Discussing video game addiction is never a particularly easy subject to broach. At least not in my experience. Ordinarily it’s not something I particularly like to talk about at all. That could be because I’m a gaming addict in denial, or because I’m ultra defensive over my chosen hobby and quickly angered by the stupidity and banal waffle that usually follows such discussion in the mainstream media. The problem for me is that I am a gamer, known and labelled as such, and so I have to be exposed to the subject of games addiction whenever it rears its head in the media. Being “The Gamer” of both my family and friends group – not just the one who likes Angry Birds but the one with a custom built PC who talks to other dweebs online – I find that whenever there’s a story about gaming addiction in the news, that story soon finds its way into my inbox.
Although a couple of days later than the article was originally published, that same such event occurred today. An email from a non-gaming work buddy pointed me in the direction of this article from The Guardian regarding Mr. Ryan Van Cleave, resident of both the United States of America and of Azeroth.
For the benefit of our readers from the US and other exotic locations, The Guardian is actually a pretty decent newspaper, in so much as that it’s the only newspaper I’ll actively read. It’s certainly a huge leap up from The Sun or the other gutter tabloids. Shock horror, the article isn’t even a cheap excuse to bash the gaming industry. There’s a slightly snide and critical tone to some of the language that’s sure to get certain mouths frothing with the words “BAN THIS FILTH NOW!” or whatever, but generally this is a pretty sensible and down to earth recollection of a man’s struggle with a very real problem. It’s at the very least worth a read if you have a spare five minutes. Either way, you’ve no doubt heard much of this before. “Wife leaves husband for playing too much World of Warcraft.” “Couple sell child to play World of Warcraft.” “Man dies due to playing too much World of Warcraft.” “Dog eats washing machine then farts rainbows that smell like cat biscuits due to World of Warcraft.” Dat WoW, eh?
My standard and potentially ignorant and/or wrong response to this sort of thing is “everything is fine in moderation.” I’m not going to keel over and die in my chair if I play an hour of Football Manager anymore than I’m not going to end up in A&E requiring a stomach pump if I drink a beer. And I’m not going to call for alcohol to be banned every time some other goon does. The vast, vast majority of gamers are of course capable of enjoying their favourite past time without developing deep vein thrombosis, and that includes everybody from the hardcore WoW players to the apparent non-gamers who still play Cut The Rope/FIFA/Madden/Call of Duty. It’s all in the moderation.
That’s not to discredit Van Cleave’s addiction and it’s not to blindly ignore what is obviously a genuine issue. It’s just what I believe to be the root truth of this problem and other’s like it. The piece did however prompt me to consider not only my own gaming time, but how that time aligned with other readers and contributors to Tap Repeatedly. You know, as mega dweebs who read online blogs and shit.
Ryan Van Cleave, pictured looking sad in front of a PC just to make ABSOLUTELY SURE you get the idea..
There’s a reason I name dropped Football Manager above, and that reason is because as anyone on my Steam friends list will know, I play a lot of Football Manager. Steam tells me I’ve played it for 368 hours, but Steam is prone to undercutting its time keeping and that figure doesn’t include the several weeks after the game was released before I redeemed my retail copy. Oh, and that’s just this year’s version, so that figure is only since November 2010. And I’ve been playing football management sims since some time in the mid-1990s. Oh heck. In my defence, I generally treat Football Manager less as a game and more as a vital part of my boot up routine. Often I’ll load up the game but leave it idle, sometimes for hours at a time, while I browse forums, listen to music or are otherwise away from the computer entirely. Nevertheless, that’s a lot of game time. To some, that would undoubtedly signal the onset of an addiction.
Despite this, I wouldn’t consider myself to be the victim of addiction. I’m happily married, maintain an active social life and never find my work disrupted by gaming (although sometimes I wish it was), but there’s an even more simple reason for my doubts. My forever dwindling attention span dictates that in only a few rare circumstances will I sit and play a single game in a single session for any longer than an hour, or maybe an hour and a half at most. Don’t get me wrong, I play a lot of games and generally play daily if I can squeeze the time, but I wouldn’t suggest an hour and a half’s gaming to be the sign of an addiction. Who knows, maybe I’m displaying those signs of denial again. I’m no psychologist, but even as someone who classes themselves as a “core” gamer (for lack of a less ridiculous description), and as someone who is friends with lots of other “core” gamers both on and offline, behaviour like that of Van Cleave’s just doesn’t fit in line with the activities of either myself or anyone I know.
Gaming culture, though. That’s something else, and it’s something I’m openly prepared to admit I may have a little more of an issue with. I absolutely love the video game industry and the idea of gaming. I spend a fair amount of time reading internet forums, laughing at memes, keeping up with blogs and have recently even re-visited the world of the printed magazine thanks to EDGE and their irresistible layout and production quality. I regularly find myself reading about games I have no intention of buying, getting hyped for games I know will be crap and generally digesting as much useless information as I can. It’s not unfair to suggest in the slightest that I spend more time, perhaps significantly more time, engrossing myself in the world of video games and gaming culture more than actually playing games themselves. It’s not something I necessarily consider a problem, but if I were to combine the time I spend reading about games with the time I spend playing them, I would almost certainly find that this industry consumes a huge amount of my spare time. Perhaps not too far away from the amount of time Van Cleave’s invested into World of Warcraft, and perhaps considered a genuine addiction to many.
I’m kind of rambling and edging further into self justification territory at this point, so I’ll draw this to a close. Those are my thoughts on a sometimes sticky and awkward subject and this is my post. My stance on video game addiction and how it potentially effects or doesn’t effect me. In a totally non-judgemental way and without fear of being ridiculed as a SUPER NERD or l33T G33K, it would be great to hear the thoughts of anyone who has also considered how their own gaming time is spent. As always, comments welcomed below.
Email the author of this post at matc@tap-repeatedly.com
I was thinking of writing a response to the Van Cleave article, as well, but school’s got me a little swamped…so I’ll just leave my comment here! (Creative solutions!)
The thing that I see about video game addiction coverage is that people outside of the gaming audience generally treat it like its the new designer drug that all the kids are doing. And that’s not it at all. Games aren’t the kind of thing that you take one hit and then you’re a slave to them for life. The comparison to gambling addiction isn’t too bad, of course, as both are things that aren’t literally addictive – in the physical dependency sense – but can definitely become psychologically addictive if not moderated properly.
Maybe this is just me, but does it strike anyone else as vaguely odd that addiction to video games stokes all sorts of fires every once in a while, but the same outlets find very little ire for, say, alcohol? Then again, covering every time that someone lets their alcohol abuse leave their life in shambles (and quite possibly others’ lives, too) would pretty much take all their time.
Great work, Mat, a really thoughtful view.
I’ve always leaned in the direction of the IGDA White Paper on Addiction on these matters. Paraphrasing, it says “addiction subtracts from one’s life; that to which the subject is addicted does not receive from the substance the same level of life fulfillment that is removed.” And games, as with many other escapes, become increasingly tantalizing as the addicted individual’s life as a whole gets worse.
But as you say, hundreds of millions of people play but aren’t hurt by it. Avoiding problems by escaping into games; not eating; ignoring one’s family; these are signs of a problem. The addicted individual could just as easily have chosen heroin, but as Brandon said, if they covered everyone who ruined themselves and their families through alcohol or smack, there’d be no other stories.
I feel for Mr Van Cleave, and I hope he’s able to take his life in a new direction. A lot of game addiction coverage is very much of the blame-the-sin-not-the-sinner style; I can’t couch to that because games are not a sin and addicted people are not sinners. They just want to be happy, and when they find something that makes them happy, they can over do it.
Great piece of work, Mat, thanks. I never would have read the Guardian article were it not for your post here.
I was reading this article on my blackberry and I got halfway through and set it down to do something else. Whilst I was doing that I considered my own time spent gaming, I stand with you in that my time spent gaming isn’t excessive – daily, yes – but not excessive.
Just as I was coming back to the article I though “then again, I do spend a lot of time reading gaming blogs, forums watching videos and following twitter feeds. Then, lo and behold you said exactly the same thing. I think that I would class myself as an enthusiast as opposed to an addict – at least that’s how I justify the time I spent immersed in the culture.
Thanks for the feedback as always, gents.
Brandon, I think there’s still an element of the media that think’s it’s funny to poke fun at the gaming community. The vision of the overweight slob sat in the cellar of his Mums house eating nacho’s and playing MMO’s is the start and end of it, as far as they’re concerned. It’s a particularly hilarious view given how many of the people who claim they aren’t gamers and who read this sort of stuff, DO play games these days.
Mind you, The Guardian’s piece wasn’t like that in the most part, thank god.
Very thoughtful read. I personally think issues like gaming “addiction” get a lot of unnecessary attention (as opposed to say alcoholism or a smack addiction) because it is still a relatively new from of media and communication. So much of a game like WoW is social interaction in a digital age, a highly advanced chat room of sorts where along with socializing, we can take part in various activities with friends.
If a so called MMO addict were to spend the same amount of time they played WoW doing other activities with friends (sports, book clubs, boating, whatever) would it still be an addiction? Would you see news columns questioning why people were spending too much time hanging out with their friends?
We are highly social creatures, a result of our own evolution, but the modernization of our world post industrial revolution has heavily impacted our ability to socialize. To me, online gaming, Facebook, Twitter, all these new communications media are in a large way saviors fulfilling an evolutionary need we have to interact with one another, but for a variety of reasons can no longer do so easily in the “real” world.
With time, as gaming is more normalized in our culture, this sort of view of gaming will change.
Great article…. kinda funny that I happened upon it JUST after watching one of “Extra Credits” latest videos. Extra Credits is an internet show that takes a critical look at the industry, development, art and impact of video games in the modern world. They used to be on “The Escapist”, but had some issues… now they are squatting on you tube looking for a new host – (bring em here Steerpike!!). The episode in question dealt with the concepts and conceits of game addiction, and it was at time quite hard to watch. Now if you’ve never seen Extra Credits, it was very unlike their usual shows, which are a little lighter, yet still very intelligent. Check em out…. and watch the episode. Clocks in at nearly 30 minutes (there are 3 parts), 3 times as long as any other episode that have done – but well worth it. Link below:
http://www.youtube.com/user/ExtraCreditz#p/u/4/00SvIIualUw
Thanks for the comments, Arctic Black. Also thanks for linking me to Extra Credits. Never seen any of their stuff until now but I will check them out with interest..
Well… all the stuff they had on the Escapist is gone… dunno if there’s a repository somewhere…. some great episodes. I’ll look into it.