Because there is no larger “addiction disorder”, and trying to create one would have a messy and complex definition compared to distinct definitions that happen to share some features.
Yet the same organisation that seems to care so much about giving every little addiction it's own name also lumps every variety of autism under the same umbrella term.
Each addiction clearly and openly differs in the object of addiction.
Whereas, with autisms, we don't yet know how to analyze symptoms well enough for there to be a bijection between set-of-symptoms and underlying-autism-variant; indeed, we can barely even separate autism's causes and effects, if at all.
The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling. Defining the disorder by the pathology rather than an obtuse collection of symptoms which have a tendency to overlap and merge might be too much for psychology, but it’s the scientific thing.
> The activity which is addictive varies, but the underlying physiological mechanism seems to be essentially identical from cocaine abuse to gambling.
No, it doesn't. There seem to likely be some similar key mechanisms involved, but the shared mechanisms aren't the whole story, otherwise someone addicted to something would be addicted to everything.
We give different diagnoses for different allergies, even though allergies have a common key mechanism.
I don't think so, gambling is based on the risk/reward thrill, coupled with the fact that "if I just hit the big one, I can do other activity that I want to do, but can't afford". I don't feel like many people go into the casino like, "if I win it big at $5, I'm gonna go play 100 dollar a hand blackjack!"
Video games don't have that risk/reward in as nearly as a tangible sense. Though you could argue that games like EVE Online, where in game resources have a direct comparison to hard cash. Ie, you can grind up a capital ship in game, or you can theoretically purchase enough ISK (in game currency, about $11,000 USD in this case) to buy one outright.
Video games have less risk/reward, are focused internally, and have more greed and achievement. If I'm able to clear this raid, I'm able to get X, which will allow me to do Y in the same game, which will make it easier to attempt Z, etc. No one plans to play 5 dollar blackjack so they can play 100 dollar blackjack.
I’m told that the World Health Organization’s International Classification of Diseases (ICD) was created to help epidemiologists in different countries share data. It may be, and I’m speculating here, that it’s rather easy to get something added to it, as long as there are enough researchers somewhere in the world who want it added.
Someone here must know a little more about the process by which new things are added to the ICD.
Because people who don't play games think it's weird that others are interested in things they don't like. So there must be something wrong with them.
There's a good reason why many psychologists and psychiatrists were against the inclusion of this in ICD-11 and why the DSM5 does not list it as an officially recognized disorder either.
FWIR sex/porn addiction is a suspect concept for many psychologists just like "masturbation addiction" is. One wonders whether such ideas are based in psychology vs. social attitudes of certain people similar to the attitudes those who think "masturbation addiction" is a thing.
For what it's worth "Gaming" is broad enough to capture pretty much any 'non-chemical' activity that can be addicting.
There's a somewhat grey area between "Gaming" and "Gambling", but I think it's fair to consider "Gambling" a subset of "Gaming" where the games actually pay out money (or something of monetary value). This probably doesn't match the WHO definition though.
There are people that spend most of their available hours staring at screens of graphs while trading various tokens in order to achieve the highest score... but of course we call them professionals not addicts.
> There are people that spend most of their available hours staring at screens of graphs while trading various tokens in order to achieve the highest score... but of course we call them professionals not addicts.
Not really, we call them workaholics (e.g. work-addicts) if they're so compelled to work that they can establish boundaries between it and the rest of their lives.
Do we? In some professions (eg. investment banking, medicine, corporate law, fashion, entertainment) long hours are so ingrained in the culture that the rest of the world doesn't even bother to call them workaholics, because it's exceptionally unlikely that anyone from the rest of the world knows them on a personal level.
Trading on an exchange is zero sum for the active participants and has secondary benefits like increased liquidity and less volatility for the passive participants.
Gambling is negative sum for all participants. The house is always going to win. The jackpots are just a user acquisition expense to trick even more participants into playing.
There are people that spend most of their available hours playing video games against other players to get the most kills, wins, ... but of course we call them esports athletes.
For some people it's a job that generates income for others it's an addiction that impairs proper functioning.
What I heard on the radio was "do you lose your job, lose your wife/family, yet continue to play?"
So what about the case where playing the game IS your job (which is a growing field?) What about the case where your wife/family is playing it with you?
I'm not denying there might be some underlying destructive problem, but to my layman ears it sounds more like something someone is interested in that contradicts what another believes to be "properly functional."
It should be: "do you lose your job, lose your wife/family, BECAUSE YOU continue to play?"
IE, instead of helping your wife do important things, you play a game. Instead of going to bed so you can wake up for work, you play another round, and as a result of not getting enough sleep, your performance suffers. Addiction is basically a mis-prioritization of resources due to abuse of brain chemistry. Worse, it is typically a feedback loop: "She left me, now I am sad, but the game activates my dopamine response, providing some semblance of happiness"
i expect Wikipedia Disorder as well for people who are too curious and read too much. So basically any deviation from the normal boring person is a disorder,says the thought police.
Yes, and anyone looking for help in managing their lives will get slapped with any such term and made to feel like deviants.
I've been "diagnosed" with all sorts of things. ADHD, ODD (obsessive defiance disorder), asperger's (ASD 1), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), and I'm sure I qualify for others. The thing is, there was always this search like that to look for what was the ultimate cause for my distress. And then, after all that searching, nothing came of it because I grew as a person. And I think there's a small thing there, which is that if you have a diagnosis, you have an excuse, and oh, you'll have loads of friends with similar diagnoses who will encourage you to whine and wallow in it and make excuses, and there will even be competition as to who is the worse for it.
What about television disorder, Netflix disorder? BBC News seem to be implying that 20 hours per week is too much [1]. I feel like most people that watch TV/Netflix/Youtube etc. would easily watch more than 3 hours a day. They also claim that if you're putting too much meaning on your online friendships that this is a bad thing. For many, their online friendships are the only ones they have, or they will be better and will be longer lasting than their school friendships.
Which is hilarious. Because a single game of American Football is like 3 hours, and its "fine" to watch every game throughout a season, often multiple times a week.
Ehhh... no thanks. I'll stick to my games. Nothing against Football or sports, but DAMN those things are huge timesinks I don't personally want to be a part of. I generally just spend a few minutes reading the scores / major plays so that I can continue to have conversations with my coworkers (I do see the importance of smalltalk and being able to keep up socially, so that's the level I try to stay at with sports).
Spoiler alert: pretty much every hobby eats up a lot of time. I'm not convinced any particular hobby is better or worse for you, aside from health-mandated fundamentals (ie: a bit of exercise and time in the sun).
Yes, but I wouldn't call idle consumption a hobby. It's like calling masturbation a hobby.
Reminds me of the trope of gamers annoyed that the opposite sex isn't impressed with their "hobby" as if it's some injustice that someone isn't impressed that you can sit in a chair for hours to play games or binge Netflix or enjoy amphetamines.
Through, if you say hello to them or ask them questions during that time, they will not yell at you. They don't demand to be tiptoed around like gamers do. They also don't swear loudly and randomly during that time at teammates. They are able to join family dinner preparation with everyone else - they don't do "just one more game" ad-infinity. They can tell when their favorite show ends when they want to not be disrupted, which is usually 20-40 minutes you in advance when it movie ends and you can expect them to join.
They are rarely seriously angry, excited and annoyed after watching TV, possibly with exception really involved sport match. That have impact to other people in the room, who shockingly, dont particularly enjoy dealing with that.
I like games, but gamers often feel entitled to behave the way that is considered rude in pretty much everybody else.
The problems you listed are absolutely issues with people watching sports as well, but have nothing to do with the subject material. It's a people problem and can be resolved on that level. Let's not pretend that this is somehow unique to gamers or sports fans or really any other involved hobby.
> 2. Increasing priority given to gaming to the extent that gaming takes precedence over other life interests and daily activities
This needs to be further qualified, such as by "over extended periods of time". If you spend a weekend prioritizing gaming over other life interests/activities, it's no different than having a crunch week at work and prioritizing work over life interests/activities, neither of which should be considered a disorder.
Edit: This is shoddy reporting on TechCrunch's part, the official WHO ICD listing [0] qualifies it thus:
> The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning [...] The gaming behaviour and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.
"For a diagnosis to be made, the negative pattern of behavior must last at least 12 months: "It cannot be just an episode of few hours or few days," Poznyak said. However, exceptions can be made when the other criteria are met and symptoms are severe enough."
If you are rich and no need to work, you hire the servants for your daily meals, hygiene, excretion, and/or remainder for take some sleep, playing game all day long for everyday isn't a disorder.
In the US the university experience allows a ridiculously care-free existence for many students, temporarily. A while back a friend in university was stuck with a deadbeat live-in GF that he couldn't get to leave. He ended up getting a copy of GTA Vice City and focusing on it until she voluntarily left without a fuss a week later. The GTA franchise in general aren't extremely addictive games, but the negative impact of chosing to spend free time with a game as apposed to a GF or family can cause real problems.
dis·or·der
noun
- a disruption of normal physical or mental functions; a disease or abnormal condition.
verb
- disrupt the systematic functioning or neat arrangement of.
- disrupt the healthy or normal functioning of.
I was severely addicted to video games when I was a kid. My parents kept saying I was going to be a garbage man (ignoring the insult to garbage men) I don't think it would be the norm, but because of my interest in games I was interested in computers and here I am. I'm not like a top earner 1M / year AI developer or anything, but it definitely didn't impact my life. Now if my parents had taken me to some kind of "gaming disorder" center to get fixed, I would.. probably be a garbage man right now.
Taking you to an addition center would be an overreaction as a first measure. More sensible first steps would be to simply limit the gaming time, possibly by getting you to do something else for part of the day.
A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just being a bad parent.
Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.
Absolutely ridiculous. The entire point of identifying a disorder and defining the mechanisms for diagnosis is so that we can create treatment plans to help people overcome these issues. You don't treat gaming addiction the same way you would heroine, alcohol, or gambling.
Heroin and alcohol addiction are physical addictions. They are a completely different matter.
Gambling addiction is them same as this, and there is basically no effective treatment available. Just like there won't be one for social media addiction or gaming addiction or reading addiction or sex addiction or masturbation addiction or...
I suggest reading up on how addiction treatment for gambling goes. The person still is a problem gambler at the end of treatment and it's considered successful.
The entire model for addiction for non-substance abuse addiction seems sketchy.
> A bad parent could easily make a child fit all the criteria given by just being a bad parent.
That's just as true of lots of diagnoses of physical and mental conditions and injuries. (bone fractures and PTSD are obvious examples.) The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.
> Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.
The inherent differences between different subjects of addiction require some source specific variation, but various addictive disorders in either the ICD or the DSM do have generally similar criteria.
>The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.
You misunderstood me. The bad parent causes it by being there. If you removed the bad parent then there would be no problem.
One of the criteria (although not mentioned in this article) is that the person is having negative consequences happen in a family situation because of their gaming. A bad parent could cause these negative consequences by simply being a bad parent and as a result the kid could withdraw into gaming. With this disorder around the parent can simply blame the kid playing games without looking at their own behavior.
>A scapegoat for what?
For people who alienate those close to them, so that they can blame something else other than their behavior. If a kid wants to interact with their family then they will.
All 3 of the article's points could be applied to any hobby / passion driven profession.
Next up...
Guitar disorder
Karate disorder
Baseball disorder
Fast forward 10 years...
Someone coins the term "hobby disorder" after detecting numerous patterns of people wasting their life away on doing things they enjoy.
Fast forward 20 years...
Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and a few large tech companies took over everything).
<tinfoilhat>
Sounds like a good way to begin the journey towards even more income disparity between the 1% and the rest of us.
> Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and a few large tech companies took over everything).
Dumb question here: why is not having to feign passion for every single corner of technology (just to even get a chance at a foot in the door at each particular company) a bad idea?
But there aren't many people (as far as I'm aware?) who forgo self-maintenance to play guitar more and more. Games are uniquely positioned to get someone hooked in the same way that gambling is, because modern games are so well optimised for triggering dopamine release. It's certainly fuzzy, but there's a line between "I do this thing in most of my spare time because it's my passion" and "I neglect important aspects of my life because I'm spending so much time doing this thing".
I think so. I was really addicted to playing the guitar when I was younger. You get that same dopamine release from learning a riff or finally getting through a solo without messing up (which you may end up trying 100 times in a row). Then once you pull it off, you do it again, and again and again because it feels good.
The same thing happens with any skill based activity. Like learning a 120 move form in Karate, or pitching a no hitter (where every single time you prevent a hit, you get that hit of dopamine), etc..
Or programming where you might spend 15 hours a day consumed with it, forgetting to eat, etc., where you might get hundreds of dopamine hits during that time frame. Each one being triggered by your app doing what you wanted it to do.
Some people have a ridiculous amount of determination and will not give up until they do what they set out to do. It doesn't matter if it's a video game or not, the activity will consume them. Video games just make it easier for more people to get addicted, but that deeply rooted dopamine cycle will affect you no matter what you do. If video games didn't exist, you would find something else.
This is really funny. How much have you "innovated" while gaming? You are living under the thumb of entertainment media already. You're trapped in your time waster instead of innovating.
Everything is a time waster until you know, investments pays off. Playing an instrument is a time waster until it turns into something you can market. Its difficult to judge future benefits of current actions.
It's not the fact of calling shenanigans; it's the vehemence with which it's being done.
There's an inflection point beyond which "[he] doth protest too much, methinks" becomes at least as parsimonious an explanation, if not moreso.
EDIT: Not to say that's happening here, specifically, but ... gestures around there's definitely some emotionally-driven reaction to this idea, amongst (and probably also behind) some of the criticism.
The vehemence might be due to the silliness of the idea as well as how it is an outgrowth of cultural attitudes people have towards gamers, not just denial.
Nowadays that society is more liberal in its acceptance of nonconforming behavior, referring to addition is one of the most effective ways of getting general acceptance to curtail people's freedom, so it's no wonder that people react with alarm.
True thanks for pointing that out. I'm addressing this as a self identified video game addict. I feel that pull to play in my brain every day. I just try to not live in denial telling myself that spending all my time gaming is a healthy and constructive way to spend my time.
I've seen this behavior in my peers and in myself. Almost always among the addicts like myself you get two responses. "Yea no doubt lmao" or an exhaustive list of other addictions like television, cigarettes, Facebook, etc. trying to rationalize it to you and themselves. I'd like to point out in these cases it is far beyond a hobby. It is self-destructive. Going a day or more without eating or sleeping. Pulling an all-nighter because you just cant seem to get away from it. I've literally seen league of legends ruin a friends future because he couldn't study over getting in just-one-more-match. In my perspective video game addiction is an undeniable truth. And those vehemently opposed usually have a self-image interest in opposing it.
That’s fair, but at the same time, nobody can diagnose addiction over the internet. There’s just too much critical context missing.
On top of that, as someone who has gaming as their primary hobby, seeing questionable armchair diagnosis brings back to memory shades of the anti-game hysteria that plagued the late 80s into the 90s. The feeling is decidedly “oh god not this shit again”. I’d be willing to wager a lot of the “Nintendo generation” that grew up on games is going to have a visceral reaction to what appears at first glance to be another attempt at demonizing them and what they do for fun, let alone the developers.
Put another way, if Tetris had been released today, I’d expect people to start banging on about addiction and how the developers are doing something wrong by releasing something so "adddictive". That deeply annoys me.
Don’t draw conclusions about peoples aggregate behavior based on comment threads. I don’t disagree that this topic touches a nerve for some people, but those people are garunteed to be over-represented here.
This whole thing with trying to place a medical diagnosis on behaviors is too much. This is really no better than the old Greek humors theory where if you were sad, you had an imbalance of melancholy.
There are a bunch of human behaviors, many of which are destructive, for which we don't really have insight into the underlying bio-physical explanation. Without that understanding, we should not be turning them into medical diagnoses.
Correct me if I'm wrong, doesn't South Korean have Gaming/Internet Addiction Centers for those with "Gaming Disorders"? I remember seeing something about this from a eSports documentary some time ago. Unfortunately I don't remember name of it.
An important aspect of identifying new disorders or creating new diagnoses is that it facilitates access to treatment and services for those that need it.
That means that those few people that have serious consequences because of excessive gaming will have the right to get treatment covered by insurance.
Video games are fine for some people, but for nerd-like personalities they present far too great a temptation to supplant real life goal obtainment with virtual status/achievement. I think its helpful to make people aware of this tendency, and unhelpful to wave it away with a comparison to some more widespread non-nerd past-time like watching TV or sports.
How precisely do you define "nerd-like" personalities and what is it about them that is susceptible to having a "gaming disorder"?
I feel like there's not much that would separate a gaming disorder from addictive behavior in general. So much so, actually, that to grant a special term for a video game related illness comes off as a little ridiculous.
I'm not sure. When I look at video game addicts including myself in my late teens, I see someone who is addicted to credentializing in a virtual world. Maybe because everything is measurable unlike real life.
Doesn't seem like "addiction" alone communicates what's happening there.
That may be your experience but that isn't what others experience. It also doesn't match the ICD's definition either.
Credentials in most systems are useless outside of those systems (and even within them in certain cases). Some can be used to gain employment or other things but even those can be abstract and "virtual" in a sense.
The essence of nerdiness is the elevation of the abstract at the expense of what's real, including the elevation of accomplishment in abstract domains (eg. video games) at the expense of developing social skills and progressing towards real life milestones, and the misunderstanding of social relations and social status owing to incorrect, reality-starved mental models. Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.
As another poster (always_good) observes, there is a huge observable difference between video game addicts and substance abusers. I would not expect nerds to be substance abusers, and I would not expect substance abusers to be video game addicts, but everything about video games, in their construction of alternative realities and virtual goals and online communities, is like a glove tailored to the hand of nerd-dom.
> Often manifests itself in things like unwelcome pedantry.
You callin me a nerd, Tycho?
So, broadly, I can agree that a tendency towards escapism is what would make someone develop a "gaming disorder". And perhaps video games are the pinnacle of what our culture can offer as the richest form of escapism.
But I still don't think that's enough to draw a categorical line between the vices through which escapist tendencies become pathologized. It seems to me the solution to the mentation of escapism is to reinforce what you appeal to as "anti-nerdiness": pursuing meaning in a world you can (and do) fully occupy with the senses. And I agree there too.
Noting the bit at the end of the article about how terribly few people manifest a "gaming disorder" is what I'm not pleased to hear. Calling it a "gaming" disorder makes it seem like if you get rid of games, you've solved the problem. But obviously that's not necessarily the case, and so I think it's a useless distinction which potentially obscures the real issue.
If the WHO is making an indictment against the entertainment industry to formally warn against the ethical risks of making games which exploit escapist tendencies, that's fine. But I don't think there's actually much of a problem here that couldn't already be meaningfully identified as an addictive tendency.
While not all addiction is due to escapism, it cannot be escaped (no pun intended) that it can be a catalyst. What we as a society need to stop doing (same re opiod addiction for example) is stop labeling and treating symptoms instead of addressing the root causes.
> Sounds like artists and philosophers and academics fall into your category of nerdiness.
I don't think anyone would dispute that. The real problem manifests itself when those drives lead someone to throw themselves into a hollow, relatively uncreative domain (e.g. pushing buttons to achieve virtual rank in someone else's creation).
Agreed. It's too arbitrary. The pattern of addiction is the same. The method of delivery doesn't matter.
In terms of marketing and supporting affected gamers, sure. But from a medical perspective, it's as arbitrary as classifying behaviors on Monday as somehow being qualitatively different from behaviors on Tuesday.
I understand and agree with part of your point, but there is also benefit to showing how they are all the same.
Showing how this parallels the exact same dopamine addiction patterns as gambling, porn, and social media provides greater insight and understanding.
The addiction research (especially with gambling) is more developed and provides much needed context and background.
People are going to think oh, it's just video games, no big deal. When they understand they are behaving exactly the same as a gambler, that might trigger something in them.
From a chemical / psychology perspective the brain operates the same no matter the domain.
> to supplant real life goal obtainment with virtual status/achievement.
If you achieve a world first in an MMO, that achievement is as real as winning a sports championship. Even if you don't do something with a competitive component, some gaming achievements are as real and can be meaningful to the individual as something like climbing a mountain that everyone has climbed before. I don't agree that it is any way helpful to just characterize games as some kind of fake activity that requires special attention. Other nerd-like activities would be anime watching and book reading. I would argue both of those have examples of extreme addiction.
The diagnosis criteria makes clear that the problem is when you start sacrificing normal life functions to get your fix. Lots of marriages have fallen apart while one partner was out playing golf. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on something, what separates a disorder from a hobby is when you are letting other responsibilities suffer.
The difference is temptation. Climbing a mountain is arduous. Addiction is not likely to be a problem. Even reading becomes kind of a slog. Video games are engineered to feel effortless and supply a constant steady buzz (or dopamine hit or whatever).
Being world No 1 in an MMO may be a real achievement, but for the millions of mediocre players, being a mediocre but persistent sportsman is likely to lead to far greater life outcomes as side effects. (And, again, physical limits stop the temptation becoming all consuming.)
I started playing Starcraft and watching it about 2 years ago. I’ve always had an obsessive mind and had stopped playing games since high school. It’s reached a point where I almost dedicate every free moment to playing. Games are incredibly addictive and it can be hard to stop. Back when I didn’t play I never understood why people play games so much. Games used to be only for geeks and boys but now everybody plays them. They are addictive and I think it’s a growing problem.
Yep I've had the same problem with counter-strike, SC2 and LoL. All my mind would be devoted to the games and I'd live in a state of ignorance bliss about my career, building up networks, building up any skills whatsoever.
Starcraft and RTS is general is a great game that rewards higher-level strategy thinking, attention management, and a number of other skills. Becoming proficient is no joke, and pros need to spend more of their time practicing than traditional sports because there is less of a physical tax from practice.
But it's just like any hobby. If it's not your profession, you need to make sure you're not putting your long-term health or the health of your relationships or other responsibilities aside just for quick shot of pleasure or adrenaline.
For Starcraft specifically, I've probably played 2k hours of SC:BW and maybe 3-4k of SC2, so I'd agree it is no joke and practicing is quite important. I managed to reach the top 2% of MMR by grinding out numerous games (as Zerg, FWIW), averaging 2.5 h/daily at my peak. I would practice economy/production (macro) and build orders outside of my matches, then bring those in to the competitive 1v1 ladder and figure out all the weird rush builds that needed to be scouted for/prevented.
I actually am trying to cut out games, however, since I find the stress on the wrists/hands that comes with coding + piano + gaming to be too much. So, when push comes to shove, I just end up watching some SC pro matches these days, as opposed to putting my wrist health in jeopardy.
That's awesome! Reaching Master League in SC2 is quite an accomplishment. I did it myself with Zerg and then Protoss, but only barely and only in 2 seasons.
The high intensity, unreachable skill ceiling, and quick feedback loop of Starcraft really taught me how improving a skill needs to be an active process. You don't just get better by grinding out games (at least not efficiently); you need to study your own play, find weaknesses in it, and work on them methodically. Having that background has helped me in other kinds of skill acquisition.
I stopped playing mainstream video games last century when, after a 'quick network game of Starcraft and maybe a bit of Quake on a Friday afternoon at the end of the work week', I emerged from the dungeon we'd made at work for the purpose, only to discover it was Sunday morning, and more than 24 hours had gone by since any of us had even thought about what we were doing.
That was my personal wake-up call. Now I only play MAME games that require, max, 10 or 15 minutes of investment .. and then I simply stop.
I sort of miss the arcades of the 80's, which didn't seem to really propagate this addiction as readily as the current madness does.
Arcades absolutely did promote addiction, they just sucked at it compared to today's games.
In a classical arcade, you walk into a darkened room filled with animated CRTs and strange noises. They literally have blinders, designed to shut out your peripheral vision so the game is the only thing in your consciousness. When you die, you have 30 seconds to insert more coins and continue, otherwise you have to start all over from the beginning. Pretty much everything about this is designed to trigger your adrenalin-based threat-and-reward reflexes.
If modern computer games are more addictive, it's only because they've figured out how to trigger even more powerful primal instincts. MMORPGs and MOBAs add a social aspect, and very often a cumulative acquisition aspect (experience, gold, credits, etc). Simulations and worldbuilders like SimCity, Minecraft & Factorio engage our higher brain centers like planning and optimization. Mobile & casual games have figured out how to squeeze gaming into even smaller timeslots within our lives.
It's also interesting how gaming & gambling have converged. It used to be that a slot machine was a machine where you pulled a lever and tried to match up dials. Now you walk into a casino and it basically looks like an arcade, with lots of computerized gambling games on backlit LCD displays, while Internet games like CryptoKitties let you play & trade with real (well, fake) money.
> they just sucked at it compared to today's games
Games these days are far far more interesting than most movies, TV shows or other forms of entertainment. With photorealistic rendering coming combined with AR they might even override the need for exploratory travels outside pure relaxation stays (i.e. if you can visit Alaska/Antarctica/Japan/Petra/whatever with photorealistic graphics, would you really want to travel there? I guess you'd rather go to some beach or clubbing place to unwind instead)
I don't disagree with your premise about games being far more interesting than most other forms of entertainment, but I cannot take you seriously when you say that any form of rendering (no matter how photorealistic) can compete with being in a different place with different people. That is a complete experience, and would need to be simulated with far more senses and to a far higher degree than is currently possible to even come close to the experience that travel will give you.
In fact, I'd say that the "I'm here now and I can't be anywhere else for a while, I'm really stuck in it and everything is exciting and new" aspect of traveling really cannot be emulated by a medium that you know you can stop consuming at will, at any time.
For me, deciding moment was announcement of World of Warcraft at the turn of the century. I knew that game was going to be everything I hoped for, and that it'd ruin me. Even though I haven't actually tried it out to see if it's any good, life of my many friends was, from a personal judgmental perspective, ruined by it.
I had the exact same experience. I'd played a bunch of games online and some weak mmorpgs like Knight Online, so I knew without a doubt if I played Wow I was done for, as it would press every button I had. And after hearing from my friends how great it was and how much time they spent playing, my resolve not to ever touch it strengthened. To this day I've played many mmos and mmorpgs, but never Wow. How weird is the world we live in where games are actually mentally physically and psychologically DANGEROUS? Where rather than eagerly awaiting some new game we fear it? At least I'm not the only one, as selfish as that sentiment is.
And sure the case can be made for personal willpower, and it's my own fault for being too weak to play it without becoming invested. But as others have pointed out these games are made to addict us. They are custom talored crack for the brain. I've seen so many friends lose jobs, friendships, all kinds of relationships... and I've seen the same with literal drugs such as alcohol, crack and heroin. I hate to advocate for regulation but we need at least some protections here because when a gaming company's bottom line depends on how much time we spend in a game you can be sure they are going to milk us for every second they can,for the most part.
Very similar experience here. I played Anarchy Online in lower secondary school so much it started to affect my grades. I started upper secondary school at the same time as WoW came out, and even though everyone else in my class and my best friend was playing it, I decided to skip it.
When I started university, I was renting a house with a guy who basically sat inside playing WoW all day, didn't socialize much (other than us and our friends at the house) and didn't study much at all. Meanwhile, for the first time, I started being social outside the world of computers.
That year my grades took a hit from socializing and drinking instead, but I don't regret that. They recovered the next year and stayed good.
WoW really felt like a big threshold for gaming to me. I'd seen the same problems with Anarchy Online and other games, but nothing was close to the scale of popularity and level of addiction that WoW had.
Something similar happened to me...I stopped playing games when my girlfriend at the time cut the power breaker off to the computer room to stop my WOW binge. I had been playing for 36hrs straight.
When Everquest came out I watched the gaming group I used to play Warcraft and other games with turn into depressing addicts basically overnight. I’ve never played an mmorpg just because of how terrible that was to watch.
Why is every researcher treating addiction like it's bad behavior that needs to be avoided in order to be cured, instead of researching ways for humans to keep on getting the satisfaction, while curing the side effects?
(I know "curing the side effects" sounds bad, but it's basically what we want).
Sounds like a "happy pill" compared to which any other reward mechanisms pale in comparison. Or, in the opposite direction, a "sad pill" compared to which no reward mechanisms can work.
It may not be possible. Addiction is a disease of our systems governing attention and motivation: Normally those systems should adapt so that we pay attention to those things which are most relevant to our long-term well-being, and so we are motivated to act in ways which sustain our well-being and success.
Addiction occurs when a pattern of exposure to an acute stimulus activates our reward system in such a way that our attentional and motivational systems are subverted to cause us to seek out more of that short term reward, at the expense of our long-term happiness.
The "satisfaction", as you put it, is the subjective experience of that overwhelming, system-breaking reward signal. To get that experience without the resulting behavioral consequences would require us to fundamentally augment how reward affects the brain. It's doubtful it's possible to do that with addictive stimuli without causing wide-reaching effects on general learning and adaptation.
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[ 2.9 ms ] story [ 247 ms ] threadWhereas, with autisms, we don't yet know how to analyze symptoms well enough for there to be a bijection between set-of-symptoms and underlying-autism-variant; indeed, we can barely even separate autism's causes and effects, if at all.
No, it doesn't. There seem to likely be some similar key mechanisms involved, but the shared mechanisms aren't the whole story, otherwise someone addicted to something would be addicted to everything.
We give different diagnoses for different allergies, even though allergies have a common key mechanism.
Especially when comparing video poker machines, it's just like a video game.
Video games don't have that risk/reward in as nearly as a tangible sense. Though you could argue that games like EVE Online, where in game resources have a direct comparison to hard cash. Ie, you can grind up a capital ship in game, or you can theoretically purchase enough ISK (in game currency, about $11,000 USD in this case) to buy one outright.
Video games have less risk/reward, are focused internally, and have more greed and achievement. If I'm able to clear this raid, I'm able to get X, which will allow me to do Y in the same game, which will make it easier to attempt Z, etc. No one plans to play 5 dollar blackjack so they can play 100 dollar blackjack.
Because diagbostic criteria need to be different for different subject matter, and no suitable generalization had been identified.
> also lumps every variety of autism under the same umbrella term.
Because there is a continuum of manifestations and not clear differentiated kinds with crisp, clinically meaningful boundaries or subject matter.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operant_conditioning_chamber#C...
Someone here must know a little more about the process by which new things are added to the ICD.
There's a good reason why many psychologists and psychiatrists were against the inclusion of this in ICD-11 and why the DSM5 does not list it as an officially recognized disorder either.
There's a somewhat grey area between "Gaming" and "Gambling", but I think it's fair to consider "Gambling" a subset of "Gaming" where the games actually pay out money (or something of monetary value). This probably doesn't match the WHO definition though.
Not really, we call them workaholics (e.g. work-addicts) if they're so compelled to work that they can establish boundaries between it and the rest of their lives.
http://www.dictionary.com/browse/workaholic
Gambling is negative sum for all participants. The house is always going to win. The jackpots are just a user acquisition expense to trick even more participants into playing.
For some people it's a job that generates income for others it's an addiction that impairs proper functioning.
What I heard on the radio was "do you lose your job, lose your wife/family, yet continue to play?"
So what about the case where playing the game IS your job (which is a growing field?) What about the case where your wife/family is playing it with you?
I'm not denying there might be some underlying destructive problem, but to my layman ears it sounds more like something someone is interested in that contradicts what another believes to be "properly functional."
IE, instead of helping your wife do important things, you play a game. Instead of going to bed so you can wake up for work, you play another round, and as a result of not getting enough sleep, your performance suffers. Addiction is basically a mis-prioritization of resources due to abuse of brain chemistry. Worse, it is typically a feedback loop: "She left me, now I am sad, but the game activates my dopamine response, providing some semblance of happiness"
I've been "diagnosed" with all sorts of things. ADHD, ODD (obsessive defiance disorder), asperger's (ASD 1), GAD (generalized anxiety disorder), and I'm sure I qualify for others. The thing is, there was always this search like that to look for what was the ultimate cause for my distress. And then, after all that searching, nothing came of it because I grew as a person. And I think there's a small thing there, which is that if you have a diagnosis, you have an excuse, and oh, you'll have loads of friends with similar diagnoses who will encourage you to whine and wallow in it and make excuses, and there will even be competition as to who is the worse for it.
I think the system is very wrong.
We used to call jokingly call it being an 'information junkie', but it's real, not a joke.
[1] https://www.bbc.com/news/uk-44504683/embed
Ehhh... no thanks. I'll stick to my games. Nothing against Football or sports, but DAMN those things are huge timesinks I don't personally want to be a part of. I generally just spend a few minutes reading the scores / major plays so that I can continue to have conversations with my coworkers (I do see the importance of smalltalk and being able to keep up socially, so that's the level I try to stay at with sports).
Spoiler alert: pretty much every hobby eats up a lot of time. I'm not convinced any particular hobby is better or worse for you, aside from health-mandated fundamentals (ie: a bit of exercise and time in the sun).
Yes, but I wouldn't call idle consumption a hobby. It's like calling masturbation a hobby.
Reminds me of the trope of gamers annoyed that the opposite sex isn't impressed with their "hobby" as if it's some injustice that someone isn't impressed that you can sit in a chair for hours to play games or binge Netflix or enjoy amphetamines.
They are rarely seriously angry, excited and annoyed after watching TV, possibly with exception really involved sport match. That have impact to other people in the room, who shockingly, dont particularly enjoy dealing with that.
I like games, but gamers often feel entitled to behave the way that is considered rude in pretty much everybody else.
- Programming Disorder. For those weirdos always spending a huge chunk of their spare time before their desktops and laptops, hacking on something.
- Engineering Disorder. A superset, including the hardware-obsessed folks (e.g. electronic/radio engineering).
This needs to be further qualified, such as by "over extended periods of time". If you spend a weekend prioritizing gaming over other life interests/activities, it's no different than having a crunch week at work and prioritizing work over life interests/activities, neither of which should be considered a disorder.
Edit: This is shoddy reporting on TechCrunch's part, the official WHO ICD listing [0] qualifies it thus:
> The behaviour pattern is of sufficient severity to result in significant impairment in personal, family, social, educational, occupational or other important areas of functioning [...] The gaming behaviour and other features are normally evident over a period of at least 12 months in order for a diagnosis to be assigned, although the required duration may be shortened if all diagnostic requirements are met and symptoms are severe.
[0]: https://icd.who.int/browse11/l-m/en#/http://id.who.int/icd/e...
https://www.cnn.com/2018/06/18/health/video-game-disorder-wh...
Except these people voluntarily spend what is essentially their free time working to improve skills and the economy of the country
Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.
This just looks like a scapegoat to me.
Absolutely ridiculous. The entire point of identifying a disorder and defining the mechanisms for diagnosis is so that we can create treatment plans to help people overcome these issues. You don't treat gaming addiction the same way you would heroine, alcohol, or gambling.
Gambling addiction is them same as this, and there is basically no effective treatment available. Just like there won't be one for social media addiction or gaming addiction or reading addiction or sex addiction or masturbation addiction or...
I suggest reading up on how addiction treatment for gambling goes. The person still is a problem gambler at the end of treatment and it's considered successful.
The entire model for addiction for non-substance abuse addiction seems sketchy.
That's just as true of lots of diagnoses of physical and mental conditions and injuries. (bone fractures and PTSD are obvious examples.) The fact that bad parenting can cause a condition doesn't invalidate the diagnosis of the condition.
> Something like this should not exist in the ICD. There should be a general addiction disorder that puts forth general criteria for showing that a person has an addiction for something.
The inherent differences between different subjects of addiction require some source specific variation, but various addictive disorders in either the ICD or the DSM do have generally similar criteria.
> This just looks like a scapegoat to me.
A scapegoat for what?
You misunderstood me. The bad parent causes it by being there. If you removed the bad parent then there would be no problem.
One of the criteria (although not mentioned in this article) is that the person is having negative consequences happen in a family situation because of their gaming. A bad parent could cause these negative consequences by simply being a bad parent and as a result the kid could withdraw into gaming. With this disorder around the parent can simply blame the kid playing games without looking at their own behavior.
>A scapegoat for what?
For people who alienate those close to them, so that they can blame something else other than their behavior. If a kid wants to interact with their family then they will.
Next up...
Guitar disorder
Karate disorder
Baseball disorder
Fast forward 10 years...
Someone coins the term "hobby disorder" after detecting numerous patterns of people wasting their life away on doing things they enjoy.
Fast forward 20 years...
Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world (people stopped innovating and a few large tech companies took over everything).
<tinfoilhat>
Sounds like a good way to begin the journey towards even more income disparity between the 1% and the rest of us.
</tinfoilhat>
Dumb question here: why is not having to feign passion for every single corner of technology (just to even get a chance at a foot in the door at each particular company) a bad idea?
The same thing happens with any skill based activity. Like learning a 120 move form in Karate, or pitching a no hitter (where every single time you prevent a hit, you get that hit of dopamine), etc..
Or programming where you might spend 15 hours a day consumed with it, forgetting to eat, etc., where you might get hundreds of dopamine hits during that time frame. Each one being triggered by your app doing what you wanted it to do.
Some people have a ridiculous amount of determination and will not give up until they do what they set out to do. It doesn't matter if it's a video game or not, the activity will consume them. Video games just make it easier for more people to get addicted, but that deeply rooted dopamine cycle will affect you no matter what you do. If video games didn't exist, you would find something else.
> Being passionate about anything is a thing of the past. Everyone works a corporate job at 1 of 5 companies in the world
And they play videogames to relax. And think life is good this way. Maybe today is the right time to avoid your dystopia.
So you spend a few hours playing games and you have nothing to sell or shill on Hackernews. Is that a problem?
Did you enjoy yourself playing those games? Yes? Then why isn't that enough?
Downtime is important.
There's an inflection point beyond which "[he] doth protest too much, methinks" becomes at least as parsimonious an explanation, if not moreso.
EDIT: Not to say that's happening here, specifically, but ... gestures around there's definitely some emotionally-driven reaction to this idea, amongst (and probably also behind) some of the criticism.
I've seen this behavior in my peers and in myself. Almost always among the addicts like myself you get two responses. "Yea no doubt lmao" or an exhaustive list of other addictions like television, cigarettes, Facebook, etc. trying to rationalize it to you and themselves. I'd like to point out in these cases it is far beyond a hobby. It is self-destructive. Going a day or more without eating or sleeping. Pulling an all-nighter because you just cant seem to get away from it. I've literally seen league of legends ruin a friends future because he couldn't study over getting in just-one-more-match. In my perspective video game addiction is an undeniable truth. And those vehemently opposed usually have a self-image interest in opposing it.
On top of that, as someone who has gaming as their primary hobby, seeing questionable armchair diagnosis brings back to memory shades of the anti-game hysteria that plagued the late 80s into the 90s. The feeling is decidedly “oh god not this shit again”. I’d be willing to wager a lot of the “Nintendo generation” that grew up on games is going to have a visceral reaction to what appears at first glance to be another attempt at demonizing them and what they do for fun, let alone the developers.
Put another way, if Tetris had been released today, I’d expect people to start banging on about addiction and how the developers are doing something wrong by releasing something so "adddictive". That deeply annoys me.
There are a bunch of human behaviors, many of which are destructive, for which we don't really have insight into the underlying bio-physical explanation. Without that understanding, we should not be turning them into medical diagnoses.
Edit: found it https://youtu.be/of1k5AwiNxI?t=1150
That means that those few people that have serious consequences because of excessive gaming will have the right to get treatment covered by insurance.
I feel like there's not much that would separate a gaming disorder from addictive behavior in general. So much so, actually, that to grant a special term for a video game related illness comes off as a little ridiculous.
Doesn't seem like "addiction" alone communicates what's happening there.
Credentials in most systems are useless outside of those systems (and even within them in certain cases). Some can be used to gain employment or other things but even those can be abstract and "virtual" in a sense.
As another poster (always_good) observes, there is a huge observable difference between video game addicts and substance abusers. I would not expect nerds to be substance abusers, and I would not expect substance abusers to be video game addicts, but everything about video games, in their construction of alternative realities and virtual goals and online communities, is like a glove tailored to the hand of nerd-dom.
You callin me a nerd, Tycho?
So, broadly, I can agree that a tendency towards escapism is what would make someone develop a "gaming disorder". And perhaps video games are the pinnacle of what our culture can offer as the richest form of escapism.
But I still don't think that's enough to draw a categorical line between the vices through which escapist tendencies become pathologized. It seems to me the solution to the mentation of escapism is to reinforce what you appeal to as "anti-nerdiness": pursuing meaning in a world you can (and do) fully occupy with the senses. And I agree there too.
Noting the bit at the end of the article about how terribly few people manifest a "gaming disorder" is what I'm not pleased to hear. Calling it a "gaming" disorder makes it seem like if you get rid of games, you've solved the problem. But obviously that's not necessarily the case, and so I think it's a useless distinction which potentially obscures the real issue.
If the WHO is making an indictment against the entertainment industry to formally warn against the ethical risks of making games which exploit escapist tendencies, that's fine. But I don't think there's actually much of a problem here that couldn't already be meaningfully identified as an addictive tendency.
I don't think anyone would dispute that. The real problem manifests itself when those drives lead someone to throw themselves into a hollow, relatively uncreative domain (e.g. pushing buttons to achieve virtual rank in someone else's creation).
In terms of marketing and supporting affected gamers, sure. But from a medical perspective, it's as arbitrary as classifying behaviors on Monday as somehow being qualitatively different from behaviors on Tuesday.
Showing how this parallels the exact same dopamine addiction patterns as gambling, porn, and social media provides greater insight and understanding.
The addiction research (especially with gambling) is more developed and provides much needed context and background.
People are going to think oh, it's just video games, no big deal. When they understand they are behaving exactly the same as a gambler, that might trigger something in them.
From a chemical / psychology perspective the brain operates the same no matter the domain.
If you achieve a world first in an MMO, that achievement is as real as winning a sports championship. Even if you don't do something with a competitive component, some gaming achievements are as real and can be meaningful to the individual as something like climbing a mountain that everyone has climbed before. I don't agree that it is any way helpful to just characterize games as some kind of fake activity that requires special attention. Other nerd-like activities would be anime watching and book reading. I would argue both of those have examples of extreme addiction.
The diagnosis criteria makes clear that the problem is when you start sacrificing normal life functions to get your fix. Lots of marriages have fallen apart while one partner was out playing golf. It doesn't matter how much time you spend on something, what separates a disorder from a hobby is when you are letting other responsibilities suffer.
Being world No 1 in an MMO may be a real achievement, but for the millions of mediocre players, being a mediocre but persistent sportsman is likely to lead to far greater life outcomes as side effects. (And, again, physical limits stop the temptation becoming all consuming.)
You mean Starcraft II?
Bad times.
But it's just like any hobby. If it's not your profession, you need to make sure you're not putting your long-term health or the health of your relationships or other responsibilities aside just for quick shot of pleasure or adrenaline.
I actually am trying to cut out games, however, since I find the stress on the wrists/hands that comes with coding + piano + gaming to be too much. So, when push comes to shove, I just end up watching some SC pro matches these days, as opposed to putting my wrist health in jeopardy.
The high intensity, unreachable skill ceiling, and quick feedback loop of Starcraft really taught me how improving a skill needs to be an active process. You don't just get better by grinding out games (at least not efficiently); you need to study your own play, find weaknesses in it, and work on them methodically. Having that background has helped me in other kinds of skill acquisition.
That was my personal wake-up call. Now I only play MAME games that require, max, 10 or 15 minutes of investment .. and then I simply stop.
I sort of miss the arcades of the 80's, which didn't seem to really propagate this addiction as readily as the current madness does.
In a classical arcade, you walk into a darkened room filled with animated CRTs and strange noises. They literally have blinders, designed to shut out your peripheral vision so the game is the only thing in your consciousness. When you die, you have 30 seconds to insert more coins and continue, otherwise you have to start all over from the beginning. Pretty much everything about this is designed to trigger your adrenalin-based threat-and-reward reflexes.
If modern computer games are more addictive, it's only because they've figured out how to trigger even more powerful primal instincts. MMORPGs and MOBAs add a social aspect, and very often a cumulative acquisition aspect (experience, gold, credits, etc). Simulations and worldbuilders like SimCity, Minecraft & Factorio engage our higher brain centers like planning and optimization. Mobile & casual games have figured out how to squeeze gaming into even smaller timeslots within our lives.
It's also interesting how gaming & gambling have converged. It used to be that a slot machine was a machine where you pulled a lever and tried to match up dials. Now you walk into a casino and it basically looks like an arcade, with lots of computerized gambling games on backlit LCD displays, while Internet games like CryptoKitties let you play & trade with real (well, fake) money.
However in the modern era, once you start - there is nothing stopping you.
Games these days are far far more interesting than most movies, TV shows or other forms of entertainment. With photorealistic rendering coming combined with AR they might even override the need for exploratory travels outside pure relaxation stays (i.e. if you can visit Alaska/Antarctica/Japan/Petra/whatever with photorealistic graphics, would you really want to travel there? I guess you'd rather go to some beach or clubbing place to unwind instead)
In fact, I'd say that the "I'm here now and I can't be anywhere else for a while, I'm really stuck in it and everything is exciting and new" aspect of traveling really cannot be emulated by a medium that you know you can stop consuming at will, at any time.
And sure the case can be made for personal willpower, and it's my own fault for being too weak to play it without becoming invested. But as others have pointed out these games are made to addict us. They are custom talored crack for the brain. I've seen so many friends lose jobs, friendships, all kinds of relationships... and I've seen the same with literal drugs such as alcohol, crack and heroin. I hate to advocate for regulation but we need at least some protections here because when a gaming company's bottom line depends on how much time we spend in a game you can be sure they are going to milk us for every second they can,for the most part.
When I started university, I was renting a house with a guy who basically sat inside playing WoW all day, didn't socialize much (other than us and our friends at the house) and didn't study much at all. Meanwhile, for the first time, I started being social outside the world of computers.
That year my grades took a hit from socializing and drinking instead, but I don't regret that. They recovered the next year and stayed good.
WoW really felt like a big threshold for gaming to me. I'd seen the same problems with Anarchy Online and other games, but nothing was close to the scale of popularity and level of addiction that WoW had.
(I know "curing the side effects" sounds bad, but it's basically what we want).
Addiction occurs when a pattern of exposure to an acute stimulus activates our reward system in such a way that our attentional and motivational systems are subverted to cause us to seek out more of that short term reward, at the expense of our long-term happiness.
The "satisfaction", as you put it, is the subjective experience of that overwhelming, system-breaking reward signal. To get that experience without the resulting behavioral consequences would require us to fundamentally augment how reward affects the brain. It's doubtful it's possible to do that with addictive stimuli without causing wide-reaching effects on general learning and adaptation.