Surprising Information About Video Games

The other day, I finally got around to finish watching an episode of Dr. Phil called “Virtual Chaos” about video game addiction that aired a couple of weeks ago. (You can see full show notes and online videos by clicking that link.)

You probably are going to say, before I go any further, that typically Dr. Phil has extreme cases on his show that are not true to most families in America. Well I’ll just say that even if you think these examples are extreme, there is an important message embedded here that I’d never heard before. That is what I want to share with you today, the important part not criticizing the individuals that were on the show.

I also, by pure coincidence, viewed a video lecture published on the TED site (see video at end of this post) by a person who works in the video game industry. I’ll get to that later but the point is that in that lecture this same issue said on the Dr. Phil show was underscored as real and known to the video gaming industry. Bear with me as I try to explain this in a way that makes sense.

The bottom line shocker for me was that gamer players and game makers know that emotions and connections can be felt by the brain by playing video games especially role playing games. The role playing games Ever Quest and World of Warcraft were said to be especially addicting and ‘emotionally connecting’. That is, a person (and their brain) can feel fulfilled and emotionally connected through playing video games and/or through online connections with strangers who they only “know” through the Internet. The issue is that some people are choosing to spend their time playing video games and feeling fulfilled, while neglecting other activities including neglecting relationships with their spouse and children (if they are married), losing their jobs and not working. Single people sometimes are spending time in the ‘virtual world’ which takes their time away from ‘in person’ friendships and relationships. (A Dr. Phil show that aired last year made this point with a young teenaged girl but the point didn’t seem as strong to me.)

In this episode, and in some of Dr. Phil’s other shows, we hear of extreme cases of parents neglecting children while playing video games, marriages on the rocks, neglected spouses, losing one’s job due to a video game addiction, failing to spend time looking for a new job because all they seem to do is spend all their waking time playing role playing games on the Internet. However past Dr. Phil episodes never talked about emotional fulfillment like this episode did.

The now-unemployed father on the “Virtual Chaos” Dr. Phil show verified that he is feels he is addicted to World of Warcraft, verified that he is not seeking employment as his time is taken up playing the game. In reaction to the idea that a person’s emotions can be fulfilled by playing a role-playing game he agreed, and said that past activities at work that caused him to feel fulfilled and to have achieved something are now being ‘fulfilled’ by the video game playing instead. For that man, the video game playing has taken over his former real life activities(working at his career) that also financially supported his family and now he was being an emotionally disconnected husband and father as well. The wife/mother works outside the home but they said on her income alone they are not making ends meet, and debt is piling up. While mom is at work, the father “takes care of” their five year old. How he does that is he puts his five year old on his own computer and gave him a World of Warcraft account. The two then only interacted with each other on the screens (they were sitting about ten feet away from each other). Their only words spoken were exclamations of anger including profanity (yes the five year old swears while playing the game).

Another story in this episode was that an addicted gamer, a single young man, killed himself with a gun, while sitting in front of the video game while it was still playing on the flickering screen in front of him. That is how his mother found him, dead in front of the computer with the role-playing game on the screen.

Dr. Phil had no patience for the father who was jobless, not looking for work that caused his family to not be able to even live paycheck to paycheck. Dr. Phil’s use of shock and logic at the idea of spending hours per week playing a video game and neglecting real life activities required to sustain one’s family (making money to buy food and to pay for their shelter for example) didn’t ‘get through to’ the addicted gamer.

Dr. Phil said that a study showed that children are spending 44.5 hours playing video games a week. That is a combination of video game console playing, video games on the computer and Internet based computer games. Wow, that is a lot of time! I’d never heard that statistic before!

Lastly it was said that the fault is not with the video game makers because they can’t make a person get addicted. It was said that the person is the problem, they have an addictive personality or they are trying to disconnect emotionally from real life and are escaping to what truly is a fake world. Sadly as I said before the more the video game addicts play role playing games and get emotional fulfillment from their on-screen experience, the more they can disconnect from the real humans in their lives. That is something I worry about with my children. I don’t want to do anything to contribute to my children getting emotional fulfillment from their video game playing. So far I have not allowed them to play role-playing games online or connecting with anyone through the gaming system (such as using xBox Live). The closest they have come to it is with “Thrillville Off the Rails” which I didn’t realize was a role-playing game when my kids received it from a relative as a gift.

I watched a TED video lecture the other day by David Perry a video game designer, which was eye opening. I highly recommend that you watch it. In this video, Perry talks of the expanding industry and how the average age of the player of video games is 30 and the average age of the buyers is 37, and that 43% of video game players are female (despite the stereotype belief that mostly males play video games). Also that 83% of video games have NO mature content whatsoever.

As part of Perry's presentation, you will see a video and hear a video game addict (not Perry, it is someone else who is a video game player) tell his story. What surprised me what again the mention of the emotional fulfillment that he felt as a child, a teen and now as an adult, all achieved through the video game playing.

Then, the scariest thing you will hear is that this gaming industry is still expanding, and in 2008 they think the video gaming industry will make more money than the music industry! Also that the technology will continue to improve, making the experience more visually and appealing in an auditory way. He said the video gaming industry is seeking employees who can help design more complex games that can provide emotional fulfillment for gamers; they especially need developers who can concoct a fantasy genre storyline game. So, more emotional fulfillment by video game playing is in store for the future.

The idea of emotional fulfillment felt in the brain from playing role playing video games was really surprising to me. I have never played those types of video games and I’m having a hard time relating to it. I do know that online discussions with strangers (such as on a homeschooling chat list) can inform me and encourage me, but those online email or bulletin board based talks cannot replace real friendships. Also with my online activity, when I’m talking with others I am talking about my real life. I am not pretending to be someone who I am not. I am not playing a game and playing the role of a character in a make believe world. I am interacting with real people just through the medium of the computer and Internet. As Charles Murray said in a recently lecture, he feels that attending universities for a mentor role in a collaborative project are not even required anymore, as he collaborated on a book with a mentor figure all done through the computers. He said that in the past some people attended certain universities to gain access to their libraries but now that we have the Internet we are all being exposed and opened up to access those same books and written sources via a virtual library through the Internet.

As a mother of two boys, I don’t want my children to get sucked into video games to the point where time spend gaming takes time away from pursuits of better things. To that end I restrict video game playing to one hour per day Monday-Friday and two hours each day on the weekend. So if they play all that time that equals nine hours a week, a drop in the bucket compared to Dr. Phil’s quote of the statistic of kids playing 44.5 hours per week. Also, if we are too busy or not home, they lose their time, and gaming is the first thing that gets removed if they break house rules. At this point they are not playing role playing games nor are they using the Internet to play games or for social networking. I am being a strict gatekeeper on that. I can only hope that the strong bonds that my husband and have forged with our children will continue and they will not seek emotional fulfillment via role playing video games. I want my kids to be filled with real life experiences not living through virtual worlds, through fake worlds that are part of a game which are just pixels on a screen.

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Here is the TED Talk: David Perry on Video Games

Description from TED site:

Game designer David Perry says tomorrow's videogames will be more than mere fun to the next generation of gamers. They'll be lush, complex, emotional experiences -- more involving and meaningful to some than real life.

I can't get the TED talk to embed, to view the video presentation and lecture, link directly to the talk on the TED site: David Perry on Video Games, published October 2008.

I didn’t see anything in this video that would make it unsuitable for children to watch or overhear.

If you have not seen some of the recent technology in video games there is a section in the talk where you see a history of the video game and how they have improved visually over time.

Technorati Tags: parenting, video games, role playing games, emotional fulfillment video games, video game addiction.