[...] addiction. In fact, these kinds of irresponsible statements are everywhere. According to a number of prominent articles on the subject, these symptoms may include:Thinking about what is happening [...]

[...] constitutes game addiction? It appears to be defined by a laundry list of symptoms. According to a number of prominent articles on the subject, these symptoms may include:Thinking about what is happening [...]

[...] and an enormous amount has been written specifically on World of Warcraft. Academic literature [1] and social anecdote provide some interesting ideas about why MMORPGs are so popular. Most anecdotal [...]

[...] any actual research into the supposed addictive properties of MMOs? I can only find one referenced here. I’m going to have a look through it. I’m not finding the "growing number of research [...]

[...] Game Addiction Media Crisis Grows – Where is the Industry Response? ESA, NCSoft, Sony, Microsoft, EA, NetEase, Nintendo, where are you? While I understand that you may be a bit fatigued by fighting the annoying Violence in Games bills, these addiction studies are equally threatening… especially to the high growth online gaming portion of the industry. So far, the industry has sat silently by while a range of “experts” whose qualifications seem mostly in their ability to be available for newspaper interviews and fronting their “game addiction support groups” have defined the issue. The only person who has said anything from the industry perspective is Jason Della Rocca: “People are reluctant to point a finger at themselves,” said Jason Della Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association. Excessive use “is a reflection of friction in that person’s life. They shouldn’t use the game as a scapegoat.” – The Washington Post Thank you Jason. First, The Washington Post has a sizeable article on Game Addiction, then our own Gamasutra posts a Master’s Dissertation (in Communications, mind you) on Game Addiction. The main expert, who had an interview in the Washington Post, was Dimitri Williams – an Assistant Professor in the Speech Communication Department at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Professor Williams did not claim to be an expert on addiction and, for a change in the current media climate, actually spoke rather sensibly on the issue. It is a pity that he wasn’t cited in the main article. The article itself focused on a couple of anecodotal cases, including a tragic suicide, but did not seem to provide any information that was not supportive of the Game Addiction theory. The Online Game Addiction Anonymous web site rated 125 million hits and over 2000 members (i.e., emails, probably) in 4 years. Raph Koster’s website has probably done as well – by the way, Raph has a good discussion going on the Gamasutra article. The “study” cited in Gamasutra was from a student in Communications. I do not claim to be an addiction expert or a psychologist or other mental health professional, but I suspect there is a huge danger in surveys of behavior related to addiction due to the increasing tendancy to “psychnologize” everything in our culture. At a minimum, people routinely use the language of addiction to discuss many ordinary situations. Personally, I think most of this is “hooey”. There is certainly going to be a portion of the population with addiction problems that will manifest through online games (or alcohol or TV or gambling or golf or drugs or MySpace). I can count fewer than 10 incidents in the past several years where someone has died in a manner closely tied to an online game – and that is not just in the US. Considering the millions and millions of game players, that number is quite low. But is it an impending social crisis? It may be for the industry, if it doesn’t start responding to these articles and getting in front of the issue – cut Dr. Williams a check or two to do some real studies in this area…. get some good PR for a change. The real danger is that these ideas are pernicious and spread vigorously. There have been dozens of articles in the past several months based on the Game Addiction Clinic in Europe. People start quoting previous “assertions” as facts in subsequent news stories and suddenly, they become the accepted truth. So, industry leaders and associations in the US, Korea, and China, if you want to protect your business, start speaking out before we all face another Jack Thompson.. if you are lucky or Hillary Clinton, if you are not. Continue reading “Game Addiction Media Crisis Grows – Where is the Industry Response?” Posted by SecurePlay in Game Industry, Game Culture, Policy, Law, and Politics, Game Addiction and Usage Controls at 05:35 | Comments (2) | Trackbacks (0) [...]

Wouldn’t this be better solved if there was an information campaign to educate parents on the realities of video games? Instead of carefully wording scientific studies (I assume it’s scientific; I haven’t read it) to be politically neutral?

People can and do get addicted to MMORPGs. Denying it doesn’t make it false. Just because this fact, and it is a fact, can be taken by some jerk with surplus clout to effect damaging policy doesn’t make it less true.

Negative effects? To whom? For what? It’s a nonsensical term that says absolutely nothing. For what is apparently being measured, addiction is the appropriate and most accurate term.

# Roleplay and immersion show no link to addiction.

# However, they also do not show any link to engagement, which seems counterintuitive to the author of the study. I might hypothesize here that engagement comes from actual emotional contact with others, rather than from roleplayed relationship.

I would posit that it is because most MMOs are crappy roleplay spaces, where it’s impossible to realize sufficiently complex in-character relationships and maintain an adequate level of drama to become properly engaged by that particular facet of your game experience. MMOs really do not have a sufficient signal-to-noise ratio, or a coherent enough narrative, for roleplaying engagement to kick in. The thing that engages (and yes, addicts) people when they are playing roleplaying MUDs is usually the soap-opera-like characteristics of the experience. What kind of story are you following when your character raids the same three dungeons every week?

If the industry continues to ignore this “Game Addiction” problem that the media has stirred up, it is going to have another big problem on its hands. This meme has been growing like mad since early this summer.

It also shows how disconnected ESA is from the online game industry in the US… which is bad since there a slew of issues that online games face – age verification, jurisdiction, community standards for obscenity, etc.

In skimming it’s looking at when certain specific strongly negative effects come into play

Then he should be using “Negative effects” because clinically, morally, and socially “addiction” has subjective meanings and objective ramifacations.

The author, and I congratulate him for tackling this issue, and using Yee’s data, is right addiction as a term is used to often, because it sticks easy conceptually.

But there are problems with this.

Addictions can be qualified as diseases.

Diseases have psychological and clinical interventions

When a disease has psychological and clinical interventions those are apt to face policy scrutiny and regulation, especially ifbased upon consumer usage.

Can your industry be taxed? (i.e. How deep are its pockets?)
Is it a consumer based industry?
Does it lend itself to a disease process effecting society? (Addiction)

These are not far fetched conceptual leaps, ask the Tobacco, Alcohol industry, or Television industry

Example:

As far as policy formulation all it takes is a clinician, say a psychiatrist studying clinical depression as it relates to say withdrawl from video games (his grant for this work wont be comming from the video game industries lobby I can assure you) well the research is still fairly thin on the subject, hard scientific data mostly lacking, but what is available frequently uses “addiction” in terms of games. So what results is a “hard” scientific study by a clinical specialist, citing papers by non clinicians using the term “addiction” and the subjective meaning now takes on an objective intervention, “addiction” enters the lexicon clinically, addiction to video games becomes a disease process. Policy therby has an impetus to solve this:

(congressional soundbite, just prior to the video game tax being implimented)

“troubling issue of Americas youth being clinically addicted to violent, time consuming, unhealthy and obiesity causing video games”

(Read: widespread, disease, causing violence, wasting time that could have been better spend at school, missing meals, and not getting exercise, caused by video games)

And will concerned parents disagree? (nevermind they bought the console or game during the holidays)

(Im being facious here…)
And from there all it takes is one congressman, who’s pissed off because Jr. who wants to make games decided to go to graphic design school rather than law school, to hold a hearing.

Addictions require interventions, interventions cost money, and require programs and breaucracies to administer them, who’s breaucracy and who’s money?

And so my point is this, because I’ve worked in health care policy, be careful what terms are used to describe the effects your industry has on its consumers, especially in terms of research. Policy wonk’s, and surely congressmen looking for the “next big issue for political traction” wont read this entire study,but a passing glance at its title is damning.

Grad students and researchers need to be aware of the policy ramifacations of thier terminology and how it enters the clinical and political lexicon.
Think about the policy outcome your work is supporting.

Im not sure, is it easier to find research on the negative effects of video games? If it is the video game industry might consider founding a think tank that promotes research showing the positive effects of video games on players and society. This is another reason people should support the efforts of those games for change folk’s even if they disagree with what they’re games political bent is, objectively there is a positive impact by creating awareness of issues.

Just my observations for what they’re worth having been in the political healthcare policy trenches.

That’s like saying marijuana isn’t addictive. And it’s not, chemically. The actual act of smoking pot does not addict you. But that doesn’t mean you’re not addicted or can’t become addicted.

Try this: 12 questions: Am I an Addict? Feel free to change “smoke pot” to “play a MMORPG”. It works remarkably well. I think #1 is rather to the point. Alternatively, an addict has this personal anecdote. Neither source is authoritative, but neither source is completely discreditable, either.

And I believe it’s possible to become addicted to TV or a TV show, but I don’t have any references.