Addictive Nature of Video Games

Video games have gained mass popularity and attention over the years. Being a part of the video game revolution, they have become a time consuming activity for kids of the youth today. It changed from an activity that children have enjoyed to changing people’s lives, both children and adults alike. More so, over the past few years, gaming has become more of an acceptable  occupation than in the past. Adults and teens can play video games and make a living off of it. What people have once seen as a harmful thing that controls children’s minds can now take them farther than they’ve ever gone before. 

Video games aren’t all that positive. They also have some negative attributes as well, like addiction. Aviv Malkiel Weinstein, author of the article, Computer and Video Game Addiction—A Comparison between Game Users and Non-Game Users, says:

“Although repetition of favorite activities has a moderate effect upon computer game addiction, flow experience, the emotional state embracing perceptual distortion and enjoyment shows a strong impact on addiction” 

Addiction is seen as a mental health issue that has gained more attention over the past few years. It can lead to other things that become more problematic as time goes on. In Video game addiction: The push to pathologize video games, authors Anthony Bean, Rune Nielsen, Antonius van Rooij, and Christopher Ferguson claim “it should be possible to document that there are some individuals who start with video game addiction even if that then worsens into depression and other issues.” They go on to explain how it is unclear if video game addiction is a gateway into a “‘unique’ disorder if the excessive gaming is symptomatic of underlying issues,” or they are being “miscategorized and misinterpreted as a separate disorder.” 

A child’s addiction to video games is a very serious matter that must be discussed and addressed, but this problem is no different than a person with a gambling addiction or someone with a drug addiction. What causes an addiction in people? Some could say that it is a repeated action that people get used to doing over a period of time, but it’s a little more complex than that. 

To fully understand what addiction looks like in the brain of a human, we need to understand the study behind it. Calton Erickson and Richard Wilcox address this in their essay, which talks about drug addiction. In their essay, Neurobiological Causes of Addiction, they say that people “mistakenly believe that drug-induced euphoria, craving, or physical withdrawal are causative factors in chemical dependence.” This is just with drug addictions but it could be assumed the same with gambling addictions and video game addictions

Maybe they don’t put any chemical into the mind of the user, but they do give the user a euphoria. A high if you will. People with addictions want to keep that high feeling, so they’ll do anything that they can to keep that feeling going. And if that means continuing with the unhealthy behavior then so be it. 

Going back to the people that play video games, there have been a number of different games that have become popular. Point of view shooter games, where the player can absorb the atmosphere from the player and immerse themselves in a fantasy world where the only thing that matters is the amount of kills that the player has. 

The amount of kills that a player gets in a game boosts them on the tier list of said game. A person can think of those tiers as a social ladder of the other players. A person that does well in the games will continue to advance. On the other hand, those who struggle to do well in those matches against other players will not advance and even fall down a tier. 

A player can fall down a tier and can use that as the motivation to get back to where they were and then move up more tiers, if they’re able to do it. When a player climbs up the different ranks that a game has to offer it isn’t because they’ve suddenly gained the skills to beat any opponent that comes their way. It’s more because of the luck of that player. 

A player needs skills to rank up, but there are other components that lead to a players standing in the point of view shooter games. One of those things, as I’ve already said, is the luck that a player has with their team. Some player get lucky and can get all the way to the top, and be one of the best players that the game has to offer. 

But for a good majority of players, they can never get to the point where they are at the very top. The same reasons that can help a player, can actually hurt them too. A player can have bad luck with a team and lose against their opponents. Needless to say, when a player loses, they’re ranking can decrease. Another thing to take note of is if the player continually loses. More than they actually win. The player’s standing in the game can also decrease because of that too. There are a plethora of different reasons as to why a player shouldn’t doesn’t advance in the rankings. The player doesn’t know why it is happening. It doesn’t mean that they’re a bad player, or they can’t catch a break. They just don’t know why it happens. 

If a player isn’t advancing, and if they know they’re not advancing at a desirable rate, then why do people continue to play the game? If people know that they cannot, and if they know that they will not make it to the top, then why do people keep investing time, money, and energy into something that doesn’t seem to benefit them at all? To answer this, it would be appropriate to understand that a person doesn’t just do it because they want to improve their skills, and gain popularity. They do it because it’s fun, and they do it because they need the satisfaction of doing well. This is very similar to the way gamblers are in a casino. People who play slot machines don’t do it because they want to waste their money, or because they know they are going to lose. They do it because they want the satisfaction of winning. They want to feel the thrill of having that win under their belt. 

References

Aviv Malkiel Weinstein. (2008, October 20). Computer and Video Game Addiction—A Comparison between Game Users and Non-Game Users. Taylor & Francis Online. Retrieved from https://www-tandfonline-com.ezproxy.rowan.edu/doi/full/10.3109/00952990.2010.491879

Bean , A. M., Nielsen, R. K., van Rooij, A. J., & Ferguson, C. J. (2017, October). Video game addiction: the push to pathologize video games . Retrieved from https://www.proquest.com/docview/1918848134?parentSessionId=n%2BGZ3jVrnfp7nEm4CcyJJ6NSgZCZ%2Byh4EBdmy0zc130%3D

Erickson, C. K., & Wilcox, R. E. (2008, October 20). Neurobiological causes of addiction. Taylor & Francis. Retrieved October 17, 2022, from https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1300/J160v01n03_02