I can say that there was a period of time where I exhibited all the signs of a video game 'addiction'. I would skip class, and stay up late playing games until very early hours of the morning. When I left university and got a job this continued still, it did negatively impact on my job and was noticed by co-workers. I played FPS games competitively, sometimes in paying competitions, and would stay up until 3 or 4 am playing with others in our clan who lived in Australia. However in retrospect it was little about the video games that was the problem, and more than my job and colleagues were both horrible and depressing (IT support!). If video games weren't available I would have surely escaped through some other form of media consumption.
So, very much so, I was a problem gamer, escaping through the use of the game and the social experiences that were offered in it. I now have a better job, I hardly play any more simply because the demands of work (5am starts!) wont permit the kind of late nights of playing any more. (Whilst I say that I hardly play I have 160 hours of Skyrim under my belt already... oops). The evidence that my problem wasn't a traditional addiction is that when COD4 got boring... I stopped playing it, in fact I stopped playing for a few months, I tried taking it up again, but the magic wasn't there. An addiction that you can get bored of and quit possibly doesn't match the classic portrayal of an addiction, otherwise I should still be playing Ultima from when I was 8.
One thing I'll note though about new video games and video game services is that they often display how many hours you have played a game, and in examples like Steam, this is publicly shared with your friends and other players. Having a large amount of game time is often worn as a badge of pride, rather than a shameful mark on your life.
I agree with this entirely. Not from my own experience but through a friend of mine who played world of warcraft to the point where his life was being adversely affected. His motivation to work was completely lost and his life literally revolved around a virtual realm. Yet I would not call this 'addiction'. I have had another friend who was forced to go to rehab for a methamphetamine addiction. The difference between the effects of the virtual drug and the real drug are massive and being addicted to a game may affect ones life but certainly not their health. This is why I believe the term 'promlematic gaming' is much more appropriate. Very few parrallels can be drawn between the two when seeing it in person. The term addiction should not be applied to gaming as it does not have an adverse 'physical' impact on the player as with other addictions. Can the term addiction be applied merely when it affects ones life? or does the term imply more than that? Many men may say they are addicted to fishing and would take days off work and spend loads of money on boats and tackle. This affects their lives perhaps negatively at times but is it an addiction? I believe not. In reality almost everyone is addicted to something (gym, fishing, gaming, surfing, skateboarding, photography) whatever ones hobbies might be it is going to affect their lives in some way, gaming is no different.
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