191–200 of 236 posts
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this. As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't ge…
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this. As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't ge…
Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit. Games can be a fantastic story-telling medium, a competitive environment where you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents, a lot of pure fun, or a way to spend time playing cooperatively with friends. All of these can be worthwhile activities in different ways. Grind…
That might be clear for you, but it's not for everyone. The way the OP describes his motivation for gaming sounds extremely similar to people with gambling addictions.
Self-awareness isn't enough for everyone. Some people are just wired to respond to that dopamine hit from progression systems in an especially strong, self-reinforcing way. They need more help and one of the first steps to that is endorsing more ethical game design that doesn't go so heavily into building addictive feedback loops.
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this. As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't ge…
> As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are I appreciate that you're sort of equivocating here to preemptively deter the critics, but I'll take a stronger stance. Gaming is indisputably "addictive" in the layman's sense, even if people seem to get grumpy over using the term "addiction" for anything other than substance abuse. Regardless of what we call it, the detriment…
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this. As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't ge…
Just play enough clicker games until you realize that "progression for progression's sake" is nothing but an empty dopamine hit. Games can be a fantastic story-telling medium, a competitive environment where you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents, a lot of pure fun, or a way to spend time playing cooperatively with friends. All of these can be worthwhile activities in different ways. Grind…
- a competitive environment where you can test your skill and intellect against real human opponents
- playing cooperatively with friends.
- Grinding mindlessly to make some numbers go up
All of those are different things that it's possible to enjoy. I would hesitate to say any one is more "correct" than the others, other than how socially acceptable they are.
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…
For me, deciding moment was announcement of World of Warcraft at the turn of the century. I knew that game was going to be everything I hoped for, and that it'd ruin me. Even though I haven't actually tried it out to see if it's any good, life of my many friends was, from a personal judgmental perspective, ruined by it.
And sure the case can be made for personal willpower, and it's my own fault for being too weak to play it without becoming invested. But as others have pointed out these games are made to addict us. They are custom talored crack for the brain. I've seen so many friends lose jobs, friendships, all kinds of relationships... and I've seen the same with literal drugs such as alcohol, crack and heroin. I hate to advocate for regulation but we need at least some protections here because when a gaming company's bottom line depends on how much time we spend in a game you can be sure they are going to milk us for every second they can,for the most part.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
they didn't say these things can't be addiction.
Why is suddenly some fringe gamer "epidemics" treated as more important (WHO level? seriously?) than vastly more prevalent smartphone-based social addiction?
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…
For me, deciding moment was announcement of World of Warcraft at the turn of the century. I knew that game was going to be everything I hoped for, and that it'd ruin me. Even though I haven't actually tried it out to see if it's any good, life of my many friends was, from a personal judgmental perspective, ruined by it.
When I started university, I was renting a house with a guy who basically sat inside playing WoW all day, didn't socialize much (other than us and our friends at the house) and didn't study much at all. Meanwhile, for the first time, I started being social outside the world of computers.
That year my grades took a hit from socializing and drinking instead, but I don't regret that. They recovered the next year and stayed good.
WoW really felt like a big threshold for gaming to me. I'd seen the same problems with Anarchy Online and other games, but nothing was close to the scale of popularity and level of addiction that WoW had.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> they just sucked at it compared to today's games Games these days are far far more interesting than most movies, TV shows or other forms of entertainment. With photorealistic rendering coming combined with AR they might even override the need for exploratory travels outside pure relaxation stays (i.e. if you can visit Alaska/Antarctica/Japan/Petra/whatever with photorealistic graphics, would you really want to trav…
Of course people would still want to travel. I don't know how to put this nicely but not everyone is a recluse.
Posted it the other day on another thread, will post it here again so people can see it. Here is my own experience with this. As crazy as these articles have been about gaming addiction being a medical condition are, I believe it. I'm in my early 20s, ever since I was in my mid teens I was addicted to video games. All through grade school and in college now, I struggle to put the controller down. I routinely don't ge…
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-g…
I can relate. I have taught myself to judge the impact of the StayAndPlay behavioral, and if necessary Alt-F4, walk away. Getting the shopping out of the car when my wife gets back is not more important, but not helping my wife is perceived as rude, and that is important. I'm trying to teach my boy this. Fortnite is absolutely gaming crack designed by psychologists. Powerful shit.