Game Addiction: The Experience and the Effects

212 Pages·2009·1.89 MB·English

by  Neils Clark

Game Addiction
This page intentionally left blank
Game
Addiction
The Experience and the Effects
NEILS CLARK and
P. SHAVAUN SCOTT
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Jefferson, North Carolina, and London
LIBRARYOFCONGRESSCATALOGUING-IN-PUBLICATIONDATA
Clark, Neils.
Game addiction : the experience and the effects / Neils Clark
and P. Shavaun Scott.
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-7864-4364-2
softcover : 50# alkaline paper
1. Video game addiction. 2. Video games—Psychological
aspects. 3. Video games and children. 4. Video games and
teenagers. I. Scott, P. Shavaun. II. Title.
RC569.5.V53C53 2009
616.85'84—dc22 2009012386
British Library cataloguing data are available
©2009 Neils Clark and P. Shavaun Scott. All rights reserved
No part of this book may be reproduced or transmitted in any form
or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying
or recording, or by any information storage and retrieval system,
without permission in writing from the publisher.
Cover illustration ©2009 Brand X Pictures
Manufactured in the United States of America
McFarland & Company, Inc., Publishers
Box 611, Jefferson, North Carolina 28640
www.mcfarlandpub.com
NEILS:
To Alysa Majer
SHAVAUN:
To Mike,
for ensuring I am never without the means
to enact every random creative thought,
and for forcing me to do the things
I swear I have no time to do.
And to Matt & Dan,
for teaching me how to be a highly competent elf.
This page intentionally left blank
T C
ABLE OF ONTENTS
Preface (by Neils Clark) 1
ONE—The Digital Living Room 7
TWO—Media Experience and Real Illusion 27
THREE—Why They Play 55
FOUR—Anatomy of a Game Addiction 91
FIVE—Games Are Not Babysitters 115
SIX—The Road Ahead 143
Afterword (by P. Shavaun Scott) 163
Appendix A. Helpful Activities During the Process of Change 167
Appendix B. Learning the Lingo 169
Appendix C. Commonly Used Internet and Gamer Slang 177
Appendix D. Seeking Help in an Unfamiliar World 183
Chapter Notes 187
Bibliography 195
Index 201
vii
That which is dreamed
Can never be lost,
can never be
un-dreamed.
...
Only the phoenix arises
and does not descend.
And everything changes.
And nothing is truly lost.
—Neil Gaiman
For the probability of error increases with the scope of the
undertaking, and any man who sells his soul to synthesis will
be a tragic target for a myriad merry darts of specialist critique.
“Consider,” said Ptah-Hotep five thousand years ago, “how
thou mayest be opposed by an expert in council. It is foolish
to speak on every kind of work.”—Will Durant
P
REFACE
by Neils Clark
I stared transfixed. A six-hundred-dollar computer monitor sat on a
dingy hardwood floor, and I knew that I had been hunched over it for the
better part of that day, most of the week, and all that summer. I was play-
ing one video game twenty hours a day, and it seemed normal up until
that night. There was probably an hour of silent staring. I left for gradu-
ate school the next week, without a computer and unable to shake that
night’s feeling of shock.
My name is Neils, and even though I’ll tell you a little bit about the
people I’ve murdered, the woman I married, and the millions that I’ve made
in video games, this book isn’t strictly about any one person’s story. This
book was born out of an attempt to make sense of gaming addictions
through research. As it matured, it became clear that tens, if not hundreds,
of millions of people around the world were killing, working, marrying, and
feeding on video games. Their stories, in many cases told through their eyes,
are used to augment and clarify the game-effects research accumulating
across fields that rarely attempt communication, let alone collaboration.
Right now there’s really no way to know whether video games, tele-
vision, or even the world’s massive entertainment culture will be a force
for positive or negative change. What we do know is that things are chang-
ing. An eleven-year-old Vietnamese boy strangled an 81-year-old woman
for the equivalent of five U.S. dollars, then buried her under a thin layer
of sand in front of his house. Questioned by police, he said that he needed
the money for items in a video game. This coin has two sides. An eight-
year-old Norwegian boy saved his younger sister’s life by putting his own
life at risk, threatening an attacking moose and then feigning death once
1