Addiction and Other Concerns

Though many people view gaming as a simple leisure activity, the electronic gaming industry has sparked controversy. Parents, politicians, the medical establishment, and media scholars have expressed concern about the addictive quality of video games, especially MMORPGs, and have raised alarm about violent and misogynistic game content—standard fare for many of the most heavily played games.

Addiction

“Video games are bad for you? That’s what they said about rock and roll.”

SHIGERO MIYAMOTO, CREATOR OF THE SUPER MARIO BROS. SERIES (UNDATED)

No serious—and honest—gamer can deny the addictive qualities of electronic gaming. In fact, an infamous South Park episode from 2006 (“Make Love, Not Warcraft”) satirized the issue of obsessive, addictive behavior of video game playing. In a 2011 study of more than three thousand third through eighth graders from Singapore, one in ten were considered pathological gamers, meaning that their gaming addiction was jeopardizing multiple areas of their lives, including school, social and family relations, and psychological well-being. Indeed, the more the children were addicted, the more prone they were to depression, social phobias, and increased anxiety, which led to poorer grades in school. Singapore’s high percentage of pathological youth gamers is in line with studies from other countries, including the United States, which found 8.5 percent of gamers to be addicted. In China, the number is 10.3 percent, and in Germany 11.9 percent.20

Gender may play a factor in game addiction: A study conducted by Stanford University Medical School in 2008 found that males are two to three times more likely than females to become addicted to video games.21 These findings are not entirely surprising, given that many electronic games are not addictive by accident, but rather by design. Just as habit formation is a primary goal of virtually every commercial form of electronic media, from newspapers to television to radio, cultivating compulsiveness is the aim of most game designs. From recognizing high scores to various difficulty settings (encouraging players to try easy, medium, and hard versions) to levels that gradually increase in difficulty, designers provide constant in-game incentives for obsessive play.

This is especially true of multiplayer online games—like Halo, Call of Duty, or World of Warcraft—that make money from long-term engagement by selling expansion packs or charging monthly subscription fees. These games have elaborate achievement systems with hard-to-resist rewards that include military ranks like “General” or fanciful titles like “King Slayer,” as well as special armor, weapons, and mounts (creatures your avatar can ride, including, bears, wolves, or even dragons), all aimed at turning casual players into habitual ones.

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This strategy of promoting habit formation may not differ from the cultivation of other media obsessions like watching televised sporting events. Even so, real-life stories, such as that of the South Korean couple whose three-month-old daughter died of malnutrition while the negligent parents spent ten-hour overnight sessions in an Internet café raising a virtual daughter, bring up serious questions about video games and addiction.22 South Korea, one of the world’s most Internet-connected countries, is already sponsoring efforts to battle Internet addiction. (See “Global Village: South Korea’s Gaming Obsession” on pages 100–101).

Meanwhile, industry executives and others cite the positive impact of digital games, such as the mental stimulation and educational benefits of games like SimCity, the health benefits of Wii Fit, and the socially rewarding benefits of playing games together as a family or with friends.

Violence and Misogyny

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GAMES IN THE GRAND THEFT AUTO series typically receive a rating of Mature, indicating they should not be sold to players under 17. However, the ratings do not distinguish between overall game violence and misogynistic attitudes.

The Electronic Software Association, the main trade association of the gaming industry, likes to point out that nearly half of game players are women, that nearly three-quarters of games sold are rated in the family and teen-friendly categories, and that the average age of a game player is thirty. While these statements are true, they also mask a troubling aspect about some of game culture’s most popular games: its violent and sexist imagery.

Most games involving combat, guns, and other weapons are intentionally violent, with representations of violence becoming all the more graphic as game visuals reach cinematic hyperrealism. The most violent video games, rated “M” for “Mature,” often belong to the first-person shooter, dark fantasy, or survival horror genres (or a combination of all three), and cast players in a variety of sinister roles—serial killers, mortal combat soldiers, chain-gun-wielding assassins, nut-jobs going “postal,” father-hating sons, mutated guys out for revenge, not-quite-executed death-row inmates, and underworld criminals (to name a few)—who earn points by killing and maiming their foes (sometimes monsters, but often “ordinary people”) in the most horrendous means possible. In this genre of games, violence is a celebration, as is clear from one Top 10 list featuring the most “delightfully violent games of all time.”23

That some games can be violent and misogynistic is not a point of dispute. But the possible effects of such games have been debated for years, and video games have been charged as being a factor in violent episodes, such as the Columbine High School shootings in 1999. Earlier research linked playing violent video games to aggressive thoughts or hostility, but those effects don’t necessarily transfer to “real world” environments. Instead, more recent studies suggest that the greater concern should be the personality traits of certain types of players rather than violent video games. For example, a study in the Review of General Psychology noted that individuals with a combination of “high neuroticism (e.g., easily upset, angry, depressed, emotional, etc.), low agreeableness (e.g., little concern for others, indifferent to others’ feelings, cold, etc.) and low conscientiousness (e.g., break rules, don’t keep promises, act without thinking, etc.)” are more susceptible to negative outcomes measured in studies of violent video games.24 For the vast majority of players, the study concluded, violent video games have no adverse effects.

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There is less research on misogyny (hatred of women) in video games. One of the most extreme game narratives is from Grand Theft Auto 3, in which male characters can pick up female prostitutes, pay money for sex, get an increase in player “health,” then beat up or kill the hooker to get their money back. Although women are close to half of the digital game audience in the United States, it’s likely that many aren’t engaged by this story. The source of the problem may be the male insularity of the game development industry—for reasons unclear, few women are on the career path to be involved in game development. According to the National Center for Women & Information Technology, “Women hold 56% of all professional occupations in the U.S. workforce, but only 25% of IT occupations.” And even as the digital game industry gets bigger, the impact of women gets smaller. “In 2009, just 18% of undergraduate Computing and Information Sciences degrees were awarded to women; in 1985, women earned 37% of these degrees.”25 (See “Media Literacy and the Critical Process: First-Person Shooter Games: Misogyny as Entertainment?” for more on violence and misogyny in video games.)