In our culture, addiction surrounds us. We make ourselves addicted to things, that in the end we know has a potential to harm us. Cigarettes, alcohol, and even non-substance addiction (gambling, sex etc..) plagues us. So what makes something by a scientific definition “addictive”?. And once that definition is found, are video games subject to the same classification?

If you were to go by Merriam-Webster’s definition of addictive - “The condition of being habitually or compulsively occupied with or or involved in something.”, then I’d say that you could call it a day, and video games are definitely addictive. In a report, released by the AMA, they discuss the different psychological effects of video gaming. In the report, the AMA compares video game addiction to that of gambling addiction. They associate alot of video game addiction, to the MMORPG (massive multiplayer online roleplaying game) genre. MMORPG’ers make up around 9% of the video game population. In the report, they make a comparison of MMORPG addiction to Internet addiction, more so than gambling. The reason for the comparison, is the use of real-time, and interactive social services that each provide.

So, video games atleast by the AMA’s standards have the basis for dependent like behavior. What the report fails to conclude is an actual physical or mental dependence on games. Here is an excerpt from the report on actual video game dependence, “It is not clear whether withdrawal symptoms are associated with video game overuse; some excessive users do not exhibit “cravings” for the games if they are unavailable, while other users insist they cannot reduce the time they spend on the games.”

Going by the AMA’s report, I think that the idea of video game addiction is plausible at best. While games exhibit addictive type traits in certain people, I don’t see a correlation between extreme addiction as with gamblers or cigarette smokers. I’d say if you were to interview a gamer, and then interview a gambler, you’d find that the gambler would have a more hard time quelling his addiction than the gamer. I was a pretty hardcore “WoW” player for a couple of years, and when I decided to quit, there were no withdraws or changes in my mood. Of course for every report of non-addictiveness there is a report of serious addiction. Most people in the video game world know of the South Korean man that played Starcraft to death. So I guess what can be taken from all this, is that certain people have addictive personalities, and video games can be that trigger. But to say that video games are a direct cause of addiction would be a little hasty.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 22nd, 2008 at 6:52 am and is filed under Consumer Electronics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.