Game Addiction This page intentionally left blank Game Addiction The Experience and the Effects NEILS CLARK and P. SHAVAUN SCOTT McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers Jefferson, North Carolina, and London 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 softcover : 50# alkaline paper 1. Video game addiction. 2. Video games—Psychological aspects. 3. Video games and children. 4. Video games and teenagers. I. Scott, P. Shavaun. II. Title. RC569.5.V53C53 2009 616.85'84—dc22 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 Manufactured in the United States of America 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. This page intentionally left blank TABLE OF CONTENTS Preface (by Neils Clark) 1 ONE—The Digital Living Room 7 TWO—Media Experience and Real Illusion 27 THREE—Why They Play 55 FOUR—Anatomy of a Game Addiction 91 FIVE—Games Are Not Babysitters 115 SIX—The Road Ahead 143 Afterword (by P. Shavaun Scott) 163 Appendix A. Helpful Activities During the Process of Change 167 Appendix B. Learning the Lingo 169 Appendix C. Commonly Used Internet and Gamer Slang 177 Appendix D. Seeking Help in an Unfamiliar World 183 Chapter Notes 187 Bibliography 195 Index 201 vii 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 five 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 PREFACE by Neils Clark 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 play- ing 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 gradu- ate school the next week, without a computer and unable to shake that night’s feeling of shock. My name is Neils, and even though I’ll tell you a little bit about the people I’ve murdered, the woman I married, and the millions that I’ve made in video games, this book isn’t strictly about any one person’s 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 there’s really no way to know whether video games, tele- vision, or even the world’s massive entertainment culture will be a force for positive or negative change. What we do know is that things are chang- ing. 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 sister’s life by putting his own life at risk, threatening an attacking moose and then feigning death once 1 P REFACE it began attacking him. Questioned later, he said that he learned those skills in a video game. For me, starting to play too much didn’t have much to do with the usual explanations; my excesses weren’t attributable to some manic imbal- ance, nor a childhood that was too psychologically traumatic to mention. My childhood was charmed. Though I can’t say for certain where prob- lems 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 me—God only knows what. The thing that I do remember is Jason’s father coming home. I remember the hot sting of embarrassment when he asked why I wasn’t playing with his son. I don’t remember my reply—but I do remember what he did: Nothing. This book is neither pro-games nor anti-games. Above all it’s about how we experience games and what they really mean to us. What’s hap- pening can’t be solved by just loving or hating the technologies surround- ing 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. What’s drawn a few types of people of my generation into games—is already pulling almost the entirety of the coming generation into the offspring of games. We can’t 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 don’t think that gamers are bad, because I don’t 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 incred- ible experiences; they could do incredible things. In his book on “the virtual worlds exodus,” Ted Castronova was sur- prised that the crew of the starship Enterprise, in the famous television show Star Trek: Next Generation, only used the holodeck every so often. If you’re not familiar with the holodeck, it was the ultimate video game: It was pho- torealistic, all of the senses were stimulated, and it could recreate any 2 Preface (by Neils Clark) 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 there’s no reason for the crew to have been anywhere but the holodeck. Since we already have this technology in today’s games, he says, real life will have to compensate by becoming more satisfying— otherwise nobody is going to spend time running the real-life starship. Peo- ple won’t engage in society as we know it, because it “won’t be for them.” Wrong. I’ve played with the people who can’t leave today’s Holodeck, and it’s rarely a happy scene. I’ve seen a friend—a doctor—give up one of the world’s most prestigious residencies only to move into one of Cal- ifornia’s most run-down suburbs. I’ve smelled people who left their dor- mitory 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. I’ve met some gamers who will leave profoundly positive marks on this world, but I’ve seen many more who are consumed by the game and then matriculated into the establishment. They don’t 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 pro- fessionals. And that’s without a holodeck. That’s 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 play- ers don’t have yet—just like we don’t have phasers, warp speed or any- thing else from the Star Trek universe. We’re just not there. Most people today don’t understand that video games are here to inspire us to make a better reality. They use today’s entertainment to replace reality, rather than to feel its cool uncertainty or face its subtle antagonists.