Game Addiction: Myth or Fact?- Our Responsibility as an Industry

Back in September when I attended the Game Developers Conference in Austin, I had the privilege as a Game Art and Design student to actually rub shoulders with real live actual people in the gaming industry. I have to say I enjoyed every moment and that my only regret was that the conference only lasted for three days.

While there, I opened my favorite Pandora’s Box and asked people about how they felt about creating a product that could effectively be involved with someone’s addiction to games. The stance I encountered in all cases for my impromptu poll was pretty well one-sided. In every case, the opinion was that gamers make the decision to play the games and their type of usage is not really the problem of the game maker. They compared it to the way that a person might consume alcohol. It’s not the fault of the alcohol industry that people are alcoholics certainly. Right?

However, the actual empirical evidence I collected from the gamers that I knew was a little disturbing. I myself on occasion have acted in an addictive manner with my games. I know this has very much to do with our inner mechanics and whether or not we are hard wired to act addictively. As an adult, ultimately my behavior is my own and I cannot certainly blame the game industry for my poor choices. Most adults I know go through a pretty set cycle when introduced to MMORPG’s that involves a period initially where all other life ceases and only the game universe exists. It is one of the beautiful things about in-game immersion and the effect it can have on the end game user. After a deep saturation period, usually most people pull back, take a look at the 28 coffee cups on their desk, and the pizza boxes lining their office floor and say, “I need to get a handle on this.” For myself, I know that to this day, during certain time frames, it is a bad idea for me to play my games.

Some people can’t surface from the gaming world once there and have gone on to literally lose their ability to support themselves due to their gaming. One reason, colleague and friend Kim Allen (a Licensed Psychologist in Chemical and Alcohol Dependency) stated, was that games allow us the ability to let out that, “holy sanctified part of ourselves that won’t be respected anywhere else.” Meaning that nowhere else will allow us to embrace and rejoice as completely in our inner Geekdom.

Well this is all fine and well, but really what does this have to do with us in the gaming arena? Seriously, we just want to make some kick-ass games and have everyone in the world buy them. It is the ultimate job security if we have people rabid about our games isn’t it? Yes and no. Let’s face it; we get the same subscription fee and initial game purchase from both the game addict and the casual gamer. If involvement with games decimates someone’s life and income, they are unlikely to the best repeat consumer.

So far I've voiced my opinions as a gamer and a gaming student. There are more than a few experts out in the field addressing these issues. Dr. Douglas Gentile, Director of Research for the National Institute of Media and Family defines addictive behavior for gaming as, “[meaning] that you do it in such a way that it damages your life. This is why we based our definition on how pathological gambling is diagnosed in the DSM-IV. Almost one out of every ten youth gamers show [et al] enough symptoms of damage to their school, family, and psychological functioning to merit serious concern." Results from his recent study suggest the level of addiction in the 8-18 age range of youths interviewed is hovering around 8.5 percent as of April 2007.¹

On the flip side, during a study in May 1998 there was some interesting information revealed through extensive interviews with people who viewed themselves as having an internet addiction. “On average, Internet ‘addicts’ in the study reported having five psychiatric disorders at some point in their lives [et al].” ² This points to what I said earlier that game addicts are hard wired differently than casual gamers typically. Average age for this study was 35 years old. So these folks were hardly kids suffering from the impetuous transgressions of youth.

What does this mean for gaming companies? Well nothing yet. People are looking at our industry, but no one has held us responsible for the behavior of admitted game addicts. There are some companies though already starting to address the issue in mild ways. Nintendo, always positioned as a family friendly company, now gives advice to players on the Wii. It asks you if you would like to take a break after you go to the selection screen of your game in certain places. Another cute way that World of Warcraft chose to address the issue on the game loading panels was to remind us to go out and enjoy the real world once and a while. Also, the Wii monitors and records how much a person has played and how the playtime was broken up. We were able to chart my sons’ playtime on Star Wars Legos the first day we got it and how long Mom and Dad spent on Wii Sports. Certain MMORPG’s actually gave an option to set alarms to remind you it was time to get off, or ways to track your playtime so you are aware of how much time you were actually playing the game.

The Austin Chapter of IGDA actually held a panel about this issue of game addiction back in 2003. I highly suggest reading it at: http://www.igda.org/articles/austin_addiction.php . It was a very balanced look at game addiction issues. In that panel, Dr. Meunier suggested that managing a game/computer addiction is much like a food addiction. You can’t quit eating merely because you have a food addiction and the computer addicts of the world are going to have a very hard time functioning without computers at all in the world of tomorrow.

What are the solutions for game makers of tomorrow? As an industry we need to continually examine our games and how they are being perceived and used by the end user. We need to address the issues around game addiction that might eventually arise for the companies that make games. Or we might find ourselves in the same boat as game makers and internet cafes in Greece did. The Greek government actually banned all online gaming back in 2003, despite the outcry of their national industries that revolved around internet gaming. At present, they are in at a strange impasse. The law is still on the books; however it is not being enforced under the reasoning that it is "unconstitutional".

South Korea is having similar issues as it finds itself inundated with a country where the people seeking help in game addiction issues quadrupled in the space of a year. Numbers like this are only the tip of the iceberg; they also had two highly publicized deaths directly related to game usage in 2005.

In our country, the American Medical Association ultimately decided in June 2007 that the term video game addiction was not to be included in the American Diagnostic and Statistic Manual of Mental Disorders. The reasoning behind this was that video game addiction was not seen as a disease in the way that diseases like alcoholism are perceived.

However, it does not absolve our industry of responsibility. We need to continue to monitor and keep an eye on this issue. When people make a choice to use our product, we want it to be for what we intended it for…entertainment. It is why being in our industry is as fulfilling and sought after as it is. Who doesn’t want to be the peddler of fun? So it is our job to make sure we continue peddling fun and not something more sinister.

Spot On: Korea reacts to increase in game addiction by John Anderson
Gamespot.
http://www.gamespot.com/news/2005/09/12/news_6132357.html

Video Game Addiction ‘not mental illness’
NewsScientistTech.
http://technology.newscientist.com/article/dn12131-video-game-addiction-not-mental-illness.html