Gaming Made Me Do It

The contested notion of 'video game addiction' is something that I have not been able to stop thinking about since Kevin's lecture on Tuesday. What an 'addiction' is, is in itself a complex question to answer. I found myself agreeing with Clark and Bakker's idea that it is more accurate to use the term 'problematic use' rather than 'addiction' to describe compulsive gamers .

However, despite such a suggestion from Clark and Bakker, it evident that video gaming continues to be strongly associated with the 'addiction' in the media. To back up such arguments that video games are 'addictive' in nature, many draw on the fact that gaming addiction can be treated. Yes, treated. Much like drug or alcohol addiction. Keith Bakker, the director of the first treatment facility in Europe, once likened gaming to having the same effects as drugs and alcohol in 2006 saying that he could see "enormous parallels between problems with gaming and alcohol and gambling". But in a later interview conducted again by BBC, Bakker came back to say that such cross-addiction only affects 90% of users. As Kevin mentioned in the lecture, 'problematic use' is a more accurate term than 'addiction' as a player could potentially play for 6 hours a day and not be addicted. Furthermore, just because a guy might play WoW for 6 hours, this does in no way make him 'addicted' either. It is not how long one plays a game, or even the 'addictive' nature of a game. It is the way in which a player uses gaming which is problematic for the problem is inherently social rather than psychological.

Gaming receives a lot of bad press. An unfounded amount really, considering this bad press comes from a very small percentage of gamers. Yes, there death has occurred as a result of gaming but these are extreme cases. Looking at such cases, it can be seen that behaviour displayed by gamers here is not normal. I, personally, was shocked by some of the following:

- A mother in Florida shook her baby to death because his crying had interrupted her playing FarmVille. She pleaded guilty to second-degree murder.

- A boy in Ohio killed his mother after his parents banned him from playing Halo 3.

- A man in Philadelphia killed his 2 year old child in a frustrated rage over his broken Xbox.

I did find it interesting that a lot of the cases I read involved grown adults, namely parents. Video games are often talked about in regard to children and their negative affects on 'youth' but why is it that parents are often left out of the equation?