Clark Neils - Game addiction: the experience and the effects

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Clark, Neils.
Game addiction : the experience and the effects / Neils Clark and P. Shavaun Scott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.

ISBN 978-0-7864-4364-2

1. Video game addiction. 2. Video gamesPsychological aspects. 3. Video games and children. 4. Video games and teenagers. I. Scott, P. Shavaun. II. Title.
RC569.5.V53C53 2009
616.85'84dc22 2009012386

British Library cataloguing data are available

2009 Neils Clark and P. Shavaun Scott. All rights reserved

No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher.

Cover illustration 2009 Brand X Pictures

McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com

Neils:
To Alysa Majer
Shavaun:
To Mike,
for ensuring I am never without the means
to enact every random creative thought,
and for forcing me to do the things
I swear I have no time to do.
And to Matt & Dan,
for teaching me how to be a highly competent elf.

That which is dreamed
Can never be lost,
can never be
un-dreamed.

...

Only the phoenix arises
and does not descend.
And everything changes.
And nothing is truly lost.
Neil Gaiman

For the probability of error increases with the scope of the undertaking, and any man who sells his soul to synthesis will be a tragic target for a myriad merry darts of specialist critique. Consider, said Ptah-Hotep ve thousand years ago, how thou mayest be opposed by an expert in council. It is foolish to speak on every kind of work.Will Durant

I stared transfixed. A six-hundred-dollar computer monitor sat on a dingy hardwood floor, and I knew that I had been hunched over it for the better part of that day, most of the week, and all that summer. I was playing one video game twenty hours a day, and it seemed normal up until that night. There was probably an hour of silent staring. I left for graduate school the next week, without a computer and unable to shake that nights feeling of shock.

My name is Neils, and even though Ill tell you a little bit about the people Ive murdered, the woman I married, and the millions that Ive made in video games, this book isnt strictly about any one persons story. This book was born out of an attempt to make sense of gaming addictions through research. As it matured, it became clear that tens, if not hundreds, of millions of people around the world were killing, working, marrying, and feeding on video games. Their stories, in many cases told through their eyes, are used to augment and clarify the game-effects research accumulating across fields that rarely attempt communication, let alone collaboration.

Right now theres really no way to know whether video games, television, or even the worlds massive entertainment culture will be a force for positive or negative change. What we do know is that things are changing. An eleven-year-old Vietnamese boy strangled an 81-year-old woman for the equivalent of five U.S. dollars, then buried her under a thin layer of sand in front of his house. Questioned by police, he said that he needed the money for items in a video game. This coin has two sides. An eight-year-old Norwegian boy saved his younger sisters life by putting his own life at risk, threatening an attacking moose and then feigning death once it began attacking him. Questioned later, he said that he learned those skills in a video game.

For me, starting to play too much didnt have much to do with the usual explanations; my excesses werent attributable to some manic imbalance, nor a childhood that was too psychologically traumatic to mention. My childhood was charmed. Though I cant say for certain where problems with gaming started, I do remember one summer when I was about nine. My friend down the street, Jason, had a brand new Super Nintendo. I remember greeting him at the door, sitting down to play for a few hours and then refusing to get up when everyone left to play with water guns. Something about Mario seduced meGod only knows what. The thing that I do remember is Jasons father coming home. I remember the hot sting of embarrassment when he asked why I wasnt playing with his son. I dont remember my replybut I do remember what he did: Nothing.

This book is neither pro-games nor anti-games. Above all its about how we experience games and what they really mean to us. Whats happening cant be solved by just loving or hating the technologies surrounding the worlds online. We have to understand them and, as much as possible, enter this next generation with more personal responsibility in using them and more professional understanding in making them. Whats drawn a few types of people of my generation into gamesis already pulling almost the entirety of the coming generation into the offspring of games. We cant take back any of these technologies and addiction is just one blip on the radar of how they will change our world. But for better or for worse?

I dont think that gamers are bad, because I dont think that I am bad. Gamers have experiences the likes of which very few people in our history have been afforded, wherein they can play the parts of good, evil, or morally grey characters. The theatre is digital, but the other puppeteers still bleed when their hearts and minds are cut too deeply. Gamers have had incredible experiences; they could do incredible things.

In his book on the virtual worlds exodus, Ted Castronova was surprised that the crew of the starship Enterprise, in the famous television show Star Trek: Next Generation, only used the holodeck every so often. If youre not familiar with the holodeck, it was the ultimate video game: It was photorealistic, all of the senses were stimulated, and it could recreate any scenario imaginable. In a simple room, real-feeling and convincing events could be re-created. With the ability to enter their favorite experiences as much as they wanted, whenever they wanted, Castronova uses economic theories to say that theres no reason for the crew to have been anywhere but the holodeck. Since we already have this technology in todays games, he says, real life will have to compensate by becoming more satisfyingotherwise nobody is going to spend time running the real-life starship. People wont engage in society as we know it, because it wont be for them.

Wrong. Ive played with the people who cant leave todays Holodeck, and its rarely a happy scene. Ive seen a frienda doctorgive up one of the worlds most prestigious residencies only to move into one of Californias most run-down suburbs. Ive smelled people who left their dormitory rooms to buy Husky burgers, but not to attend their final exams or to relieve themselves. Some of my best friends in real life started out as my favorite rivals in video games. Ive met some gamers who will leave profoundly positive marks on this world, but Ive seen many more who are consumed by the game and then matriculated into the establishment. They dont demand that life become more exciting, that it better suit their needs. They lose themselves, accepting the rank and file when they were just months from saving lives as doctors and establishing themselves as professionals. And thats without a holodeck. Thats today.

The crew of the starship Enterprise uses the holodeck responsibly because they understand how it works. They know the risks, and they know how to balance reality with entertainment. That knowledge is not free. It is a hard-won understanding that most regular video game players dont have yetjust like we dont have phasers, warp speed or anything else from the