You could also roll into the analysis people who play games with the sole intent of trolling other players. This could include chat harassment, using in-game items to mess with other players participation, AFK and ragequitting in the middle of group queues, exploiting bugs, hacks and cheats mainly to annoy others, and a host of behaviors that don’t improve game play but disrupt others’ enjoyment of the game. Lots of MMORPG players I know have zone chat muted because of all the asshats that frequently take it over, and prefer to run missions with players they already know or have vetted.
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I don’t get it - the addictive behaviors seem to be gambling; by bringing video games in general into the issue just seems to confuse things (as the whole “video game addiction” has been debunked).
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Debunking…yeah, I’m doing debunking right now.
I have an addiction to Rocket League, two years and going strong, BEST JOB I EVA HAD!
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I know, right? Every time i feel like quitting it pulls me back in. I wish i could quit you, rocket league.
Loot boxes are an absolute foul stain on gaming at the moment but as long as gamers keep pumping their cash into them publishers will have zero incentive not to put them in. So kudos to gamers for getting those money grabbing bastards EA to change their model for battlefront 2 - the only free choice is the refusal to pay.
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Aside from hype driven and unsystematic DSM-creep; I’d imagine that it gets a special category because it has no pharmacological component(unlike the usual addictions); isn’t as obviously connected to known-powerful human influences like sex and food; seems able to(quite possibly even the majority of cases) to occur in people without other obsessive or compulsive behavior; and often doesn’t even have a monetary component(except in the especially aggressive lootbox hells).
I doubt that gaming is unique in this; but it is not without some claim to novelty.
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It’s not just the lootbox/gambling aspect, video games are designed to be addictive… or, more precisely, they are designed in a way that enables addiction. Game design calls it “flow”: a state you actively want to engineer in players such that their immersion and enjoyment is at a level where they don’t stop playing for hours. Bad games do this through skinner box techniques, but even good ones do it through careful balancing of challenge and reward. A good game is made to be more satisfying than real life.
I may well meet some of the criteria for this, myself–absent other commitments (of which I have very few), I will play my games of choice for six, eight, even twelve hours at a stretch. Sometimes daily. If I don’t, I feel generally dissatisfied and antsy. The idea of having to fill my time with something other than games scares me. It doesn’t affect my work performance or social life (such as it is), but it’s not healthy. It’s also definitely comorbid with my depression and anxiety, and I would say that people with similar mental health issues are definitely more likely to be affected by the addictive side of games–when your brain isn’t working in a way that allows you to be happy in your life, anything that feeds you regular pellets of accomplishment and satisfaction (as games are designed to do) can easily be a bright spot you wind up clinging to and not knowing how to let go of without professional help.
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Games are definitely designed to keep us playing:
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QFT. Also, RE: depression and anxiety: games are vastly less stressful(though, on a bad day, picking up a new game, rather than grinding on a familiar one can be embarassingly difficult).
Games give you such nice, discrete, tasks to accomplish; with the implicit understanding that, if a task is assigned, it is possible(or a setpiece/setup for the real task); and that you’ll get nice, precise feedback on how it went.
Real life…not so much. Even if your circumstances are such that your external problems are pretty minor; they are rarely so neatly packaged or precisely scored as game challenges; and it isn’t exactly uncommon for the real life challenges to be substantially less hopeful than their fictional counterparts.
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She is our great sweet mother.
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Should the term have been recognized soon after golf was invented?
I remember talk amongst psych profs back at school, they speculating on whether or not the medical establishment should do away with the term “neurosis” since neuroses were so pervasive amongst the general population (i.e., having a neurosis of some kind is normal, therefore…)
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Screw video games, those have minimal impact upon society. How about “gaming disorder” for people in finance?
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I remember a couple of years ago, it was all the rage to talk about using game mechanics for retail/sales. All the hooks that get gamers are basically applicable to any kind of systematic relationship.
Coming soon: Groupon loot boxes.
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Not directly, in the UK’s case.
In the 1970s the releasing of patients was meant to be limited to people with conditions that don’t need constant observation. They would get a council house if they needed one, visit their psychiatrist once a month for check-ups and get other help from social services. The savings would then be used to fund better care for the in-patients who couldn’t leave hospital.
This would have worked great if Britain hadn’t gone on to elect Maggie’s Tories a few years later. The old council houses are sold off, no new council houses are allowed to be built and cuts to NHS and social services budgets meant that “care in the community” stopped being about care.
From the article you linked to, it seems that something similar happened in the US.
The lesson to be learned from this is don’t try to make savings so you can fund new things that work more efficiently. Some conservative/reactionary will just come along and decide you don’t need that money anymore then take it away from you, leaving you in a worse position than when you started. It’s a shit lesson, but it is sadly necessary.
Maybe one day the right will become aware enough to realise that they are shooting themselves in the foot, but I doubt it.
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Diagnose, recognize, financialize, trade ratchets, profit, repeat. Pretty soon you have an informed electorate…er, LOC firehose full of organized corruption.
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