Most of us know one of those guys (rarely girls) who is obsessed with video games. Maybe he’s smart and talented and could be excelling at school or work or otherwise broadening his horizons, yet he chooses to do little else with his free time than sit in front of a glowing box, pushing buttons, and watching the pretty lights. Some of us were that guy (…he said, sheepishly raising his hand).
Having been steeped in that video game obsessiveness for long periods of my life, and looking at the phenomenon from the outside nowadays, I truly believe it to be a psychological addiction, just like gambling or nymphomania.
But what’s the mechanism of that addiction? Gamblers are hooked by the thrill of risk, and nymphomaniacs by hedonistic ecstasy. What about gamers? Gaming has elements of passive entertainment, like TV or movies: pretty images for the eye and electronic symphonies for the ear, but if those things were the “hook” of the addiction, then film and television would be the addiction of choice, because, though the margin narrows over time, they still easily outstrip the world of gaming in those respects of eye and ear candy. Similarly, gaming often has elements of storytelling, but if that were the “hook,” then gamers would put down their controllers in favor of books, for even the most intriguing Final Fantasy can’t touch the satisfying complexity or depth of the world of literature.
I believe the key to gaming addiction lies in its artificial sense of participatory accomplishment. This is, I believe, an entirely separate phenomenon from the sense of accomplishment involved in sports. Sports, for one thing, do often require a finely honed sense of teamwork. But more relevantly, the goals of sports are entirely arbitrary and abstract: take this object and place it over here; increment a meaningless number so that it’s higher than our enemies’ number. It requires a certain degree of self- as well as collective motivation to sustain involvement in something so transparently contrived: you have to really dedicate yourself to being excellent at sports.
But gaming is, by and large, a solitary affair. And gaming, through the means of sound, imagery, and storytelling, clothes its arbitrary goals with concrete, emotional meaning. Think about how games like Doom 3 can appeal directly to the R-complex of our brains: through its immersiveness, it’s scaring the crap out of thousands of twitchy mammals who possess an evolutionary history of being prey more often than predator. So it really means something when you finally give that boss monster its death blow with the BFG — that is, you get the hormonal rush because you were sucked into the world of the game and felt the giddy, primal thrill of survival by the skin of your teeth. While Doom 3 represents only one exceptional example of a particular genre of gaming, I think it serves as a perfect example of an important trait it shares with all successful video games, even the cerebral, strategic Civilization III: while excelling at sports requires a sense of dedication and a cultivation of a psychological and emotional link to their arbitrary goals, gaming cuts through all that and appeals directly to the primal psychology and emotional links of the gamer. And so it’s through these direct links to our psyche, like jacking into the Matrix, that video games deliver their sense of accomplishment.
I think everyone has a basic need for a sense of accomplishment in their lives, just like their need for security or love or any other pleasure. But normally it requires a great deal of dedication and hard work in order to satisfy these needs, just like it requires dedication and hard work to be successful in athletics and sports.
Gaming is like a recreational drug in that it delivers a packet of primal joy directly to the brain with minimal dedication or discipline. Just like Ecstasy is “joy in a pill” or marijuana is “tranquility in a breath,” computer and video games are “success on a disc.” And just like drugs reinforce behaviors of instant gratification in exchange for potential long-term negative consequences, so does gaming.
Since I think most gamers would concur that, on average, games have gotten slowly easier over the years (how many of you beat Contra without the up-down-up-down-left-right-left-right-a-b-a-b-select-start cheat?) while delivering more of the “candy,” one could even argue that gamemakers, consciously or not, are creating more and more accessible “gateway games.” With our minds so enthralled, might we be rapidly approaching a potential for overt manipulation? Or are we already there?
Of course, gaming, like drugs, is not an entirely destructive world. Despite my earlier disclaimers, a lot of truly stunning artwork, music, immersively escapist fantasy, and compelling storytelling is produced solely for the sake of a game. I have to confess how much I’m looking forward to Myst 4 for exactly those reasons. And sometimes gamers even do something good with their often elitist community. I’m confident such things also come from the world of illegal drugs. But that doesn’t make investment in either a healthy pursuit; that simply shows them to be overwhelmingly self-destructive instead of completely so.
Some of you may be thinking I’ve gone off on some Lieberman-esque rant against the evils of video games, but that’s not really the case here. I don’t think games should be censored or barred from sale to anyone. But then, I think the same goes for drugs.
Because in the case of both drugs and gaming, I’m simply arguing that personal responsibility and consciousness of self-development should take overwhelming precedence. I spent years addicted to video games, living off their artificial sense of occupation and accomplishment. I’m embarrassed to say that, at the time, I considered beating a certain game my most noteworthy accomplishment of a particular semester in college. And I’ve also been connected with the world of illegal drugs, though to a much lesser degree. I was never steeped in an addiction to marijuana, which I’m sure is at least as common as addiction to gaming, but if circumstances had turned out slightly different, I very well could be struggling with a weed habit right now. I stay away from it entirely now, because the relief and tranquility I get from doing things that are actually constructive far outweighs the price or even the reward of weed’s instant gratification. And while I still play a video or computer game once in a while nowadays, I rarely find myself playing for longer than half an hour at a time, or more often than once every week or two. Again, the rewards just aren’t rewarding to me anymore, and the price is simply absurd when weighed against the benefits of doing something that’s actually constructive.
But there was a time when my depression, my inability to face the world, or my inability to face the responsibilities I’d accepted would prompt me to buy a new game, and to play it obsessively. I used gaming to defer the onset of overwhelming emotional force held barely in check, just outside the borders of my conscious thought. I used it to escape my problems. I used it as a psychological crutch. And that’s where the problem lies, and that’s why I’m writing this. Far too many people, like myself, have or continue to use gaming or drugs as a crutch, while believing the illusion that things are getting better. But things aren’t getting better as long as the habit persists, as long as the crutch exists. There is no cushion from the Issues in one’s life. Sooner or later we have to “hit bottom,” and suddenly face all of the emotional responsibility we’ve deferred, as if we’ve defaulted on a student loan. Far better to do the responsible thing, and address the Issues as they come up.
So let the gaming world perpetuate itself, I say, and let the world of illegal drugs be able to perpetuate iself without the hyperinflation and fear the Law instills. But let us all partake of each world sparingly, if at all, and only in the greater context of sure-footed self-evolution.
[UPDATE 9/3/04: Interestingly the BBC just posted this article on some of the psychology of gaming. They come at it from a business/marketing angle instead of my addiction angle, but the subject matter is stilly closely related and very interesting.]
