No really, sex and video games. What’s not to love?
Video games are a lot like sex. Both require mental and physical dexterity. They are fairly repetitive, predictable, and both are driven by the offer of rewards for achieving goals linked together by a veneer of narrative. Both leave you feeling drained, keep you up late at night, and teenagers find it hard to stop thinking about either. They are also both the subject of seemingly new, often media-spun addictions. That’s right, I’m looking at you, Tiger.
Video game addiction, like sex addiction, has become a widely used term often bandied around to mean doing something to excess or used as an excuse for lack of self-control. An actual addiction is a serious mental health issue and as such requires the attention of medical professionals and academics. When asked to define addiction, Senior Lecturer in cognitive neuroscience at the University of the West of England Dr Caroline Brown said;
“Biologically, addiction is related to the increased dopamine signalling [broadly speaking, the happiness hormone] that occurs in appetitive behaviour. The dopamine response may increase with each repetition, and in turn it becomes difficult to do without the pleasurable response.”
Putting the Dope in Dopamine
It is this dopamine response that make video games so enjoyable and so-called ‘video game addicts’ fall victim to a pleasure-punishment cycle called Pavlovian conditioning. When we enjoy something we get a rush of pleasure so we do more of it. In contrast when we don’t enjoy something it is like a punishment so we try not to do it again. This is called reinforcement and video games have many ways to reward us for doing well and penalising us for failing. Rewards come in many forms but are usually psychological; collect coins, points, perks, better weapons and gear. Unlocking trophies/ achievements also adds to the warm fuzzy glow we get while playing games. It is like a teacher giving you a gold star. On the other hand games also give us negative reinforcement; you can lose points, fail objectives, or restart the whole level. In team games you can fail the objective on behalf of your friends adding a level of social pressure to the pleasure-punishment spiral. Games would not be worthwhile playing if you simply won everything you attempted and therefore this carrot and stick is fundamental.
Addiction to gaming however is hotly contested by academics. Dr Brown says,
“The concept of addiction to video game playing is debated. Playing games in excess may have underlying psychological causes such as depression, or poor time management, for example.”
In this case, excessive video game playing could be the symptom of a wider problem and not in fact the cause. This is the case for many compulsive behaviours and addictions such as gambling or drug abuse. Not enough research exists to simply dismiss video games as the root cause of all evil and by doing so we might actually be failing those in need of help. It is not a leap to imagine someone who is depressed coming to rely on the dopamine released by playing video games and in this sense playing games has become a self medication in the same way that an alcoholic might turn to drink. However, it seems unlikely that these factors will be taken into consideration when it’s so easy to shake a stick at games themselves. Gamers should take heart that it’s only a matter of time before the witch hunters find another axe to grind. So what will it be? Place your bets. My money is on VR.
This article was originally submitted to the VG247 2015 writing competition and made it to the list of finalists. It didn’t win. That’s next year’s challenge.
Read the winning submission here.
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