‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization • Hacker News Board

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#101

Post by Synaesthesia » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:06 AM UTC

ComodoHacker wrote: post #89

Synaesthesia wrote: post #85

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 t…

>I started playing Starcraft and watching it about 2 years ago You mean Starcraft II?

Yeah SC2 although I played through the original and Brood war remastered as well, and checked some games.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#102

Post by YuukiRey » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:07 AM UTC

XalvinX wrote: post #99

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 s…

> like fighting real diseases such as malaria?

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.

> goes on little sprees of one kind or another

Educate yourself before you post. From http://www.who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en/

> 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.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#103

Post by watwut » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:14 AM UTC

sasaf5 wrote: post #20

brandonjm wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 an…

This. Play 2 hours of videogames and babyboomer parents start loosing their minds (but not after spending the whole evening watching TV)

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.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#104

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:16 AM UTC

rhacker wrote: post #51

falcolas wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More accurately, addiction to the point it has a severe negative impact on the rest of the patient's life.

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 "gam…

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.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#105

Post by icebraining » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:23 AM UTC

rosser wrote: post #39

Karunamon wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

A bit of well poisoning, don’t you think? That one can’t call shenanigans without supposedly being affected?

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…

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.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#106

Post by mmjaa » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:30 AM UTC

nostrademons wrote: post #95

mmjaa wrote: post #88

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…

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 o…

The difference is, when you ran out of quarters, you were done. There was no further impulse to play for days and days.

However in the modern era, once you start - there is nothing stopping you.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#107

Post by announcerman » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:32 AM UTC

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?

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#108

Post by imtringued » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:33 AM UTC

gehwartzen wrote: post #67

contravariant wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

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.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#109

Post by mattlondon » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:34 AM UTC

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.

Re: ‘Gaming disorder’ is officially recognized by the World Health Organization

#110

Post by skohan » Tue, Jun 19, 2018, 10:36 AM UTC

amelius wrote: post #93

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.