Inside the Tragic, Obsessive World of Video Game Addicts
vice.com
vice.com
But looking back at why I played so much, is touched on in the article. It simulates being very productive (which in a meta sense you are), and for me that represents "goodness" in my self image. It was only after I called out the lie I was telling myself about "getting stuff done" did I really lose the compulsion to go play for hours.
I still enjoyed the social aspects, and the strategies for gaming the economy or finding a new way to solo a boss fight, but I no longer equated it with being productive. So for the same reason I don't sit in a movie theater for 8 hours straight, I stopped playing for those long stretches. And when I did have something I could get done, I chose not to play WoW.
One whole weekend! :) You don't want to know how many weekends of mine that netflix or videogames have claimed. I think I turned out alright though. For me, it's mainly about whether I feel motivated. If I do, it's easy to avoid that other stuff. If not, then there's an endless stretch of time with nothing to do and no money to pursue hobbies. That stuff is a natural filler for the void of endless boredom.
About the kids: I wanted to ask you, how did the kids handle it when you left? I guess you didn't get too into it, so maybe they didn't feel very strongly one way or the other about whether you played. But I think I'm going to try to cultivate a relationship with my kids over videogames, whether it's playing Minecraft with them or whatever MMO they want to play. It seems like hiking through the woods together, but virtual woods. But I'd imagine it's going to go like: They might get too into it at the expense of schoolwork, so I'll have to put my foot down and say no more, which will make them quite upset. And sure, that's the job of a parent. I'm their parent, not just their friend. But I can't help remember how misplaced my father's rules were, so I don't want to become like that. Yet I remember how much of a pushover my friend's dad was, which my friend took full advantage of; again, don't want to be like that. So I wonder how to strike a proper balance. It'd be great to hear from you and anyone else with children what your rules are regarding videogames.
Is there an instruction manual that comes with each child? No? Hmmm....
I've played minecraft with my kids a lot, and it can be fun, but virtual play time is not all adult nostalgic fuzzy bunnies, I was highly annoyed to discover that minecraft playtime with the kids is just like meatspace play time with the kids which means it includes all the annoyances, so there's tons of typical "what are you doing put that down right now", "be nice to animals or we stop playing", "if you walk along the edge you're going to fall and get hurt", "lava will burn you I told you to leave that alone", "I don't care how much of a temper tantrum you have you can't take that diamond I just mined and do nothing with it because its too valuable", "stop teasing your sister in game or we all quit", "no we aren't there yet", "dads redstone thing is complicated stop dumping water buckets on it", etc.
I've spent my whole life from kid up to adult being lectured incessantly from liberal arts grads that normal humans never treat online humans like they would meatspace because ... some fuzzy psych major BS whatever, which is just apologist rhetoric for its OK to flame people online because its "natural", and/or stereotypical "nerds suck we spend our time watching football so we're cool" BS. However, despite decades of pontificating, I assure you my kids act online just like they act offline, both the mostly good and occasionally not so good parts.
Its tiring. Just like taking kids to a (real) park involves burning mental energy keeping them alive (I'm talking real parks with real wilderness, not swing set neighborhood parks), taking kids to your base in minecraft involves me not focusing on the game and spending maybe 25% of mental energy, maybe more, trying to keep them out of trouble. And just like in the real world, one or two adults can easily keep one kid out of trouble but you get two or more kids and only one adult and next thing you know one is shooting arrows at her brother or the other is dumping lava buckets on his sister because she won't give him back his sword and she's threatening to tattle to mom and oh its all Fed up sometimes. Well, kids will be kids.
It was/is fun, just go in with the awareness that if they spend X% of real world time being naughty, in virtual world its going to be the same X% of time being naughty. Its not gonna be all idyllic.
As far as rules and stuff its not rocket science you make a to do list and work it top to bottom and unless you're an idiot, minecraft is the last thing on the list not the first, the first is usually homework.
That kind of lecturing may make sense in the real world, but one of the differences/advantages of virtual worlds is that the normal constraints don't apply -- you can do whatever the machine/software allows, without risk (certainly not fatal risk, as in the real world).
Games present an opportunity to examine systems in depth without the traditional fears/consequences of the real world.
The usual explanations center around anonymity and lack of perceived accountability, neither of which would apply to children who are being directly supervised by a parent, for obvious reasons.
That said, playing with the kids was great fun as long as it didn't interfere with other things. I ended up changing my network configuration between 9PM and 6AM to avoid people getting up in the middle of the night and getting in a few hours of raiding time. What seemed to work for me was helping them keep it in perspective with respect to their other tasks. They still get together online for age of empires runs.
I think these sort of games are also excellent examples for the sunk cost fallacy [1]. They make you invest a lot of time at the beginning by slightly increasing the work and rewards, and if you want to stop you think that it would be a shame that the invested playing time would be wasted, not taking into account that there might be overall losses (such as fewer social interactions, less exercising etc.). People have an irrational aversion against giving up their investment of money/engery/time (the sunk cost), even if it might be better to give up on it entirely. Often there is an anxiety involved that the inconsistent action needs to be explained to others.
[1] http://www.logicallyfallacious.com/index.php/logical-fallaci...
That aside and in all seriousness, good on you. I went through a very similar experience with WoW when I realized I had well over 100 days of my time invested in pixel characters. That is 2400 hours, or around a quarter of the 10,000 hours required to become an expert in something worthwhile. And that was just 1 character in WoW, I played other games like DAOC with similar time investments. It is and was just crazy and well over the point where I could justify it as entertainment/me time.
It's freaking sad, and it's just getting worse.
1992 or so. I'm a computer guy, gamer (arcade and old Atari) and we've got this cool new thing called a Nintendo for my two boys, 6 and 4.
Being a good dad, I sit down next to them and "help" them get started playing a game. We went through Super Mario, then started on Zelda. Wow! This was a lot better than those arcade games where you only got 3 or 4 minutes and had to pay. Here you could play, well, you could play forever.
And then it hit me. You could play forever. That was the whole gimmick. I stood up and left the room. Never played another console game again, unless it was something very brief and involved having people over. During that time, I watched every other member of my family get involved in games that took literally hundreds of hours of their time. I'm still watching my second-youngest son struggle with online games and college work. It's depressing as hell.
Today as I type this, I realize that I've spent 3 or 4 hours fucking around online that I should have been doing something useful. That's just Facebook, Twitter, G+, and so forth.
This is not a coincidence. Every piece of tech I pick up is trying as hard as it can to be "sticky" Same shit, different platform. I'm still the big hunk of dumb meat I used to be. Computerized gaming just keeps getting better. The trajectory is not good.
But just as Patricia rematerialized, her AA recovery partner
and husband of 43 years contracted a fatal illness. Patricia
took care of him until the end.
"I regret so much," she said. "I wasted all our time
together. We could have been doing all kinds of things, but I
was just gaming."
People don't realize that it's like you wouldn't invite your now-sober alcoholic friend to the bar unless you knew they were absolutely comfortable with it.
I'm glad you got outside of it. Games are awesome and a lot of fun, but there's a lot of other really awesome stuff out there too.
But I didn't get in to Augmented Reality games and it's not my shtick. At the end of the day, I definitely use games as a way to decompress.
For me, personally, when I go out I have a hard time wanting to have anything to do with the computer, be it software dev or games.
> that's exactly because they are less stimulating, or to put it bluntly, boring.
Sports are hardly boring, at least if you enjoy the particular sport you're playing. Which isn't true for everyone, so this is one that can be dropped off a lot of people's lists.
Going outside can often be stimulating, if you're open to it. I don't get to do it as much as I'd like, but camping or at least hiking is fun. I went to a friend's wedding in November in a state park. I stayed at the lodge in the park and from my window I had a fantastic view of the trees in their autumn colors, blanketing the mountains. A friend and I hiked a few miles of trails, seeing the waterfalls and river from various angles. A very memorable and enjoyable experience. My only regret is that my girlfriend couldn't make the trip, but it gives me something to show her in the future. And then there's stargazing, or catching rare or uncommon events like a lunar eclipse or a total solar eclipse. I still remember the time in high school my dad snagged a couple pairs of night vision goggles and drove us out to the middle of the desert to watch a meteor shower. That was 15 or so years ago and the memory is still strong in my mind.
Dating is hardly less stimulating than games. I've, admittedly, not got much experience because, well, my 20s were wasted. But, I've never experienced this level of fear and exhilaration and happiness all rolled into one moment in anything other than dealing with someone I loved.
Hanging out with friends is a broad thing. While not video games, my friends and I play boardgames, card games and tabletop RPGs. For me, I count these as distinct from video games because they require enough effort to setup and play that they can't touch the addictiveness of video games. We also go to the nearby big (hah!) city's downtown and have a good time checking out local productions of plays and art by local artists at the galleries. Eating at restaurants with interesting cuisine. All these things are stimulating, and to a variety of senses. And it's a shared experience with people I care about and that care about me, making it an emotionally satisfying experience.
I'd expect them surpass any meatspace activity actually. It's hard to compete with the limitless degrees of freedom from a game (specially when we get more inputs/sensitive feedback). And I'm not at all uncomfortable with that. Having fun is quite productive, one just has to safeguard the more longlasting joys of life, like having a successful career, family relations, etc.
A game purchased for $5 may net you hundreds of hours of gameplay. By contrast, that same $5 doesn't go nearly as far when spent on say, alcohol.
It's also worth noting that video game addiction doesn't necessarily result in any sort of addictive exclusivity. I've seen plenty of video game addicts who are also alcoholics.
Admittedly I haven't read the article because Vice is blocked at work, but I imagine video game addiction is a lot different from other addictions since it has to do with something you do rather than a state you're in (not to say it's necessarily worse - just different). Serious addicts can play video games for several days straight, whereas I don't think doing drugs for several days straight (at least without doing anything else) is common among even the most serious addicts (though admittedly I'm not an expert in this). I think it would be very difficult to be a "high functioning" video game addict.
There's plenty of them, just like there are high-functioning alcoholics.
Suppose you could define the degree of addiction as the amount of interference the addictive habit inflicts upon a person's life. By that logic, a busy, high-functioning person who plays 20 hours a week may in fact have a more damaging addiction than the person with tons of free time on their hands playing 80 hours a week. Of course, if the latter person has all that free time on their hands because addiction interfered with their life at a much earlier stage, then that's worth considering.
I guarantee you there's a ton of high-functioning video game addicts though, probably even right here on HN. Founder depression in particular can play right into such things.
But certainly you're right that the loss of time/opportunity is far from cheap. Although with someone who has the means to be addicted to something like a game - implying a computer, power, a place to stay - one might speculate that they have more to lose, materially speaking.
Let's use alcohol as an example. For someone who has been drinking heavily for a while coming off alcohol can be dangerous, even fatal. This means that people have to permanently drink, or risk death. To qualify for a medically supervised in-patient detox in England you need to drink 40 units per day. That's one litre of spirits at 40% ABV. (34 US fluid ounces of 80 proof liquor). That's 9 cans of Special Brew per day. That level of drinking is not rare.
But other drugs are similar. People addicted to opiates sometimes resort to acquisitive crime or prostitution. That suggests that they need, not just want, the money for drugs and that drug use is pretty much continuous.
To some children/adolescents games are the perfect (psychological) parents: providing all the endless, almost limitless attention and appreciation, perfectly dosed challenge and rewards, a sense of accomplishment and unconditional ... fun.
I think this could be unique gateways for games to tip some effected ppl. into addiction, gateways not used by other potentially addictive stuff.
I submit that hedonism is a purpose unto itself, that all recreational activities hold equal value to our species (~none), differing value to the individual, and that people should simply do whatever they enjoy, right now.
Working towards a potentially better future that may never happen is not necessarily the right thing.
So, I started playing Fallout: New Vegas. I clocked like 120-140 hours in two weeks. I beat the game, I beat the expansions. I had a blast.
I think the problem with the video games is that they often offer a certain kind of refuge. You're a hero, and more importantly, you make tangible progress.
Playing CS or Quake or UT or Payday, you are playing a round, and everything lives and dies in that 12-20 minutes of your life. Everything is simple: strafe left, fire, reload, pickup, die, respawn. It's a beautiful three-dimensional puzzle in planning space, and at least for me is nearly a meditative state. I'm a big guy, and when I played Mirror's Edge, I quite literally cried because I was getting a chance to experience a freedom of movement only my skinny, small friends who practiced parkour could accomplish. I was free.
Playing RPGs is similarly relieving: I'm the Courier, I'm some guy left for dead in a pit in the ground, and I've got to piece together how I got there and how to bring justice to the person that put me there. I've got a neat little checklist of things to accomplish, fairly straightforward ways to check off those things, and a continual sense of "oh, okay, if I do this, then this happens, and then this." At a time in my life where things were most uncertain and the way most unclear, I could fire up New Vegas and see a logical progression of actions and accomplishments.
What do we get in the real world?
Well, it's not the people--it seems like pretty much everyone exists mainly in a state of consumption, alternating between work and home and social media or texting.
It's not heroics--the only wars being fought are unjust and unending police actions against the third world or our own citizens, and even as experienced developers we, searching for ever-more professionalism, realize that a team is not made of a hero and ensemble cast but instead a group of cooperative individuals with humility.
It's not even a clear causal universe: I write several KLOCS of code and deliver features, my sales don't increase. My friend doesn't take out ads, his sales increase. My cat plays outside, it gets hit by a car and dies behind a radiator waiting for me to come home. My other friend hangs outside in a parking lot, and a wild kitten appears. There's no sense to it, only random chance.
And so, does it really surprise anyone that we'd prefer our virtual worlds to this situation?
Can lifestyle choices be destructive? Absolutely. But most of the perceived destruction arises from the delusion that one has more time available than one actually has, and makes false promises across various domains (for example, to a family member, and a boss, and a WoW clan leader). In a sense, life is being rapidly fractalized.
At the risk of sounding cynical, most family interactions revolve around the television anyway (i.e. an average American watches approximately 5 hours of television a day). Together with an 8 hour work day, plus prep time, bathroom time, meal time, transit time, that leaves very little time for 'authentic' interaction. One could say, if you upset your family, because you play video games, or sit in front of a computer for long periods of time, it, more or less, means that you didn't watch television with them.
The tragical quotes (like some mentioned in the article), along the lines of "if I hadn't spend so much time with x, I could have spent more time with y", often arise in moments of introspection (which frequently tend toward the depressive, by the very nature of introspection, or at least by what spurred us to introspect), or during a period of grieving after the loss of a loved one that manifests as regret or as an overly-romanticized view of a fictitious past that might have been, and often the regret would have emerged regardless of what the x or y was, due to the finite and possibly Kierkegaardean nature of being a human being.
In real life, you can find purpose in things but if you are not careful then the daily eight-hour grind of a job, followed by dinner and a few hours of social activities then sleep starts to feel like a meaningless repeating routine. You can wake up knowing everything that's going to happen in a day and just go through the motions, brain on simmer.
In contrast, you hop into a game and you have something you need to do. You know how to do it. You can do and achieve something in a reasonable amount of time, seeing progress as you go. There is never a moment (generally speaking) where you feel like you are wasting time or not achieving anything - at least in a game you are engaged in - and that is incredibly satisfying in a way that's hard or infrequently achieved in real life.
What's "not false" about our progress and labor in the middle and upper-middle class?
The bank can decide to repossess your house or car if you miss payments, medical bills can wipe out everything you have and destroy your credit, the police can decide at random to screw you and ruin all of the progress you've made. If you don't make rent, or you just get gentrified, what "progress" have you made?
There's a deeper illness here.
I look forward to the day someone can discover it, and describe it.
Or do you just want to sound like some snarky nit on a message board?
"Or do you just want to sound like some snarky nit on a message board?" That was the idea, yes.
But why do that, when I can just write a really snarky comment on HN to try and sound superior.
>What's "not false" about our progress and labor in the middle and upper-middle class?
- Helping people, people we know, people we don't, for money and for free, coworkers, lovers, family. Helping them meet the ordinary demands of their lives, large and small - seeing the smile on their face when you help one of their problems go away. Buying someone a coffee, holding the door open; helping them move, with that spreadsheet. With that printer. Asking them how they're doing. (Personally I love buying people gifts, particularly of food. If enjoying a good meal isn't 'progress', I don't know what is!)
-Discovering and learning! Exploring the known and unknown world through reading, contemplation, and discovery, both on the job and otherwise. (Which is my favorite).
>The bank can decide to repossess your house...
I call this sort of thing "winning the shit lottery". There are a million ways to "win", and both nature and other people are constantly drawing from a bowl that has your name in it. But: realize that some of these negative outcomes (particularly the worst of them) are only possible because of erstwhile success. E.g. you don't get your heart broken unless you've been in love, and you don't get your house taken unless you once owned a house. Whenever you build something, you are entering another ticket in the shit lottery!
Anger at the shit lottery is very dangerous because it's easy to get wrapped up in the anger, the indignity, the feeling of helplessness, the sense of unfairness - and it's a strange feeling because it's at odds with our everyday life, which is usually pretty good because no single individual wins the shit lottery that often (at the very least because it's hard work to enter).
Okay, I was debating whether to write about this last thing, but a couple years back at a meditation retreat the overarching pointlessness of our society hit me like a ton of bricks. What is this we are doing, building things only to consume them in the fires of either vapid consumerism or these new strange, horrible, antiseptic, invisible wars? Do we work for the glory of our religion? Or our nation? Or ourselves? It struck me then that the only possible justification for any of this is if one day mankind grows enough in knowledge and power to spread life beyond earth. (And if that's just not physically possible, then we would do worse than to intentionally revert our society to Quaker-level technology and just...enjoy life.)
Helping people, exploring, fighting injustice, aspiring to discover or create new worlds. I'd say that's an enjoyable life, and real progress. Don't be distracted by the shit lottery, or other people's goals, however short-sighted. Know that you are right, and they are wrong, and maybe one day they'll get it.
HTH, angersock.
I feel this way doing simple physical labor. If it paid even nearly as well, I'd probably be happier doing landscaping or wall framing or something like that than programming.
What we get in the real world is actual novelty, believe it or not. There's 7 billion people out here, each with their own unique storyline. There's a billion different things to do out here. You could go swimming out near the Great Barrier Reef. You could learn to bake a cake. Heck, you could be building video games for others to enjoy. Any one of these activities lead to a tangible experience which rewards you in a way that no virtual world ever could.
The thing that kicked me out of my video game addiction was the realization that with video games, I was doing the same damn thing over and over again. Get a gun, and shoot everything with a red aura. Or get a sword, and hack everyone with a red aura. Or build an empire, and burn down every building with a red aura. The worse part was that after going through the motions, I had absolutely nothing to show for it. That empire I built, gone. The world I "saved", disappeared as soon as the PC was off.
This isn't any different than real life. Everything you will ever do or build will disappear (to you) as soon as you die. If you're the type who believes in leaving a legacy, then consider the heat death of the universe instead of your personal death.
-Ozymandias by Percy Bysshe Shelley
It is very unlikely that anything you do in a video game will persist more than a few years, let alone beyond your death. If you do things in the real world, there is some chance of a legacy that persists past your life and affects people after you're dead, whether it be kids, a house you built, a book you wrote, or whatnot.
Ultimately, yes, all our works are but tears in the rain. But if you take that view too long and too hard it's easy to sink into ennui and just let yourself wither away; why bother?
I think the problem with the video games is that they often offer a certain kind of refuge. "
If you had a blast, why is it I problem? I still remember some gaming sessions fondly. I think escapism is one of the more likeable traits of mankind.
Why does this seem to be tied so closely to online games?
At least superficially it seems like it was never a problem anywhere close to this magnitude in the old days of single-player, and the addiction stories are always WoW, Starcraft, Warcraft, CounterStrike, Call of Duty, etc.
When I think back to when I was a little kid playing Sega Genesis for 5 hours straight, the way I always remember those occasional binges ending was this: I would hit a particular point in the game I was obsessing about at that moment, and just plain get stuck. I might batter against it for half an hour, but finally my exhausted patience would snap and I would give up, and that would be the end of that binge.
From a game design perspective, that represents a failure; it did not design that challenge right, or it was too unclear about something, or it should have provided an alternative route a player could take - a player should struggle, certainly, and play at the edge of their ability, but they should never reach a point where they're just completely stuck and cannot advance.
The online games are generally better designed in that respect; bottlenecks are observed and quickly patched, there are usually many alternatives or built-in difficulty mechanisms (in a MMORPG, grind some more; in Counterstrike, find less skilled players to play against) and if nothing else, you can search the community for other people who got stuck on it and see what they did or just commiserate.
In the old offline gaming world, all of that is either less likely or impossible. So as frustrating as those instances might be, they served as safety valves.
Not gaming, but I reckon I've wasted hundreds of hours on Reddit.
That little 'new message' indication would drive me back to the site over and over again.
It got so bad that it pretty much derailed my startup. I would use it as a refuge when trouble loomed. Can't close that new deal? Scared to call that client? Paralyzed by fear because you can't ship the product in time? Don't worry, discuss this damn thing on Reddit and pretend that your opinion actually matters in the world.
I've blocked Reddit on my computer now. Haven't been to the site in months. I've never been more productive.
In contrast, I used to play Age of Empires 2 a LOT as a kid, but I had a terrible internet connection which meant I couldn't play online.
My addiction to AoE, thus, was nowhere near as bad as my addiction to Reddit. Without that social feedback, I could escape pretty easily.
With an offline game, once you've bought the game, the transaction is complete. The developer has no incentive to do anything more to you except leave you with a happy memory so you recommend it to your friends.
Online games have subscription or advertising-based recurring revenue models. The developer's incentive is all about finding ways to exploit security vulnerabilities in your brain so as to cause repetitive behavior. If one developer has a sense of ethics and doesn't do that, another will. Playing an online game is like advertising that you keep bitcoins on your laptop: you're giving smart, dedicated and ruthless people an incentive to attack you - except it's far more dangerous, because it's not just your computer or your money on the line.
The advice I would give is, if you're going to play video games, stick to offline ones and don't touch the online ones - in exactly the same way that I would advise people, if you're going to do drugs, stick to pot and don't touch cocaine or heroin.
Online communities like Reddit and... ahem... Hacker News... that gamify the online discussion experience with up/down mods and such can also be addictive.
(... backs away slowly ...)
In those days, people used to fail out of college for playing hearts/spades/Risk etc so I don't think this is purely a online phenomenon.
I would say that computers give you an "always on/always there" opponent you can play whether it be a person or the computer itself.
As a side note, I can imagine in the past reading being the same way for children of parents who put lots of emphasis on doing vs thinking. E.g. they would see their children get "lost" in a "fantasy" land rather than being productive.
I don't think people understand the responsibilities of a Guild Leader in your typical MMORPG. When you're a guild leader, dozens, hundreds... even thousands of people look up to you for guidance.
Not virtual people, I mean real people. And the demands of a guild often demand dozens of hours of game-time. Either laying alliances with other guild leaders, setting up training schedules for the newbies, connecting newbies to veteran players who can show them the ropes. Etc. etc.
For competitive games, like Starcraft, League of Legends, or CounterStrike... the "guild" is not part of the game but instead part of the online community. They are called "Clans" in these games. But the concept is simple, you're in charge of a team, usually dozens of people.
You are expected to make practice, 8pm on Saturdays. You are expected to train certain maps, and make progress with skill.
For WoW, you are expected to be ready an hour before the Raid. You are expected to play your role (tanking, healing, DPS, whatever) for the next 2 hours in the Raid, and you have at least 5 players at any time that are dependent on your success.
People get "addicted" to the social connections, expectations, and in-game status. When you're a guild-leader in charge of a 10,000 person guild (_real_ people), it is a bit depressing to return back to the real world where you're a low-level junkie.
Even at a low level, you're always happy for being able to contribute to your Guild or Clan, especially when your peers appreciate your efforts.
When you spend all your time staring into the screen, interacting with people through the medium of a game, after a while your only friends are people you've met through the game. And you usually can't say "fuck this game, let's go have some beer iRL" very easily, because your game friends have no guarantee of living anywhere near you. So you keep on meeting in the space of the game.
You end up with nothing but these tenuous virtual relationships. Ones founded entirely on text, ones where there's the immediacy of real time but never a touch, or a kiss. They're shitty relationships that can't fully sustain you, but they're better than the absolute lack of anything out in the real world that you'll have to suffer for who knows how long until you start making friends and lovers in reality? Less frightening to stay. It sucks, it's miserable, but it's just enough emotional contact to get by on. Leave it and you'd have nothing.
It doesn't matter what you're playing. My time in that particular downward spiral was via a socialization-focused MUD.
In the brave new world of online gaming, all those constraints are gone. Using the net for distribution rather than physical media means that it's now economically viable for the marginal cost to the developers to get new content to players has plummeted to more or less nothing -- which means they can economically keep you on a drip-feed of new content essentially forever. The universe of available content within a game becomes infinite. So that the game never really ends -- it just goes on sucking money out of your wallet until either you walk away from it, the audience for the game becomes too small, or you run out of money or die. (In real life, I mean.)
In this sense gaming as a hobby is one of those things that was transformed into something socially destructive by a simple change to the supply and demand curves underpinning it. An analogous example from history might be sugar.
Before Europeans discovered the New World, sugar was an extremely rare commodity to them, and thus only used in small quantities by those few people who could afford it. The New World offered prime sugar-growing land, however, and the introduction of slaves as a workforce made growing sugar much, much cheaper. This led to a flood of sugar into the European market, and the resulting price plummet led sugar to be accessible to more Europeans in greater quantities than ever before in history... which in turn led to a society-wide epidemic of rotting teeth as people binged on the stuff.
(You know the old story about George Washington having wooden teeth? This is why. George Washington's teeth rotted out early in life because, in the period he lived in, everyone's teeth rotted out early in life -- because they were enjoying all that newly cheap sugar.)
MMOs have the social aspect, which for people like me, is the main draw, any skinner box effect rapidly wears off, but many people spent months hanging about in Orgrimmar chatting with guildies not doing anything.
MMOs tend to (in my experience only) be more of a distraction too. Single players never got me through an anxiety or depression episode, whilst MMOs saved me there more than once or twice.
Dont forget, in the old days of single player, the media was not as it is now, and there is a focus generally on "Are people behaving differently because of online things", and MMOs are an easy target for this.
It's just that, I think, the technology has spun it such that more games are online than not these days.
Edit: But also, I never bother with MMOs because they're tedious to begin with. It's multiplayer FPS games that are the real trouble spot.
My "immersive alternate reality" approach is to use novels, which have a well-defined end.
Now I know how I'd feel as a goldfarmer.
he was in the tenth grade .. he stopped bathing or brushing his teeth regularly.
Basically these parents have 100k to shell out on rehab but they can't trust their 12 year old to be obedient, and they completely neglect his basic hygiene. This is parenting bordering on abuse.