Be Afraid: Video Game Addiction

I am launching a new category here at Masson’s Blog – Be Afraid. We’ll see if I maintain it, but it seems to me that media of various stripes specialize in a kind of fear porn where lurking dangers in society are “exposed.” Fear is a useful and powerful emotion that can be hijacked by commercial interests. For a good discussion of some of this, I recommend Douglas Rushkoff’s “Coercion: Why we listen to what “they” say.”

Today’s installment is relatively mild. The Indianapolis Star has an article entitled “Online video games can become a virtual obsession.”

Though not officially recognized as a medical condition, game addiction has fostered a tidal wave of anecdotal evidence about people who shun families and careers to devote huge chunks of their lives to games. More academic evidence is cropping up, as well as clinical treatment programs.

As a kid, I spent five years working at our local country club. Perhaps I could recommend a new story to the Star, because there is plenty of family shunning going on at golf courses all over the state.

The article describes a guy who spent an inordinate amount of time playing World of Warcraft, then gave it up when he had a kid. Now he limits himself to less time intensive video games but admits that he’d like to go back to playing. The whole article is cast in the language of addiction. But, to me, it sounds like a guy who was having fun with his hobby to the exclusion of some more sensible undertakings. When the big responsibility came along, however, he stepped up to the plate and started doing what needed to be done instead of what would have been more fun.

The article goes on to talk about those nefarious game designers who make their virtual worlds as addictive as possible. You mean they want to make their product as entertaining as possible? No kidding? Presumably the Star will be following up with tales of book addiction and movie addiction and addiction to escapist fiction in any other media that comes along.

Seems like my entire life, whenever something new comes along, there is some expert breathlessly proclaiming how the new thing means doom . . . DOOOM! I’m pretty sure that damn rock and roll music was going to ruin the Boomers. Before that, presumably, it was color movies and talking movies and the radio and God knows what else.