Video game addiction
I posted to an IGDA discussion group something about video game addiction, its relationship to drug addiction and the use of the term “addictive” in the game industry. In the course of this I rabbited on a bit about drug law and treatment. I think it’s worth sharing, as the discussion led me to more nuanced opinions and a lot of new things to think about. Here is what I wrote:
Part of my style, as you have probably gathered, is to chuck out my stance stated starkly, to see how it connects to everything else I believe and to dig up mistaken assumptions. Hence my declaration that computer games and gambling don’t merit the same label as cocaine, cigarettes, and alcohol. Hearing the responses, I acknowledge I need to work in some nuances but I’m still not decided how.
I found very interesting [D's] account of how an activity such as gambling, game playing, running, and so on produce internal chemical rewards which mimic the addictive effects of substances that come from the outside. So in a sense it can be argued that if you have a particular kind of mind, when you play a slot machine you “make your own drugs” which you then get hooked on. (As a side note, I do think that the allure of slot machines is very similar to a component of the lure of playing RPGs (including MMOs), due to the way the random loot system works. It’s not the only appeal in RPGs but it’s a significant component. I also agree with [J] that the social reliance built into MMOs adds another compelling factor, as does the slow achievement progression system cited by [D].) So I must acknowledge that there is a chemical response to pleasurable activity– as a celebrant of sustainable hedonism, it’s my bread and butter!– and therefore have to acknowledge that, because your neurons don’t distinguish between chemicals made in your glands and chemicals made in a factory, it must be possible to have the same kind of addiction response to either. So that seems to force me into a logic that indicates that gaming can be addictive.
But this is really unsatisfying to me, and I think there needs to be a semantic distinction. I am no medical expert so I won’t try to fashion one. Perhaps “compulsive” can apply to a dependency on one’s own chemical response to sensory stimuli, but “addictive” should only apply to a dependency on a chemical made outside your body. And perhaps a good reason for this distinction is because our bodies and minds have evolved in symbiosis with our internal reward chemicals, but not evolved in symbiosis with outside chemicals. In other words, even cavemen had natural selection pressures to develop the right balance for how to be “hooked just enough” on sex, but did not have pressures to develop the right balance for how to be “hooked just enough” on alcohol– a fact with devastating consequences to the aboriginal peoples of the Americas and Australia. Also, it seems that one compulsion can be swapped for another: the endorphins you get from one pleasurable activity is not chemically any different from the endorphins you get from a different activity, so you might wean yourself off of slot machines by getting into far cheaper RPGs. However, you can’t wean yourself off of cocaine by getting into far cheaper cigarattes; they are different chemicals.
I want the semantic distinction because of a concern about a slippery slope down which society is already sliding. It took decades for “old” addiction– to alcohol, heroin, and so on– to grow to the shaky status of a real medical condition, one to which some people are more disposed than others, and one that requires special therapy. For so long, society told the addict, “if you had enough willpower, you’d just quit”, when now there is concrete evidence that an addict’s brain is physically changed to become different than an unaddicted person’s, and therefore quitting is not simply a matter of ordinary willpower. Finally, this medical truth is more generally recognized and it’s less likely for an addict to be regarded as being merely weak in character. Just as a diabetic is not “too weak willed” to handle sugar normally, an alcoholic is not “too weak willed” to stop drinking. Both require therapy to manage. Now, here comes along the use of “addictive” to describe sex, gambling, rock climbing, video game playing, and dozens of other things. It is even used as a positive description in a product’s promotion. At the risk of sounding like a curmudgeon who bemoans the lack of the proper use of the term “whom” in today’s degraded society, I just don’t like seeing a perfectly good word be stretched in a way that renders it less useful. The term “addiction” has been cheapened. So I wish there were a different term for how one may feel “hooked” on an activity that makes one’s own body produce endorphins and seratonin and adrenaline and such. I see the medical community as the bastion that should protect the narrow definition of addiction.
Next, there is the question of regulation, by law. I no longer propose that the decider of what should be made illegal or regulated should hinge on whether something is truly addictive or not. It should hinge on how readily the hook takes hold, and how much it compromises the person’s value to society while hooked– health effects, ability to work, economic drain, and so on. What I’d wish to happen in law is too much of a sidetrack, but in short I’d want to see nothing or virtually nothing be illegal, and a few things regulated to different degrees to make certain that whoever is exposed is fully educated about the effects, and motivated to avoid getting hooked, or to get un-hooked once hooked.
So for the sake of games, this is somewhat moot, because no matter what the term, the “hooking” power and consequence of games is, I feel, mild. Since I don’t think caffeine should be regulated, I certainly don’t think games should be regulated. In both cases the “hook”, whether they are different hooks that deserve different terms or just two instances of the same kind of hook, is mild enough that I think some general social education is all that is needed to hit the right balance of freedom vs. a society’s efficiency. Government, the medical professions, and industry should spread the word that both caffeine and computer gaming are things that you should be careful not to do too much of, that they can end up luring you into doing too much of them, and that doing too much can have mild negative effects on you– in the case of caffeine, it has health effects, and in the case of gaming, it can absorb a lot of your time and perhaps aggravate your aggressiveness (if science bears that out).
However, I still strongly advise game makers to not throw around the term “addictive” to describe games (as they often do in order to promote them). Even if one does not agree that the term “addictive” should not be distorted and cheapened, then surely one must agree that it invites governmental regulation or prohibition of game playing, and that’s not a good thing. Indisputably addictive substances such as alcohol, cigarettes, and cocaine are regulated or banned by law. To equate games with addiction makes it that much easier for a bad law to be made.
I’d be interested to learn more about how the medical profession is dealing with the definition of “addiction” and what other terms they use for these other things that may “hook” you but are not truly addictive.
