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I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when

I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Y'know, how people in the 60's would say "Oh Johnny just likes his liquor" when Johnny's drinking at 9AM, drunk at 10 and hungover by 2. Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all day and all night, at the expense of one's social life, academic success and even career. That's not normal behavior; it's behavior indicative of addiction and dependency. And I'm referring to adults. For kids, who lack executive functions, this behavior can and is even worse, even more debilitating. Now, regulating video games like alcohol may not be the best idea. We could end up in a similar state of binge drinking, except with binge playing. But perhaps some sort of preventative measure can be taken so that kids do not get sucked into these games that are, make no mistake, maliciously designed to addict and to steal money from the vulnerable. Even alcohol manufacturers don't dose their products with nicotine.

bsaul 7y ago
That’s an interesting comparison. Following the analogy, we should have the equivalent of « alcool concentration » for addictiveness. Some games are pretty mild relative to in app purchases pushing or addiction mechanics , while others are simply awfull.
verisimilitudes 7y ago
>I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Get off it. There's a strong difference between playing a game like ''Super Mario Odyssey'' and the trash Google allows because it makes money on trickery and theft. >Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. China locks up people who have ''Internet addictions''; they might find ''lies'' about political protests in China, as an example. >I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all day and all night, at the expense of one's social life, academic success and even career. Clearly one's career is said person's most important aspect. They could be working or participating in office politics instead of having fun. >That's not normal behavior; it's behavior indicative of addiction and dependency. And I'm referring to adults. Yet, nowhere in your message do you wonder why people would rather play games than do other things. You seem to think games are at fault, rather than the sorry state of society. >Now, regulating video games like alcohol may not be the best idea. It's important that every medium be heavily regulated, to prevent the wrong ideas from getting through.
ej10 7y ago
Anecdata: I live this, I agree with you. An MMO was the only thing in my life I've stayed up all night for and then been able to set an alarm and wake up for after 2 hours of sleep. This was a game I committed to for 14 years. I've slept through finals, been tardy my entire life, yet for this MMO I could do anything. I was "sick" instead of seeing my girlfriend, I was otherwise occupied instead of working, or school. I made the conscious decision years ago to never install WoW for exactly this reason. In the same way AA teaches that an alcoholic is always an alcoholic but can be sober, I choose to stay sober. I miss it. I think about it. But I have to make the active, conscious decision to 'choose life'.
- madaxe_again 7y ago
  Hear hear. I’m madaxe. I’m an addict. I wasted 18 months of university on an MMO, 15 years ago. Cost me my social life, my girlfriend, and I found myself on academic probation. It was absolutely insidious. I only found my way out of it by becoming a GM and then banning my own account, because even though I’d made the decision I wanted to stop, I just kept finding myself downloading and installing the client, yet again. It worked, I completed my degree, rekindled friendships. I did relapse about four years later while working a shitty boring QA job, and decided to treat the root cause, which was the shitty job, and went and started a business - and then didn’t game at all for nearly a decade. Weirdly, my addiction and my physical running away from the environment that fostered it lead to much of the success that I have enjoyed since. It made things so intolerably bad that a ground change was mandatory. I game again now, but it’s now on the order of about 5 hours a week on average - I’ll still occasionally spend a sleepless weekend playing something, but then I’ll go a month without. I like finite games - some adventure with an enthralling plot, and when it’s over, it’s over - or grand strategy like civ, where you master the game and move on - and frankly I find a three day deity match gruelling enough that it’ll be three months or more before I get the itch again. I’ll never touch an MMO again - they are almost perfect and infinite skinner boxes.
  - danielscrubs 7y ago
    I’m scrubs, I’m an addict. Spent my youth programming, going from language to language. I was learning and it led me to jobs and I’m grateful for that, but my memories of youth is me in a dark room in front of a big monitor and a buzzing light that never really worked right. I have almost no other memories of it. was it worth spending my youth so that I could be 15% more productive at some firm? Even now I come home, kiss my gf and then sit in front of the computer to chase the next big thing, mostly because when I come home I am to tired to do anything else than just programming. There was some research on HN where they found that programming (successful run/compilation) led to similar dopamine boosts as gambling. My neck, back and hands all hurt, but I do what I always do.
kibwen 7y ago
The problem that I've observed is that people get too bogged down over the use of the word "addiction" to describe this phenomenon, contrasting their psychological effects with the physiological effects one normally finds in drug addicts. In the process what gets lost in this dismissal is that, regardless of mechanism, the consequences of excessive gaming (or similarly, excessive internet consumption) echo those of some of the hardest drugs: complete withdrawl from society, neglect for self-care, chronic sleep deprivation, and thieving to support their habit. Any nerd who went to college in the 00s knew people in their freshman year who dropped out from spending too much time in EverQuest or WoW. I myself had an epiphany in 2011 after having played the newly-released Skyrim for 100 hours in its first two weeks (and those numbers are tame by comparison). It took about eight years of cold-turkey for me to stop jonesing, literally jonesing for World of Warcraft. As humans we have yet to develop ways to cope with an overabundance of mental stimulation, in much the same way that humans are still trying to figure out how best to survive in a world where food calories are no longer scarce. What we're looking at for the next decade is the obesity crisis for the brain.
hermitdev 7y ago
I've set Google Play to prompt for my password on every purchase. It's a 40 character random alpha, mixed case, symbols and number password. Hard to type when sober, impossible while drunk. Helps prevent impulse/accidental purchases. I have to really want something to transcribe that in (not stored anywhere on my phone). I have my password stored on the Xbox, but I've made abundantly clear that they are not able to purchase anything without consent. My kids are 10 & 12 and know it's really money and if they make even a single purchase without consent all gaming and internet privileges go away indefinitely. I get immediate receipts via text, so the ban hammer would go down quickly. Edit, also the kids arent allowed to my phone, either. They have their own devices, and can't purchase anything on theirs (requires Mom's password). My wife likewise has her iPhone to prompt for password on purchases.
d1zzy 7y ago
Anything can be an addiction, meaning if it stops you from going to school/work, building and maintaining relationships, having food and shelter then it qualifies IMO. So while I support trying to help people in this situation I would be careful to not make it harder for everyone else that is responsibly enjoying those things.
- fkdo 7y ago
  Yes but it seems like many video game designs are engineering towards exploiting addictive behavior. This is predatory business behavior.
  - foldingmoney 7y ago
    All business behaviour is (potentially) predatory. It's the job of regulators to set the rules, and for businesses to play within those rules as optimally as they can. It's definitely not the job of companies to _not_ give their customers what they want. If something permissible could increase their user engagement but they opt not to do it for ethical reasons, they just lose share to the less ethical companies.
    - fkdo 7y ago
      It's my right as a member of a democracy to call out when a company is doing something unethical with the hope of swaying the opinion of my peers against such business practices. It's my privilege to do so on this platform. This type of behavior is unethical which is an entirely different thing than illegal. I hope we can adjust regulations on the market to make such behavior illegal. I have this hope because I don't want to live in a society where an increasingly portion of the population is addicted.
      - foldingmoney 7y ago
        Yes, I probably should have framed my answer more carefully. My point wasn't that people shouldn't complain about this stuff. My point was just that businesses, by their nature, are sociopathic (regardless of whether anyone who works at them is a sociopath).
opportune 7y ago
I think, like with other addictions, you need to take a holistic view of video game addiction that also includes the circumstances of the addicted people during their transition from casual use, to abuse, to addiction. Why? Because most people don't get addicted to video games, just like most people don't get addicted to alcohol. And while you might be able to chalk some of it up to addictive personalities (predispositions to addiction regardless of circumstances) I'm guessing a lot of it comes down to environment more than pure chance. For video games, I think there are a few serious structural/societal issues leading to addiction. First and foremost is that keeping kids busy is hard, and the lowest effort way to keep some kids busy is to give them video games. Couple that with most kids not being allowed to just wander around outside anymore, and living in a car culture where they can't drive, and video games become the primary way most kids can play with other kids. A lot of video games addict will tell you that the thing that keeps them coming back to games are usually 2-3 things: well-defined goals with clearly actionable tasks to be completed to meet those goals (getting level 99 or a specific rare item, etc.), the community aspect, and the feeling of proficiency/accomplishment. In real life, important goals are harder to meet and less well-defined, much higher stakes, and are done over the course of months/years instead of hours/days/weeks, so video games are much preferable to hitting goals in real life. Social isolation is prevalent so videogames can easily replace that. And in real life, not everybody can be a winner, yet in videogames everyone can feel like a badass for grinding out a skill requirement or getting a rare/expensive item.
- syndacks 7y ago
  >Because most people don't get addicted to video games, just like most people don't get addicted to alcohol So, uhh, what _do_ they get addicted to?
  - jachee 7y ago
    Dopamine is the only thing that truly makes me happy.
  - opportune 7y ago
    Most people aren't addicted to anything. Most people who try alcohol and video games don't get addicted to them
hashberry 7y ago
I also like to compare video games to porn. It's achievement porn that can replace hobbies, creative pursuits, and working (lots of unemployed men game all day), just like porn can replace sex and relationships. I remember first playing WoW and thinking how dumb and childish it was. Then it sucked me in and I became obsessed with it, especially PvP. It made me realize that games with cartoon graphics such as Fortnite specifically target children and young teens.
justinhj 7y ago
It's not fair to lump all video games into one category and then malign them. Video games consist of a wide variety of forms and business models. Even the ones that people will think are exploitative, other people enjoy playing them and it forms part of their social life, a way to unwind and relax in short bursts.
- _hardwaregeek 7y ago
  Agreed that video games are not all bad. I purposefully chose alcohol as a comparison because it's neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Plenty of people enjoy drinking alcohol and have it as a part of their social life, a way to unwind and relax. However at the same time we should acknowledge that video games, like alcohol, can have a dark, addictive side. In the case of video games this is especially insidious due to the way certain games are engineered to be addictive. Basically I'm not saying video games, in all their creativity, brilliance and technical accomplishments, are necessarily bad for society.
chongli 7y ago
You're damn right! I dropped out of high school at 16, did very little besides playing video games throughout my 20s, and only in my 30s did I complete my high school diploma and enroll in university. Here I am at age 35, in the midst of a mathematics degree, grinding my way through assignments that take days and days. I don't have time to play video games anymore, though I do spend a lot of time watching others on Twitch tv.
ripsawridge 7y ago
Thanks for sharing this. I totally agree.
simonh 7y ago
I think a much closer and more appropriate analogy is gambling. They're both forms of games and are both engineered to engage the player in similar ways. Their monetisation and marketing strategies are also converging rapidly. Buying gems and coins in a mobile game is largely indistinguishable in my mind from buying tokens for a slot machine. The problem is games are not regulated in the way that slot machines and fixed odds betting machines are. As a result they are free to implement tactics that would be illegal in a gambling machine. For example the way some mobile games like Candy Crush calibrate the game difficulty to match the playing style of the player and adjust the odds of winning to entice them into buying coins to 'take advantage' of some perceived opportunity that the game then adjusts itself to take away from you. I'm not sure how to address this though. How can we appropriately regulate Candy Crush, without unintended consequences for Kerbal Space Program fro example? I'm not even necessarily against pay-to-play, after all it's just an extension of the model for coin operated arcade games. It might be controversial to suggest this, but it seems like some people actively seek out addiction. Maybe they are missing something in their lives and see an addiction as filling it somehow. Maybe we all do that in some from or other, we just call it engagement.
feketegy 7y ago
That's just simply not true. There are countless studies that video games are nothing like alcohol or other addictive substances.
_Codemonkeyism 7y ago
People have reasons for addiction, stress, problems, depression, loneliness, boredom. They will fill it with addiction what is easily available to them, gets them out of their problems and works. Video games are more easily available to many compared to alcohol + cheaper. If you don't remove the cause of the addiction, the person will fall back or into a new one.
FreezerburnV 7y ago
I, personally, feel somewhat offended by this characterization. While it’s true that I can stay up too late playing some video games (have to be specific ones to get me invested enough), I can do the same for other things like binge-watching anime. (And the root cause is my mild depression anyway or my ADHD depending on activity, I believe) But the current vast majority of what I do when playing games is honest practice and effort to reach a semi-pro level at my chosen game. And there are actual careers being made by the pro players of the game, or streamers playing it. On top of that, by learning how to play this team-based game more effectively, I’ve encountered a surprising number of lessons that apply outside of the game. (How to interact with “unpleasant” people, how to make suggestions without making someone feel belligerent and do the opposite, how “expending” a resource first puts you in a worse situation, etc) And on top of that making new friends by playing with the same people for months in a competitive environment. You can learn a lot of practical things, including discipline and dedication, from trying to improve to be a higher level player. Granted this is a specific “track” that most are likely not going to be following, but I think some lessons apply even if you just want to improve and get a higher “Elo rating”. And there can be negative interactions, just like almost anything in this world can become unhealthy for someone. But I think the vast majority of people can interact with video games in a healthy way that helps them destress, or cope with something in life, or whatever else. Seeing the “overwhelming numbers of reddit posts” feels almost like confirmation bias, or at least just seeing something that feels like a problem when it’s likely affecting less than 0.1% of people playing video games. On the flip side I’ve read stories in the past about how video games have saved lives, because it gave people something to live for in a horrible part of their lives. And when they get to a bettering place, they’re able to interact with them in a much healthier way because they themselves are in a healthier place. Anyway, this is a big rambly thing I typed on a phone, so it’s hopefully cohesive and understandable. But I felt a need to give an opposite perspective from someone who has never been able to dedicate their free time to anything for more than a week or something until I found a competitive game I wanted to make a run at getting into at least the semi-pro scene with, maybe even someday the pro scene. EDIT: And I have a healthy life outside of the game too. I’m married with a wife who is supporting me in getting better at this game, I hold the job making the vast majority of our money, have a healthy relationship with family on both my and her side, have good friends, help around the house, etc. I’m not just sitting in a dark parents basement playing games all day. But I do put a lot of hours into it because it’s whats necessary to get better, and maybe I’m choosing to trade that time for some other thing, but it’s a choice I’ve consciously made for improvement, much like someone here might make that choice to build a product. I shouldn’t be “shamed” for building one skill while someone doing almost exactly the same thing but in an “approved” arena is lauded.
iamthepieman 7y ago
I agree with the similarities with regard to addiction. But the mode of delivery is very very different. You can drink enough hard liquor to get drunk and satisfy the addiction cravings in 30 minutes or less and that 30 minutes of drinking(which you can also do while doing other things) will effect you for the next several hours. If you played video games for 30 minutes a day that would be a "healthy" amount in most cases.
Ygg2 7y ago
I disagree. This isn't about all games. This is about some AAA games literally bolting a gambling mechanics onto a crap game, to cause gambling addiction.
- kuzimoto 7y ago
  I think any game is addictive. Having "gambling mechanics" certainly doesn't make it any better, but that's like saying alcohol causes a drinking problem. Yet many people that drink occasionally are not alcoholics.
  - Ygg2 7y ago
    So is food, sex, etc. But having a Skinner box and other psychological tricks that empty your wallet is a serious problem. An addicting game that doesn't extract money wastes your time, granted, but an addicting game that extracts money can leave you homeless, without a job and on the street. Equating the two is like saying - all drugs are the same when one drug can leave you with a slight migraine while other kills if you take a mg more than the recommended dose.
    - kuzimoto 7y ago
      If I understand correctly, you're saying that AAA game companies are at fault for producing video games that influence people through addictive psychological tricks to the point of ruining their lives. I completely agree that some methods uses by game companies are dubious at best, and can ruin lives. However, I don't think that game companies are to blame. > Equating the two is like saying - all drugs are the same when one drug can leave you with a slight migraine while other kills if you take a mg more than the recommended dose. All addictions are not equally destructive. But, all addictions can be destructive depending on the individual. Many other companies are using similar tactics in other areas than video games. People obsessively use Facebook/Instagram to the point of depression and suicide, are they to blame? Are McDonald's commercials to blame for obesity and heart disease? Where does it end? Are we saying that the average person has no control, and can't think for themselves? I think it's easy to play the victim card, but hard to actually deal with the core issues that lead you there.

bsaul 7y ago

That’s an interesting comparison. Following the analogy, we should have the equivalent of « alcool concentration » for addictiveness. Some games are pretty mild relative to in app purchases pushing or addiction mechanics , while others are simply awfull.

verisimilitudes 7y ago

>I strongly believe that video games today are comparable to alcohol in the 60's. Get off it. There's a strong difference between playing a game like ''Super Mario Odyssey'' and the trash Google allows because it makes money on trickery and theft. >Right now we have people who are facing serious problems with video games, and yet we brush them off casually and callously. China locks up people who have ''Internet addictions''; they might find ''lies'' about political protests in China, as an example. >I can't count the number of stories on reddit about playing video games all day and all night, at the expense of one's social life, academic success and even career. Clearly one's career is said person's most important aspect. They could be working or participating in office politics instead of having fun. >That's not normal behavior; it's behavior indicative of addiction and dependency. And I'm referring to adults. Yet, nowhere in your message do you wonder why people would rather play games than do other things. You seem to think games are at fault, rather than the sorry state of society. >Now, regulating video games like alcohol may not be the best idea. It's important that every medium be heavily regulated, to prevent the wrong ideas from getting through.

ej10 7y ago

Anecdata: I live this, I agree with you. An MMO was the only thing in my life I've stayed up all night for and then been able to set an alarm and wake up for after 2 hours of sleep. This was a game I committed to for 14 years. I've slept through finals, been tardy my entire life, yet for this MMO I could do anything. I was "sick" instead of seeing my girlfriend, I was otherwise occupied instead of working, or school. I made the conscious decision years ago to never install WoW for exactly this reason. In the same way AA teaches that an alcoholic is always an alcoholic but can be sober, I choose to stay sober. I miss it. I think about it. But I have to make the active, conscious decision to 'choose life'.

madaxe_again 7y ago
Hear hear. I’m madaxe. I’m an addict. I wasted 18 months of university on an MMO, 15 years ago. Cost me my social life, my girlfriend, and I found myself on academic probation. It was absolutely insidious. I only found my way out of it by becoming a GM and then banning my own account, because even though I’d made the decision I wanted to stop, I just kept finding myself downloading and installing the client, yet again. It worked, I completed my degree, rekindled friendships. I did relapse about four years later while working a shitty boring QA job, and decided to treat the root cause, which was the shitty job, and went and started a business - and then didn’t game at all for nearly a decade. Weirdly, my addiction and my physical running away from the environment that fostered it lead to much of the success that I have enjoyed since. It made things so intolerably bad that a ground change was mandatory. I game again now, but it’s now on the order of about 5 hours a week on average - I’ll still occasionally spend a sleepless weekend playing something, but then I’ll go a month without. I like finite games - some adventure with an enthralling plot, and when it’s over, it’s over - or grand strategy like civ, where you master the game and move on - and frankly I find a three day deity match gruelling enough that it’ll be three months or more before I get the itch again. I’ll never touch an MMO again - they are almost perfect and infinite skinner boxes.
- danielscrubs 7y ago
  I’m scrubs, I’m an addict. Spent my youth programming, going from language to language. I was learning and it led me to jobs and I’m grateful for that, but my memories of youth is me in a dark room in front of a big monitor and a buzzing light that never really worked right. I have almost no other memories of it. was it worth spending my youth so that I could be 15% more productive at some firm? Even now I come home, kiss my gf and then sit in front of the computer to chase the next big thing, mostly because when I come home I am to tired to do anything else than just programming. There was some research on HN where they found that programming (successful run/compilation) led to similar dopamine boosts as gambling. My neck, back and hands all hurt, but I do what I always do.

kibwen 7y ago

The problem that I've observed is that people get too bogged down over the use of the word "addiction" to describe this phenomenon, contrasting their psychological effects with the physiological effects one normally finds in drug addicts. In the process what gets lost in this dismissal is that, regardless of mechanism, the consequences of excessive gaming (or similarly, excessive internet consumption) echo those of some of the hardest drugs: complete withdrawl from society, neglect for self-care, chronic sleep deprivation, and thieving to support their habit. Any nerd who went to college in the 00s knew people in their freshman year who dropped out from spending too much time in EverQuest or WoW. I myself had an epiphany in 2011 after having played the newly-released Skyrim for 100 hours in its first two weeks (and those numbers are tame by comparison). It took about eight years of cold-turkey for me to stop jonesing, literally jonesing for World of Warcraft. As humans we have yet to develop ways to cope with an overabundance of mental stimulation, in much the same way that humans are still trying to figure out how best to survive in a world where food calories are no longer scarce. What we're looking at for the next decade is the obesity crisis for the brain.

hermitdev 7y ago

I've set Google Play to prompt for my password on every purchase. It's a 40 character random alpha, mixed case, symbols and number password. Hard to type when sober, impossible while drunk. Helps prevent impulse/accidental purchases. I have to really want something to transcribe that in (not stored anywhere on my phone). I have my password stored on the Xbox, but I've made abundantly clear that they are not able to purchase anything without consent. My kids are 10 & 12 and know it's really money and if they make even a single purchase without consent all gaming and internet privileges go away indefinitely. I get immediate receipts via text, so the ban hammer would go down quickly. Edit, also the kids arent allowed to my phone, either. They have their own devices, and can't purchase anything on theirs (requires Mom's password). My wife likewise has her iPhone to prompt for password on purchases.

d1zzy 7y ago

Anything can be an addiction, meaning if it stops you from going to school/work, building and maintaining relationships, having food and shelter then it qualifies IMO. So while I support trying to help people in this situation I would be careful to not make it harder for everyone else that is responsibly enjoying those things.

fkdo 7y ago
Yes but it seems like many video game designs are engineering towards exploiting addictive behavior. This is predatory business behavior.
- foldingmoney 7y ago
  All business behaviour is (potentially) predatory. It's the job of regulators to set the rules, and for businesses to play within those rules as optimally as they can. It's definitely not the job of companies to _not_ give their customers what they want. If something permissible could increase their user engagement but they opt not to do it for ethical reasons, they just lose share to the less ethical companies.
  - fkdo 7y ago
    It's my right as a member of a democracy to call out when a company is doing something unethical with the hope of swaying the opinion of my peers against such business practices. It's my privilege to do so on this platform. This type of behavior is unethical which is an entirely different thing than illegal. I hope we can adjust regulations on the market to make such behavior illegal. I have this hope because I don't want to live in a society where an increasingly portion of the population is addicted.
    - foldingmoney 7y ago
      Yes, I probably should have framed my answer more carefully. My point wasn't that people shouldn't complain about this stuff. My point was just that businesses, by their nature, are sociopathic (regardless of whether anyone who works at them is a sociopath).

opportune 7y ago

I think, like with other addictions, you need to take a holistic view of video game addiction that also includes the circumstances of the addicted people during their transition from casual use, to abuse, to addiction. Why? Because most people don't get addicted to video games, just like most people don't get addicted to alcohol. And while you might be able to chalk some of it up to addictive personalities (predispositions to addiction regardless of circumstances) I'm guessing a lot of it comes down to environment more than pure chance. For video games, I think there are a few serious structural/societal issues leading to addiction. First and foremost is that keeping kids busy is hard, and the lowest effort way to keep some kids busy is to give them video games. Couple that with most kids not being allowed to just wander around outside anymore, and living in a car culture where they can't drive, and video games become the primary way most kids can play with other kids. A lot of video games addict will tell you that the thing that keeps them coming back to games are usually 2-3 things: well-defined goals with clearly actionable tasks to be completed to meet those goals (getting level 99 or a specific rare item, etc.), the community aspect, and the feeling of proficiency/accomplishment. In real life, important goals are harder to meet and less well-defined, much higher stakes, and are done over the course of months/years instead of hours/days/weeks, so video games are much preferable to hitting goals in real life. Social isolation is prevalent so videogames can easily replace that. And in real life, not everybody can be a winner, yet in videogames everyone can feel like a badass for grinding out a skill requirement or getting a rare/expensive item.

syndacks 7y ago
>Because most people don't get addicted to video games, just like most people don't get addicted to alcohol So, uhh, what _do_ they get addicted to?
- jachee 7y ago
  Dopamine is the only thing that truly makes me happy.
- opportune 7y ago
  Most people aren't addicted to anything. Most people who try alcohol and video games don't get addicted to them

hashberry 7y ago

I also like to compare video games to porn. It's achievement porn that can replace hobbies, creative pursuits, and working (lots of unemployed men game all day), just like porn can replace sex and relationships. I remember first playing WoW and thinking how dumb and childish it was. Then it sucked me in and I became obsessed with it, especially PvP. It made me realize that games with cartoon graphics such as Fortnite specifically target children and young teens.

justinhj 7y ago

It's not fair to lump all video games into one category and then malign them. Video games consist of a wide variety of forms and business models. Even the ones that people will think are exploitative, other people enjoy playing them and it forms part of their social life, a way to unwind and relax in short bursts.

_hardwaregeek 7y ago
Agreed that video games are not all bad. I purposefully chose alcohol as a comparison because it's neither wholly good nor wholly bad. Plenty of people enjoy drinking alcohol and have it as a part of their social life, a way to unwind and relax. However at the same time we should acknowledge that video games, like alcohol, can have a dark, addictive side. In the case of video games this is especially insidious due to the way certain games are engineered to be addictive. Basically I'm not saying video games, in all their creativity, brilliance and technical accomplishments, are necessarily bad for society.

chongli 7y ago

You're damn right! I dropped out of high school at 16, did very little besides playing video games throughout my 20s, and only in my 30s did I complete my high school diploma and enroll in university. Here I am at age 35, in the midst of a mathematics degree, grinding my way through assignments that take days and days. I don't have time to play video games anymore, though I do spend a lot of time watching others on Twitch tv.

ripsawridge 7y ago

Thanks for sharing this. I totally agree.

simonh 7y ago

I think a much closer and more appropriate analogy is gambling. They're both forms of games and are both engineered to engage the player in similar ways. Their monetisation and marketing strategies are also converging rapidly. Buying gems and coins in a mobile game is largely indistinguishable in my mind from buying tokens for a slot machine. The problem is games are not regulated in the way that slot machines and fixed odds betting machines are. As a result they are free to implement tactics that would be illegal in a gambling machine. For example the way some mobile games like Candy Crush calibrate the game difficulty to match the playing style of the player and adjust the odds of winning to entice them into buying coins to 'take advantage' of some perceived opportunity that the game then adjusts itself to take away from you. I'm not sure how to address this though. How can we appropriately regulate Candy Crush, without unintended consequences for Kerbal Space Program fro example? I'm not even necessarily against pay-to-play, after all it's just an extension of the model for coin operated arcade games. It might be controversial to suggest this, but it seems like some people actively seek out addiction. Maybe they are missing something in their lives and see an addiction as filling it somehow. Maybe we all do that in some from or other, we just call it engagement.

feketegy 7y ago

That's just simply not true. There are countless studies that video games are nothing like alcohol or other addictive substances.

_Codemonkeyism 7y ago

People have reasons for addiction, stress, problems, depression, loneliness, boredom. They will fill it with addiction what is easily available to them, gets them out of their problems and works. Video games are more easily available to many compared to alcohol + cheaper. If you don't remove the cause of the addiction, the person will fall back or into a new one.

FreezerburnV 7y ago

I, personally, feel somewhat offended by this characterization. While it’s true that I can stay up too late playing some video games (have to be specific ones to get me invested enough), I can do the same for other things like binge-watching anime. (And the root cause is my mild depression anyway or my ADHD depending on activity, I believe) But the current vast majority of what I do when playing games is honest practice and effort to reach a semi-pro level at my chosen game. And there are actual careers being made by the pro players of the game, or streamers playing it. On top of that, by learning how to play this team-based game more effectively, I’ve encountered a surprising number of lessons that apply outside of the game. (How to interact with “unpleasant” people, how to make suggestions without making someone feel belligerent and do the opposite, how “expending” a resource first puts you in a worse situation, etc) And on top of that making new friends by playing with the same people for months in a competitive environment. You can learn a lot of practical things, including discipline and dedication, from trying to improve to be a higher level player. Granted this is a specific “track” that most are likely not going to be following, but I think some lessons apply even if you just want to improve and get a higher “Elo rating”. And there can be negative interactions, just like almost anything in this world can become unhealthy for someone. But I think the vast majority of people can interact with video games in a healthy way that helps them destress, or cope with something in life, or whatever else. Seeing the “overwhelming numbers of reddit posts” feels almost like confirmation bias, or at least just seeing something that feels like a problem when it’s likely affecting less than 0.1% of people playing video games. On the flip side I’ve read stories in the past about how video games have saved lives, because it gave people something to live for in a horrible part of their lives. And when they get to a bettering place, they’re able to interact with them in a much healthier way because they themselves are in a healthier place. Anyway, this is a big rambly thing I typed on a phone, so it’s hopefully cohesive and understandable. But I felt a need to give an opposite perspective from someone who has never been able to dedicate their free time to anything for more than a week or something until I found a competitive game I wanted to make a run at getting into at least the semi-pro scene with, maybe even someday the pro scene. EDIT: And I have a healthy life outside of the game too. I’m married with a wife who is supporting me in getting better at this game, I hold the job making the vast majority of our money, have a healthy relationship with family on both my and her side, have good friends, help around the house, etc. I’m not just sitting in a dark parents basement playing games all day. But I do put a lot of hours into it because it’s whats necessary to get better, and maybe I’m choosing to trade that time for some other thing, but it’s a choice I’ve consciously made for improvement, much like someone here might make that choice to build a product. I shouldn’t be “shamed” for building one skill while someone doing almost exactly the same thing but in an “approved” arena is lauded.

iamthepieman 7y ago

I agree with the similarities with regard to addiction. But the mode of delivery is very very different. You can drink enough hard liquor to get drunk and satisfy the addiction cravings in 30 minutes or less and that 30 minutes of drinking(which you can also do while doing other things) will effect you for the next several hours. If you played video games for 30 minutes a day that would be a "healthy" amount in most cases.

Ygg2 7y ago

I disagree. This isn't about all games. This is about some AAA games literally bolting a gambling mechanics onto a crap game, to cause gambling addiction.

kuzimoto 7y ago
I think any game is addictive. Having "gambling mechanics" certainly doesn't make it any better, but that's like saying alcohol causes a drinking problem. Yet many people that drink occasionally are not alcoholics.
- Ygg2 7y ago
  So is food, sex, etc. But having a Skinner box and other psychological tricks that empty your wallet is a serious problem. An addicting game that doesn't extract money wastes your time, granted, but an addicting game that extracts money can leave you homeless, without a job and on the street. Equating the two is like saying - all drugs are the same when one drug can leave you with a slight migraine while other kills if you take a mg more than the recommended dose.
  - kuzimoto 7y ago
    If I understand correctly, you're saying that AAA game companies are at fault for producing video games that influence people through addictive psychological tricks to the point of ruining their lives. I completely agree that some methods uses by game companies are dubious at best, and can ruin lives. However, I don't think that game companies are to blame. > Equating the two is like saying - all drugs are the same when one drug can leave you with a slight migraine while other kills if you take a mg more than the recommended dose. All addictions are not equally destructive. But, all addictions can be destructive depending on the individual. Many other companies are using similar tactics in other areas than video games. People obsessively use Facebook/Instagram to the point of depression and suicide, are they to blame? Are McDonald's commercials to blame for obesity and heart disease? Where does it end? Are we saying that the average person has no control, and can't think for themselves? I think it's easy to play the victim card, but hard to actually deal with the core issues that lead you there.