There’s no point in having fun. But surely that is the point: to focus entirely on an activity in the here-and-now present, an end in and of itself. Yet there may be more to it than that. Since the dawn of time human societies have appreciated the importance of fun, often in culturally institutionalized events such as parties and feasts. Wine, women, and song and their more modern reincarnations, sex, drugs, and rock and roll, free us up to live for the moment, to have our raw senses directly stimulated, with no time for abstract thoughts and self-conscious introspection. And all this fun could actually have serious, evolutionary value. Immersion in a sensation-soaked present would favor participating in the material, immediate joys of reproduction and nutrition that are essential to survival.
It needn’t stop there. Talents rehearsed across the card table or playing charades on a rainy winter evening translate directly to becoming proficient in the interpretation of body language, in knowing how to employ eye contact, and in learning to empathize generally with thought processes and emotions, as well as in developing important cognitive skills such as reasoning and memory. Playing with dolls anticipates caring for babies, while all types of sports develop the teamwork, physical health, and competitive skills that in the primeval savanna would have ensured the survival of the fittest. Yet videogames could, for the first time, be dissociating fun from any of the survival-value requisites that traditional games have met. Rather than serving as a twenty-first-century answer to age-old needs, the gaming experience could be an end in itself rather than a means for thriving in the real world.
The advent of the smartphone has further transformed the experience: 36 percent of American gamers access games on their smartphones,1 and it seems that this trend will increase in the future as phones become increasingly personalized. These vast technological advances make videogames richer and more diverse experiences and have contributed to their soaring popularity. Interestingly enough—and contrary to earlier trends—games are rapidly becoming popular with older generations. The average age of a gamer is now estimated at around thirty, with 45 percent of gamers being women.2 Nonetheless, videogames readily offer something that appeals to people of all ages, backgrounds, and cultures, which the real world and traditional games only rarely do.
Nicole Lazzaro is the founder and president of XEODesign, “the world’s first player experience design consulting company,” and a leading researcher “on emotion and the fun of games.” An authority on emotions and videogames, Lazzaro identified four different types of fun, with the best-selling videogames offering at least three out of four on the list. Hard fun gives you challenge combined with the promise of eventual mastery; easy fun provides the sheer joy of the gaming experience itself. Serious fun enlivens your otherwise dull tasks, while people fun is the inevitable result of hanging out with your friends.3 Real life rarely provides more than one or two of these opportunities at the same time and certainly not on demand, whereas videogames are meticulously designed to do just that.
However, not all games are created equal. They can vary not only in their platform (e.g., PC, gaming console, mobile phone) but also in their mode (e.g., single player, multiplayer, offline, online). First-person shooter games remain popular in both online and offline modes; one of the most sought-after titles, the latest version of the Call of Duty series, sold more than twenty-seven million units within the first six months of release.4 While incentives to play differ according to gender, age, personality attributes, and mood of the gamer, a few common elements in the appeal of videogames rank consistently high as factors. Players most frequently cite opportunities “to achieve,” “to escape,” and “to socialize” as reasons for entering these unreal worlds.5
Videogames have existed for more than half a century, but only in the past two decades have they become endless collaborative online experiences, often with thousands of other human players interacting simultaneously. Known as massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs), they focus on the progression of the gamer-controlled character, an avatar, in a fantasy world. Unlike typical first-person shooter games, MMORPG players have full control over the physical features, development, and attributes of their avatar. Avatar progression is realized through combat, exploration, item acquisition, skill development, socialization, and narrative. The MMORPG world in which this action unfolds is much larger in scope than the worlds of first-person shooter games, with such large numbers of players able to interact in the same virtual world simultaneously. Furthermore, this global game is persistent, in that, regardless of whether or not a gamer is logged-in, the world continues to turn in the cybersphere, updating and evolving. In contrast, first-person shooter games are typically made up of purely “instance” scenarios, in which the plot only exists for the duration of the game and can be restarted at the original point an infinite number of times.
This distinction is important. In a review of the current findings on gaming, authors Daria Kuss and Mark Griffiths conclude that, given the endless possibilities of the new worlds of MMORPGs, their social nature, and the possibility for the gamer to develop an attachment to their avatar, MMORPGs are the most addictive type of videogame.6 A friend whose son had become hooked on videogames to the exclusion of much else and who can himself see the appeal of, and vulnerability to, gaming, tried to explain: “The games are designed to pull the player in, to ensure that each level is rewarded by the next level, that play never naturally stops, and that if you take a break you either suffer in the game play or you feel desolate as a result of the lack of exciting and rewarding game play.”
This personal attachment and emotional investment in an alternative gaming self adds to the lure. Experiences are designed to provide excitement and meaning as a means of manipulating behavior. As the designer of Gamasutra, a website founded in 1997 that focuses on all aspects of videogame development, John Hopson has been able to analyze the attraction in terms of established behavioral theory, where conditioning is used to teach both humans and animals new information and behaviors. For example, rats can be controlled by being rewarded with food pellets or punished with shocks in accordance with a simple behavior such as pressing a bar. Hopson has described how, like a rat, a gamer can be manipulated into continuing to play when a reward is given only under specific circumstances. In certain schedules, not only are the rats avoiding the unpleasant, but they are also hooked by the uncertainty of not knowing when a reward will come; they just know that one will eventually come along.7 For human gamers, there may be a reward after a number of actions have been completed (fixed ratio schedule) or, alternatively, after a specific number of actions, with the number changing every time (variable ratio schedule). Then there are what are known as chain schedules, with multiple stages to achieving the goal, where the player needs to respond quickly. Games are thus excellent vehicles for manipulating brain processing at a very basic level.
Back in 2002, social scientist Nick Yee conducted seminal research on nearly four thousand players to gain more insight into gaming behavior.8 He found that well over half of all the gamers fessed up to playing MMORPGs continuously for ten hours or more in a single sitting, and over 15 percent reported feeling anxious, irritable, or angry if they were unable to play. Nearly 30 percent admitted they continued to play even when they became frustrated or upset or had stopped enjoying the game, while 18 percent claimed that gaming had caused them academic, health, financial, or relationship problems.
Many of us have our own stories to tell. One father told me:
Having had a son who lost a year of university through playing World of Warcraft, I nevertheless believe that the fact that he has moved on from that game and is now in a successful career (for the moment touch wood!) does not mean he is free of the gaming addiction. He is not, and I doubt if he ever will be.
This father, a friend of mine, was almost in tears the first time he told me of his son’s plight, and for quite a few months it was the sole topic of conversation whenever I saw him. He and the boy’s mother felt guilty and out of their depth: when and how had this happened?
Any behavior might have addictive qualities—that is, it may be characterized by a compulsion to engage over and over in an action until that action has a serious and persistent negative effect on an individual’s physical, mental, social, and/or financial well-being. As of May 2013, “Internet use disorder” has been included in the fifth edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-5) as a condition “recommended for further study” within Section III. This move effectively postpones full recognition and inclusion of the disorder until uniform criteria needed for a robust psychiatric diagnosis can be agreed on.9 For more than a decade, however, numerous studies have produced evidence that excessive use of the Internet, and of related features such as gaming, may be considered a behavioral addiction comparable to pathological gambling.10 But herein lies a snag: not all Internet activity involves gaming, and vice versa.11
Then again, when researchers study specific features of excessive Internet use, online gaming is the most frequently explored. Despite the multiple ways we might conceptualize excessive gaming and measure the behavior, two symptoms appear consistently: significant problems as a result of overuse of games, and an inability to control use. Some hallmarks of gaming addiction include lying about how much time is spent gaming; intense feelings of pleasure or guilt; spending more and more time gaming to get the same enjoyment; withdrawing from friends, family, or spouse; experiencing feelings of anger, depression, moodiness, anxiety, or restlessness when not gaming; spending significant sums of money on online services, computer upgrades, or gaming systems, and thinking obsessively about gaming even when doing other things.12
Some argue that these screen-based experiences are just a medium through which an addictive activity is accessed.13 In other words, the gambler who drives every day to the casino is addicted to gambling, not to driving. Similarly, the person who uses the Internet to gamble is addicted to gambling, not to the Internet. However, while online gambling has a real-world alternative option, gaming, by definition, does not. Unlike gambling, it’s a phenomenon specific to digital technology. Hence any abnormal behavior associated with videogames cannot be divorced from the medium of the screen and the unique experience it gives. So while much Internet activity might encompass gaming, we need to remember that an addiction to gaming will be an addiction to gaming, and not to anything else.
Statistics on Internet addiction vary widely across cultures and depend on the form of evaluation used.14 However, the numbers for gaming addiction specifically seem to be much more consistent. Drawing on a U.S. sample, Douglas Gentile found that 8 percent of gamers between eight and eighteen years old were classified as addicted,15 while another recent review gives an estimate of 2 to 12 percent.16 Moreover, a ballpark figure of just under 10 percent seems to be consistent across continents: in a two-year longitudinal study performed with a general elementary and secondary school population in Singapore, including some three thousand children in third grade, the prevalence of “pathological gaming” was similar to that in other countries, 9 percent.17 But leaving aside questions of definition, conflation with other Internet activities, statistics, and the additional appeal of online interaction, can we say with any certainty that gaming is addictive?
Aviv Weinstein at the Hadassah Medical Organization in Jerusalem believes that the craving for online gaming and the craving for substance dependence could well share the same neurobiological mechanism.18 Weinstein argues that teenagers may play longer, prioritize thinking about games over other important matters, game to escape emotional problems, have difficulties with academic work and socializing, and conceal gaming activities from their family. Individuals with this behavioral pattern who then experience intolerable irritability when they stop gaming are displaying the classic hallmarks of an obsession, even an addiction. But can the behavioral commonalities of traditional addiction and intense gaming be linked to the same single brain state?
In one particular brain-imaging study, healthy control subjects displayed a reduction in the number of molecular targets (receptors) for the neurotransmitter dopamine in a key brain region (the ventral striatum) after playing a motorbike riding computer game. In striking contrast, former chronic Ecstasy users showed no change in the status of their receptors after playing this game.19 For the nonaddicts experiencing the thrill of gaming, there was a surge in the release of dopamine that “desensitized” its receptors (remember the handshake analogy in Chapter 7 and how a hand would become numb when pressed for too hard or too long). But the brains of the Ecstasy addicts told a different story. Here chronic use of the drug had accustomed the brain to vast amounts of dopamine. The videogames added no excitement because they worked via the same common mechanism. It seems that as far as the brain was concerned, taking Ecstasy and gaming were comparable experiences.
Another way of showing that gaming releases high levels of dopamine in the brain is through looking at changes in the actual size of brain structures. Do you recall how the hippocampus was bigger in London taxi drivers because they constantly relied on their working memory while driving? It seems the same principle might apply to gamers and their dopamine systems. In young gamers, brain imaging shows an enlargement of the area of the brain (the ventral striatum)20 where the neurotransmitter dopamine is released.21 Interestingly enough, a similar feature is also characteristic of the brains of pathological gamblers, who suffer from another behavioral addiction.22 So it seems that whether we’re talking about addiction to drugs, gambling, or videogames, all three conditions are linked to excessive dopamine release in the ventral striatum.
The next question is whether individuals with brains that happen to have an enlarged ventral striatum are predisposed to gaming, or whether excessive gaming has literally left its mark on the brain. This presents a tricky chicken-and-egg conundrum that in general bedevils brain research: does an unusual brain feature cause an unusual behavior, or does an unusual behavior change the brain, thanks to its plasticity?
Let’s start with the chicken: that gaming, as with all life experiences, leaves its mark on the impressionable, plastic brain. The work of Simone Kühn’s team at Ghent University in Belgium would suggest that this is the case. They showed that gaming could be linked to a larger striatum, reflecting adaptive neural plasticity through the sustained release of dopamine.23 In other words, the more time spent playing, the more pronounced the expansion of the striatum. This suggests the former caused the latter.
Then there’s the egg: the idea that a preexisting brain state might predispose individuals to compulsive gaming. Kirk Erickson at the University of Illinois found a correlation between the volume of a key brain area, the dorsal striatum, and later training success in a videogame.24 Erickson has also described a link, again seen with imaging, between activation of the striatum before training and subsequent later skill acquisition during gaming. These findings highlight the importance of the striatum, a rich source of dopamine, and how this might be consistent with the idea that some brains are more susceptible to the lure of games. Individuals who happen to have a larger striatum might experience gaming as more rewarding in the first place. This neurological setup, in turn, could facilitate skill acquisition and lead to further rewards from playing.
So which came first, the chicken or the egg? Did a strong and sustained experience shape the brain, or was a certain type of brain already predisposed to respond readily to that experience? An important clue to the right answer is the anatomical makeup of the striatum itself. This structure can be divided into two parts, an upper (dorsal) zone and a lower (ventral) one. It turns out that the latter releases more dopamine than the former.25 So it may not be surprising that the two regions have been associated with different kinds of functions: the dorsal striatum coordinates sensorimotor functions for attaining a goal, while dopamine released from the ventral part enhances the impact of the actual reward that then ensues.26 So one way of resolving the chicken-and-egg problem might be to say that a brain predisposed to effective sensorimotor coordination, with an active dorsal striatum, will have a predisposition for gaming, while it is the games themselves that change the way the ventral striatum reacts to reward. Yet neuroscience is rarely so simplistically cut and dried, and certainly research in this area is still in its infancy.
In any case, the chicken scenario, where obsessive gaming directly impacts brain states, is not necessarily mutually exclusive with the egg scenario of a particularly predisposed type of brain. The most significant issue here is the contribution of dopamine. Neuroscientists at Hammersmith Hospital in London have shown that playing videogames directly results in release of this neurotransmitter.27 However, just as it is impossible to establish a causal link between, say, the known biochemical actions of Prozac in enhancing serotonin availability and the alleviation of depression, so the translation of the objectively observed release of dopamine in the brain into the subjective effects of feeling wildly happy is very difficult to conceptualize.
There is nothing magical locked inside the dopamine molecule. Rather, it is the particular site in the brain, together with the environmental context in which it operates, that determines the final net effect. Suffice it to say that raised levels of dopamine are consistently linked to various brain states relating to arousal, reward, and addiction. Moreover, the idea that the chicken and egg are not exclusive but may actually be reinforcing each other would be a great example of how the brain and the environment are in an intense and continuous two-way dialogue.
So why do some people and not others become addicted to videogames? Perhaps an individual’s capacity for excitement could be pivotal. Since dopamine is linked to high arousal, as can be seen with the drug amphetamine (that causes the release of dopamine in the brain), this idea is quite logical. One investigation found different patterns of arousal in different types of gamers. Those who played excessive amounts of first-person shooter videogames had significantly higher levels of arousal during gaming, which dropped off immediately after gaming.28 By contrast, gamers who did not play excessively stayed “high” even after gaming had finished. MMORPG players who gamed excessively displayed significant decreases in physiological arousal, which rose again immediately after gaming. Meanwhile, MMORPG players who didn’t play excessively showed normal increases in arousal during gaming and then reached a plateau after their session.
These differences in arousal for gamers of different genres are comparable to those reported in the scientific literature on pathological gambling. There are the thrill-seeking, impulsive addicts who take stimulating substances or engage in high-risk behaviors; by contrast, there are the escapists, the often depressed addicts who are not seeking high arousal.
So for the second type of player, the kind who experiences low arousal, the time spent in MMORPGs and the meaningless nature of the activity could have long-term implications for mental state. Of course, once again the chicken-and-egg complication applies: these disturbances in arousal regulation could be either a cause of gaming addiction or a consequence of it. Nonetheless, the discovery that the activity physiologically affects excessive gamers differently than gamers who don’t play to excess is an important consideration to bear in mind.
Yet at the end of the day, what finally determines an individual’s level of arousal and whether he or she becomes addicted to one or another type of videogame? This is impossible to answer, as is the question why certain individuals and not others are predisposed to being kind or shy or funny. There may be some extremely indirect, genetically based predispositions. For example, a possible inherited vulnerability to videogame addiction has been reported in studies on the genes encoding for a subtype of dopamine receptor.29 This in turn might influence the effects of dopamine released in the brain, but even here the causal link is impossible to establish. Remember that it is very unlikely that there is just a single gene for any complex cognitive trait.
It is impossible to tease out a cause-and-effect sequence of events as the brain interacts with the environment, and therefore it is hard to predict with any accuracy whether someone will become addicted to videogames. There are likely to be cumulative effects from risk factors such as low socioeconomic status, parental depression, parental criminality, domestic violence, and parental alcohol and substance abuse, which may be offset to a greater or lesser degree by protective factors. But in the case of my middle-class friend and his expensively educated son, none of those risk factors applied.
A more plausible view would be that what goes on in the brains of those addicted to videogames is not qualitatively different but rather quantitatively different from what happens in the brains of those who are less obsessive. Why else would videogames be rewarding, by definition, to every single person who plays them? It seems that gaming can induce enough dopamine production to keep the user feeling good, but not enough to completely desensitize the user to its effect. However, the lure of gaming operates not just at the mechanistic biochemical level of brain dopamine but also at the more cognitive one of social relations.
A compulsion for gaming must involve not just the internal machinations of the brain but also the brain interacting in an ongoing two-way relationship with the screen. The very nature of this screen environment is crucial in keeping the individual playing. Games are noisy and have visually rich scenes, just like an action movie. In addition, however, they are immersive, offering not just strong sensory stimulation but “flow,” or the capacity for a gamer to lose him or herself in the game world and become utterly involved.
“Playing [World of Warcraft] makes me feel godlike.… I have ultimate control and can do what I want with few real repercussions. The real world makes me feel impotent … a computer malfunction, a sobbing child, a suddenly dead cell phone battery—the littlest hitch in daily living feels profoundly disempowering.”30 So claimed English professor Ryan Van Cleave, recalling a time when he was playing videogames for some sixty hours a week. Note that Ryan never even mentions “having fun” and that his mindset is signifying something much more profound. World of Warcraft was, for him, a refuge from a real world where he felt inadequate.
Olivia Metcalf from the Australian National University, who has studied the psychology of excessive gaming, makes the distinction that the appeal may not be a positive consequence of the videogames themselves, but rather that the games provide an escape from a purposeless, directionless real life:
Perhaps videogames are more than just escapist fun; they give disillusioned youth the chance to fulfill those needs so intrinsic to being human: competency, purpose, success, achievement, and so on. Research indeed suggests that these are some of the motivations to play videogames: the chance to be outstanding when in real life we are probably average.31
The “human” challenge of interacting with other players projected through cyberspace perhaps creates an even greater compulsion for many gamers. As such, online videogames have a higher addictive potential than offline games. Specifically, MMORPGs are thought to have a number of unique characteristics that give them higher addictive potential then other genres. Dr. Daniel King, a senior research associate in the School of Psychology at the University of Adelaide, has conducted an extensive review of worldwide research into “pathological” or harmful videogame playing behavior and found that social interaction is important in the development of excessive gaming. Games with avatars that players can control and identify with are associated with higher addictive potential. These qualities account for why excessive gaming is most commonly seen in MMORPGs. King also found that gamers who play excessively value the achievements gained through gaming, and he proposes that the reward structure built into the game influences the development of excessive gaming.32
While MMORPGs have intricate reward systems built into the games, with gamers constantly trying to reach the next level, it is the social interaction with other players that appears to be the real extra hook. Perhaps the appeal is that the player is now not just playing a game but playing out an idealized life that is simultaneously exciting and safe, both physically and mentally. The real world is messy and ambiguous: real people are never either wholly good or wholly bad, they always have inner thoughts or secrets, and actions always have consequences, however indirect, with long-term repercussions that cannot be reversed. Furthermore, in the real world feedback, especially positive feedback on your achievements, is all too hard to come by. And as for life goals, they are for most of us far from clear and usually too complex and provisional to define categorically. According to Nicole Lazzaro (who clearly likes lists of four items), videogames remove much of what is difficult and confusing about real life, since games (1) simplify the world, (2) suspend consequences, (3) amplify feedback, and (4) set clear goals.33 This inventory may add up to the crucial something about videogames that makes them such a compelling escape from the uncertainty and complexity of the real world.
More generally, sometimes the real world is not the best place to be. In some cases games can provide calming routines for people who are unable to cope with the frenetic uncertainty of life beyond the screen. Unlike traditional real-world games, videogames offer a total escape from the dull, difficult world to one that is not just more exciting and sensational (i.e., appealing to the senses) but where there are reassuringly definite and predictable outcomes in which the player can participate as a better self. Research shows that when people are unhappy or dissatisfied with their lives, they create avatars that are very different from themselves.34 Happy people create avatars just like themselves. Game enjoyment is inversely related to the avatar-person similarity; that is, individuals who are unhappy and create an avatar very different from themselves end up enjoying the game world more. They are literally exploring a new identity for themselves in this game world, choosing an avatar that is better, faster, fitter, stronger, thinner, taller, prettier, or smarter than they are or probably ever can be. Perhaps that’s the crux of why videogames may be so pernicious. For most people they remain a form of entertainment, but they open up an entire new world where everything is better than real life, which is particularly appealing to the psychologically vulnerable. And that could be pretty much all of us.
We saw earlier that identity is not just about having a fully fledged mind, which enables you to make sense of the world, but also involves a crucial next step: the reaction you would show, as a result of how you interact with the world, in a specific context at a specific time. In games, however, instead of your family, your soccer team, your choir, or your colleagues, the all-important momentary context that is accumulated through the cause-and-effect chain of a unique life story will now be more standardized. Gamers become extremely emotionally dependent on their avatars. They are as attached to their avatars and their teams as someone in the real world may be attached to their real-world relationships. In these instances, the momentary context has shifted online into an artificial world. And what if so much of your life story isn’t a story at all, not a sequence of events but, as is the case with first-person shooter games, an atomized, fragmented set of experiences that have no consequences in the real world? In either case, you might start to feel uncertain about who you actually are.
This insecurity could be compounded by a sneaky feeling that what you are doing lacks any real significance or meaning. Meaning, as I’ve suggested already, can be interpreted through the prism of neuroscience as making connections, of seeing one thing in terms of another. And this can also apply to causal connections over time. This connectivity, as we’ve seen, has a corresponding parallel in the physical brain as neuronal connections are forged and strengthened through the remarkable plasticity of the human brain. So just as a wedding ring, a simple gold object, can acquire a complex meaning or significance by the associations that develop around it, so significance can be attached to a cause-and-effect linkage.
If you climb a tree and then fall out and break your leg, an injury that takes time to heal, the whole episode will be a meaningful one, not least because it is irreversible. Of course, your leg may well become fully healthy once more, but the event of the breaking itself cannot be airbrushed out. It has enduring consequences in changing forever, one way or another, your view of tree climbing. By contrast, if you drop a bit of paper on the floor and pick it up again immediately, perhaps that’s the nearest you’ll get to turning back the clock in the real world. It would also have been a pretty meaningless thing to do.
So meaning can be directly related to consequences over time. But if gaming must have, according to Lazzaro, no consequences, it could be regarded as a meaningless way of spending time. And if someone is going to spend all his spare time engaged in a meaningless activity, it may jeopardize in the long term any significance he eventually attaches not just to that activity but, most important, to himself. Yet for the player untroubled by such possible long-term existential concerns, there is the opportunity to simplify and improve instantly on the immediate environment and how he feels within it. The something about videogames is that they create a world where you feel good not only because you’re having fun but also because you’re shutting out the kinds of experiences that would normally make you feel sad, anxious, or worthless. You enter a world designed to cater to your psychological needs; therefore there will be a complex and wide range of effects on how you think and feel over the longer term. “What we do know,” concludes Daphne Bavalier, an expert in this field at the University of Rochester, “is that, in technology, we have a set of tools that has the capability to drastically modify human behavior,” inevitably by modifying the brain.35 What is needed, she feels, is a way to ensure that technology is specially designed in order to achieve desired outcomes. But this might be easier said than done.
We’ve seen here that videogames can be affecting mental processes in a complex and diverse range of ways. There are a host of different questions that have to be unpacked separately. For example, if the gaming reward schedules are locked into a fast iteration of stimulus and response, then what effect might prolonged gaming have on attention? Moreover, given that violent games account for 50 percent or more of all videogame sales, will playing these games increase aggressive behavior in the real world?36 Finally, if, as we’ve seen, there is no permanent meaning in the escapist gaming world because actions don’t have enduring consequences, will it result in people becoming more generally reckless in real life? Let’s explore each of these issues in turn.