Video Games and the False Sense of Achievement

To reply to the actual content of the paper:

Understanding the factors behind video gaming as a problematic behavior separate from addiction is quite useful. Oftentimes, video games and other behaviors are driven by needs satisfaction, rather than physiological dependence. The needs for community, social activity, for achievement, purpose, and other commonly recognized human needs are often partially or fully satisfied incidentally by maladaptive behaviors. Moreover, even in cases of physiological dependence or behavioral addiction, other factors still come into play that encourage the behavior.

We constantly hear from drug addicts and alcoholics, that part of their push-pull factor is the community of other users that they identify with and receive support from, social aspects of their negative behavior, etc. It's not enough to counter their physiological dependence on the stimulation itself - their other needs that were previously satisfied by the activity, must be satisfied by other means, or relapse becomes much more likely.

Spending too much time on the phone, computer, internet, video games, drugs, social media, news, books, etc. There are a myriad of behaviors that can be excessively performed by individuals, to the harmful neglect of their other needs. Today’s world is more full than ever of dangerous and maladaptive behaviors - this is one ail that technology has almost certainly contributed to, with or without ill intent. Though education and institutions to help maladaptive individuals are certainly ways to help, it is difficult to say if they can completely solve this problem, or if it is a price we have to pay in order to continue the upwards progress of technology as a whole. To be clear, technology has only lowered the barrier to people neglecting themselves. The root causes have always been there to some degree.

I interpret the title to mean that a true achievement is something that is a step towards a better life as determined by each person. Haven't read it yet, but I imagine that the problem it alludes to is how people get trapped in a cycle of escapism -> life gets worse -> escapism. The "false" sense of achievement would be those that make you feel like you've achieved something, when actually your life outside of the game hasn't improved at all.

This isn't to say that true achievements can't come from playing games, but I believe for most people the achievements that come from games are false by this definition.

The title isn't even the title of the article. Change the title to that of the article: "Understanding the lives of problem gamers: The meaning, purpose, and influences of video gaming"

Physical changes are about overcoming physical obstacles.

I guess tl;dr not all videogames are bad - it's just a medium after all. But the interactive nature of games and game designer's needs to maximise engagement has led to certain game mechanics which are designed to tap into our desire for achievement.

For me at least it is about difficulty and the feedback loop from delayed gratification and self-improvement that entails.

If you climb everest you have to be physically fit - and you have to train for months/years. In reaching that goal, you will be both physically and mentally stronger so your sense of achievement is paired with some degree of improvement.

But there are definitely games that are designed to tap into that human desire for improvement to snare you into the game. I arrived at this personal opinion after pumping ~15000 hours into an MMO: one day (while hiking, incidentally, I realised that MMOs were designed to feel a bit like real life. The grind felt a bit like a job/training for sports. Except it was easier: doing sports training for an hour everyday is HARD. Logging in to an MMO to craft for an hour or grind xp for an hour when you boil down to it is quite menial and fundamentally easy.

But I realised when you're stuck in the weeds, the chase can feel real and the achievements in the game feel satisfying.

I guess to me there's not much to personally gain from artificial strife of RNG and long xp grinds which you get in MMOs and mobile games. But I think they are designed to tap into our basic need for a sense of "achievement".

I don't think it's impossible to find a sense of achievement through video games though but it will be games that require skilled input from the gamer. For PvE games that might be your Dark Souls or Hollow Knight. There are also input heavy games like Street Fighter or Devil May Cry. Similar to those are the music games like DDR or Guitar Hero

On the other side of games you have PvP, and if the PvP is fair (ie not imbalanced by grind or P2W mechanics) then competition dynamics come into play and achievement there is really about beating other people.