Addiction

Hey Guys,

As my first blog post I thought I'd link an old article that I read which explores the idea of addiction. This may be somewhat premature as we haven't done that lecture yet but is still good reading and may provide some context for that lecture. What's most interesting and almost validating about this article is that the author John Hopson works for Microsoft games studio and his job is to research what hooks player's. If you are interested in the author he's written a number of other articles for the same site and also written academic articles in the field of psychology and games.

This article explores the idea of gaming addiction from a psychological angle exploring the rewards system in games and how it is used to exploit a players time and effort. I found this interesting as a self professed gamer I could relate to everything that was being said and have experienced it before whether it was ranking up or working towards a reward in a game.

The ironic thing about this is that what makes this article so interesting also makes it so scary. The fact that there are people with doctorates in psychology specifically trying to find what makes us addicted to a game is a little bit intimidating. I've always know that games have an addictive quality about them, it's hard to ignore heart fluctuations every time you hear the infamous beep-boop of unlocking an Xbox achievement or ranking up in reach but the fact that they're structuring game play around this notion of rewards is a little bit daunting.

I don't know about you but I'll think twice next time I use a kill streak in COD...only twice though.