In the Treatment

Programs and clinics have opened in order to help “game addicts,” specifically in China, the Netherlands, the United States, and most prominently in South Korea, where apparently “Hundreds of private hospitals and psychiatric clinics have opened units to treat the problem.” If Korea is any indication of what’s to come, then our dearth of research in this area should strike a deeply troubling chord. While there’s varying amounts of information on how each clinic will be treating game-related patients, to date there’s no accepted data on how to conduct that care.

While it’s good that nobody has jumped to that conclusion, it also begs a few questions. If there’s enough demand that treatment centers are opening, then why aren’t we seeing more serious research? Now that these clinics are accepting people, what new kinds of treatments will be used, and how will we judge their success?

What about intervention? A recent episode of A&E’s reality TV show “Intervention” featured a 21-year-old college graduate and gamer. The synopsis reads that, “Peter is so addicted to video games that he identifies himself as the characters in the games he plays and refers to other characters as people he hangs out with.” A writer in the syndicated gaming blog “Kotaku” replied to this, saying that this type of behavior wasn’t too big a deal. It’s very hard to tell by A&E’s description whether an intervention was warranted, or if this man was just exhibiting behavior which is standard and accepted among gamers.

We don’t have research data to tell us how the particulars of problem gaming work, let alone how to treat it. In the American Journal of Psychiatry, Allison et al. documented a case study of one gamer, noting that, “When it came to recommending treatment, the evaluation team was faced with the fact that there was no evidence base from which guidelines could be developed.” While these doctors and clinicians opted for an encouragingly nuanced approach to their patient, not all clinicians are currently willing or able to grasp the real nuances of treating problem gamers. While there is a lot of work yet to do, it would be really exciting to start seeing clues about problems and treatments which actually reflect the unique nature of games.

On Poking Badgers With Sticks

Our lack of research and knowledge isn’t the only problem. Technology is moving faster than it ever has before, which is causing far more anxiety than ever. As Dr. Aaron Delwiche points out in his must-read article, You Can and Must Understand Technology Now, we all need to ask ourselves, “a very simple question: ‘Am I willing to learn new things?’ And, if so, ‘Am I willing to continue learning new things for the rest of my life?’” If you have the time to read my article on “addiction,” then you have the time to read Aaron’s article on technology. No, really. Check it out.

So will people choose to learn new things, choose not to, or refuse to choose? How ever you slice it, there’s a fear and anxiety that’s closely tied to ignorance. With this in mind, we can start to see where a lot of this game-related anxiety comes from. It’s tied, in part, to more broad social fears of technology. Stanford University’s Nick Yee has been looking at the trouble with calling games “addictive,” and noted that, “the level of social acceptance for technologies, objects, and people influences how likely we blame them in analogous scenarios, and how likely we take on holistic as opposed to narrow perspectives in trying to explain the problem."

So not ‘getting’ games is like a stick. The mass of people who don’t understand technology, they’re like an angry badger. The badger is already pretty feisty, but give it a poke or two with the ignorance stick and it's seething. Let’s suppose, for the moment, that one particular badger is completely unwilling to understand technology or games. If somebody close to that badger, say a friend or family member, plays games, it would be a lot more difficult for the badger to tell if that person actually had a problem. The badger may very likely drag a perfectly healthy gamer away from a perfectly healthy hobby.

Most people have no desire to be a badger. They know that a lot of people just play for fun. They want and need to become informed, but right now the information out there is ridiculously bad. To turn the analogy in a slightly different direction, gamers face incessant stick-poking by questionable, even laughable information on game “addiction.” With enough harassment, they’d be well within their right to become badgers, except with the major difference that they “get” games, and to varying degrees technology. They’re becoming badgers because they keep getting poked by other people’s ignorance. If good information were available it would be one more area where society could get informed and move on.