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As games and their communities have grown more elaborate and alluring, many players have spent more and more time immersed in them. This can feed addictive behavior in some people. These deep levels of involvement are not always considered negative, especially within the media playground, but they are nonetheless issues to consider as gaming continues to evolve.

Immersion

For better or worse, gaming technology of the future promises experiences that will be more immersive, more portable, and more inclusive. As gaming matures as a mass medium, the industry will use its potential for immersion to attract different audiences seeking diverse experiences.

For example, the Wii's system has successfully harnessed more user-friendly motion-control technology to open up gaming to nontraditional players-women, senior citizens, and technophobes of all ages. More motion-controlled gaming is expected, with wireless controls to detect more of players' body movements and even facial expressions. One version of this technology is Microsoft's Kinect system, which uses a sensor camera to capture full-body player motion. The Kinect will also recognize players' voices and faces, making on-screen avatars more accurate likenesses of the players. With Xbox LIVE, players can interact in full video or avatar form with friends online.

Another form of immersion has been imported from an older mass medium: In light of Hollywood's great success with 3-D movies, television set production and video games have moved toward 3-D experiences. PlayStation rolled out 3-D games in the summer of 2010, while Nintendo has released the 3DS, a 3-D version of its popular handheld console that doesn't require special glasses.

These technological enhancements are being applied to existing entertainment brands, but video games in the future will also continue to move beyond entertainment. Games are already being used in workforce training, in military recruiting, for social causes, in classrooms, and as part of multimedia journalism. For instance, to accompany related news stories, the New York Times developed an interactive game called Gauging Your Distraction. The game demonstrates how distractions like cell phones affect a person's driving ability. All of these developments continue to make games an ever-larger part of our media experiences-even for people who may not consider themselves avid gamers.

Addiction

No serious-and honest-gamer can deny the addictive qualities of electronic gaming. In a Harris Poll in 2007, 8.5 percent of respondents between the ages of eight and eighteen could be classified as video game addicts. And 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. 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 news-papers to television to radio, cultivating obsessive play is the aim of most game designs. From recognizing high scores to offering a variety of difficulty settings (encouraging players to try easy, medium, and hard versions) to embedded 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.

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. South Korea, one of the world's most Internet-connected countries, is already sponsoring efforts to battle Internet addiction.⁹ Meanwhile, industry executives and others cite the positive impact of digital games, such as the learning benefits of games like SimCity and the health benefits of Wii Fit.