Neils Clark

There are two reasons to be critical of the 8.5% of gamers number

First, the questions being asked come from Pathological gambling. There's been this long-standing tradition of copying and pasting those criteria, started by Kimberly Young of netaddiction.com - after creating criteria for "internet addiction," other therapists criticized her as having all of the originality of a "trash romance writer."

Sure, gambling and gaming share some similarities. You don't even want to know how many spawns I've camped at the local indian casino. Still, they're not exactly the same. There's a behavioral component in all addiction. Yeah, it releases chemicals and all that. No, it's not exactly the same as rolling the dice.

This study added onto Young's criteria, and as a researcher I appreciate that. What I'd appreciate more is a fundamental re-thinking of how we understand this. Games aren't the same as drugs like meth or heroin. They also aren't the same as smoking a stogie while you cheat at cards. Games are a form of expression... that keeps some people glued to their computers for whole days.

The violence issue is kind of similar, but kind of not. Even if games are shown to cause hugely damaging violent urges, how can we separate this from TV watching, or reading violent passages in the bible? If the study is right, they're all potentially harmful in the wrong hands, but all forms of creative expression.

Panic button, go!

First off, Neuroscience Carl's comment that games may be addictive in that they promote a "lack of interest in moving away from the stimulus" is extremely insightful. While it has been shown that gamers are, in point of fact, drawn to games, the inability to separate oneself from the gaming experience has a lot to do with the format of (especially MMO) games. In other words, games aren’t like television, with its commercials, or a book, with its chapters. There's not always a breaking point in games. This may exacerbate the goal-related dopamine release, and the potential for subsequent addiction.

Secondly: "you eat a fistfull of peanuts and die? that's your own goddamn fault." I would rather give somebody the Heimlich then watch them die (k thx). Games may not be directly responsible for addiction, yet there is one point from my article that I would like to highlight – as it has been largely glossed over: “What we can do, as game creators, is understand that a problem exists, and try to understand research advances as they occur.”

A lot of people are having problems controlling their play. The game industry should be genuinely concerned that their best customers might be suffering at the hands of something that is supposed to be fun, if for no other reason than it truly threatens their long term profits. If the word addiction is indeed appropriate, then telling somebody to simply "take care of it" likely hurts more than it helps, especially considering the social stygmatization already associated with gaming. Game addiction is much more complicated than anyone is giving it credit for.