
Inside the Tragic, Obsessive World of Video Game Addicts - Thevet
http://www.vice.com/read/video-game-addiction-is-destroying-american-lives-456
======
ChuckMcM
Tragic. I played a lot of World of Warcraft when it came out, had the classic
relationship challenges (wife didn't play but the kids did) and finally
stopped playing seriously when I realized I had wasted a weekend working on
materials for imaginary armor rather than building an actual robot or learning
something new. Fortunately, Blizzard completely ruined the game with the Mists
of Pandera expansion and I've never played since.

But looking back at _why_ I played so much, is touched on in the article. It
simulates being very productive (which in a meta sense you are), and for me
that represents "goodness" in my self image. It was only after I called out
the lie I was telling myself about "getting stuff done" did I really lose the
compulsion to go play for hours.

I still enjoyed the social aspects, and the strategies for gaming the economy
or finding a new way to solo a boss fight, but I no longer equated it with
being productive. So for the same reason I don't sit in a movie theater for 8
hours straight, I stopped playing for those long stretches. And when I did
have something I could get done, I chose not to play WoW.

~~~
throwawaytime
_I played a lot of World of Warcraft when it came out, had the classic
relationship challenges (wife didn 't play but the kids did) and finally
stopped playing seriously when I realized I had wasted a weekend working on
materials for imaginary armor rather than building an actual robot or learning
something new._

One whole weekend! :) You don't want to know how many weekends of mine that
netflix or videogames have claimed. I think I turned out alright though. For
me, it's mainly about whether I feel motivated. If I do, it's easy to avoid
that other stuff. If not, then there's an endless stretch of time with nothing
to do and no money to pursue hobbies. That stuff is a natural filler for the
void of endless boredom.

About the kids: I wanted to ask you, how did the kids handle it when you left?
I guess you didn't get too into it, so maybe they didn't feel very strongly
one way or the other about whether you played. But I think I'm going to try to
cultivate a relationship with my kids over videogames, whether it's playing
Minecraft with them or whatever MMO they want to play. It seems like hiking
through the woods together, but virtual woods. But I'd imagine it's going to
go like: They might get too into it at the expense of schoolwork, so I'll have
to put my foot down and say no more, which will make them quite upset. And
sure, that's the job of a parent. I'm their parent, not just their friend. But
I can't help remember how misplaced my father's rules were, so I don't want to
become like that. Yet I remember how much of a pushover my friend's dad was,
which my friend took full advantage of; again, don't want to be like that. So
I wonder how to strike a proper balance. It'd be great to hear from you and
anyone else with children what your rules are regarding videogames.

Is there an instruction manual that comes with each child? No? Hmmm....

~~~
VLM
"It seems like hiking through the woods together, but virtual woods."

I've played minecraft with my kids a lot, and it can be fun, but virtual play
time is not all adult nostalgic fuzzy bunnies, I was highly annoyed to
discover that minecraft playtime with the kids is just like meatspace play
time with the kids which means it includes all the annoyances, so there's tons
of typical "what are you doing put that down right now", "be nice to animals
or we stop playing", "if you walk along the edge you're going to fall and get
hurt", "lava will burn you I told you to leave that alone", "I don't care how
much of a temper tantrum you have you can't take that diamond I just mined and
do nothing with it because its too valuable", "stop teasing your sister in
game or we all quit", "no we aren't there yet", "dads redstone thing is
complicated stop dumping water buckets on it", etc.

I've spent my whole life from kid up to adult being lectured incessantly from
liberal arts grads that normal humans never treat online humans like they
would meatspace because ... some fuzzy psych major BS whatever, which is just
apologist rhetoric for its OK to flame people online because its "natural",
and/or stereotypical "nerds suck we spend our time watching football so we're
cool" BS. However, despite decades of pontificating, I assure you my kids act
online just like they act offline, both the mostly good and occasionally not
so good parts.

Its tiring. Just like taking kids to a (real) park involves burning mental
energy keeping them alive (I'm talking real parks with real wilderness, not
swing set neighborhood parks), taking kids to your base in minecraft involves
me not focusing on the game and spending maybe 25% of mental energy, maybe
more, trying to keep them out of trouble. And just like in the real world, one
or two adults can easily keep one kid out of trouble but you get two or more
kids and only one adult and next thing you know one is shooting arrows at her
brother or the other is dumping lava buckets on his sister because she won't
give him back his sword and she's threatening to tattle to mom and oh its all
Fed up sometimes. Well, kids will be kids.

It was/is fun, just go in with the awareness that if they spend X% of real
world time being naughty, in virtual world its going to be the same X% of time
being naughty. Its not gonna be all idyllic.

As far as rules and stuff its not rocket science you make a to do list and
work it top to bottom and unless you're an idiot, minecraft is the last thing
on the list not the first, the first is usually homework.

~~~
jsprogrammer
I think you are possibly being too harsh in game. A video game should be fun;
a place where all rule implications can be explored. Turning it into an
authoritarian environment with a running lecture seems like a good way to
discourage play and exploration.

That kind of lecturing may make sense in the real world, but one of the
differences/advantages of virtual worlds is that the normal constraints don't
apply -- you can do whatever the machine/software allows, without risk
(certainly not fatal risk, as in the real world).

Games present an opportunity to examine systems in depth without the
traditional fears/consequences of the real world.

~~~
VLM
Yeah but there's the socialization aspect. In that my kids are pretty good at
getting into meaningless sibling arguments with each other in real life, and
also in minecraft. True that there is superficially no downside to beating
each other up in minecraft, but may as well try to civilize them a bit as if
we're in real life. Or learning when dad says if you do that the wrong way its
going to hurt, is an easier lesson to learn the hard way in minecraft than on
a bicycle or whatever, so why not teach it in minecraft where they won't get
physically hurt by falling into minecraft lava or off a minecraft building.

------
DanielBMarkham
Obligatory link to an essay I wrote five years ago covering the larger
picture, what drives this problem and some way forward:
[http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology-
is...](http://www.whattofix.com/blog/archives/2009/02/technology-is-h.php)

It's freaking sad, and it's just getting worse.

1992 or so. I'm a computer guy, gamer (arcade and old Atari) and we've got
this cool new thing called a Nintendo for my two boys, 6 and 4.

Being a good dad, I sit down next to them and "help" them get started playing
a game. We went through Super Mario, then started on Zelda. Wow! This was a
lot better than those arcade games where you only got 3 or 4 minutes and had
to pay. Here you could play, well, you could play _forever_.

And then it hit me. You could play forever. That was the whole gimmick. I
stood up and left the room. Never played another console game again, unless it
was something very brief and involved having people over. During that time, I
watched every other member of my family get involved in games that took
literally hundreds of hours of their time. I'm still watching my second-
youngest son struggle with online games and college work. It's depressing as
hell.

Today as I type this, I realize that I've spent 3 or 4 hours fucking around
online that I should have been doing something useful. That's just Facebook,
Twitter, G+, and so forth.

This is not a coincidence. Every piece of tech I pick up is trying as hard as
it can to be "sticky" Same shit, different platform. I'm still the big hunk of
dumb meat I used to be. Computerized gaming just keeps getting better. The
trajectory is not good.

------
Jtsummers
I have friends that keep insisting I get back into gaming and frequently
question my (apparent) lack of interest in current games. This sums up my
reason for not going back to video games:

    
    
      But just as Patricia rematerialized, her AA recovery partner
      and husband of 43 years contracted a fatal illness. Patricia
      took care of him until the end.
    
      "I regret so much," she said. "I wasted all our time
      together. We could have been doing all kinds of things, but I
      was just gaming."
    

I wasted almost a decade of my life, and who knows how many years off the end
by the terrible condition I let my body fall into. I failed at graduate
school, and nearly failed as an employee. I had no social life outside 3 or 4
friends at any time during that decade. I'm no longer in the head space where
games are dangerous to me, but I can safely say that I'm enjoying playing
sports, going outside, dating, hanging out with friends and the rest of the
things I gave up for those years much more than playing the latest FPS or
strategy game of the month.

~~~
reinhardt
I'm not much into gaming, let alone an addict, but I never got this moral
superiority argument people use when bashing games. Why are "sports, going
outside, dating, hanging out with friends" inherently better than games?
Admittedly all these other things are less likely to lead to addition but
that's exactly because they are less stimulating, or to put it bluntly,
boring.

~~~
rtb
Mainly because they are creative / productive, whereas gaming is passive /
consuming.

~~~
darkmighty
Clearly you've never played any game competitively (e.g. broodwar, cs); there
are even 'creative' games in the traditional sense for that matter, where you
design things (e.g. minecraft, DF, wc3,...). Most of those don't usually have
the shortcircuited feedback loop that brings someone into addiction however. I
disagree there's anything fundamental about gaming that's better than other
activities other than the lack of exercise. Mastering a game in skill/strategy
or crafting maps/mods can bring as much joy as anything else. I'd equate some
games with playing music for the closest traditional perspective.

I'd expect them surpass any meatspace activity actually. It's hard to compete
with the limitless degrees of freedom from a game (specially when we get more
inputs/sensitive feedback). And I'm not at all uncomfortable with that. Having
fun is quite productive, one just has to safeguard the more longlasting joys
of life, like having a successful career, family relations, etc.

------
rl3
One key distinction between video game addiction and many other forms of
classic addiction is that it's incredibly cheap by comparison.

A game purchased for $5 may net you hundreds of hours of gameplay. By
contrast, that same $5 doesn't go nearly as far when spent on say, alcohol.

It's also worth noting that video game addiction doesn't necessarily result in
any sort of addictive exclusivity. I've seen plenty of video game addicts who
are also alcoholics.

~~~
KeytarHero
Incredibly cheap in terms of financial cost, but not in terms of opportunity
cost of the time you lose.

Admittedly I haven't read the article because Vice is blocked at work, but I
imagine video game addiction is a lot different from other addictions since it
has to do with something you do rather than a state you're in (not to say it's
necessarily worse - just different). Serious addicts can play video games for
several days straight, whereas I don't think doing drugs for several days
straight (at least without doing anything else) is common among even the most
serious addicts (though admittedly I'm not an expert in this). I think it
would be very difficult to be a "high functioning" video game addict.

~~~
rl3
> _I think it would be very difficult to be a "high functioning" video game
> addict._

There's plenty of them, just like there are high-functioning alcoholics.

Suppose you could define the degree of addiction as the amount of interference
the addictive habit inflicts upon a person's life. By that logic, a busy,
high-functioning person who plays 20 hours a week may in fact have a more
damaging addiction than the person with tons of free time on their hands
playing 80 hours a week. Of course, if the latter person has all that free
time on their hands because addiction interfered with their life at a much
earlier stage, then that's worth considering.

I guarantee you there's a ton of high-functioning video game addicts though,
probably even right here on HN. Founder depression in particular can play
right into such things.

------
pointernil
After having read all the "positive" stuff about gaming in "Reality Is Broken"
by Jane McGonigal I remember thinking:

To some children/adolescents games are the perfect (psychological) parents:
providing all the endless, almost limitless attention and appreciation,
perfectly dosed challenge and rewards, a sense of accomplishment and
unconditional ... fun.

I think this could be unique gateways for games to tip some effected ppl. into
addiction, gateways not used by other potentially addictive stuff.

------
thret
For the masses who spend the majority of their time watching sports, movies,
tv, thinking about celebrities... How is gaming wasting their lives? What
value do these other things have that gaming does not?

I submit that hedonism is a purpose unto itself, that all recreational
activities hold equal value to our species (~none), differing value to the
individual, and that people should simply do whatever they enjoy, right now.

Working towards a potentially better future that may never happen is not
necessarily the right thing.

~~~
tsomctl
It's not black and white. Many hobbies, which might appear useless for society
in general, at least provide personal enrichment. Someone that spends their
time programming video games is not helping feed people, but it is helping
them become a better programmer. Also, it's well established that humans need
rest and recreation to be productive workers.

------
angersock
During one of the darkest periods of the last few years, I was working on a
failing startup. All the front-end work was done and "good enough", and I was
waiting on my cofounder to finish up a few last infrastructure tweaks so we
could launch. I had less than a couple hundred in my bank accounts, was barely
making rent, and was basically in a holding pattern.

So, I started playing Fallout: New Vegas. I clocked like 120-140 hours in two
weeks. I beat the game, I beat the expansions. I had a blast.

I think the problem with the video games is that they often offer a certain
kind of refuge. You're a hero, and more importantly, you make tangible
progress.

Playing CS or Quake or UT or Payday, you are playing a round, and everything
lives and dies in that 12-20 minutes of your life. Everything is simple:
strafe left, fire, reload, pickup, die, respawn. It's a beautiful three-
dimensional puzzle in planning space, and at least for me is nearly a
meditative state. I'm a big guy, and when I played Mirror's Edge, I quite
literally cried because I was getting a chance to experience a freedom of
movement only my skinny, small friends who practiced parkour could accomplish.
I was free.

Playing RPGs is similarly relieving: I'm the Courier, I'm some guy left for
dead in a pit in the ground, and I've got to piece together how I got there
and how to bring justice to the person that put me there. I've got a neat
little checklist of things to accomplish, fairly straightforward ways to check
off those things, and a continual sense of "oh, okay, if I do this, then this
happens, and then this." At a time in my life where things were most uncertain
and the way most unclear, I could fire up New Vegas and see a logical
progression of actions and accomplishments.

What do we get in the real world?

Well, it's not the people--it seems like pretty much everyone exists mainly in
a state of consumption, alternating between work and home and social media or
texting.

It's not heroics--the only wars being fought are unjust and unending police
actions against the third world or our own citizens, and even as experienced
developers we, searching for ever-more professionalism, realize that a team is
not made of a hero and ensemble cast but instead a group of cooperative
individuals with humility.

It's not even a clear causal universe: I write several KLOCS of code and
deliver features, my sales don't increase. My friend doesn't take out ads, his
sales increase. My cat plays outside, it gets hit by a car and dies behind a
radiator waiting for me to come home. My other friend hangs outside in a
parking lot, and a wild kitten appears. There's no sense to it, only random
chance.

And so, does it really surprise anyone that we'd prefer our virtual worlds to
this situation?

~~~
AdeptusAquinas
My theory as to why games are so fun is that its all about having a sense of
purpose.

In real life, you can find purpose in things but if you are not careful then
the daily eight-hour grind of a job, followed by dinner and a few hours of
social activities then sleep starts to feel like a meaningless repeating
routine. You can wake up knowing everything that's going to happen in a day
and just go through the motions, brain on simmer.

In contrast, you hop into a game and you have something you need to do. You
know how to do it. You can do and achieve something in a reasonable amount of
time, seeing progress as you go. There is never a moment (generally speaking)
where you feel like you are wasting time or not achieving anything - at least
in a game you are engaged in - and that is incredibly satisfying in a way
that's hard or infrequently achieved in real life.

~~~
iterationx
It's true, because man does not find meaning in leisure, only in work. Ora et
Labora as the monks used to say. Video games give you a false sense of
progress and labor. Its why gambling are so addictive, because it is not pure
recreation but it more closely resembles work, especially insofar as that you
can make rent money.

~~~
angersock
So, take it one step further:

What's "not false" about our progress and labor in the middle and upper-middle
class?

The bank can decide to repossess your house or car if you miss payments,
medical bills can wipe out everything you have and destroy your credit, the
police can decide at random to screw you and ruin all of the progress you've
made. If you don't make rent, or you just get gentrified, what "progress" have
you made?

There's a deeper illness here.

~~~
zo1
>" _There 's a deeper illness here._"

I look forward to the day someone can discover it, and describe it.

~~~
Chlorus
But why do that, when we can just write a really dramatic comment on HN to try
and sound insightful?

~~~
angersock
Do you want to explain how there is, in fact, no fair comparison between the
temporary progress in games and the often temporary progress in life? Do you
want to explain how the arbitrariness of games is somehow not mirrored by the
real world?

Or do you just want to sound like some snarky nit on a message board?

~~~
Chlorus
My comment was directed at the reply to your post. The fact that life is often
transitory, arbitrary, and often downright empty is a defining theme of art &
literature, and one of the most consistently studied topics throughout
history, so I find nothing insightful about the comment in question. The
poster makes it sound like he/she has been the first person to ever notice
this.

"Or do you just want to sound like some snarky nit on a message board?" That
was the idea, yes.

~~~
angersock
Ah, alright. Carry on, then.

------
sliverstorm
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
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
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.

------
MisterWalter
As a game maker, this stuff terrifies me. I think that there are a lot of devs
out there who string together compulsive elements in their games without
realizing just how potent they can be.

~~~
soup10
There are just as many who intentionally make the game as addictive as
possible. It was bad enough before F2P, now it's getting out of hand.

------
halfcat
Minecraft is the only game that led me to a major life change. When I look
around the real world, I realized _it 's the same thing, only more advanced_.
Once I made that realization, mining and crafting virtual resources became a
lot less interesting, and mining and crafting something real became very
intriguing and motivating. Then for a nice mind-f left turn, one day I
wondered, what if _we_ are living in a computer simulation?

------
chipsy
When I find myself getting addicted to a game now, I look for a way to cheat
and rapidly progress to the end. The illusion dispelled, I only have to waste
one hour of my life. Bonus: reverse engineering skills.

Edit: But also, I never bother with MMOs because they're tedious to begin
with. It's multiplayer FPS games that are the real trouble spot.

------
pnathan
I basically left off playing video games when I realized I could get the same
high, for nearly the same level of social interaction, by _writing code
instead_. And that would help me in many more ways than killing the top level
boss in WoW.

My "immersive alternate reality" approach is to use novels, which have a well-
defined end.

~~~
FLUX-YOU
I thought that would be a good replacement for WoW/EVE, but it turns out
nothing kills that flame faster than an 8to5 job.

Now I know how I'd feel as a goldfarmer.

~~~
pnathan
Yeah, some people find jobs to drain their coding desire. Pretty individual,
I'm sure. For me, I have to hack at home to keep my enthusiasm for software.

------
lotsofmangos
On the other hand, people who are that crazily obsessive about playing a
popular sport are usually lauded by society, rather than being kidnapped and
sent to rehab.

------
yarrel
Spending all day on social media and writing for clickbait sites about how
evil games and gamers are is a particularly tragic addiction.

------
beams_of_light
These are failures to parent. At the end of the article, Dad laments his kid
being the same after Wilderness Camp (which should have fixed everything!!!).
What his kid really needs is some involvement.

~~~
thret
_Brett 's father had retrofit a metal lock on his Celeron computer to prevent
his son from gaming. (age 12)

_he was in the tenth grade .. he stopped bathing or brushing his teeth
regularly.

Basically these parents have 100k to shell out on rehab but they can't trust
their 12 year old to be obedient, and they completely neglect his basic
hygiene. This is parenting bordering on abuse.

