Why are computer games so addictive?
Why are computer games so damn catchy? What makes them such life sapping viruses, and is there anything we can do about it? Do we even want to, when we’re perfectly happy to be addicted?
Here are a few thoughts purely from my personal experience. I’d love to hear some of yours.
1. Dance moves
There is a primeval pleasure in learning the moves of the dance, and dancing well. Play an arcade game for long enough, and you’ll learn where to step, when to shoot, and when to dodge away; if you can keep up, eventually you’ll fall into a hypnotic waltz fuelled by constant low-level injections of reward adrenaline. This is how you can lose eight hours of your life without realising it, and why to a gaming addict, losing those hours does not feel like a waste, because somewhere in the future lies the promise of nirvana.
I am some way from achieving this state with Galaga, because Galaga is a fucking arsebastard.
2. Steady advancement; just rewards
Games are what life would be like if it wasn’t so cripplingly unfair. In most games you can guarantee that if you jump through exactly the right number of hoops while barking merrily, you’ll advance to the next stage. The desire for betterment is hardwired into everyone, and games provide a clear, logical way of doing so, with each reward spaced out so as not to make you wait too long or to overfeed you. You know you’re playing a great game when you’ve completed it twice but keep coming back because the task / reward system is so gratifying.
In real life, a logical and worthwhile task / reward system is the basis for a truly good job. And is therefore as rare as rocking horse shit.
3. Escapism
Some game worlds are so pretty that you find yourself returning to them just because they’re a nicer place to live in than the real world. I remember the first time I stepped out onto the beach in Far Cry and saw the palm trees nodding in the breeze… at that moment, Far Cry could have been a geriatric dog-sex simulator and I’d still have called up all my friends to tell them it was my new favourite game.
There is also the dubious topic of moral escapism. Crysis allows you to do things to poultry that would have you lynched and set alight in real life, but it’s fine because it’s a game. No one will ever know about the chicken corpse mountain you constructed and then blew up, watching the beautiful pullet cloud spread across the sky.
Well, except for the ten thousand people who watched the video you uploaded to Youtube after adding a soundtrack by My Chemical Romance.
4. Violence violence RAAAAAARGH
Come on, admit it. You wouldn’t play games if you didn’t get a tumescent killboner every time you made someone’s viscera fly out of their torso like spaghetti in a hurricane. FPS games only get boring when the killing gets boring. This is why Soldier Of Fortune was so popular even though it was an utterly dull game. It was popular because you could shoot someone’s fingers off, then their right knee, then literally pop a cap in their ass. Personally I don’t recall a single memorable level to this game, but I remember the first time I blew a dude’s head off with a single shot from my Deagle, because I finally felt like a MAN that day.
So, in conclusion, if you want to put together the most addictive game in the world, you should make it a samba simulator set in Honolulu, and give all the dancers machine guns.
I would buy the shit out of that game.
How about you? What is it about your favourite game that makes it so addictive? Do you resent its hold on you?
Filed under: Addiction
Violence indeed, it may sound terrifying, but when I don’t play video games for a while I tend to dream about beating the shit out of people. In my defense, it’s always self defense.
I suspect your urge might stem from a specific event in your early life; possibly an event such as deciding that you really liked beating the shit out of people.
No charge.
Though it surely wasn’t the best game I ever played, Rome: Total War had the tendency to eat up hours of my time. I had never pulled so many consecutive all-nighters until that point.
I would find myself musing over strategy during English class to thwart those persistent Egyptians…
I had exactly the same thing with Rome. Everything about that game was geared to destroy months of your life. I think the killer is that an evening spent preparing for a couple of big battles feels very satisfying, but the sum total of that evening’s work will only bring you about 1% closer to finishing the actual game.
The only reason I stopped playing Rome was because I declared war on the senate way too early, and then looked on in abject horror as ten thousand million Scipii armies sprung out of nowhere and starting raping and pillaging all the towns that I had spent weeks and weeks of my life building up.
I couldn’t bear to play the game out to its grim conclusion. Before I was brought to my knees and urinated on, I uninstalled the game and tried to pretend that it had never existed.
I still hum the theme tunes to myself, though. “Saaa-lutaaaarus…..”
I never understood a word that chick was singing, but I must admit…I always sort of lip-synced along with it. It was very soothing…perfect for deep, strategic contemplation.
“Glooriaaaatoh….yuns fo-daaaayooh….”
I recently had to do a presentation with other people for a small group class i took at the local community college. We picked video game addiction. I so wish I had stumbled across your site then, I would have loved to do a short snippet about your recovery efforts.
lol.
I know that this is cliché, but the original Halo. I don’t know why, but it sucks me back in over and over. I actually spent two weeks with reoccurring dreams of violence and grenades. The only detail I recall is that there was a big scene in a mess hall that was unlike any of the gameplay environments. I have had *flashbacks* to this dream.
I have 2 words for you guys…
Starcraft…
…Broodwar
it ate up about 9 years of my life and it was, believe it or not, totally worth it.
Just seeing perfection on screen burst open in a bloody mess.. Thank you Zerglings…
I don’t kow why, but I never ended up playing Starcraft. It’s the Simpsons Syndrome. There are episodes that everyone else has seen ten million times, but you’ve never seen once, and your friends always react with deep outrage when it crops up in conversation. “What do you MEAN you haven’t seen the one where Homer turns into a donut?! Are you inSANE???”
It’s the same with Starcraft. Every person I spoke to said it was the best game ever. Even people who hadn’t actually played it and had no interest in computers. From what you’ve said, I reckon it was a good thing I didn’t go near it, because it would have stolen valuable years of my life which I could have wasted in other ways.
tip for those damned egyptians in total war: gang-bang them. 3 or 4 preatorian or legionary cohorts to swallow them up. sure it’l take a cohort down with them but isnt making sure some chariots dont violate your forces from behind in mid-battle worth it?