Why do people become addicted to games?

[JDFP]

So, I'll start off by saying I'm not a gamer. Other than my computer I don't own any game systems. The last game system I owned was sometime back in the early 90s when I had a Super Nintendo. I've thought about getting a 360 or a PS3 and last year when I received my Christmas bonus from work I came close to buying the PS3 or 360 but ultimately decided to save some money and just get a stand-alone Blu-Ray player instead (far less expensive). I've just never really been into games other than occasionally playing with my cousins when I was younger but even then wasn't really into it that much. I'd prefer a twelve pack and three or four great films myself (or a really good book), but to each their own. :)

Anyway, I watched a pretty groovy documentary called "Second Skin" earlier tonight about folks that are out-and-out addicted to online gaming. I thought it was really fascinating but just blown-away by people that spend 10 plus hours (or more!) a day on online games. Some of these people have lost jobs, relationships, etc. due to their addiction. "Gaming addiction" is quite a bit like drugs or alcohol (drugs I wouldn't know, but the threat of too much alcohol is something I'm very aware of) to some people, and I became curious and know that there's quite a few people here that really get into gaming. I figured I'd ask, why do you all think that people become addicted to games? Is there a social-economic situation that makes some people more prone to gaming addiction? (people that are socially awkward but find release in a fake reality of games?); is there something inherent that drives some people more towards gaming addiction (just like alcoholism being a genetic trait that makes some people more prone to it?). I'm really curious.

I'm definitely an outsider on this subject as I have less familiarity and 'gaming' knowledge than I'd dare say any other person on this forum being that I don't have any systems or play any online games, but it's not because I have anything against it, it's just never been my thing really, but with not really understanding the nature of it at all it's made me even more curious so that's why I've come here to ask some of the more gaming-inclined people here for your opinion on the matter.

j.p.

[krakenslayer]

I guess with all addictions, it's really about reward. You drink and you get a buzz off it, you gamble and you win money, you play a game for hours and have a great experience. This happens the first few times you do it, and your unconscious brain begins to consider that action a guaranteed reward - like a rat pressing a button that drops pellets of food into its cage. After the behaviour is learnt, even if you take the pellets away the rat will keep hitting the button again and again and again, and so long as you drop a pellet in maybe once every fifty or a hundred times, he will never give up pushing the button. This psychology is how casinos make money: their machines are designed to pay out at a rate that's just enough to reinforce the "reward" in the user's mind, but just rarely enough that the user steadily loses money.

With gaming, the reward is having fun. If you're addicted and bore of the game after playing for hours and hours, I guess it stops being fun so much, but the behaviour is learnt by that time and so long as they have some kind of positive experience every so often, they'll never stop playing. They'll keep chasing the reward.

Obviously different people have different reward thresholds and therefore are less inclined to addiction.

[blind2d]

Interesting theory, but... I think the genuine entertainment value should also be considered. My best friend is a WoW head, and whenever he's not in class, eating, or sleeping, he's playing WoW. This leads me to believe that either it's actually fun for him, or he's just gotten so deep into the habit that even if it weren't he would still feel the need to do it. I myself have also gotten into the habit of gaming, but I use a Gamecube or Nintendo DS. And it's kind of unusual but I only play about four games total regularly, so it's not just the gaming itself but those games in particular that I am addicted to. I don't think that either my friend or I are harmed by playing these games, since we have some sort of control over it, but some people don't have that control, and while this is understandable to me, I still find it very sad.

[Danny]

Ive seen second skin, it showed a very skewed portrayal of videogame addiction. There was more worst case scenarios talking than anyone with an education giving any factual evidence behind it.
It was entertaining enough for a documentary but very far from the truth in any way shape or form.
By and large video game addiction is the easiest form of dependancy to diagnose, because its the most obvious form of escape, particularly in mmo's, where the problems of the real world dont exist and you can be some grand champion of justice or whatever that feels like it has much more of an impact and therefore a value than there actual lives.
Personally i play games for fun but id just as much read a book or watch a movie y'know? but then im comfortable enough to enjoy my life and dont need an escape.
Of course mmo's aside you have the type who play fps games online with an almost religious zeal- then i think its more of a reward type of deal then.

[Tricky]

I go through phases of getting hooked on certain games, i've never got hooked in the sense where i've sat for 24 hours playing, but theres occasionally a gem that comes out that I just play to death, turning down nights out or time with girlfriends just so I can play!
GTA3
Doom
Metal Gear Solid
Jungle strike
Battlefield 2
Final Fantasy 7
Arma 2
Resident Evil
Mario World
Medal of Honor
Call of duty

All those are ones that I've sacrificed far more time to than I would for other casual game experiences! I dont get the whole buzz & addiction around warcraft & other MMO's though, but im not really that much into online gaming, maybe if it had been around when I was in my teens I would think differently, but I grew up on single player games that you can save & come back to later, so its not like the rapidly changing & evolving world that MMO's exist in where people are scared they'll miss something if they go offline!

[Danny]

I go through phases of getting hooked on certain games, i've never got hooked in the sense where i've sat for 24 hours playing, but theres occasionally a gem that comes out that I just play to death, turning down nights out or time with girlfriends just so I can play!
GTA3
Doom
Metal Gear Solid
Jungle strike
Battlefield 2
Final Fantasy 7
Arma 2
Resident Evil
Mario World
Medal of Honor
Call of duty

All those are ones that I've sacrificed far more time to than I would for other casual game experiences! I dont get the whole buzz & addiction around warcraft & other MMO's though, but im not really that much into online gaming, maybe if it had been around when I was in my teens I would think differently, but I grew up on single player games that you can save & come back to later, so its not like the rapidly changing & evolving world that MMO's exist in where people are scared they'll miss something if they go offline!

once when i was sick i played oblivion for 28 hours straight. fun at the time but never again.

[Wyldwraith]

I'm layman-qualified to explain gaming addiction from both personal and observed experience.

As I see it, there are three basic pillars on which the foundation of a growing gaming addiction rests. 1) Escapism, pure and simple. Some people find the ability to immerse themselves in an artificially generated scenario more pleasurable, or more comfortable than facing Real Life. This drive in particular reaches its most extreme expression in people whose real lives are EXTREMELY UNPLEASANT. They unconsciously compare how they feel when gaming and how they feel when engaged in other areas of their lives, and gaming seems to be "better", or at least more desirable a state to be in than say, making a painful but necessary first step in resolving some long-term pain/dysfunction of theirs. Obsessive gaming allows such people to deceive themselves, just like actual junkies, that the gaming experience-drug is all they need to be happy and fulfilled.

Escapist Gamers generally won't recognize a problem even exists unless something they simply can't ignore. This is almost always something that "suddenly" interferes with or outright prevents them from continuing on as they had been doing. A good example would be becoming so entrenched in their gaming activities they don't even take the snail-mail (including bills) out of their mailbox. Let alone open, read, and then do something. From their perspective it will seem to come out of the blue when the lights go off and their TV or monitor goes dark because they failed to pay the electric bill within the allotted time after receiving the Final Notice-version of said electric bill.

2) Gaming as surrogate for social contact and the fulfillment of unmet needs such as the desire to stop being alone and feel like someone else values them for who they are. It's not as simple as the first-glance notion that this is only an issue for socially awkward teens.

In my cyber-travels of recent years, particularly during my long Warcraft phase, I've noticed that a) Rising numbers of complete gaming-virginal older men and women in their 50s or even 60s are taking to participating in various MMORPG. b) Many if not most of these older and/or disabled individuals use the games primarily as social players who are generally just using the game as a form of social networking. Most of the members who fit this mold care almost nothing about actually PLAYING the game, as many are content to remain extremely low-level/otherwise not participate in any facet of the game that requires them to develop gaming skills. In fact, from what I've seen, even the minority of seniors who actively play the game are motivated primarily by the desire to maintain their socializing with online friends who are both significantly younger and primarily involved to play the game itself.

For this sort of Gaming Addict, the addiction seems to be pretty destructive because its basis is in the deep need people have to not be alone long-term. I've read at least two or three dozen newspaper articles where the obsession became so strong that serious medical problems occurred because the senior(s) in question failed to take very important daily medications. Heart attacks and strokes for skipping high blood pressure meds, or diabetic complications caused by not monitoring blood sugar or taking their insulin, etc etc.

Basically, this form of gaming addiction is simply a different expression of the same lonely desperation that gets a healthy senior to feign illness and make 7-8 appointments to see their M.D, just to have their MD's attention. On a less extreme level, its why arthritic seniors with bad knees will wander the local mall just so they can circulate with other seniors who came for the same reason.

Finally there's c) The maladjusted personalities using games to let off some steam/pressure caused by their particular issue. A 40yr old who resents his mother deeply for having relentlessly controlled his life, yet remains unable to face her and express that resentment might obsess over an MMORPG which allows non-consensual Player-Killing. They're known in such games as Griefer PKs, or just Griefers, because they'll target a much weaker character of a less experienced player and kill them so often they essentially completely prevent the victimized player from playing the game. In this way, they find an outlet for their resentment and feelings of powerlessness about their mother's behavior by making their victims feel powerless in-game.

Or there are individuals who are seething masses of unexpressed anger and frustration because they're stuck in a nothing of a dead-end job and feel far less important, and have far less authority/influence then they feel they deserve. These individuals can become game-obsessed because carefully building an in-game "Guild" up, and thus creating incentives for serious players to want to be part of their Guild can allow them to "rule" and fulfill their need to control and dictate the actions and behavior of their game-subordinates to make themselves FEEL POWERFUL.

Can't even begin to tell you how many nutjob Guild Leaders I've run into in everything from the very first MMORPG Ultima Online all the way through to World of Warcraft.

This sort of gaming addict will let everything in his shitty life go completely to hell, just so long as he/she gets their power-"fix" by pushing around, controlling, tearing down and outright ridiculing/otherwise humiliating their game-subordinates. Making their Game of Choice a higher priority than Real Life means that they can kid themselves into believing that since the Game is their life, and they're powerful in-game, then they're actually powerful and in control.

Instead of being the pathetic, snotty little 98lbs or morbidly obese egotistic malignant narcissist that any of us here would punch out if they tried to talk to us for 30 seconds like they talk to people online.

It all comes down to meeting emotional or psychological needs that aren't being met in real-life. If the level of gratification they receive in the game environment significantly exceeds the level of satisfaction with their real lives, an obsession with their Game of Choice develops.

Apologies for the length of the post, but this issue is something I've made a serious study of as someone who's disabled and relies on online socializing to remain sane myself.

[SymphonicX]

I guess with all addictions, it's really about reward. You drink and you get a buzz off it, you gamble and you win money, you play a game for hours and have a great experience. This happens the first few times you do it, and your unconscious brain begins to consider that action a guaranteed reward - like a rat pressing a button that drops pellets of food into its cage. After the behaviour is learnt, even if you take the pellets away the rat will keep hitting the button again and again and again, and so long as you drop a pellet in maybe once every fifty or a hundred times, he will never give up pushing the button. This psychology is how casinos make money: their machines are designed to pay out at a rate that's just enough to reinforce the "reward" in the user's mind, but just rarely enough that the user steadily loses money.

With gaming, the reward is having fun. If you're addicted and bore of the game after playing for hours and hours, I guess it stops being fun so much, but the behaviour is learnt by that time and so long as they have some kind of positive experience every so often, they'll never stop playing. They'll keep chasing the reward.

Obviously different people have different reward thresholds and therefore are less inclined to addiction.

That's a near perfect analysis of addiction - nice one.

it's true of all types of addiction - I'm addicted and habitual with a lot of things in life, my mum being an ex alcoholic with maybe 9/10 people having alcoholism in my family - I believe in the addictive gene.

Personally I don't drink, for the above reasons - I can't stand the stuff. But man do I make up for it in other ways.

I drink an absurd amount of caffeine, big smoker, and have been massively addicted to certain games - there's other stuff that I can't go into on a work computer.

As for all of these things, it's about the reward, like Kraken rightly says - the reward for drinking this much tea or full fat pepsi or whatever is the sugar rush/caffeine high, smoking is obvious as a stress relief or to subside social anxiety, and with computer games it's an adrenaline addiction. Certain games, whereby just a split second's difference exists between win or fail, like Halo series or Battlefield or whatever, will have me religiously playing for hours on end - and after a time the thrills become further and further apart - but the initial intense period sees every game having these moments. The reward is the rush, it's always the rush.

Also humans quite like to do repetitive things over and over - we are very cyclical in our nature - which is why we never seem to change even though we always are. We do things in an outward spiral, which gets bigger and bigger until the original form is different.

This is why we as a species can be addicted to television, games, and substances - it's easy to establish a pattern with them and when the pattern becomes strong enough everything on the outside doesn't matter. We hide it in the guise of stuff we like to do, and stuff we don't like to do - but as humans our very nature dictates that if we find something we like, we'll keep doing it over and over and over until it doesn't exist anymore or is consumed completely. it's just the way we are - it's just that some people live more varied existences but even within their own lives they are confined by their cyclical nature. A person with an insanely active social life could be just as "addicted" to parties, or going out and getting wasted - humans just don't moderate themselves and have beaten themselves into believing that this kind of behaviour is OK.

[DjfunkmasterG]

Hey I'll be honest I own 2 games for my PS3.

I bought it primairly as a Blu-Ray player because it was already 2.0 compliant, and could be upgraded with simple firmware updates. Plus it was the only reliable Blu-Ray player being made at the time.

BTW the games were played ONCE! :D

[bassman]

Because they're fun?:shifty:

[LouCipherr]

Hey I'll be honest I own 2 games for my PS3.

I bought it primairly as a Blu-Ray player because it was already 2.0 compliant, and could be upgraded with simple firmware updates. Plus it was the only reliable Blu-Ray player being made at the time.

BTW the games were played ONCE! :D


I think we just had this conversation in another thread.

"I bought a PS3!"

"What about the games?"

"LOOK! IT HAS A BLU-RAY PLAYER IN IT!"

"but what about the games?"

"Did I tell you about the blu-ray player it has?"

:lol:




Because they're fun?:shifty:

Bingo. :lol:

[DjfunkmasterG]

Because they're fun?:shifty:

Actually they were fun, but I am not the gamer I used to be... So I just use the frickin' thing to watch Blu-Rays. :p

[LouCipherr]

Actually they were fun, but I am not the gamer I used to be... So I just use the frickin' thing to watch Blu-Rays. :p

"LOOK! IT HAS A BLU-RAY PLAYER IN IT!"

http://enderzero.net/smilies/poke.gif

[DjfunkmasterG]

"LOOK! IT HAS A BLU-RAY PLAYER IN IT!"

http://enderzero.net/smilies/poke.gif

WELL IT DOES :D and a GREAT ONE AT THAT!

[Danny]

Actually they were fun, but I am not the gamer I used to be... So I just use the frickin' thing to watch Blu-Rays. :p

go buy infamous. sandbox game where you are electric batman.

S-NBsSfxH30

[Tricky]

Actually they were fun

Very good point, I dont know about anyone else, but im finding more & more that despite the absolutely stunning graphics we have these days, that the majority of games (with a few exceptions) have no soul! Im playing the remakes of the Monkey island series at the moment, and they are far more enjoyable than most games ive played recently

[LouCipherr]

Tricky is right on the money - what's sad is, I can find more enjoyment out of some Atari 2600 games than I can the latest gen console or pc games. It has nothing to do with graphics, it's all about the gameplay. "Back in the day" (goddammit I'm getting old!) they didn't have the capability for intense eye-candy games, so what did they do? yup, made the games fun. Too many game makers now are more concerned about flash than substance. I guess now it makes sense why I only buy maybe 2 games a year, if that. :(

[Trin]

Pretty much what big brother Hollywood taught them.

[bassman]

I guess now it makes sense why I only buy maybe 2 games a year, if that.

I'm lucky if I can complete two games in a year.:lol:

As I said in another thread, a great deal of recent video games are basically movies. They're stories that you get to participate in. They may not be the same fun as the older games, but I enjoy the hell out of the experience you get out of living a western(RDR), solving riddles(Batman:AA), joining up with the greatest comedic cast of all time(GB), fighting through a mall overrun with zombies(DR - although I dislike that game), or just generally living a story you wouldn't be able to under any other circumstances.:)

[darth los]

Pretty much what big brother Hollywood taught them.

Yes, the parallels between the movie and gamimg industries are striking.

They are becoming more similar by the day.

As bassman said, they now are basically stories you get to participate in.

A big reason for that imo, is to make them easier and appeal to a wider demographic thus increasing their bottom lines.

:cool:

[LouCipherr]

I'm lucky if I can complete two games in a year.:lol:

As I said in another thread, a great deal of recent video games are basically movies. They're stories that you get to participate in.

:lol:

..and you're right about many newer games are movies you participate in. That's fun to do at times, but sometimes i really want good game play vs. good eye candy. If I want eye candy, I'll flip a porn on the telly.. :lol:


Yes, the parallels between the movie and gamimg industries are striking.

They are becoming more similar by the day.

Pretty soon, instead of "video games" and "hollywood" it's going to be: VIDEOWOOD!

(I have copyrighted that word, so any re-quoting will cost you 50 cents per quote. You have been warned, and will recieve a bill in the mail shortly after your quote. :lol: :D)

[fartpants]

VIDEOWOOD VIDEOWOOD VIDEOWOOD

there we go Lou, that should get you started

now how much is that in real money

[LouCipherr]

VIDEOWOOD VIDEOWOOD VIDEOWOOD

there we go Lou, that should get you started

Your bill is in the mail and should arrive shortly. :lol:

[SymphonicX]

I bet the postage cost you more than a buck fifty