Gamers' Brains Are Different
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Yes that is definitely a Kanamite from "To Serve Man." I love The Twilight Zone.Warrior Irme said:
And "it's a cookbook" is probably one of the greatest punchlines of all time.
Will this be used for gambling withdrawal?
I bet a really nice gaming rig and everything on Steam is still cheaper than a gambling habit. And if you can't pay, it just get's repoed and your legs wont necessarily get broken.
Well, of course!Grey Carter said:
To someone who's not paying much attention, that sounds like a terrible thing! But when you stop and get down to it, when you are killed in a game, what do you do? RIGHT! You restart and try again. In gambling, however, restarting means spending more money.
So, while the two activities stimulate that same part of the brain, the gamer tries again because he doesn't want the game to win and to progress; the gambler does it to make money/recoup losses. See the two different frames of mind?
This article doesn't really do that good a job of actually telling me much about the study. I suppose I should just go read it myself.
I think we've all met (or are) gamers that handle challenges in different way. Some people are on the MMO feedback train where we struggle for our pellets in predictable ways. The very idea of daily quests that are monotonous button pushing exercises is something that is as big a turn off to some people as it is attractive to others. Then you've got the folks who only want to be the best, or beat the game on the hardest setting in the most challenging way possible, since otherwise it's not worth it to them. And conversely, as mentioned above in the comments here, we've got people who want the exact opposite, to enjoy the ride with as little challenge as possible.
So how they can say that all gamers react in a certain way is beyond me. I guess the risk/reward response is independent from the challenge itself, but someone who persists in the face of failure (as this would seem to suggest) would be less likely to seek the easy route. It's so very different from gambling because you eventually run out of money, though I guess you could say we gamers are still spending our time, and we do eventually run out of that, too.
I think we've all met (or are) gamers that handle challenges in different way. Some people are on the MMO feedback train where we struggle for our pellets in predictable ways. The very idea of daily quests that are monotonous button pushing exercises is something that is as big a turn off to some people as it is attractive to others. Then you've got the folks who only want to be the best, or beat the game on the hardest setting in the most challenging way possible, since otherwise it's not worth it to them. And conversely, as mentioned above in the comments here, we've got people who want the exact opposite, to enjoy the ride with as little challenge as possible.
So how they can say that all gamers react in a certain way is beyond me. I guess the risk/reward response is independent from the challenge itself, but someone who persists in the face of failure (as this would seem to suggest) would be less likely to seek the easy route. It's so very different from gambling because you eventually run out of money, though I guess you could say we gamers are still spending our time, and we do eventually run out of that, too.
And? This being a possible treatment for gambling would still be a good counter-argument.Saltyk said:
so, does this apply to the real world also? if so, that sounds like a good thing. that could mean that by gaming we're more likely to be successful as we are less likely to give up.
Actually this isn't at all surprising. though that last line about games being useful to test for addiction isn't right
Gaming isn't addictive, (Extra Credits covered this, I'll post a link later.) Addiction refers to altering the brain chemistry, where the brain needs a specific stimuli to function, games have never been shown to do that. Games are compelling, they have a strong appeal to them.
The study in Belgium has confirmed that when playing games you gain a sense of control,your actions control your fate. In games the outcome of your actions is almost immediate, so you get immediate reward for success, and in most games a tiny mistake can be easily shaken off.
The problem with Game Compulsion, (Here I'm referring it to teens and young adults) is what it really means.
Here's the truth, i play games, read books spend time on the net, it's escapism, and the truth is the reason I'm so determined to to all this is in my real life, I feel kinda trapped, I think only a handful of people give a damn, and I have this gnawing feeling that I won't graduate, not because 'm not smart but because I forgot to do some grad requirement. SO the truth is, I don't play games because I'm addicted, I play games because I want to be somewhere where I'm in control.
but I'm getting ranty so I'm going to stop now.
oh like I promised, if this game addiction thing was ineresting to you Extra Credits Did an episode on it at Penny Arcade
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/game-addiction-pt.1
Gaming isn't addictive, (Extra Credits covered this, I'll post a link later.) Addiction refers to altering the brain chemistry, where the brain needs a specific stimuli to function, games have never been shown to do that. Games are compelling, they have a strong appeal to them.
The study in Belgium has confirmed that when playing games you gain a sense of control,your actions control your fate. In games the outcome of your actions is almost immediate, so you get immediate reward for success, and in most games a tiny mistake can be easily shaken off.
The problem with Game Compulsion, (Here I'm referring it to teens and young adults) is what it really means.
Here's the truth, i play games, read books spend time on the net, it's escapism, and the truth is the reason I'm so determined to to all this is in my real life, I feel kinda trapped, I think only a handful of people give a damn, and I have this gnawing feeling that I won't graduate, not because 'm not smart but because I forgot to do some grad requirement. SO the truth is, I don't play games because I'm addicted, I play games because I want to be somewhere where I'm in control.
but I'm getting ranty so I'm going to stop now.
oh like I promised, if this game addiction thing was ineresting to you Extra Credits Did an episode on it at Penny Arcade
http://penny-arcade.com/patv/episode/game-addiction-pt.1
This doesn't sound like a bad thing to me. I have only been to a casino about 5 or 6 times and when I'm losing I generally don't stick around to loose even more. But having a brain that is predisposed to shrug off a loss and keep going is something that can come in handy in the real world. Sports and competitive work environments can really benefit from this.
It would be interesting to do factor analysis with singleplayer/multiplayer gaming, and between different gaming genres. And to compare gamer brains with sports player brains - in some cases, playing a game and playing a sport have shown themselves to be psychologically similar in the past.
So the part where it lists the change in the brain's structure and how that makes our brain chemistry similar to that of gamblers wasn't at all factual?Arsen said:
Given how a lot of games use the 'Skinner Box' technique to keep players invested in them I'm not actually suprised that this has come to light (games are sort of designed this way, just look at World of Warcraft and how that keeps people playing for stupid amounts of time).
I would hardly call it bullshit when is it very possible (based on what I remember from psychologically anyway).
That's actually an interesting point, after all, correlation is not causation and what-not.Dastardly said:
I personally would argue that, as with most things, the influence video games can possibly have on people are largely based on individual differences (some of us play games healthily, some of us get fixated and spend all our time playing WoW and others turn psychotic and threaten to blow up best buy when our pre-order isn't there), like all media, we all interpret what we see in a game a different way so it could be argued that looking for a universal 'effect' of video games is a pointless endevor (you could sit two people down in front of a scene from Call of Duty and get radically different opinions about what they saw and how they felt about the experience).
This reward system takes place in every person. It's not just what happens during addiction. Anytime you're rewarded for doing something, your brain is happy and releases dopamine, and it tells itself that this action is good and you should do it in the future to get more good things. It may be larger in someone who is used to these kinds of conditioned rewards, but in the end, it's not like we don't all experience it. It's certainly not a sign of addiction. There have been scads of studies showing that random but frequent rewards are a way to get *any* human to do what you want them to do, not just compulsive types. We're all pretty easily trained.
Absolutely -- the subject of an unhealthy fixation (or even addiction) is often just revealing issues that were there to begin with. It's not the game causing the fixation, but rather a tendency toward fixation happening to latch onto games as its outlet. If games weren't there, something else would have done it.Iron Mal said:
Now, just like we can tell if someone is genetically more-at-risk for certain conditions, we can identify if someone is psychologically more-at-risk, too. If someone is prone to act out fantasies, we can surmise that gaming would feed that... potentially in dangerous ways. But the game isn't creating problems, so much as revealing them.
We do, however, also have to face the possibility that certain types of games, coupled with certain issues, can reinforce those issues. Not the same as a cause, but definitely a contributing factor.
Cool. Very interesting stuff. Reminds me of an experiment I studied in college. They found that London taxi drivers had a much larger hippocampus area in their brains that non-taxi drivers. Basically the exact same thing happened as in this study. Their brains changed in reaction to a greater demand of navigation skills.