Canadians Argue Over Videogame “Addictions”

In light of the ongoing arguments regarding whether or not a true “addiction” in the traditional sense exists with videogames, GamePolitics.com has an entry detailing a televised debate up in Canada between Liz Woolley of Online Gamers Anonymous (yes, the similarity to Alcoholics Anonymous is deliberate), Marc Ouellette over at McMaster University in Ontario, and Christina Winterburn at 4thegirlgamers.

This is a good example to watch typical media treatment with easy to digest sound bites and oversimplification of complex issues, all crammed together in a tight time slot between advertisements. Here’s my summary of the segment, FWIW:

The segment opens with a tragic discussion of how Ms. Woolley’s son committed suicide after overuse of EverQuest, leading her to start OGA. Winterburn concedes gaming can become addictive in the sense that games can fill a hole in the lives of certain socially repressed people. Ouellette tries to get into an explanation of the research surrounding videogames, bringing up Loftus & Loftus (1983) regarding inherent reward schedules in games.

But, the journalists wanted to focus on the suicide related to EverQuest and ask Woolley if games like EQ should simply be banned. Ouellette gets back in to the conversation, and points out that comic books were blamed for youthful degeneracy in the 1950s, back-masking in rock lyrics were considered bad in the 1970s, and that basically each generation embraces a medium parents don’t understand. However, now parents have grown up with games and are more accepting. Woolley tries to ask that because Ouellette is a gamer and understands the medium, would he be more careful with his children playing, but this line of discussion is cut off due to lack of time. The journalist wraps up by belittling Ouellette’s last point, saying we’ve come a long way from the days of Pong and comic books with these videogames.

References:
Loftus, G. R. & Loftus, E. F. (1983). Mind at play: The psychology of video games. New York: Basic Books.