I don't know, this resonated deeply with me. I had a crippling game addiction that got turned into a very productive programming career, and giving up that dopamine hit was critical in making the change.
I've had this discussion with a few people: and afaict for some folks it's not actually an addiction, but a passion. I think the difference lies in whether you ever have the thought: "I wish I was doing something else right now", and then continued doing what you were doing. It comes down to whether you're in control of your own motivation and time.
Hobbies are great, and video games are a perfectly legitimate hobby, for some. Just like some people can casually do cocaine and not think about it the next day. For others, it's a different story.
I don’t know about video game addiction; I interpreted the parent as simply talking about how—if you have the right kind of brain—it can be relatively easy to end up as a professional {e-sport, poker, chess} player and devote your entire life to high-level competitive play, making money from tournaments, studying or practicing whenever you’re not playing, etc.
This is a fine life for some people, but if you want to do something else with your life, the knowledge that you’d do well in these competitive-play pursuits can feel like a black hole always pulling at you. It’s easy to lose passion for “real work”—doing good in the world, creating stuff, entertaining people; these are all pursuits that have their high points, but aren’t fundamentally structured to match the human reward system. They have moments where you have to struggle through to regain your desire to do them.
Competitive gameplay—probably a lot like competitive athletics—is very “natural” to the human brain. If you’re good at it, it’s hard to resist letting that be your life—and people encourage you to let it!
Imagine being 7’1” and enjoying basketball, but having other passions that are stronger (academic economics, let’s say.) If there’s ever a lull in your love of academia, you’d be tempted to just quit and play basketball, right? That’s not an addiction, per se. But you have to repress it like one all the same.
I think so. I was really addicted to playing the guitar when I was younger. You get that same dopamine release from learning a riff or finally getting through a solo without messing up (which you may end up trying 100 times in a row). Then once you pull it off, you do it again, and again and again because it feels good.
The same thing happens with any skill based activity. Like learning a 120 move form in Karate, or pitching a no hitter (where every single time you prevent a hit, you get that hit of dopamine), etc..
Or programming where you might spend 15 hours a day consumed with it, forgetting to eat, etc., where you might get hundreds of dopamine hits during that time frame. Each one being triggered by your app doing what you wanted it to do.
Some people have a ridiculous amount of determination and will not give up until they do what they set out to do. It doesn't matter if it's a video game or not, the activity will consume them. Video games just make it easier for more people to get addicted, but that deeply rooted dopamine cycle will affect you no matter what you do. If video games didn't exist, you would find something else.
I disagree with your interpretation of OP's comment. Sure you can argue that playing a video game can be addictive to some people. But game developers are not getting addicted to playing the games they make.
Creating a video game is probably as close as you can get in the software space to art. It's the culmination of hundreds of different skills into a single package that has the off chance to shift and affect culture across the globe. Its exciting, and has the potential to fill someone who works on it with an intense amount of pride. That, in my opinion is not addiction.
Unless you consider artists, musicians, designers, actors and hundreds of others who work in purely creative mediums, addicts.
There is a lot to be proud of by shipping something that is used by hundreds of thousands if not millions of people and especially more so if it makes people happy. It's that intangible feeling of creating and seeing it successful that keeps people working in the video game industry despite the very obvious downsides.
For a lot of people, it's attempting to create something for players that fills them with as much emotion as they once experienced playing another game.
I am just one bit of anecdotal evidence, but this was the case for me as child. However, it is still the case for me as an adult too...
Video games and information about whatever is piquing my interest at the time have always been my addictions[1]. Video games have always been my escape, while subjects I am interested in just typically trigger hyperfocus.
Other than the "escape" video games provide, there is also a strong correlation between desired outcomes and effort. Much unlike real life where hard work is rarely rewarded and typically taken advantage of. I have always felt like I have had to put a lot of effort into things just to function "normally," and I do not have the make-up to excel in anything.
I know I have, and probably still do, waste a lot of time with video games and media (I should be working right now), but in some dark way it's one of the few areas in life where I feel like I can actually be halfway decent at something.
I've been a professional software engineer for almost 6 years, and I still feel like most junior devs and fresh grads could spin circles around me. I try to improve, I put in hardwork, but I have nothing to show for it.
I treat my condition(s), but at the end of the day I feel like I am just living the story of "Flowers for Algernon."
[1] I do not mean addictions as defined by medical terminology, but in a more commonly used manner.
I think you'd be surprised on both counts. Chasing a dopamine hit in a game is seeking a "state" as much as a thing to do — after all, you do things because of the way they make you feel, right? And multi-day drug and/or alcohol binges are actually very common.
But certainly you're right that the loss of time/opportunity is far from cheap. Although with someone who has the means to be addicted to something like a game - implying a computer, power, a place to stay - one might speculate that they have more to lose, materially speaking.
My addiction to video games led me to software development.
Addiction is a peculiar thing. Anything that makes you feel good is inherently addictive. People get addicted to biting their fingernails.
Is it bad to be addicted to reading? Or working out? If gaming is making your synapses fire faster, if for nothing more than to increase your IQ score (which is based on speed), is it a bad addiction?
Addiction is a compulsion to do something you would not chose to do. It really depends on that something whether it's good or bad for you. Addiction is something everyone will have to deal with at some point in life. Learning it from gaming is probably not a bad thing.
Did you lose your job, destroy relationships with your family and friends?
Or did this merely replace 500 hours that would have been spent watching TV, Netflix or other types of entertainment?
The word addiction has a real meaning with some clinical ways for a trained person to diagnose somebody as having it.
I think of addiction more like alcoholism. Sure video games are engineered these days to be huge time sinks but that doesn't make it an addiction. If you can drop it (like you did) and it doesn't impact your life, its not an addiction.
I was just pointing out there is a difference between an actual clinical addiction vs. a really bad habit.
I know the feeling about gaming and have been in similar shoes. I actually stop myself and check if I am doing something out of habit or because I want to... and have found I want to do other hobbies more, its just the inertia to get over the habitual actions that is the problem sometimes.
There is a big difference between something that gives you pleasure and then create a bad habit and an actual addiction.
What you are doing is the equivalent of saying that it's fine to play video games late because "people are addicted to it". Most people aren't. They simply have deep rooted bad habits. Playing Flappy Bird every time you commute isn't an addiction. Wanting to finish your level before logging off isn't either.
An addiction is when your mind is always focused on the addictive behavior. You have an urge than can never be fulfilled. It's a shifting goalpost because your tolerance increases as you spent more and more time attempting to satisfy the urges. It gets so bad it takes over your life, become more important than your career and family.
Actual gambling, gaming & internet addictions are life breaking. People die from it [1][2][3]. Entire families get broken from addiction. People lose careers over it.
True thanks for pointing that out. I'm addressing this as a self identified video game addict. I feel that pull to play in my brain every day. I just try to not live in denial telling myself that spending all my time gaming is a healthy and constructive way to spend my time.
I've seen this behavior in my peers and in myself. Almost always among the addicts like myself you get two responses. "Yea no doubt lmao" or an exhaustive list of other addictions like television, cigarettes, Facebook, etc. trying to rationalize it to you and themselves. I'd like to point out in these cases it is far beyond a hobby. It is self-destructive. Going a day or more without eating or sleeping. Pulling an all-nighter because you just cant seem to get away from it. I've literally seen league of legends ruin a friends future because he couldn't study over getting in just-one-more-match. In my perspective video game addiction is an undeniable truth. And those vehemently opposed usually have a self-image interest in opposing it.
Well, a large body of psychological literature says gaming is addictive and it's not just people lacking self control. Games are designed to be compelling. If you succumb to the compulsion and there are negative consequences for you - like not achieving your goals, that's definitively addiction and games are definitively addictive.
> If you have to eliminate an activity to not have it dominate you, you haven't controlled it, it controls you.
I strongly disagree. I don't want to play games, but feel a compulsion to. Not playing them, I control the situation.
I am proud to not play games for the following reason. Gaming is compulsive while I'm doing it, but afterwards I regret it because I think it's a waste of my time. I could be spending my time helping people. So I take control of that situation by stopping playing the games. And I'm proud that, despite the compulsion to play and the games being designed to stoke that compulsion, I have still managed to not play them.
note: I don't think you playing games is a waste of your time - you may do whatever you please. I'm not casting judgement on anyone but myself. And I don't think games are inherently bad - they are impressive in all sorts of ways. I just don't want to play them.
The difference between a passion and an addiction begins with the negative impact (the thing) is having in your life. The World Health Organization has an official criteria for a "Gaming Disorder" which you can find here: http://who.int/features/qa/gaming-disorder/en
If someone is gaming and their life is fine, then it's no problem, but if they are failing school, dropping out of college, struggling to keep a job, or getting divorced, amongst other negative factors, then it's something they should be able to seek professional help for, and removing gaming for a 90 day period (what I personally recommend) has been shown to help immensely as a 'reset'.
Not every addict makes something out of their addiction but every addict gives a lot of their potential away, often their health too.
A lot of people become software developers without being addicted to games. Great software developers bring things on the table that they learned doing stuff that is not software development, gaming is one of those but people are capable to do so many great things.
Nerding over something is cool but when it becomes an addiction, it's dangerous.
If one were to have an addiction, I'd pick video game addiction for them - the side effects are not like drugs, and it's possible to recover from it without major side effects, and in addition you can get a penchant for solving problems and learning quickly if you break out of the addiction cycle.
While I absolutely get your point about addictiveness (indeed many games are designed to be addictive) I've always found it odd when people complain that time spent gaming is "wasted" moreso than other hobbies. I don't think I've ever looked at someone who makes model train sets and thought "now there's an accomplishment!" I've never heard about someone buying a stamp and went "well, I bet their parents are proud!"
Both of those are perfectly fine hobbies, and I bet people interested in them absolutely have skills and accomplishments they're proud of. And that's fine. I may not get the hobbies, but I'm certainly not going to judge the value of how they spend their spare time. That's for them to determine if they're happy with. And I'll worry about my spare time.
Generally, less time for all kind of other things in life.
Game addiction is a thing (as is "tons of hours spent but not clinically addicted"). And unlike e.g. workaholism, it doesn't even result in a career to show for it.
I've been addicted to games and now addicted to playing soccer, albeit less so probably due to being older with more responsibilities. And I see lots of similarities between the two very different kinds of games and the "addictions" to them. Even health-wise, it's hard to say if playing games all day is worse than getting tackled into hospital. I've met many people who were going for pro-sports when they were younger that destroyed their health and/or hurt their career prospects and had to re-invent themselves.
How do we distinguish what is a healthy hobby/persuasion, and what is an addiction?
You make some good points, but games are a special case. Making something fun is not really that different from making it addictive. There's a huge grey area and lots of room for cognitive dissonance / rationalization among game creators. We've learned a lot about addiction, and people are not nearly as rational as they want to believe.
My thinking is that many of the people who are really passionate about making games have somewhat addictive personalities. I.e. there are some people who would just never stay up 'till 3 am playing a game when there's something more "important" to do, whereas game creators have turned this flaw into a virtue (and a career).
EDIT> I love games, and I have a great job making games, but I'm 38 and I now realize that I spent way too much time playing games in my 20's. While it is a matter of self-control, I do have some guilt that some kid is going to fail their Compilers exam because they'd rather play computer games instead of studying, like me circa 1995.
I've had this discussion with a few people: and afaict for some folks it's not actually an addiction, but a passion. I think the difference lies in whether you ever have the thought: "I wish I was doing something else right now", and then continued doing what you were doing. It comes down to whether you're in control of your own motivation and time.
Hobbies are great, and video games are a perfectly legitimate hobby, for some. Just like some people can casually do cocaine and not think about it the next day. For others, it's a different story.
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