Addiction

I stumbled across a website called "Video Game Addiction: When video games become more than just games". It is just like any other website dedicated to addiction, complete with "symptoms in adults and teens" and a category called "Why won't my child stop playing?". I find the site slightly humorous , but game addiction is a real thing. Games can be very addictive. In the lecture Kevin said that we need to want to be immersed to be able to be immersed in any game. But that is not true with addiction. Its not just that people are playing the games too much, thus getting hooked on them, but that games are actually designed to keep players hooked. The games played the most (apparently) are mmorpg's. Since these games are subscription based, game designers have to offer their players more than what a simple console game would offer. They need to keep their players enticed to keep them playing for as long as they can in order for the money to keep rolling in. They have to create more places they can explore, but need to make sure they come back. They give out rewards, (leveling up, getting an extra item) to keep players returning. Much like rats in cages who quickly learn that pressing a leaver will give them a pellet, we know that if we kill a certain amount of monsters (or something like that) we will get a reward, so we keep going. But that can't be it? Well according to David Wong, " If you want to make him press the lever as fast as possible, how would you do it? Not by giving him a pellet with every press--he'll soon relax, knowing the pellets are there when he needs them. No, the best way is to set up the machine so that it drops the pellets at random intervals of lever pressing. He'll soon start pumping that thing as fast as he can...this is the reason many enemies "drop" valuable items totally at random in WoW. This is addictive in exactly the same way a slot machine is addictive. You can't quit now because the very next one could be a winner. Or the next. Or the next." And this can slowly lead to addiction. While we have to want to get immersed in a game to get immersed, the game can help, and these games are crafted so well that its easy to slip into immersion. I've personally lost many hours of my life by playing Warcraft, unable to get up between a level because it wouldn't be saved, and once I'd level up I'd think "just one more..." So while the media may say that games are stealing peoples minds, gluing their eyes to their monitors, while this may not be true for all games (and the media mostly focuses on all the wrong things anyway) but some games have that nature, that intention, because their success depends on peoples activity on-site. Which sounds pretty dangerous. While it is their life and they can do what they want with it (players can play 24/7 if they like), too much of anything can be harmful...