Addiction: forgoing reality to play a game

Game developers know that in order to be successful in such a competitive industry, their products must be fun to play. The player should be motivated to continue playing, and they should want to make an effort to achieve something or make progress in the game. But it seems that this theory of design can almost be too successful. Certain games enable the player to become overly engrossed in the content, ignoring all aspects of their actual lives as they devote every waking moment to playing the video game. Many believe that video games have the capacity to become an addiction, potentially on par with substance abuse or alcoholism.

There’s a genre of video game that hasn’t been discussed thus far in this blog: massive multiplayer online RPGs, or MMOs for short. These games often depict fantasy settings with a world that is populated not only by virtual characters, but also by other real people playing the game at the same time. The first MMO to gain widespread popularity was Sony Online Entertainment’s (SOE) Everquest, but a more relevant example would be Blizzard’s World of Warcraft, which currently has more than 11 million players each paying 15 dollars a month to inhabit a virtual world. There are also MMOs targeted specifically at children, such as SOE’s Free Realms, which just recently reached the 10 million subscriber mark.

MMOs are designed to be incredibly immersive, perhaps more than any other genre of video game. You progress through the game in small increments, but each step you take towards being all-powerful is designed to feel significant. MMOs are often referred to as a metaphorical carrot-on-a-stick, where you are always given an incentive to play just a little bit more in hopes of making progress. The trick is that you can never reach the end of the game: new content is constantly being developed and released for games like WoW, so a player can never truly say they finished the game or completed everything. This sort of design is devised to get the player to keep playing the game, often in extended sessions.

These games encourage a player to devote their time to the game, rewarding them with new items or status symbols. But some players can become so addicted that they start to slip out of touch with reality. Video game addictions aren’t common in the U.S., but they pervade much of the adolescent culture in some Asian cultures, specifically China and South Korea. In these countries, internet cafes are everywhere and computer access is available to almost anyone. But within the past decade, there have been a number of tragic events involving video game players who were so addicted to playing their game that they became completely detached from the real world.

In 2005, Qiu Chengwei, a gamer from Shanghai, stabbed his friend to death after discovering that he had sold one of his in-game swords for around $700. Because many players wish to have power in these games but don’t have the time to play them for hours on end, they are willing to play real cash for virtual items in MMOs. When Chengwei discovered that his friend had sold the sword he had lent him, he started a confrontation that ended in murder. Another game-related death occurred in 2005, when a South Korean man identified as Lee died of a heart failure after playing a game for 50 hours straight. He collapsed during his marathon session and was sent to the hospital, where he died shortly after – doctors suspected that his heart failure was the result of pure exhaustion. You can read the full story on these tragic events in the links below.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4072704.stm
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/4137782.stm

A more recent, and heartbreaking, game-related death was reported in March 2010. A couple from South Korea let their baby daughter starve to death while they played a game at the local internet café. The game, Prius Online, allowed the couple to raise a virtual daughter in an online world. After a 12-hour marathon of playing, the couple returned home to find that their daughter in the real world was dead.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2010/mar/05/korean-girl-starved-online-game

These stories serve as shocking examples of what can happen when people let an addiction to video games take over their lives. It should certainly be noted that these individuals did not appear to be mentally stable, or were dealing with a traumatic event, such as being fired or giving birth to a premature child. But the very fact that these games could pull a player in so deep that they no longer cared about harming themselves or others is frightening.

Gamers need to set limitations for the amount of time that they spend playing video games, lest they become addicted and let an enjoyable past-time become an unhealthy devotion. They need to realize that these games are designed to keep you engaged and stay within the virtual world, but that the player has the ability to stop and break away from the game when they choose. China is choosing to deal with the problem of video game addiction by establishing “boot camps” for teens that have embedded themselves in the virtual world. According to the China National Children’s Center, there were 2.3 million Internet addicts in China in 2006. Only time will tell if these sorts of programs are effective, but gamers need to acknowledge the fact that too much of a good thing is often very bad.

You can read about the Internet Addiction Treatment Center in Beijing here:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/12/technology/12iht-addicts.4880894.html?_r=1&scp=3&sq=addiction%20to%20video%20games&st=cse