Posts Tagged ‘addiction’
Gamers Get Less Sleep: Gamers Ask “They Needed a Study?”
We’ve all been there. You sit down to play a few levels of whatever you’re plowing through at the moment and the next thing you know it feels like someone’s glued sandpaper to the inside of your eyelids and the clock taunts you with an obscenely late hour. A study presented at the recent SLEEP 2009 event told the world what millions of World of Warcraft subscribers already know: gamers get less sleep.
The study also showed that people who reported their gaming interfered with their sleep got 1.6 hours less shut-eye than everyone else and those who reported being addicted to gaming slept an hour less on weekdays. Only a third of those who reported being addicted felt that it interfered with their sleep.
While it’s easy to blame this on escapist, socially inept stereotypes, it’s quite easy to get caught up in games. Sandbox games can be particularly time-obliterating since there’s no obvious landmarks to call your attention to how long you’ve been playing. Bizarrely, the easiest I’ve ever been drawn into a game without concern for time was Viva Pinata. I haven’t played it since out of fear of losing entire days to its colorful world.
Study Claims One In Twelve Children Showing Signs Of Gaming Addiction
A new study conducted by Iowa State University suggests that video games might be a little too popular amongst youngsters. According to their results, one in twelve children between the ages of eight and eighteen show signs of being addicted to video gaming. Unfortunately for the anti-video game camp there’s not much going on in this study that can’t be explained by the simple fact that children and teenagers are generally impulsive and hedonistic.
The study used a survey method and since the majority of other research is laboratory based there are few pre-existing sets of survey so they simply used a set of criteria used to assess gambling addiction. The study goes on to assess the two behaviors via the same rubric although the two behaviors are quite different, especially when one considers that gambling is a behavior restricted to adults and is generally engaged in with the ultimate purpose of winning money.
Many of the more commonly manifested symptoms of the ‘addiction’ the study points to are simply common traits of children and adolescents. They did find that there was a correlation between greater signs of video game addiction and poor school performance, but there have always been kids more interested in working on cars, playing sports, listening to music or a dozen activities other than studying for tests.
Some of the other ’signs’ of addiction are laughable: ignoring chores in favor of games, suffering on an assignment or test because of excessive game playing, using video games to escape from problems or bad feelings. While it’s not commendable to spend time playing games instead of studying, the development of self control and good work habits is a crucial part of the adolescents development and is often not truly achieved until college or later in ones adult life.
When one takes into account the permissiveness of many parents nowadays combined with the self-gratifying focus of American society and the pleasure-focused existence of most teenagers, it’s not surprising that kids are playing more games than some might consider healthy.
Teen Convicted In Halo 3 Related Killing
It’s sad enough to see people so caught up in the world of video games that they eschew friends, family and normal social situations, but when violence gets involved it’s much, much worse. Recently Daniel Petric, a teen from Ohio, shot his parents after they confiscated his copy of Halo 3 (which they’d forbidden him to buy). His father survived the shooting, which Petric had attempted to make look like a murder-suicide by putting the gun into his father’s hand after he had shot both of them.
As one might expect, the lawyers attempted to blame the crime on Petric’s video game addiction, which had something to do with why his parents instructed him not to buy Halo 3. They were going for the insanity defense, but the murder-suicide plot and the fact that Petric admitted to thinking about killing his parents in the weeks before the crime generally eroded his claim of insanity and he was convicted.
Daniel Petric now faces sentencing with life in prison without parole as the maximum sentence. While this is a terrible tragedy and I send my sympathies to Mr. Petric and his family, it’s good to see that the spirit of accountability is still alive in a country that’s all together too quick to blame others.
Dr.Phil Goes After Gaming… Again
A little over a year ago, we commented on Dr.Phil taping one of his shows which was focused on violent 
video games. Now, while I have to acknowledge his originality, (because let’s face it, no one has ever gone out of their way to blame video games on violence before), the thoughtless attacks are unnecessary. Obviously that isn’t stopping him from going after ratings, because he has a new show, set to air in October, concerning video games being addictive (another, completely original though). Not only that, but Dr.Phil is making it a point of arguing that video games are intentionally, and thoughtfully designed to be addictive. How do we Know this? Simple, one of his guests said so in her blog.
“However, angry as this makes me personally, there is a clear difference between games being made to addict players – the action – and games made to addict players – the intent. I spent years digging around behind the smoke and light show that game designers hide behind. I saw them on camera and off. I saw miles of dirty laundry…memos that shouldn’t have left the company, stories that shouldn’t have left the Human Resources office, attitudes that shouldn’t have been shared in the hallways with just anyone listening. It’s clear to me the game addiction phenomenon wrecking lives, finances, relationships and careers was not foreseen and planned by these game designers. They wanted the loyalty of their consumer fans, but they had no idea how far it could go. They’re actually, secretly, very frightened by the emergence of addictive game player behavior, and the anger of the general public over it.”
The guest in question is Wendy Kays, wife to Graham Kays who is the lead designer for SOCOM: U.S. Navy Seals. While it would appear, by reading her blog, that Wendy is more or less fair on the issue, acknowledging the fact that the addiction issue is real, while not going out of her way to make a point of video games being “evil”. Despite this, Dr.Phil apparently accuses her of being biased towards video games, even though she has a new book titled “Game Widow”. If you ask me, that doesn’t sound very supportive of the industry.
By the way Dr.Phil, it’s called replay value. It isn’t there to make games addictive, it’s there so that they are more interesting to comeback to, as opposed to other entertainment types. For example, watching a rerun of a TV talk show.