Sucked in by Eye-Candy – Gaming Addictions Are Here to Stay
If you look in the course guides of campuses and universities for classes you’re required to take while studying Psychology, you’ll typically find something that resembled a course on addictions. Often pertaining to drugs and other vices that are ingested. Read books on addiction in any library and you’ll find a recurring theme. What none of them mention is the viral addiction of PC games and how hard it is for people of any age to shut it down and walk away. Often those that manage to walk away can’t keep their mind off the game and they permit it to occupy their thoughts as they go about their business at school, work and other social events.
Thinking leads to discussing, and those games are continually brought up in conversation via phone, text, chat, e-mail and even during business meetings. I personally know how intense the addiction can be with these games and how strong the desire is to suck all your friends into it. I was manic fan of MMORPG’s, often investing hours per day at the office building the level of my characters and going on raids only to go home at the end of the day to continue playing into the night. If I needed a break from the MMORPG’s, then I turned my attention to a single-play shooter offline that I could “relax” to. Since the depth of programming and profundity of eye-candy is increasing in the games they are becoming more like interactive cinema and less like the quick-play games of the past. What was once only attainable at an arcade for a few hours is now in our living room and offices permanently, to play at our leisure, to interrupt our work, our child-rearing, and change our lives for ever.
