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I haven’t forgotten about part two of the previous post. I’ve just hit a bit of a slump after several nights of little or no sleep caused by heat, disagreements with something I ate or the need for a new mattress.

In the meantime, watch this video for more background information about games, specifically MMO’s:

Random Article Challenge #1 – Thanks to Natasha Fleming for this article suggestion! It’s been both educational and challenging, especially in terms of looking back on my own gaming history and asking myself some hard questions…

Ok, where to begin… Like all good articles that fall outside of the scope of the average person’s knowledge, I need to give you some background from which to establish a foundation in order to work with the arguments that will be proposed later. Bear with me a little, if you would.

Wikipedia generally offers a nice starting point as the easiest point of entry for most casual researchers (and for the purpose of this article I’m going to assume that gaming refers to video gaming):

Video game addiction, or more broadly video game overuse, is excessive or compulsive use of computer and video games that interferes with daily life. Instances have been reported in which users play compulsively, isolating themselves from, or from other forms of, social contact and focusing almost entirely on in-game achievements rather than broader life events.

Sounds pretty grim already, doesn’t it? Before I get into any detail, let’s consider some of the history behind video gaming a little, shall we?

A little more than 25 years ago, video gaming at home, if you were one of the fortunate ones, was a rare and wonderful thing. These were the golden days of the Atari consoles, Commodore 64’s and ZX Spectrums – depending on your country of origin and the strength of your currency, these items were either incredibly expensive or difficult to come by, making them that much more precious to those that had them. For the rest, you had to go spend your precious pocket money at the local arcade or hope that you could visit a friend who had their own personal computer to experience wondrous electronic entertainment.

When the IBM PC clones began making their way onto the market at the end of the 1980’s, a new world opened for many. As the years passed and personal computers became progressively faster and more multimedia friendly, gaming took a giant leap forward (and continued striding relentlessly forward), creating a a very real schism in the gaming community between the “have” and the “have-not’s” that was very dependant on finances and availability. Pretty soon, if you weren’t shelling out large amounts of cash on a regular basis to keep your gaming hardware up to date, you weren’t really a gamer, at least not in the eyes of your peers. It became even worse when online gaming really took off – if you couldn’t get online with decent latency, you needn’t bother playing, something that frustrated the burgeoning gaming communities in countries that were either slow in adopting new technology or reluctant to spend money of upgrading their telecommunications infrastructure to match that of the international community.

Slowly but surely, the gaming scene began to change, taking a different direction. This was largely helped by the introduction of ADSL and other broadband technologies (albeit largely in the first world countries in the beginning) and general exposure to the Internet (even if the rest of us were still on dial-up and ISDN). Smaller, independent software studios began releasing non-mainstream type games, somewhat reminiscent of the old family entertainment titles from the 1980’s; games that Mom and Pop could play on their relatively basic PC. Titles like Bejewelled and many others like it that now form part of the growing PopCap Games offering.

Soon, it wasn’t just the geeks and hardcore gamers that were playing games at every opportunity. As choices grew and variety increased, a family could not get by with just one PC, mostly due to everyone wanting their own share of screen time, be it for research, sending mail to friends and family, chatting away for hours on end on IRC and the emerging IM-scene or general entertainment – i.e. gaming, be it Minesweeper, Solitaire or something more exotic. Fortunately, for most gamers and hardware gurus, this became an easy recycling outlet for their older out-dated  components.

Later still, another revolution began, on three very different fronts. One was the resurgence of the consoles. Another was social networking. The last was in mobile multimedia platforms such as the iPhone, iPod Touch and the Sony PSP.

Consoles had been around in one incarnation or another for years. They’d had the odd facelift here and there, a few functionality improvements, better graphics and so on, but they were still niche items in the eyes of the public, meant for kids and casual gamers only. Certainly, this is the image that many had, considering the type of content in the games that were available.

This soon changed and looking at the consoles of today, some, myself included, find that gaming is more accessible via the console than it is via the PC. The old cartridge mentality still abides, as most games will work immediately out of the packaging, barring a need for a critical patch which one is generally notified about if the console is online – the truest form of “plug and play” we’ve seen so far while still maintaining the relative quality of the games.

By comparison, PC gaming has become all the more complex. Now, one has to tweak (read: fight with) drivers to get them to play the games without rendering artefacts or screen tearing. There is a very real risk, as a casual gamer, that your PC, unless you are one of the fortunate, may not be able to play the latest titles.

The addition of online marketplaces for each major console now means that as long as you have a relatively decent Internet connection and the means to perform some form of online financial transaction, you can play whatever you want as long as you can download it to the console’s harddrive (barring regional copyright issues). Most titles even often teaser demos to whet your appetite if you have not been convinced by the myriad screenshots, trailers and other forms of propaganda that has been put online for your viewing pleasure.

Moving on, let us take a quick look at the revolution centred around the social networking model. Yep, you guessed it, I’m referring to Facebook and the further bane of productivity, Farmville.

Hands up… who of you, reading this, have played a game via a social networking site? I’m guessing, knowing some of my audience, that it would be quite a few of you.

Farmville (and it’s many spin-offs), Mafia Wars (and it’s derivatives), Bejewelled, WordTwist and any number of other games that are accessible via Facebook, have been one of the largest time-sinks in the recent history of mankind’s productivity.

Let’s do some basic calculations:

At present, there are over 500 million active users on Facebook. Excluding around 200 million that access the site using their phones, we’re still left with a large chunk of the human population. Enough to be listed on par with the population of countries like the USA.

Spending a conservative average of 55 minutes on the site per day, that effectively amounts to 16500000000 minutes or 275000000 hours / 11458333.33 days / 31392.69 years worth of screen time accumulated daily by the site.

Let’s take quick look at some statistics for the top applications (specifically games for the sake of this article):

Stats taken from a snapshot of http://statistics.allfacebook.com

Using the same formula as above, that works out to roughly 6023 years worth of screen time potentially related to gaming, daily, if using the average time spent (55 minutes). In reality, it’s probably far more and increasing daily.

Lastly, let’s take a brief look at the mobile platforms. With today’s smartphones and other portable multimedia platforms becoming more accessible to the public and developers realising that they have a vast market to tap into, the average phone has become less of a traditional communications device and more of an entertainment centre. Games, music, access to the Internet, Chat/IM… considering all this… how often do you use your phone to talk to someone, vocally, these days? 80%… 60%… less?

Your mileage may vary, but chances are that a vast majority of the cellular subscribers out there have at some point or another started using their phone for purposes other than voice communications. And who can blame them? Some phones today have greater processing power and graphical capabilities than the personal computers gamers were so proud of less than 10 years ago. And with so much available online and developers constantly releasing new applications and mobile mini-sites, coupled with an overnight growth in social media tools aimed at the mobile market, you cannot help but be exposed to the hype and possibly be drawn in.

To illustrate my point… look around you, the next time that you take some form of public transport or sit in a public area such as a restaurant or coffee shop. Look at the people fiddling with their phones. Chances are, they are could be sending e-mails or SMS’s to friends, or they could be writing a scathing review of the restaurant on Twitter and/or Facebook. Look at the kids with phones… chances are you will see similar activity or somewhat more animated movement that could be related to a game.

Gaming, is no longer the domain on the computer ‘nerds’…

So now we have a bit of background… looking back, video gaming has really taken off since it’s relatively primitive days back in the 1980’s… So where to now?

You ask any gamer these days about MMO’s or Massive Multiplayer Online gaming and there is a good chance you will hear the name “World of Warcraft”or WoW for short. It has the largest subscription market share of all the MMO universes in production and shows no sign of slowing down anytime soon. What makes it so attractive to so many? I can’t say for sure except to reference my own playing habits. I’m not a hardcore gamer by any means. I like to dabble a bit here and there but soon grow bored or frustrated with a game. However, WoW, from ‘vanilla’ till it’s most recent expansion, has kept me coming back for more, even when I swore never to play again after suffering what I can only describe as raiding ‘burnout’, a term many who have played the game will understand.

Following in Blizzard’s wake, many other software studios have tried (and more often than not failed) to emulate their success by creating vast new worlds with fantastic graphics engines, beautiful characters and awe-inspiring flora and fauna. Worlds so fantastic and beautiful that one could easily lose yourself in exploring them for hours on end while listening to the fantastic music scores and atmospheric ambience that seems to so accurately capture the feel for the scene in front of you. In my opinion, they are a short step away from synesthetic art, drawing you in both visually and aurally in an attempt to create a far more complex interaction and experience than the individual components indicate by themselves.

What does it mean? It means that very soon a significant percentage of the online population will be living, in all ways except physically, in a virtual realm. One that is far more pleasant than the reality many are faced with daily.

Picture by pyxelated @ deviantArt

Video game addiction is not included as a diagnosis in either the DSM or the International Statistical Classification of Diseases and Related Health Problems.

However, the effects (or symptoms) of video game overuse are similar to those of other proposed psychological addictions. Video game overuse may be like compulsive gambling, an impulse control disorder.

In 2007, the American Psychiatric Association reviewed whether or not video game addiction should be added in the new DSM to be released in 2012. The conclusion was that there was not enough research or evidence to conclude that video game addiction was a disorder.

So, is it a disorder or is it just concern blown out of proportion?

Throughout history, there have been those that will take any activity to an extreme. Gaming, it would seem, is no different to any of the other activities, even being considered recently as a digital ‘sport’.

Pro-Gamers, or competitive gaming athletes as some now refer to themselves, eat, sleep and live their respective games. And, like any sport, there are injuries and burnouts and the rise to and consequent fall from fame for many young aspirants to the rank of pro-gamer.

Between 2005 and 2009, various studies were conducted regarding the habits of children and young adults and the subsequent physiological and psychological effects that extended exposure to electronic entertainment had on them, however most have been invalidated due to inconsistencies in the testing procedures. Just when one study seems to point to the negative effects of gaming overuse, another comes along and invalidates the previous results. It would seem that for the moment, the jury is still out on this one.

However, this has not stopped the media from reporting on and sensationalizing isolated incidents related to gaming. Incidents such as deaths related to gaming (most notably in China, South Korea, Vietnam, USA and Canada). In most cases, the player suffered a loss of some sorts or interruption of access to their respective games. The resulting backlash behaviour resulted in either suicides or worse, varying degrees of murder. There are also recorded cases of involuntary manslaughter related to attention-related incidents and some runaways that ended fatally.

Now, let me play Devil’s Advocate for a bit…

I would be considered a gamer by some, not by others. I own a console (an XBOX 360), a desktop PC and a laptop, all of which have at some point or another been used for the purposes of video gaming. I currently maintain a paid subscription to an MMO, though I do not play it as frequently as I used to. I also happen to play some social-media driven games via Facebook.

An average day for me would involve interaction with at least one of these 3 devices and chances are, if I am faced with nothing to do, I will consider playing a game to pass time or simply for the enjoyment of the experience. So I decided to look at my recent activity history a little, with the help of a site called Raptr.com

You can see my profile here – http://raptr.com/medraught. Individually, each entry doesn’t seem like much, but it all adds up to time that may have been better spent outdoors or working on decreasing the considerable amount of swivel-chair spread that has gotten worse with time and lack of reason to be outside.

Now, I don’t consider myself an avid gamer. Certainly not when compared to friends and peers in the gaming community. People that actively follow a game, research it, live it, striving for perfection or at least some form of electronic synergy with the game, conquering it’s worst challenges and best achievements. Nor do I spend the obscene amounts of money that they do on new games and hardware in order to play the aforementioned game.

I do however see myself in the eyes of non-gamers or casual gamers, as someone easily confused with the avid gamers. And that scares me a little. It makes me think that I need to reconsider my priorities. Certainly, looking back, I see in myself a lot of the signs that some would associate with gaming addiction or at the very least, the reluctance to step away from the virtual world I’d been living in. Friends would call to organize a getogether and I would decline, citing a need to work on freelance projects, or not feeling well, etc. Or, worse yet, I would simply not answer calls and SMS’s. Not something I am proud of, admittedly.

Others take it to even further extremes… taking leave from work in order to play a new game or even an expansion to an existing game that has just been released. There is a growing industry in adult hygiene products to cater for those too preoccupied to leave their PC’s to perform simple ablutions. Some games allow for the ordering of fast foods via the game, removing even the simple act of picking up the phone to call for food delivery. Added to that, the recent trend towards caffeinated products to keep you at your gaming best (i.e. so wired that you cannot even consider sleeping) – everything from your standard caffeinated drinks to mints, jerky and much more… (http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/drinks/ and http://www.thinkgeek.com/caffeine/candy/).

Now, as I’ve mentioned, there are those that take things to extremes… but how extreme does one need to be that you have to wear adult diapers and live off junk for days on end to satisfy a need for entertainment. Sure, not everyone is that bad, but we shouldn’t have to get to that point in order to realise that something is very very wrong with this picture.

Casual gaming, for the most part, is an innocent pastime. It’s something to do when the weather forces us indoors and we need a break from the latest cookie-cutter productions that seem to pass for movies and series these days… but when you find yourself compulsively turning to a game, almost to the exclusion of all other activities around you, take a step back and ask yourself if there isn’t something else you should rather be doing.

After all, this life is too precious to waste living a false mirror image of one.

Pick up the phone, call a friend, reach out and touch someone real. Live. Love… and Learn.

The rewards may even surprise you.