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(some) Video games are addictive, by design.
Robman
Registered User regular
Registered User regular
There was a fascinating development a number of years back. Games were previously a single-purchase affair, you'd front the $50 and walk away with a whole title.
Then, someone had the bright idea that rather then have someone drop $50 once, you could instead get them to drop $50 and then $15 every month. But how do you get them to keep paying that $15 a month?
Do you continue to release new content so that they're always finding new adventures to go on? Fuck that, why not just put build a virtual Skinner box?
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html
An essay, distilled to five points:
So what does it all mean?
Game developers are, arguably, creating predatory titles that are designed to hijack the flaws in our thinking system and rake us in for monthly payments. It's long been accepted that a fool and their money are soon parted, and I am normally loathe to say "think of the children!" but well, think of the goddamn children!
Parent's don't know how addictive these games are. There's no warning labels. There's no publicly available information like there is about gambling or smoking. People who are "addicted" to video games are mocked unlike anything seen in people with other addiction problems.
Important to note is that this is not a condemnation of video games, but rather a particular type of video game design, where the player is drawn in and ensnared in a carefully designed trap.
Then, someone had the bright idea that rather then have someone drop $50 once, you could instead get them to drop $50 and then $15 every month. But how do you get them to keep paying that $15 a month?
Do you continue to release new content so that they're always finding new adventures to go on? Fuck that, why not just put build a virtual Skinner box?
http://www.cracked.com/article_18461_5-creepy-ways-video-games-are-trying-to-get-you-addicted.html
An essay, distilled to five points:
- 5. Putting you in a Skinner Box
- 4. Creating virtual food pellets for you to eat
- 3. Making you press the lever
- 2. Keeping you pressing it... forever
- 1. Getting you to call the Skinner Box home
So what does it all mean?
Game developers are, arguably, creating predatory titles that are designed to hijack the flaws in our thinking system and rake us in for monthly payments. It's long been accepted that a fool and their money are soon parted, and I am normally loathe to say "think of the children!" but well, think of the goddamn children!
Parent's don't know how addictive these games are. There's no warning labels. There's no publicly available information like there is about gambling or smoking. People who are "addicted" to video games are mocked unlike anything seen in people with other addiction problems.
Important to note is that this is not a condemnation of video games, but rather a particular type of video game design, where the player is drawn in and ensnared in a carefully designed trap.
Robman on
Posts
The analogy would be closer if any of those included any strong mechanism to encourage the person to spend a huge amount of time on it.
Basically, my main problem with this is that if you consider this sort of thing an "addiction" on the same level as physical substance addictions, you can call any repetitive behavior an addiction. Speeding, slacking at work, television, masturbation, and arguing with people on Internet forums (but I repeat myself!) all become "addictive behavior", in that they produce an immediate reward (or "positive reinforcement") to draw attention away from the mundanity of everyday life, and, if overused, can ultimately harm the user's day-to-day life.
WOW and the like are missing the boat. Games that get you to play all day everyday aren't where its at, they're hellish on server maintanance.
The trick would be to make a game where you play 5 minutes a month and still pay the $15.
I'm imagining something like Iracing.com, where you spend most of the time offline or in hosted games, then only actually go on their servers for one or two hosted races a week.
When I was in college, I had The WoW Roommate.
You've probably heard (a variation on) this before. It was the fall semester of my sophomore year and I was paired up with an incoming freshman, who we'll call Trevor. Trevor played WoW and talked on Skype virtually all of the time while he was in the dormroom. At around midnight, I'd tell him to either turn that shit off or take it to the lounge, because I wanted to sleep. (He'd generally turn it off and go to bed.)
After a couple of weeks, my girlfriend's roommate left for reasons I don't remember anymore. This meant that I was sleeping there pretty much every night. Without me to keep him in line, Trevor started staying up later and later. After about a month, it got to the point where I'd go up to the room at 8:00 AM or so to grab my things for class and he'd still be awake. He had gone completely nocturnal. He would go to sleep at 9:00 AM or so, wake up at 7:00 PM, grab dinner-breakfast from the dining hall, play WoW until 8:30 AM, grab breakfast-dinner, and go to sleep.
He didn't show up the next semester. A couple of weeks in, his mom showed up to pack up his things.
Now, what this says about the addictiveness of MMOs is debatable, I guess. I know it scared me away from starting WoW. But I still think that calling this video game "addiction" takes away the seriousness of actual physical addiction to actual substances.
You'd also be less inclined to work hard to achieve something in real life when you know there's a quick, easy, less-effort way of feeling accomplished.
It is nasty to manipulate people like that, but I guess everyone's got to make money...
Physiological dependency for one.
But not all people that gamble or instances of gambling are driven by addiction, right?
Edit - Once more, with English. >.<
Edit Edit - And I don't mean one-time trials either; I like to gamble every once in a while, about as often as I like to go to the movies (which isn't often). It's an enjoyable experience that I like to repeat, but it certainly doesn't hold my life like it would for an addict.
Seriously, Gladwell?
Red herring.
All addiction implies pre-existing psychological problems.
Psychological problems do not in and of themselves imply moral blame. If manufacturer X makes product Y that produces compulsive behavior Z in people with common psychological issues like depression or social anxiety, then manufacturer X is still morally culpable.
Really, though, couldn't the same be said of someone with physical addictions? Unless we're talking something like cocaine or heroin--something with extremely obvious physically addictive qualities--in most cases it comes down to a matter of whether or not the person has an addictive personality.
Take alcohol. Plenty of people drink and are not alcoholics--some people who drink are alcoholics, but not to an extent that it ruins their lives. Then there are people who are shit-faced by 11:30 on a monday morning, who are losing their homes, have lost their families, and refuse to admit they have a problem.
What's the difference between those levels of people and the levels of addiction you find with something like MMOs?
Edit: Beat'd by Feral. CURSES!
Not all people who smoke have trouble quiting.
Not all people who use prescription painkillers get addicted to them.
Nor are all people that drink or instances of consuming alcohol are driven by addiction. That doesn't make alcoholism stop existing, it just means that not everyone is an alcoholic.
Let me try something out here super quick.
If (Marlboro) makes (cigarettes) that produces (chain smoking / irritability from lack of smoking) in (my mother), then (Marlboro) is still morally culpable.
... I had an idea of where I was going when I started this and lost it as I wrote it real quick, but I'll post it anyway; it's either helping you or not, but let's see eh? <_<
Yes, exactly. Just to expound a bit, it takes a LOT of exposure to alcohol to produce physical dependency. You basically have to be drinking to drunkenness every day, or nearly every day, for years before acquiring a physical dependency.
The physical dependency is relevant because it makes the addiction harder to quit once the physical dependency has started, but it is not a line in the sand that we can draw between serious addiction and not-so-serious addiction.
Could you give us an example of such a manufacturer that you believe is "morally culpable" of exploiting compulsive behavior?
Right, which is part of the point; the product isn't universally addictive, nor is it necessarily made to be addicting in the first place.
EvE. Log-in, reassign your training queue, log off until you complete your training x-days later.
HAHA!
Keep in mind that I'd rather not see the phrase "morally culpable" misinterpreted to mean "morally abhorrent." Like I said above, I think that MMO manufacturers are making games that cause compulsive behavior. I don't think they're evil people - but I do think they should take measures to reduce the degree to which their games cause these compulsive behaviors if possible.
Edit - *sigh* I apologize to any homosexual or bisexual readers who took offense to my poorly laid out joke about the power of friendship being "super gay." I will leave the evidence of my crime in place so you can feel ire toward me, as well as fuck off do you even know the webcomic this forum is attached to?
Edit Edit - No apologies to the heteros though, fuck you breeders.
Change "cause" to "attract" and we'd agree. The difference is major, IMO.
I also believe that it would be really easy to implement compulsive behavior restriction rules and absolutely impossible to enforce them. There will be a legislation on the subject sooner or later.
Edit: And let me just say that those measures should in no way affect content or gameplay of the game.
Excuse me?
Well, they don't, so I'm not sure how useful that question is. Cocaine (for instance) interacts with dopamine receptors in ways that your brain does not act on its own, even under the "influence" of video games.
Physical addiction and behavioral habituation are two very different things. Gambling doesn't destroy chemical receptors in your brain, causing you to be unable to feel pleasure without it, while heroin does. Lumping them both in the same category trivializes actual substance addiction.
Well, that's pretty ridiculous. "It's okay to make games less addictive as long as you don't change the game at all!"
Oh oh oh there we go - okay, now I know where the difference in our opinion is.
I don't think it's a matter of the developers making these MMOs that cause compulsive behavior - compulsive behavior I think is somewhat inherent in a person. It would be more accurate to say that MMOs are developed to take advantage of, or exploit if you feel strongly enough, those behavior patterns. Which vary in themselves.
Support from friends, family, and loved ones is generally seen as the greatest tool for one who is addicted to something or another and is in need of escaping it, right?
I was trying to be a little jokey with how I said it, but if super-serious is needed of me for this discussion I'll oblige.
I mean, shit, there've been periods where I'd do the 'all spare waking hours playing a MMO' thing; I've actually been binging on Champions this week. Where's the line between "thing I do instead because I enjoy it more than other ways of spending my time" and "addiction"? I'd assume an addiction would have to be harmful, but by what measure? Physical health? Or does mental health count too? And what about people who are in fine mental health, but just really enjoy WoW?
I really think it is insulting to people with real addictions to call something like excessive MMO playing an 'addiction'.
They are not making the game addictive, they are making it enjoyable. The purpose of the gameplay is not addiction, it's virtual fulfilment which just so happens can be enjoyed for short intervals by millions of people without negative consequences.
Hourly quotas, self exclusion etc are measures that could be taken.
Let me rephrase that.
Excuse me?
Actually, this is false. Cocaine does not directly agonize dopamine receptors. It inhibits dopamine reuptake, which is a subtle but important difference. Everything that cocaine does it does with the dopamine that your brain has endogenously produced.
Not really. Addiction is a category of behavioral habituation. It is true that chemical addiction is one type of behavior habituation and that there are other types of behavioral habituation, but they're not "two very different things" at all.
Please be citing where heroin "destroys" chemical receptors in the brain. It reduces availability of mu-opioid receptors through downregulation, but I actually haven't seen a solid citation that it destroys them outright in the way that, say, MPPP destroys dopaminergic neurons.
I really disagree with you bit about the design. I believe that some video games are quite willfully designed to have addictive properties. Look to the research linked in that essay on Cracked, you have designers specifically discussing research as to how to turn their games into skinner boxes so that people keep their subscriptions going despite any actual "fun".
As to games being "enjoyable", ask your average WoW player how much fun they're having standing around in Dalaran/Ironforge doing nothing, or grinding the same daily dungeons day after day after day.
Well, let me give you real-world examples of measures I'm talking about from World of Warcraft: rest XP and daily quests. Both of these features promote shorter periods of daily play over, for example, the pre-Luclin Everquest model of marathon sessions where if you weren't planning on logging in for four hours, you shouldn't log in at all.
You're being pedantic about details without refuting the overall point.
I read his post as generally talking about tolerance buildup, which is a physical conditioning.