It's official, the Korean government is taking online gaming addiction very seriously. As of October, it will be restricting the play time of adolescents (Do). Korea has suffered through some very tragic events in the past year, and years before, making it hard for the government to ignore the seriousness of the problem. In May, a couple let their prematurely born three-month-old daughter die of malnourishment because, in a stroke of morbid irony, they were too busy participating in twelve-hour marathon gaming sessions to feed and care for her regularly. The irony? The game they were addicted to, Prius Online, was a fantasy game where you raised a virtual child. The parents lavished gifts on their virtual daughter so that she would earn super powers while she grew, while their real daughter suffered and died (Sang-Hun). This is not an isolated display of the horrors that have happened in Korea this year because of online gaming addiction. In the same month, a 22-year-old male was sentenced to 20 years in prison because he beat his mother to death after she brought up the frequency in which he played online games , and a few months earlier, a 32-year-old male dropped dead after a nonstop five-day gaming session (“S. Korean Jailed. . . .” ). Online gaming addiction has a strong effect on Korea, and as more studies gather information, it is without question a dangerous addiction that should be treated seriously. These events raise a few questions in my mind. Is it the government's responsibility to intervene? How much responsibility falls on the developers' shoulders? And do developers of online games purposely keep the addictive properties that keep consumers shelling out money for the monthly fee?
Internet addiction has been around for, well, as long as the Internet has been around. Online gaming addiction has been around for just as long, but it wasn't until the launch of an online video game developed by Sony's 989 Studios, named Everquest, released March of 1999, that people started to see the effects of online gaming addiction. The game launched with modest expectations; however, by October of 2001 Sony announced that it had over 410,000 active subscribers (“Champions of Norath”). It was the first very popular MMORPG (massive multiplayer online role-playing game) to hit the gaming masses, and from that popularity came many reports of gamers sacrificing their responsibilities to play the game. It was hard to ignore the many accounts. Gamers found themselves losing their jobs, their relationships, and their friends, and they didn't care as long as it didn't interfere with their progress within the game. No one understood the addiction, or if they should call it an addiction. Meanwhile a stigma in the geek community was formed, and with that stigma came a sense of pride. Everquest was given the nickname “Evercrack,” and some gamers began to face their addiction for the first time. Their experiences got the attention of psychologists who wanted to understand why video games are addicting in the first place and the detrimental effects the addiction has on the addict.
Gamers will sacrifice sleep, food, and real world human socialization (anything that can potentially occupy their free time) in order to spend more time in the game. A usual gaming session for an addict lasts at least ten hours and can go on for more than twenty hours straight (Young 358). I have known people personally who would play for over twenty-four hours on a regular basis and be proud of their gaming stamina. They certainly had reason to be proud, because they were on top of the charts, mini-celebrities in the game.
Eventually this behavior wears on the gamer's personal life, including job, school, family, and friends. This also begins to wear on the gamer's health. Gaming addicts can suffer from many health problems, ranging from malnourishment to eye strain, back strain, carpel tunnel syndrome, and repetitive stress injury (Young 358). One of my resources, Kelly Young, goes on to quote a gaming addict concerning how his addiction effected his health, “I stopped bathing. I didn't eat unless it was a quick snack I could eat in font of my computer. I lost weight. My skin was pasty and pale. I didn't shave or comb my hair. I did nothing. I looked so bad that my mother told me I looked more like a heroin addict” (358).
The signs of online gaming addiction are many. It starts with the gamer being preoccupied with the game, spending every moment not online thinking about the game, and sacrificing responsibilities in order to play the game. They will lie or hide their game usage when family members become concerned. They will lose interest in other activities like hobbies that they once enjoyed before the video game. They will suffer from social and psychological withdrawal, causing them to experience changes in their attitude and personality the further they travel down the road of addiction. They will become defensive of the game and show anger when they are forced to go without it. They will even go as far as becoming irrational and violent, as shown in the case where the Korean man beat his mother to death over her questioning his video game habit. They use gaming as an escape, helping them forget whatever stresses they are experiencing, even those caused by their addiction, like being in trouble at school or work due to neglected responsibilities. Lastly, they will continue to play the video game despite its apparent consequences (Young 360-363).
Despite the overwhelming consequences, many gamers still refuse to acknowledge their addiction. What do they get from the game that keeps them playing despite facing real life consequences? This is a simple question with a complicated answer.
In every piece of information and research I read regarding online gaming addictions, there was one parallel drawn to connect the papers. This was the social need of the gamers, and their ability to overwhelmingly fulfill that need inside of the game. Online games have a very complex social environment that is only limited by the diversity of its players. In the game World of Warcraft (WoW) produced by Blizzard Entertainment, which has well over eleven million players, and accounts for roughly 62% of the current online gaming market, a player can take part in a number of organized social events from small temporary groups, to the larger, more permanent guilds.
Social support is essential to a person's mental health. It is known to improve physical health, and reduce negative psychological symptoms of depression and anxiety. It has been found that the social support derived from online games like WoW can also be associated with lower levels of stress and depression. Also, the more involved a player was in WoW, the more social support they received in game(Longman 563). It is found that gamers form life long friendships and partnerships. It also has been concluded that gamers prefer to socialize online instead of real life because inside the game they can safely express aspects of themselves that they do not feel comfortable doing so in real life due to their gender, sexuality, age, or looks. Though this can be a good thing for the mental well-being of the gamer, the intimate support groups and social circles gaming addicts have online have damaging consequences to real-life relationships.
With all the overwhelming information on how gaming addictions affect the lives of gamers and their loved ones, why would online game developers be interested in making video games addictive? Why would someone even consider questioning their role in this situation? It is because the online gaming market has become a very profitable business. Experts are projecting that online games are going to be the source of one-third of the game market revenue by 2011. As of this year, the online game market is already worth $4 billion, and people believe it is going to triple in the next five years (Strategy para 2). That is more than the other online entertainment markets, which also encompass music, and video (“Online Games. . . .”). These figures only include the direct flow of money from consumers to developers and do not include the revenue generated by third-party businesses that have prospered due to online gaming, such as companies who sell in-game currency for real-world money.
A chart that shows the growth of the online gaming market in the past years. Blizzard knows how powerful the strong social bonds gamers form within their creation are, and their official Web site pressures active gamers to bring back friends who have quit the game by rewarding current players with items called “scrolls of resurrection.” These are items you can give to a friend who has played in the past, and when activated, these items will give them a free two-week play time. If the friend completes the trial period and pays to activate their account, the person who gave them the scroll of resurrection earns a free one month period of WoW.
Blizzard isn't the only game developer that understands the importance of social support, and the pivotal roll it plays in keeping their consumers active and paying the monthly subscription fees. The company Square-Enix of Japan knows this very well. According to their official Web site, they offer items called “buddy passes” and “gold world passes” for their game Final Fantasy XI in a recruiting program. A current gamer can apply for a buddy pass and send it to a friend, who can in return redeem it for a one-month free trial period of the game. The “gold world pass” goes further. If the invited friend stays in game, he or she receives special items on their forty-day anniversary, seventy-day anniversary, one hundred-day anniversary, and year anniversary.
Another interesting aspect of psychology that game developers admittedly use in order to keep their gamers hooked is called ratios and intervals (Hopson). This concept is derived from a man named B. F. Skinner, who is known for his experiments concerning rats in a box, also known as a Skinner box. He was able to condition rats' behavior through reward and punishment. When a rat pushed a lever inside the box, it was rewarded with food pellets. The rat soon learned to push based on the positive reinforcement the food reward created. Later Skinner found that if he staggered the rewards( instead of giving the rat a pellet every time it pushed the lever he would reward the rat every tenth time), the rat would push the level more often, establishing motivation.
The same concept is applied during game play. When a group of gamers defeat a hard opponent, there is a chance that they will be rewarded with a rare item. To keep this system in check, and to prevent gamers from collecting all the rare items and growing bored with the game, the developers introduce harder monsters with more powerful, rarer items as rewards for their defeat. Sometimes the monsters are hard to find and will only appear in game randomly after a number of days. In many games the monster will not drop the rare item every time. The game developers monitor the game and the players and work hard to introduce new things to keep the gamers interested so that they can keep collecting the monthly fee. It is also implied, while gaming, that you must have all the best items, and be more powerful than the other players. In order to have the most powerful weapons and armor, a gamer could spend hundreds of hours killing the same monsters over and over again.
There are some positive aspects of online gaming as seen in the research involving social support, and when done in moderation, gaming can be a rewarding experience for someone who enjoys video games. However, there is overwhelming evidence that shows how harmful online games can become when gaming becomes an addiction. Instead of developers responding responsibly to the addiction, they leave it for other institutions (like the Korean government) to handle the daunting task of responding to the negative effects. Do more instances of child neglect, or even deaths of gamers who have pushed themselves too far, need to happen before developers take online gaming addiction seriously? Does the government have to get involved like we have seen in the past concerning alcohol and nicotine? I don't think it is the government's place to put limitations on entertainment; however when volatile situations are left to fester it becomes a mess that only the government has the power to clean up.Imagine a surgeon general's warning on the outside of a video game box.
I think that as the knowledge of online gaming addiction becomes widespread, more people will get involved with trying to treat and prevent it. As more research that piles up to support the addictiveness of online games, developers will be forced to change the play style of the games to provide a more neutral environment if they don't choose to make the changes themselves, or they may have to research other preventative measures against online gaming addiction. We've seen similar battles in the past concerning nicotine and other legal addicting drugs. I think eventually the same will happen concerning online games. I hope that in this case it doesn't need to go that far. I hope that developers take action before any outside sources have to get involved.
A warning that Square-Enix has displayed during start up for the online game Final Fantasy XI. A gamer must acknowledge this warning by clicking the OK button before the game loads. Works Cited
"Champions of Norath." Champions of Norath. Sony Online Entertainment. 14 Jan. 2004.1 Aug.2010.
Chin-Sheng, Wan and Chiou Wen-Bin. “Psychological Motives and Online Games Addiction: A Test of Flow Theory and Humanistic Needs Theory for Taiwanese Adolescents.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 9.3 (2006): 317-323. 22 Jul. 2010.
Do, Je-hae. “Curfew Planned to Prevent Teens' Online Game Addiction.” Korea Times. 12 Apr. 2010. 1 Aug. 2010.
Hopson, John. ”Behavioral Game Design.” Gamasutra. 21 Apr. 2001: 1-2. 26 Jul. 2010.
Longman, Huon et al.. “The Effect of Social Support Derived from World of Warcraft on Negative Psychological Symptoms.” CyberPsychology & Behavior 12.5 (2009): 563-566.
“Online Games to Generate One-Third of Game Revenue by 2011.” Marketing Charts. 21 Sept. 2007. 1 Aug 2010.
“S.Korean Jailed for Killing Mother Over Gaming Addiction.” AFP. 01 Jul. 2010. 1 Aug. 2010.
Sang-Hun, Choe. “In South Korea, Parents' Internet Game-Playing Cost Baby's Life.” New York Times. 28 May 2010. 22 Jul. 2010.
Young, Kimberly. “Understanding Online Gaming Addiction and Treatment Issues for Adolescents.” American Journal of Family Therapy Oct. 2009: 355-371. 21 Jul 2010.
