Psychology of Video Game Addiction
Video game addiction has been piquing my interest more and more as I delve deeper into my post-secondary education. One of the last papers that I wrote in my first year explored the possibility of males being more susceptible to video game addiction, MMORPG’s (such as World of Warcraft, Star Wars: The Old Republic, Everquest, etc) specifically, due to the fact that they face greater mating and societal pressures than females. A female will almost never be unable to find a mate – one could literally stand in the middle of a busy street with a sign proclaiming their desire for coitous and a line would form within minutes. In contrast, if a male did the same, he would be ridiculed. Furthermore, North American males have historically been exposed to societal ideals of male success, power, and dominance. The nuclear family model, boy scouts, and war recruitment campaigns are all prime examples of this. Unfortunately, I was too focused on sticking to a thesis that could stay within the 5 page limit to consider the biological aspects of video game addiction
This topic hits very close to home for me – I wasted many years of my life sitting in front of a screen raiding my Friday (and S/Su/M/T/W/Th) nights away in the world of Azeroth. But as the video gaming and e-Sports communities (yes, they do exist and are taken very seriously by sponsors such as Intel, Nos (energy drink), Razer/Steelseries, Doritos, Dr.Pepper, etc just to name a few) continue to grow, the line between “nerd” and “jock” are suddenly blurred. This has some pretty serious ramifications. Gone are the days where the playground was divided between the cool, fluorescent-donning kids and the geeky, acne-ridden, pocket protector protected chumps. These days, it’s spiffy to play Call of Duty. It’s chic to have more than one gaming console in your home. Boys (sorry, not trying to be sexist) go to each other’s homes to throw around a football – on the Wii! As video games become more and more mainstream, there will be a natural progression towards a complete assimilation of them into our society. Sunday night will no longer be reserved for watching big men in tights tackling each other. No siree: they’ll be spent in bars watching StarCraft matches (look up BarCraft if you don’t believe me – the invasion of the nerds has already begun). At what point will video game addiction (and yes, using the criteria from the DSM IV, it is considered an addiction) be as natural as drug addictions, gambling? How far are we willing to let this phenomenon progress right underneath our noses?
It occurred to me that the initial paper that I wrote about this topic was much too vague. I should not have focused on the obvious example of a MMORPG. Instead, I should have broadened it to video games of all types. What do Call of Duty, World of Warcraft, Mario Kart and The Sims have in common? Simple: they all are designed to addict the consumer. How good does it feel when you get a headshot and the +250 flashes up in bold, yellow text on your screen; how euphoric is it to finally win that elusive Staff of a Zergling’s Arse; how empowering is it to put Peach in her place when you trounce her on Rainbow Road; and how satisfying is it to speed through each day on 8x speed to ensure that your Simlings get promoted from a Security Guard to a Rocket Scientist? All of these events stimulate a reward pathway in your brain that is regulated by a neurotransmitter called Dopamine.
The Dopamine reward pathway is affected by all types of rewards. Basically, Dopamine makes you feel damn good. When the Canucks score, you get a rush of Dopamine to your head; when you get an A on your paper: Dopamine; when your favourite song comes on the radio, Dopamine reinforces your affection towards it; take a shower after being outside on a cold day? Dopamine; get a text on your phone? You guessed it – Dopamine. Dopamine makes us happy. Unfortunately, repeated overstimulation of the Dopamine pathway results in it becoming less and less effective. Suddenly, 2 successful rounds of CoD aren’t enough to satisfy your craving for graphic violence. You need 10. Then 20. Then 20 hours a day. There is basically no difference between gambling addiction and gaming addiction. Why did I continue to show up every night at 5:00 PST to raid Karazhan for a year and a half? Because Prince Malchezaar was an asshole who would never drop his Nathrezim Mindblade for me. But, much like slot machines, there were plenty of near misses and built-in reinforcements in the game that enticed me to continue performing my maladaptive behaviour day after day, week after week, month after month. After a while, I stopped caring about having a social life. After all, the people in my guild were friendly enough and we all clearly shared the same (one) interest. Overstimulation of my reward pathway attenuated my response to other stimuli: I no longer cared about what I ate, grades didn’t matter to me and, at one point in time, I literally considered the idea of going out and then rejected the notion in favour of performing meaningless tasks on WoW (which I hated, by the way, but less so than the prospect of engaging in social conversation with my peers). Video game addiction is a very real thing. But why don’t we seem to care about it? Why do parents encourage it by buying their 6 year old children video game consoles for Christmas? Would you buy your kid a needle to shoot up, or their very own slot machine in an attempt to never actually have to give them an allowance? It is extremely troubling that this does not get more attention in the media. Then again, I’m not all that surprised because no one wants to bite the hand that’s feeding them.
Anyway, this post has gone on for way too long and stemmed from me watching a sample lecture on the Psychology of Gambling that one of my profs is introducing next year. And while I truly love video games and think they are the bee’s knees, I do think that there should definitely be more attention given to the possibility of addiction in our society. Otherwise, we may have an army of incompetent, socially retarded males in the near future who have really good spatial attention skills.
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