91–100 of 236 posts
I'm curious why this needs its own definition, rather than being part of a larger "addiction disorder".
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.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber#C...
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.
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.
(I know "curing the side effects" sounds bad, but it's basically what we want).
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…
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.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
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 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. http://www.dictionary.com/browse/workaholic
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).
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.
WHO, GTFO!
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…