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Tangential thought- Why does this seem to be tied so closely to online games? At least superficially it seems like it was never a problem anywhere close to th

Tangential thought- Why does this seem to be tied so closely to online games? At least superficially it seems like it was never a problem anywhere close to this magnitude in the old days of single-player, and the addiction stories are always WoW, Starcraft, Warcraft, CounterStrike, Call of Duty, etc.

liquidise 12y ago
I attribute it to the social aspects. For all the introverted stereotypes assigned to gamers, many find comfort and enjoyment in the communities of online games. This, combined with the direct and quantifiable competition, allows for near endless gameplay. As long as others are playing, there is a reason to continue.
- dragontamer 12y ago
  More importantly is the sense of community and importance. I don't think people understand the responsibilities of a Guild Leader in your typical MMORPG. When you're a guild leader, dozens, hundreds... even thousands of people look up to you for guidance. Not virtual people, I mean real people. And the demands of a guild often demand dozens of hours of game-time. Either laying alliances with other guild leaders, setting up training schedules for the newbies, connecting newbies to veteran players who can show them the ropes. Etc. etc. For competitive games, like Starcraft, League of Legends, or CounterStrike... the "guild" is not part of the game but instead part of the online community. They are called "Clans" in these games. But the concept is simple, you're in charge of a team, usually dozens of people. You are expected to make practice, 8pm on Saturdays. You are expected to train certain maps, and make progress with skill. For WoW, you are expected to be ready an hour before the Raid. You are expected to play your role (tanking, healing, DPS, whatever) for the next 2 hours in the Raid, and you have at least 5 players at any time that are dependent on your success. People get "addicted" to the social connections, expectations, and in-game status. When you're a guild-leader in charge of a 10,000 person guild (_real_ people), it is a bit depressing to return back to the real world where you're a low-level junkie. Even at a low level, you're always happy for being able to contribute to your Guild or Clan, especially when your peers appreciate your efforts.
yen223 12y ago
I know from first-hand experience that single-player games can be plenty addictive. But I suspect that there's an element of social pressure that acts like a stick, keeping players from slowing down his gaming activity. A guild member would be letting his guild down if he chose to stop grinding for example.
brotoss 12y ago
Games are more fun when you're beating other people
api 12y ago
Online games offer some amount of social stimulation along with the classic video game Skinner Box effect... sort of a double-whammy of gratification. Online communities like Reddit and... ahem... Hacker News... that gamify the online discussion experience with up/down mods and such can also be addictive. (... backs away slowly ...)
gwern 12y ago
Could it have something to do with the online games being better, in a sense, games? When I think back to when I was a little kid playing Sega Genesis for 5 hours straight, the way I always remember those occasional binges ending was this: I would hit a particular point in the game I was obsessing about at that moment, and just plain get stuck. I might batter against it for half an hour, but finally my exhausted patience would snap and I would give up, and that would be the end of that binge. From a game design perspective, that represents a failure; it did not design that challenge right, or it was too unclear about something, or it should have provided an alternative route a player could take - a player should struggle, certainly, and play at the edge of their ability, but they should never reach a point where they're just completely stuck and cannot advance. The online games are generally better designed in that respect; bottlenecks are observed and quickly patched, there are usually many alternatives or built-in difficulty mechanisms (in a MMORPG, grind some more; in Counterstrike, find less skilled players to play against) and if nothing else, you can search the community for other people who got stuck on it and see what they did or just commiserate. In the old offline gaming world, all of that is either less likely or impossible. So as frustrating as those instances might be, they served as safety valves.
Squarel 12y ago
I definitely lost many months playing my SNES. MMOs have the social aspect, which for people like me, is the main draw, any skinner box effect rapidly wears off, but many people spent months hanging about in Orgrimmar chatting with guildies not doing anything. MMOs tend to (in my experience only) be more of a distraction too. Single players never got me through an anxiety or depression episode, whilst MMOs saved me there more than once or twice. Dont forget, in the old days of single player, the media was not as it is now, and there is a focus generally on "Are people behaving differently because of online things", and MMOs are an easy target for this.
angersock 12y ago
So, you could make the same arguments about Mario, about Contra, about Zork back in the day, for some people. It's just that, I think, the technology has spun it such that more games are online than not these days.
rwallace 12y ago
Consider the incentives. With an offline game, once you've bought the game, the transaction is complete. The developer has no incentive to do anything more to you except leave you with a happy memory so you recommend it to your friends. Online games have subscription or advertising-based recurring revenue models. The developer's incentive is all about finding ways to exploit security vulnerabilities in your brain so as to cause repetitive behavior. If one developer has a sense of ethics and doesn't do that, another will. Playing an online game is like advertising that you keep bitcoins on your laptop: you're giving smart, dedicated and ruthless people an incentive to attack you - except it's far more dangerous, because it's not just your computer or your money on the line. The advice I would give is, if you're going to play video games, stick to offline ones and don't touch the online ones - in exactly the same way that I would advise people, if you're going to do drugs, stick to pot and don't touch cocaine or heroin.
smacktoward 12y ago
In the old days of single-player, the universe of available content for a player to experience was limited to whatever content shipped with the game (with maybe an expansion pack or two later), which was in turn limited by the constraints of whatever physical media the game shipped on. You could only fit so much into a Nintendo cart or a floppy disk or a CD-ROM. Which meant that the game had a definitive "end" -- even the most obsessive-compulsive player would eventually exhaust the game's available content. And adding new content was an expensive, and thus risky, proposition for developers; new discs had to be pressed, boxes and manuals printed, shelf space at retail obtained, etc. In the brave new world of online gaming, all those constraints are gone. Using the net for distribution rather than physical media means that it's now economically viable for the marginal cost to the developers to get new content to players has plummeted to more or less nothing -- which means they can economically keep you on a drip-feed of new content essentially forever. The universe of available content within a game becomes infinite. So that the game never really ends -- it just goes on sucking money out of your wallet until either you walk away from it, the audience for the game becomes too small, or you run out of money or die. (In real life, I mean.) In this sense gaming as a hobby is one of those things that was transformed into something socially destructive by a simple change to the supply and demand curves underpinning it. An analogous example from history might be sugar. Before Europeans discovered the New World, sugar was an extremely rare commodity to them, and thus only used in small quantities by those few people who could afford it. The New World offered prime sugar-growing land, however, and the introduction of slaves as a workforce made growing sugar much, much cheaper. This led to a flood of sugar into the European market, and the resulting price plummet led sugar to be accessible to more Europeans in greater quantities than ever before in history... which in turn led to a society-wide epidemic of rotting teeth as people binged on the stuff. (You know the old story about George Washington having wooden teeth? This is why. George Washington's teeth rotted out early in life because, in the period he lived in, everyone's teeth rotted out early in life -- because they were enjoying all that newly cheap sugar.)
- cma 12y ago
  >John Adams claims he lost them because he used them to crack Brazil nuts but modern historians suggest the mercury oxide, which he was given to treat illnesses such as smallpox and malaria, probably contributed to the loss. He had several sets of false teeth made, four of them by a dentist named John Greenwood.[193] Contrary to popular belief, none of the sets were made from wood. The set made when he became President was carved from hippopotamus and elephant ivory, held together with gold springs.[194] Prior to these, he had a set made with real human teeth,[195] likely ones he purchased from "several unnamed 'Negroes,' presumably Mount Vernon slaves" in 1784.[196]
alexpotato 12y ago
I remember talking about this to to a friend who went to college in the 70's. In those days, people used to fail out of college for playing hearts/spades/Risk etc so I don't think this is purely a online phenomenon. I would say that computers give you an "always on/always there" opponent you can play whether it be a person or the computer itself. As a side note, I can imagine in the past reading being the same way for children of parents who put lots of emphasis on doing vs thinking. E.g. they would see their children get "lost" in a "fantasy" land rather than being productive.
egypturnash 12y ago
Online games involve interaction with other humans. We are wired to like these, even if we are paranoid little monkeys who have forgotten how to leave our own houses. When you spend all your time staring into the screen, interacting with people through the medium of a game, after a while your only friends are people you've met through the game. And you usually can't say "fuck this game, let's go have some beer iRL" very easily, because your game friends have no guarantee of living anywhere near you. So you keep on meeting in the space of the game. You end up with nothing but these tenuous virtual relationships. Ones founded entirely on text, ones where there's the immediacy of real time but never a touch, or a kiss. They're shitty relationships that can't fully sustain you, but they're better than the absolute lack of anything out in the real world that you'll have to suffer for who knows how long until you start making friends and lovers in reality? Less frightening to stay. It sucks, it's miserable, but it's just enough emotional contact to get by on. Leave it and you'd have nothing. It doesn't matter what you're playing. My time in that particular downward spiral was via a socialization-focused MUD.
puranjay 12y ago
It's the community aspect of it. Not gaming, but I reckon I've wasted hundreds of hours on Reddit. That little 'new message' indication would drive me back to the site over and over again. It got so bad that it pretty much derailed my startup. I would use it as a refuge when trouble loomed. Can't close that new deal? Scared to call that client? Paralyzed by fear because you can't ship the product in time? Don't worry, discuss this damn thing on Reddit and pretend that your opinion actually matters in the world. I've blocked Reddit on my computer now. Haven't been to the site in months. I've never been more productive. In contrast, I used to play Age of Empires 2 a LOT as a kid, but I had a terrible internet connection which meant I couldn't play online. My addiction to AoE, thus, was nowhere near as bad as my addiction to Reddit. Without that social feedback, I could escape pretty easily.

liquidise 12y ago

I attribute it to the social aspects. For all the introverted stereotypes assigned to gamers, many find comfort and enjoyment in the communities of online games. This, combined with the direct and quantifiable competition, allows for near endless gameplay. As long as others are playing, there is a reason to continue.

dragontamer 12y ago
More importantly is the sense of community and importance. I don't think people understand the responsibilities of a Guild Leader in your typical MMORPG. When you're a guild leader, dozens, hundreds... even thousands of people look up to you for guidance. Not virtual people, I mean real people. And the demands of a guild often demand dozens of hours of game-time. Either laying alliances with other guild leaders, setting up training schedules for the newbies, connecting newbies to veteran players who can show them the ropes. Etc. etc. For competitive games, like Starcraft, League of Legends, or CounterStrike... the "guild" is not part of the game but instead part of the online community. They are called "Clans" in these games. But the concept is simple, you're in charge of a team, usually dozens of people. You are expected to make practice, 8pm on Saturdays. You are expected to train certain maps, and make progress with skill. For WoW, you are expected to be ready an hour before the Raid. You are expected to play your role (tanking, healing, DPS, whatever) for the next 2 hours in the Raid, and you have at least 5 players at any time that are dependent on your success. People get "addicted" to the social connections, expectations, and in-game status. When you're a guild-leader in charge of a 10,000 person guild (_real_ people), it is a bit depressing to return back to the real world where you're a low-level junkie. Even at a low level, you're always happy for being able to contribute to your Guild or Clan, especially when your peers appreciate your efforts.

yen223 12y ago

I know from first-hand experience that single-player games can be plenty addictive. But I suspect that there's an element of social pressure that acts like a stick, keeping players from slowing down his gaming activity. A guild member would be letting his guild down if he chose to stop grinding for example.

brotoss 12y ago

Games are more fun when you're beating other people

api 12y ago

Online games offer some amount of social stimulation along with the classic video game Skinner Box effect... sort of a double-whammy of gratification. Online communities like Reddit and... ahem... Hacker News... that gamify the online discussion experience with up/down mods and such can also be addictive. (... backs away slowly ...)

gwern 12y ago

Could it have something to do with the online games being better, in a sense, games? When I think back to when I was a little kid playing Sega Genesis for 5 hours straight, the way I always remember those occasional binges ending was this: I would hit a particular point in the game I was obsessing about at that moment, and just plain get stuck. I might batter against it for half an hour, but finally my exhausted patience would snap and I would give up, and that would be the end of that binge. From a game design perspective, that represents a failure; it did not design that challenge right, or it was too unclear about something, or it should have provided an alternative route a player could take - a player should struggle, certainly, and play at the edge of their ability, but they should never reach a point where they're just completely stuck and cannot advance. The online games are generally better designed in that respect; bottlenecks are observed and quickly patched, there are usually many alternatives or built-in difficulty mechanisms (in a MMORPG, grind some more; in Counterstrike, find less skilled players to play against) and if nothing else, you can search the community for other people who got stuck on it and see what they did or just commiserate. In the old offline gaming world, all of that is either less likely or impossible. So as frustrating as those instances might be, they served as safety valves.

Squarel 12y ago

I definitely lost many months playing my SNES. MMOs have the social aspect, which for people like me, is the main draw, any skinner box effect rapidly wears off, but many people spent months hanging about in Orgrimmar chatting with guildies not doing anything. MMOs tend to (in my experience only) be more of a distraction too. Single players never got me through an anxiety or depression episode, whilst MMOs saved me there more than once or twice. Dont forget, in the old days of single player, the media was not as it is now, and there is a focus generally on "Are people behaving differently because of online things", and MMOs are an easy target for this.

angersock 12y ago

So, you could make the same arguments about Mario, about Contra, about Zork back in the day, for some people. It's just that, I think, the technology has spun it such that more games are online than not these days.

rwallace 12y ago

Consider the incentives. With an offline game, once you've bought the game, the transaction is complete. The developer has no incentive to do anything more to you except leave you with a happy memory so you recommend it to your friends. Online games have subscription or advertising-based recurring revenue models. The developer's incentive is all about finding ways to exploit security vulnerabilities in your brain so as to cause repetitive behavior. If one developer has a sense of ethics and doesn't do that, another will. Playing an online game is like advertising that you keep bitcoins on your laptop: you're giving smart, dedicated and ruthless people an incentive to attack you - except it's far more dangerous, because it's not just your computer or your money on the line. The advice I would give is, if you're going to play video games, stick to offline ones and don't touch the online ones - in exactly the same way that I would advise people, if you're going to do drugs, stick to pot and don't touch cocaine or heroin.

smacktoward 12y ago

In the old days of single-player, the universe of available content for a player to experience was limited to whatever content shipped with the game (with maybe an expansion pack or two later), which was in turn limited by the constraints of whatever physical media the game shipped on. You could only fit so much into a Nintendo cart or a floppy disk or a CD-ROM. Which meant that the game had a definitive "end" -- even the most obsessive-compulsive player would eventually exhaust the game's available content. And adding new content was an expensive, and thus risky, proposition for developers; new discs had to be pressed, boxes and manuals printed, shelf space at retail obtained, etc. In the brave new world of online gaming, all those constraints are gone. Using the net for distribution rather than physical media means that it's now economically viable for the marginal cost to the developers to get new content to players has plummeted to more or less nothing -- which means they can economically keep you on a drip-feed of new content essentially forever. The universe of available content within a game becomes infinite. So that the game never really ends -- it just goes on sucking money out of your wallet until either you walk away from it, the audience for the game becomes too small, or you run out of money or die. (In real life, I mean.) In this sense gaming as a hobby is one of those things that was transformed into something socially destructive by a simple change to the supply and demand curves underpinning it. An analogous example from history might be sugar. Before Europeans discovered the New World, sugar was an extremely rare commodity to them, and thus only used in small quantities by those few people who could afford it. The New World offered prime sugar-growing land, however, and the introduction of slaves as a workforce made growing sugar much, much cheaper. This led to a flood of sugar into the European market, and the resulting price plummet led sugar to be accessible to more Europeans in greater quantities than ever before in history... which in turn led to a society-wide epidemic of rotting teeth as people binged on the stuff. (You know the old story about George Washington having wooden teeth? This is why. George Washington's teeth rotted out early in life because, in the period he lived in, everyone's teeth rotted out early in life -- because they were enjoying all that newly cheap sugar.)

cma 12y ago
>John Adams claims he lost them because he used them to crack Brazil nuts but modern historians suggest the mercury oxide, which he was given to treat illnesses such as smallpox and malaria, probably contributed to the loss. He had several sets of false teeth made, four of them by a dentist named John Greenwood.[193] Contrary to popular belief, none of the sets were made from wood. The set made when he became President was carved from hippopotamus and elephant ivory, held together with gold springs.[194] Prior to these, he had a set made with real human teeth,[195] likely ones he purchased from "several unnamed 'Negroes,' presumably Mount Vernon slaves" in 1784.[196]

alexpotato 12y ago

I remember talking about this to to a friend who went to college in the 70's. In those days, people used to fail out of college for playing hearts/spades/Risk etc so I don't think this is purely a online phenomenon. I would say that computers give you an "always on/always there" opponent you can play whether it be a person or the computer itself. As a side note, I can imagine in the past reading being the same way for children of parents who put lots of emphasis on doing vs thinking. E.g. they would see their children get "lost" in a "fantasy" land rather than being productive.

egypturnash 12y ago

Online games involve interaction with other humans. We are wired to like these, even if we are paranoid little monkeys who have forgotten how to leave our own houses. When you spend all your time staring into the screen, interacting with people through the medium of a game, after a while your only friends are people you've met through the game. And you usually can't say "fuck this game, let's go have some beer iRL" very easily, because your game friends have no guarantee of living anywhere near you. So you keep on meeting in the space of the game. You end up with nothing but these tenuous virtual relationships. Ones founded entirely on text, ones where there's the immediacy of real time but never a touch, or a kiss. They're shitty relationships that can't fully sustain you, but they're better than the absolute lack of anything out in the real world that you'll have to suffer for who knows how long until you start making friends and lovers in reality? Less frightening to stay. It sucks, it's miserable, but it's just enough emotional contact to get by on. Leave it and you'd have nothing. It doesn't matter what you're playing. My time in that particular downward spiral was via a socialization-focused MUD.

puranjay 12y ago

It's the community aspect of it. Not gaming, but I reckon I've wasted hundreds of hours on Reddit. That little 'new message' indication would drive me back to the site over and over again. It got so bad that it pretty much derailed my startup. I would use it as a refuge when trouble loomed. Can't close that new deal? Scared to call that client? Paralyzed by fear because you can't ship the product in time? Don't worry, discuss this damn thing on Reddit and pretend that your opinion actually matters in the world. I've blocked Reddit on my computer now. Haven't been to the site in months. I've never been more productive. In contrast, I used to play Age of Empires 2 a LOT as a kid, but I had a terrible internet connection which meant I couldn't play online. My addiction to AoE, thus, was nowhere near as bad as my addiction to Reddit. Without that social feedback, I could escape pretty easily.