Comments on: Neils Clark On Game Addiction Fallacies

By: Jazmeister

Jazmeister — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 09:55:19 +0000

I just read this. Sehr Gut. I actually went back to read it because I was musing about doing an ill-informed addiction piece earlier in the week. Glad I got educated.

By: phil

phil — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 09:27:54 +0000

Providing someone LOLs, at me or with me, my work is done.

By: futage

futage — Tue, 06 Oct 2009 00:22:03 +0000

To me that’s a way more sensible response. And it deals with the broader problem rather than adding fuel by going defensive.

By: James

James — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 23:18:22 +0000

Perhaps we could start referring to most “journalists” by the name of “sensationalists”, and save the journalistic trappings and titles for those who have actually shown they have conducted some type of journalism.

Words all have specific meanings, and this is a case where calling something what it is instead of what it is portrayed as could clear up a lot of misunderstandings before they happen.

“Oh, that’s just a sensationalist piece.” That’s a statement that’s already made frequently, but if we had the correct context in mind it could be a helpful one instead of more fuel for the non-journalistic frenzy that is news reporting today.

A bit off-topic perhaps, though at least slightly relevant.

By: Railick

Railick — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 22:03:59 +0000

I think studies have shown that when you just sit there and watch TV your brain is like, off for the most part ? (may be diffrent for diffrent people I dunno) I hate watching TV, I have to do it from time to time with my wife but I'd be just as happy not to have one. I do like to watch movies now and again with a bit of witty humor and puzzles to try and solve before the end (I almost always figure out the twist in a movie with-in the first 20 minutes if not sooner, that to me is the point of movies with twists)

I wonder how much of your brian you're using when you're playing a video game on the other hand? Even the most mundane FPS Game you have to think of some sort of tactics and put your reflexs on spring mode so you can snap to and shoot enemies as they appear. How would that compare with reading a book or a comic? Maybe being addicted to playing games isn't a bad thing (At least, slightly addicted. Killing yourself of them or quitting your job, letting your kids starve is totally diffrent. I think I saw one where a dude was home alone with his daughter and TOTALLY ignored her to play WoW and the kid was taking drugs ect out of the cabinets. For me if I'm home with my kids the computer may as well not exist until they are in bed for a nap or for the night. Generally it is still off limits as long as my wife is awake unless she says "go ahead and play" normally with a sigh ;P She sighs because she wants to play though, most of the time TF2 hehe)

By: We Fly Spitfires

We Fly Spitfires — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 21:19:50 +0000

Awesome, thanks for the link through. I hate it when people throw around the term computer addiction to cover everything from kids shooting people to parents neglecting their kids. If only the solution was that simple eh? :)

By: malkav11

malkav11 — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 20:01:31 +0000

I don’t know. I think that someone who drops out of high school in order to game more has probably not fully thought through the likely consequences. I think it’s very possible that things won’t go well for him in future. But fundamentally, I see someone who’s assessed their priorities and come up with a different ordering than most of us. If I thought I could fund the activities I enjoy without working a 40-hour work week, I would. But my experience has been that I can’t, and a certain amount of education was necessary to get the kind of employment that does fund me without lots of overtime, manual labor, etc.

By: Miguel Coelho

Miguel Coelho — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 19:00:17 +0000

Excellent Blog entry, this is the type of article that makes me keep coming back for more.

Good job and Good Luck.
Keep it up.

Best Regards

By: Heliocentric

Heliocentric — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:56:17 +0000

I’m genuinely a functional addict. I can work, study and look after my kids as long as its no longer than a week the last time i played an intense multiplayer game.

If i go longer than a week i end up buying things on digital download sites. Not even played half my games, why would i need more?

By: Malibu Stacey

Malibu Stacey — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:31:18 +0000

I know many people who think that coming home from work & switching on the TV from 5 or 6pm until they go to bed at midnight or later every night is perfectly healthy but playing Video Games is completely alien, abhorrent and/or only for kids etc.
They don’t even watch anything particularly interesting. No news, no documentaries etc. just soap opera after soap opera with ‘reality TV’ randomly interspersed (most of them have never even heard of The Wire).

This however is perfectly acceptable behaviour in mainstream society. Apparently doing something which might actually mentally stimulate you instead of turning you into a mindless drone however is not.

By: Malibu Stacey

Malibu Stacey — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:23:06 +0000

Dude I play Dwarf Fortress at work all day. Well not all day because it’s on pause for large periods of time but I do poke around with it when I’m waiting for a build to finish so I can test something or while I’m waiting for something to finish installing on a virtual machine so I can test it or
Does that mean Toady One should feel like he’s a bad person for “addicting” me to the running of the virtual dwarven population? Would I be a better person if instead I was wasting my time on ‘social networks’ were I inclined to bother with them or unfunny nonsense on YouTube as the majority of people in offices seem to do?

My work machine is very capable of handling any recent PC release but you don’t see me installing Steam & playing TF2 and/or L4D during the day. I do however play both TF2 and L4D in the evenings with people whom I work with during the day (as well as other real life friends) but I guess that’s just one of the perks of working in software development where people who are into things like Video Gaming are plentiful.

By: Kakksakkamaddafakka

Kakksakkamaddafakka — Mon, 05 Oct 2009 18:18:22 +0000

Nice read.

To be honest, I do get a bit worried about addiction research in general. Bear in mind that I just got this impulse right now, I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about (haven’t read much about it in the past), so I’ll be basing this right off the article:

The markers are ok, I agree with them. Very shortly being basically something like: an individual spends large amounts of time on something, it should be investigated if this has a negative effect on his life. If the effects are negative in the sense that he or she acts immorally towards people close to him/her or himself/herself, then there might be a problem.

But I’m not sure I see anything other than people having tools to deal with actions that THEY find morally dubious. I mean, every talk about addiction is always within a very rigid system of morals defined by a long cultural history of labeling certain actions as immoral.

Lets take something like drinking and gambling (yeah, lets mash them together for sheer unscientificness). A pretty clear cut case, one would think; and of course, a great deal of people will do morally problematic things in order to pursue it, but not all. I used to drink a great deal, I also played a lot of poker. Did it affect my ability to function socially? Hell no, I was a great drinker (and I still bloody am), if anything, it had a positive effect. Also: what if I felt like being alone when drinking, or otherwise pursuing something society as a whole saw as problematic? What if I liked being alone and drunk? Maybe I could have endured the social scorn, maybe I couldn’t have.

Where is the real moral issue here, if not the isolation of focus upon things that all good christians can agree upon being immoral (and indeed that very labeling)? What about being top dog at some sport? What about being an executive in a multinational company? Surely these are pursuits that, potentially, require at least a comparable amount of personal interest and timeconsuming singlemindedness (comparable to anything that can be labeled as addictive). It will most likely have a negative impact on your social dealings with people close to you (at least for a period). Yet, nobody labels anything that make one stand out as a better person, morally, to standards rarely discussed seriously in terms of modern morals.

Sure, you’ll probably get rich as hell, and feel fulfilled by mastering something hard. It will probably have a positive impact on your life, as well as a negative one. This is different from what is labeled as addictive gaming how?

I mean, lets face it, if the markers in question are what we actually should be looking at, then most aspects of human life can be a problem. Not just the ones that have historical baggage. Sure, it’s not like excessive drinking normally is something good (in general), or excessive use of drugs, for that matter; but I do question the use of them as a moral foundation of an entire science. If the issue here is personal fulfilment of your life, and at the same time being able to function in the society as a whole, the spectrum should be widened and the terminology and the connotative aspects should be considered. Sure, gaming can probably be addictive, but I feel we’re still in a phase where gaming is “the devil”, and now we’re incorporating it into a system of beliefs that have a very traditional sense of what is morally problematic and not. Also, as a final hit of conjecture, I’ll speculate if this is just an continuation of old morals. Morals based in the old world where work was paramount to survival of yourself and the people closest to you. I think what today is labeled hedonism or addiction will in a few decades be labeled as pastimes. I mean, not only in terms of how we need to spend less time working to have a stable life, but also in how a digital life and the internet is gradually transforming how humans work socially.

Just to be clear, yes, I do think many people have problems with addiction, and yes, I do think they should get help. I just find the need to label people who outwardly do something society as a whole looks upon as immoral, pretty disgusting. That was my only point, really.