Panorama: Addicted to Games?

[Guy]

This was filmed during I41 at Newbury racecourse a few weeks ago.

Totally biased as 99% of the stuff Panorama is doing these days.

I wasnt actually the event, but from reports there it does sound like they were just going round alot of the gamers there until one of them answered the questions that they wanted.

'if you stopped gaming "cold turkey" would you be like shaking etc'
Just one of the questions being asked to the participants there.

Taken from here:

http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/i-seri...1-panorama-i40

http://forums.multiplay.co.uk/genera...ddicted-gaming

[AD-15]

Well of course - as has been said previously, these kinds of situations are the extremes of what can happen and are therefore by no means the norm. They make this clear in the program.

[Saracen]

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Totally biased as 99% of the stuff Panorama is doing these days.


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A little harsh, perhaps. They did make clear that they were talking about cases at the extreme end of the range, but just as an alcoholic that drinks himself/herself into liver disease, or a coffin, is at the extreme end of alcoholism, it doesn't mean alcoholism isn't a problem.

And at what point doesn't gaming go from a fun pastime to an obsession to an addiction?

One definition (Chambers) of addiction reads :-

1 the state of being addicted.

2 a habit that has become impossible to break, especially one involving physical and psychological dependence on the intake of harmful substances such as alcohol or narcotic drugs.

Is it possible that people are addicted to gaming? It's certainly been argued that other things, like sport, and certainly like "risk" activities, get people addicted. And if you think about it, many (perhaps all) human addictive responses essentially are chemical releases in the brain, usually dopamine. It is possible to actually watch physical brain reactions in a drug addict to the mere sight of a line of cocaine with a fMRI or PET scanner.

So what is addiction? As I understand it, it's the repeated triggering of the reward system, mainly in the mesolimbic dopamine system in the brain to the emission and reception of dopamine, that the brain then gets to require in order for the individual to feel good. It's a physiological response in the brain to a stimulus, and we know from those PET and fMRI scans that you don't even need the actual drug (cocaine, heroine, whatever) to be able to trigger that brain reaction, merely the image of it.

So if the brain responds physically to some events, be it hard drugs, cigarettes, alcohol or, hell, even chocolate, and we know that some physical activities like excessive running, or bungy jumping, cause a similar physiological reaction, then it's very plausible that excessive hours of game playing could result in physical addiction to the dopamine release from game playing. We also know that, as with many drugs, the brain slowly desensitises so that you need more of a 'hit' to get the same dopamine 'reward'. Again, it's a feature of addiction.

We therefore know that the mechanism is capable of working this way, and we know that the excessive and obsessive tendencies of an extreme few closely match typical addictive behaviour, so it's not much of a leap to conclude that when game-playing takes such a destructive hold over someone as to result in them abandoning jobs, studies, family, just about all forms of social activity that don't involve their gaming obsession, even to the point of physically damaging sleep deprivation, etc, that it's actually just another form of the phenomenon of addiction.

Those that take just about any of these forms of addiction to damaging extremes tend to be the thin end of the wedge, but it doesn't mean the wedge isn't much bigger. I was listening to a local radio station a few days ago (before Panorama aired) and a listener came on and admitted that gaming nearly cost him his marriage, because when he wasn't at work, he was gaming more or less constantly, and thought nothing of going for a session of "an hour or two", emerging later to find eight or ten hours had gone by. And then he found one of his kids (and a young one) was going to bed at 9PM, turning the sound down, putting a blanket along the bottom of his door and gaming 'til about 2AM, and was then falling asleep all the time at school.

He only came to his senses when, pretty much, the wife burst into tears and said she never saw him these days, and if he didn't change, there'd be drastic results for the marriage. Know what he said (by his own admission)? "Let me finish this level and I'll come and talk to you". If I'd said that to the wife, I'd have need gallons of vaseline and major surgery to get my computer back out again, and a very good divorce lawyer.

....

I wasnt actually the event, but from reports there it does sound like they were just going round alot of the gamers there until one of them answered the questions that they wanted.

'if you stopped gaming "cold turkey" would you be like shaking etc'
Just one of the questions being asked to the participants there.

....

A different point to the above, but while you've got to be very careful how you phrase survey questions to be confident of unbiased results, it's also about the conclusions you draw. Depending on exactly how that question was phrased, and what the responses were, and how you interpreted that, that question could even be used to assert that addiction was minimal, or even didn't exist at all. It's not fair to take a single question like that, out of context, and characterise the quality of any survey by it.

[TooNice]

But gaming is not a habit? nor an addiction...

I am going to dispute that. Saracen might have covered what I am about to say in the post above, but I'll go ahead with my post anyway.

1. Gamers and reviewers often the term addictiveness (positively) to describe a game. After all, a game that's makes you come back again and again is technically 'good value for money' compared to the game you are tired of after 20 minutes.

2. Perhaps you are not personally addicted to games. Plenty of people aren't (at least to a degree where it's a problem), but that doesn't mean nobody are. Same goes for alcohol. Most people can drink sensibly, yet alcoholism is an recognised issue. There may not be a similar term for games, but when people play themselves to exhaustion (killing themselves in the process), then it's quite obvious that the issue does exist. No, I am not suggesting banning games - merely recognising that some people are unfortunately strongly affected.

3. When talking of addictions, chemical may be one form, but it is certainly not the only one. I am still not sure why you think there are no addiction to gaming but it does not take nicotine or alcohol to induce addiction. Workaholic are defined as someone addicted to work, for instance.

Well, I've not watched the show either, so I might check it out to see what angle the show's taking on this issue later. First, some DS

[chuckskull]

I CAN STOP ANYTIME I WANT!!! LEAVE ME ALONE!!

On a serious note, yes people can get overly obsessed with them, how many of us know someone whose taking a week off this week for the new World of Warcrack expansion? But, I think the word addiction is thrown about far to easily, for example I've not heard of any grannies getting mugged for wow gold or people living in squats selling their ass for a month of Eve game time. Gaming is cheap, easy and thoroughly enjoyable escapism, and yes sometimes people are reluctant to come back from their escape, but I didn't want to come back from my last holiday either doesn't mean I'm addicted to Cornwall.

In my experience so called addicts, merely need a dose of reality and 25cc's of HTFU rather than inpatient treatment.

[directhex]

They did make clear that they were talking about cases at the extreme end of the range, but just as an alcoholic that drinks himself/herself into liver disease, or a coffin, is at the extreme end of alcoholism, it doesn't mean alcoholism isn't a problem.

This argument would have merit if they were able to present a single reliable and scientifically valid argument to support the narrative they were peddling. The best they managed was a single researcher in a tangentially related field saying that for some people, gaming might be a factor in their behaviour. That was their entire body of evidence, their "findings" which they used to try and extract soundbites from industry representatives.

Here's an excellent analysis of the show, and why it was so skewed and poorly executed.

[LWA]

DirectHex, thanks for the link. That summarised what I thought of that episode as well!

Anyway, did anyone see this comment:

Farmville is a gateway game. I started a year ago, and quickly found that the buzz wasn’t enough: I needed more. Desperate for a hit, I searched high and low for a harder Farm simulator. It was a neverending cycle downwards.

I’ve now hit rock bottom. I bought a 800 acre dairy farm in Norfolk and now play it 24/7. In calfing season I stay up all night on it, grinding on through the endless miracles of newborn life. I constantly battle with my demons – Tescos and Morrisons, always trying to push me to 8p a pint.

The impact on my life is devasting – I now use baler twine to hold up my trousers. All I have to show for this is a £2m annual turnover and a ****ing nice red Massey Ferg.

[chuckskull]

Missed that comment, brilliant