Comment by thenerdhead | Hacker News Reader

Comment by thenerdhead | Hacker News Reader

So this can help parents and kids with mobile games, but let’s talk about the elephant in the room of the games we ourselves are addicted to or our kids keep coming back to play.

When I was a teen I was addicted to World of Warcraft. I played for a few years before quitting. My grades dropped, my social life was hurting, and all for just in game items? I remember how worried my parents were about my screen time and the lengths they went to try and limit it.

Some of my best friends continue to play to this day and keep telling me that they are bored with it and will quit next expansion. They are now re-playing the same game over like they did with me a decade ago as it’s now a “classic” version.

How do we help people get help they desire when these games create almost a combative, intervention needed type of situation?

There’s https://www.restartlife.com/ and other similar types of websites out there to help, but I feel like the problem is the dark patterns already have a hold on one’s behavior to the point where only that person can be the agent of change or a major event happens in their life to spark the change.

Reminds me of the studies with drug addiction and rats. IIRC some of the early studies about how certain drugs were so addictive were done with rats who basically couldn't do anything else, and when you give the rats other things to do in their life, suddenly the drugs aren't as interesting.

I think the fundamental thing about playing repetitive games like WoW forever is that the skinner box is more interesting than real life, which is more an indictment of their real life than the game. Not sure how to fix that, though, and certainly there are people who can enjoy MMO's in moderation.

This may not be true for everyone, but it was for me. In college, I was skipping classes and ignoring friends. I just stayed in my room and played WoW. Then my graphics card kicked the bucket, and the game was unplayable. So I stayed in the library and read random books, skipping classes and ignoring friends.

I wasn't addicted to WoW. I just had major depression. After dealing with that over many years, I got back into WoW. Played a lot less of it, then.

I had the same problem with spending too much time in Warcraft 3 in college.

I dunno if I'd say that I was depressed, exactly, but I was feeling overwhelmed by my classes. Like many of us here, I'd had a very easy time in high school, and I was unused to classes that would seriously challenge me, where it would be a struggle to learn some of the content. That, combined with new freedom (I was several hundred miles away from home, and my parents had been fairly sheltering/controlling) did not make for a disciplined student, and I ended up getting academically suspended.

Came back several years later with my head on straight and retook the various classes I failed, mostly getting A's. Was actually getting an academic scholarship from my GPA by my last semester.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park likely is the study you were thinking about, studying how the willingness/desire of rats to self-administer morphine changes depending on their living conditions.

You can't think in interventions. A person has to realise their way of life objectively and feel they are making a mistake. They don't feel WoW is a waste of time. Same thing with weight loss.

It was used in reference to a friend who has told me countlessly that they want to quit but they don't know how. I also ran into this as a teen but "woke" up from it when going to college.

Maybe it is the dark patterns of the real life that push people back into games? What help could be given to help people find worthwhile things in the "real world"?

For many people, life is just going to work and then crashing exhausted on the couch to watch Netflix. So they would quit games for the sake of watching Netflix.

Quitting World of Warcraft may have similarities to quitting smoking. The thing that brings ex smokers back to smoking is the social component.

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