illness comes off as a little ridiculous.
The essence of nerdiness is the elevation of the abstract at the expense of what's real, including the elevation of accomplishment in abstract domains (eg. video games) at the expense of developing social skills and progressing towards real life milestones, and the misunderstanding of social relations and social status owing to incorrect, reality-starved mental models. Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.
As another poster (always_good) observes, there is a huge observable difference between video game addicts and substance abusers. I would not expect nerds to be substance abusers, and I would not expect substance abusers to be video game addicts, but everything about video games, in their construction of alternative realities and virtual goals and online communities, is like a glove tailored to the hand of nerd-dom.
> Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.
You callin me a nerd, Tycho?
So, broadly, I can agree that a tendency towards escapism is what would make someone develop a "gaming disorder". And perhaps video games are the pinnacle of what our culture can offer as the richest form of escapism.
But I still don't think that's enough to draw a categorical line between the vices through which escapist tendencies become pathologized. It seems to me the solution to the mentation of escapism is to reinforce what you appeal to as "anti-nerdiness": pursuing meaning in a world you can (and do) fully occupy with the senses. And I agree there too.
Noting the bit at the end of the article about how terribly few people manifest a "gaming disorder" is what I'm not pleased to hear. Calling it a "gaming" disorder makes it seem like if you get rid of games, you've solved the problem. But obviously that's not necessarily the case, and so I think it's a useless distinction which potentially obscures the real issue.
If the WHO is making an indictment against the entertainment industry to formally warn against the ethical risks of making games which exploit escapist tendencies, that's fine. But I don't think there's actually much of a problem here that couldn't already be meaningfully identified as an addictive tendency.
While not all addiction is due to escapism, it cannot be escaped (no pun intended) that it can be a catalyst. What we as a society need to stop doing (same re opiod addiction for example) is stop labeling and treating symptoms instead of addressing the root causes.
Agreed. It's too arbitrary. The pattern of addiction is the same. The method of delivery doesn't matter.
In terms of marketing and supporting affected gamers, sure. But from a medical perspective, it's as arbitrary as classifying behaviors on Monday as somehow being qualitatively different from behaviors on Tuesday.
I'm not sure. When I look at video game addicts including myself in my late teens, I see someone who is addicted to credentializing in a virtual world. Maybe because everything is measurable unlike real life.
Doesn't seem like "addiction" alone communicates what's happening there.
That may be your experience but that isn't what others experience. It also doesn't match the ICD's definition either.
Credentials in most systems are useless outside of those systems (and even within them in certain cases). Some can be used to gain employment or other things but even those can be abstract and "virtual" in a sense.
I understand and agree with part of your point, but there is also benefit to showing how they are all the same.
Showing how this parallels the exact same dopamine addiction patterns as gambling, porn, and social media provides greater insight and understanding.
The addiction research (especially with gambling) is more developed and provides much needed context and background.
People are going to think oh, it's just video games, no big deal. When they understand they are behaving exactly the same as a gambler, that might trigger something in them.
From a chemical / psychology perspective the brain operates the same no matter the domain.
dis·or·der
noun
- a disruption of normal physical or mental functions; a disease or abnormal condition.
verb
- disrupt the systematic functioning or neat arrangement of.
- disrupt the healthy or normal functioning of.
Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities
So, we all have a code and/or computer disorder. gg guys, lets get on dem zombie pillz ...
'gaming addiction' would be better term. and then even ,the problem is being addicted, not gaming.. people get addicted to all kinds of shit. having a interest in something more than other things is normal. and call that a disorder is criminal.
It's vague because it's an individual case-by-case assessment, it's not something easy to simplify to a checklist, it's a spectrum.
Yes, if the increasing priority begins to affect other aspects of your life negatively it's a disorder, like any other addiction, don't get defensive because you can relate to the description of the symptom.
> Yes, if the increasing priority begins to affect other aspects of your life negatively it's a disorder, like any other addiction
Loads of people that have a passion for something, whether it be music, painting, coding, cooking, etc.. are experiencing a negative impact on their lives in some way. This seems very obvious to me. I play guitar and for many years I've practiced more than 10 hours a day. This had a very negative impact on my income to the point I had to stop to avoid becoming homeless. Is my passion a disorder because I don't make enough money with it? Are all successful musicians suffering a passion disorder? Should they quit making great music for the world and work for McDonalds living a depressed, and above all pointless life?
Some years later I started coding and a new passion arose. For years, and still today I code often more than 10 hours a day. Only now it positively impacts my income. Do I have a disorder? Do I need to stop and get treatment for being a passionate coder? I honestly think I'm quite lucky to have a passion for something that renders income.
I've played World of Warcraft for years, sometimes a real lot too. I have great memories of great times with my online friends. It is not something I will regret when my life comes to an end. I cannot play as much as I want because it will negatively impact my income. Should I regret now because I possibly have a 'gaming disorder', should I feel bad about the good times I had? Should I prevent others from having the time of their life? Should we not better ban eSports completely because too much gaming is bad? All pro players back to poverty, doing a stupid depressing job, but totally enjoying their 'disorder free' life?
This whole thing with trying to place a medical diagnosis on behaviors is too much. This is really no better than the old Greek humors theory where if you were sad, you had an imbalance of melancholy.
There are a bunch of human behaviors, many of which are destructive, for which we don't really have insight into the underlying bio-physical explanation. Without that understanding, we should not be turning them into medical diagnoses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't South Korean have Gaming/Internet Addiction Centers for those with "Gaming Disorders"? I remember seeing something about this from a eSports documentary some time ago. Unfortunately I don't remember name of it.
I was severely addicted to video games when I was a kid. My parents kept saying I was going to be a garbage man (ignoring the insult to garbage men) I don't think it would be the norm, but because of my interest in games I was interested in computers and here I am. I'm not like a top earner 1M / year AI developer or anything, but it definitely didn't impact my life. Now if my parents had taken me to some kind of "gaming disorder" center to get fixed, I would.. probably be a garbage man right now.
Taking you to an addition center would be an overreaction as a first measure. More sensible first steps would be to simply limit the gaming time, possibly by getting you to do something else for part of the day.
An important aspect of identifying new disorders or creating new diagnoses is that it facilitates access to treatment and services for those that need it.
That means that those few people that have serious consequences because of excessive gaming will have the right to get treatment covered by insurance.
As crazy as it sounds, I think I managed my gaming time by actually designing my own because the games i have been playing never satisfy me.
I usually get bored pretty easily, and there are no games that can really make me play for a long enough time because there is something that frustrates me about the game mechanics.
It's actually very satisfying to think about game design as a programmer, and to spot what can be improved in games i like so i might better enjoy playing and sharing them in the future.
Is obsessing over things related to real life like social ties, money, career, or anything else that will surely pass after you die a disorder? If it isn't then why not?
Because activities related to those things create sustained material security and personal fulfillment. Your efforts at building a strong network of friends pay dividends for decades, the equivalent amount of time playing video games has no bearing on your life a year from now.
All any of us have here are opinions, and yeah it’s my opinion that any time spent doing things that don’t lead to some better future state is the pastime equivalent of junk food: I eat junk food and enjoy it from time to time, but I also don’t ever make the mistake of confusing it with nourishment or trying to justify why it’s good for me.
I do not mind your opinion or way of life, but if I consider other things to be relevant, why can't I use my time to improve in them? Just as you do with the things you consider relevant? As long as the activity doesn't infringe on anyone's liberty why should you be branded as defective for engaging in it?
Besides, it is hard to pinpoint what a better future state means. Doesn't it mostly depend on what you consider important to improve?
It's certainly possible to build "a strong network of friends" by playing games. Many people game specifically for that reason, or at least a large part of it.
> As for career, workaholism is certainly considered a dysfunction.
Workaholism is praised by our culture. In fact, it's probably necessary for capitalism to function at all. Without that societal impetus I imagine everything would crumble.
As a 43 year old with two jobs and two kids, I found myself playing 500 hours of PlayerUnknown's Battleground in a few months. I had to uninstall the game.
Did you lose your job, destroy relationships with your family and friends?
Or did this merely replace 500 hours that would have been spent watching TV, Netflix or other types of entertainment?
The word addiction has a real meaning with some clinical ways for a trained person to diagnose somebody as having it.
I think of addiction more like alcoholism. Sure video games are engineered these days to be huge time sinks but that doesn't make it an addiction. If you can drop it (like you did) and it doesn't impact your life, its not an addiction.
I am self-employed (I actually run two small companies) and I sent some of my work days playing PUBG. Also I had less interaction with my kids and wife, and no other hobby really.
I looked at PUBG videos very often, sometimes live streams, at the office during the day.
I was thinking about PUBG all day long. It was bad.
I was just pointing out there is a difference between an actual clinical addiction vs. a really bad habit.
I know the feeling about gaming and have been in similar shoes. I actually stop myself and check if I am doing something out of habit or because I want to... and have found I want to do other hobbies more, its just the inertia to get over the habitual actions that is the problem sometimes.
The point that you dispute is the term addiction. You mention an "habit" for instance. My point is: video games can REALLY be an addiction even for older people.
I once had this problem. Especially when I used to work from home. The game was one click away from being opened. I used to play around 6 hours per day on weekdays and the whole day on weekends. I had to do treatment to get rid of the addiction, I really don't know how I didn't lose my job at that time. Although I ended up replacing it with other kinds of addictions, these new additions are way more subtle than the gaming and easy to manage.
I'd say the following points need to be made about "gaming" because the perception does not reflect reality when you play a videogame:
- the classical "neurotic player who doesn't like distractions and spends hours on VoIP getting angry at the game" is the reflection of a lot of the people who get into real-time multiplayer in MMORPGs or now games like Fortnite. This isn't quite how it stands for a lot of games, genuine one-and-done experiences like God of War or going back a bit to the Wii didn't have this continuous "one more" feedback or ridiculous length of content (3 hours a night raiding is tiresome and stressing for some people)
- The fighting game community has the oddity of gathering in large tournaments, building community on them and treating their games with immense discipline in learning to the point where others complain the barrier of entry to being "good" is too high. More than any other genre, fighters offer real-life experiences. E-sports is picking up on this*.
- Something to consider when determining the "why" of prolonged play is also the community or social aspect of the game. I play a lot of videogames, I admit, and one of the things that makes me commit a lot of hours into a game is when I can talk about it, talk to people in it, build a common interest and execute it. I live in a country where I speak my second language more than my first and hopping online to play in English is definitely some strong escapism. This is my experience, but so many people get online these days for the strong community tools (Discord, subreddits). It's primarily this aspect that makes me question any attempt to compare it to gambling/watching sports/binge watching movies or what have you. Gaming is built on a huge internet infrastructure because social features build long-time users.
I totally appreciate the definition of gaming disorder being sacrificing other healthy parts of life to continue feeding your need to play videogames but maybe this made sense if everyone was still playing the Super Nintendo (and even then we mocked it) but the world, and maybe it's just because enough huge corporations threw enough money at marketing to make it happen, has managed to genuinely change real-life because of videogames. This is far too dismissive.
Other posters mention this and I'd probably say that they refused to consult people in the game development industry/competitive gaming organizations/prominent players because they'd like to poison the well by assuming they'd never admit they have a problem (Although I suppose that might have to do with EA and the like refusing to have ethical debate instead of filtering us through an endless marketing machine, taking notes from Hollywood)
Side note: First post on HN after long time browsing. Feel free to rip this apart.
A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just being a bad parent.
Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.
> A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just being a bad parent.
That's just as true of lots of diagnoses of physical and mental conditions and injuries. (bone fractures and PTSD are obvious examples.) The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.
> Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.
The inherent differences between different subjects of addiction require some source specific variation, but various addictive disorders in either the ICD or the DSM do have generally similar criteria.
>The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.
You misunderstood me. The bad parent causes it by being there. If you removed the bad parent then there would be no problem.
One of the criteria (although not mentioned in this article) is that the person is having negative consequences happen in a family situation because of their gaming. A bad parent could cause these negative consequences by simply being a bad parent and as a result the kid could withdraw into gaming. With this disorder around the parent can simply blame the kid playing games without looking at their own behavior.
>A scapegoat for what?
For people who alienate those close to them, so that they can blame something else other than their behavior. If a kid wants to interact with their family then they will.
Absolutely ridiculous. The entire point of identifying a disorder and defining the mechanisms for diagnosis is so that we can create treatment plans to help people overcome these issues. You don't treat gaming addiction the same way you would heroine, alcohol, or gambling.
Yet more bullshit "diseases" invented by the psychiatric community to push drugs for their big pharma overlords. Doesn't the WHO have better things to do, like fighting real diseases such as malaria?
Everybody goes on little sprees of one kind or another during their lives.
Up next, "sudden love syndrome" ...the symptoms are about the same, aren't they? No, in fact they are exactly the same if you replace "your new serious romantic interest" with "video game".
And also, I remember being pretty addicted to D&D for awhile in my teen years, so we clearly need "RPG disorder" and better throw in "Board Game Disorder" for people hooked on Scrabble or Risk.
And who made you the authority on what constitutes a real disease? When I vanished from real life to exist almost exclusively within the confines of a virtual world, I surely would have appreciated professional help and the recognition that I'm not just weak but that I have a clinically diagnosable problem with clear steps on how to improve.
I am sure that there are many things one can criticize about this, from the diagnostic criteria to how our society generally handles what the majority considers abnormal behavior.
But calling this a bullshit disease is probably the most offensive way of making people who are dealing with it (however you define it) even more discouraged.
> For gaming disorder to be diagnosed, the behaviour pattern must be of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning and would normally have been evident for at least 12 months.
Everybody goes on little sprees of one kind or another during their lives.
Have you actually read what the WHO have said? They're not talking about about 'little sprees', they're talking about sustained patterns of behavior that stretch over at least 12 month and "result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas". This is not about people who occasionally blow off some social engagement so they can spend the weekend playing Counterstrike for 20 hours straight.
If it's not negatively affecting your life then, per definition, you're not covered by this.
Wow, at least one person on the same page as me here. I just don't care what people think..."addiction" to a game and the associated anti-social and possibly self-destructive behavior is just not a disease. Or, if it is, then the sky is the limit on what will be called (and yes, medicated) as a disease. And I don't like the trend...look at the stats, they are medicating tens of millions of children in the US alone for crap just like this.........
In the old days you could just exit out to the pause menu or save so you could go to the toilet or answer the phone or talk to your family and your in-game activities were safe. You could pick and chose when and how you wanted to play.
Now you cant stop when you want, because if you do you'll just be left "idle" in-game. This means that you're prey for other players or NPCs in game, and you risk losing your character's progress and you're back to the start (sometimes there is a significant time-investment to this progress so understandably you dont want to risk it). You can only stop when you get to some sort of safe-place in-game, which means you have to play longer than you want to.
So you get situations like where if I am playing a game and my wife asks me to come and see something or make a cup of tea or something, I have to ask her to wait until it is "safe" for me to stop. I feel like I am prioritising the game over my wife (and I guess I am to an extent).
I dont like this.
I really wish games would allow you to just quit whenever you want without risking your in-game progress.