Exam preparation materials

Chapter 12 • Competitive Experiences

Hands holding the controls of interactive game with the thumbs on the larger circular buttons in the middle. Two sets of four buttons are seen grouped in a semicircular area above these two buttons with a dark perforated square panel between them.

Using a controller, console, or keyboard, digital games allow players to engage with an interactive experience and satisfy a need for competition.

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Key Idea: Digital media provide gaming platforms to attract audiences who want to create their own media experiences to satisfy their need for competition.

· Attraction to Digital Games

o Who Are the Players?

o Why the Attraction?

o The Game-Playing Experience

· Creating Digital Game Platforms

o Designing Digital Games

o Marketing Digital Games

· Types of Games

o Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)

o Digital Games as Sport

· Addiction to Digital Games

o Addiction Defined

o The Addiction Progression

§ Displacement

§ Dependence

§ Addiction

· Media Literacy

o Personal Implications

o Broader Concerns

· Summary

· Further Reading

· Keeping Up to Date

· Exercise

The desire to compete is a fundamental part of being human. The playing of games has been an integral part of all civilizations from the grand scheme of waging war to the shaping of institutions such as law and even to the individual level of providing humans with a way to define themselves through challenges (Huizinga, 1944). For millennia, humans have competed against themselves by trying to solve puzzles and mysteries. Games and play are what make our culture and civilization possible.

Humans invented card games and board games (e.g., checkers, chess, monopoly) to compete against one person or several other people. Over time, game playing has incorporated each new technology, especially with the recent development of digital innovations. With the invention of computers, the competitive platform was greatly expanded. By playing a game against a computer, people can receive immediate feedback on their performance. With the rise of the internet, individuals can now play against opponents anywhere in the world, so geography is no longer a limitation. Also, they can compete with very large numbers of players, such as with massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPGs). And with the proliferation of mobile devices, they can take their game-playing experiences everywhere they go.

There are now digital games designed to satisfy every conceivable need for competition. In Vintage Games 2.0: An Insider Look at the Most Influential Games of All Time, Barton (2017) observes that digital games range from “Triple-A” major studio productions with budgets in the hundreds of millions to quickie “indie” projects designed by lone hobbyists using cheap or even free development tools. Online distribution services such as Apple’s App Store, Microsoft’s Xbox Games Store, or Steam make an overwhelming variety of digital games easily available to the public (see Table 12.1). For example, Steam, which is an internet platform that reviews and distributes digital games, lists more than 3,700 games—far more than one person could play to any depth in a lifetime. There are games designed for all ages and genders—and even for cats and dogs!

Table 12.1

Adapted from Barton (2017).

What all of these games have in common are digital game codes that govern game appearance and play, visual and audio features that attract users to the game, and input devices that players use to communicate with the digital code while playing the game (Kerr, 2006). Also, digital games are similar to all other forms of mass media because the games are commercial products that have been created in a manner that is highly attractive to particular niche audiences and the games themselves are constructed so as to condition habitual use of them (Geddings & Kennedy, 2006). However, games are different than other types of media messages in the sense that they do not take players through a story in the conventional narrative sense (Friedman, 1995). Instead, games offer the potential for players to construct their own stories as they move through the game. These games force players to pay a heightened level of attention to the message stimuli instead of simply absorbing the meanings as presented. Players must continually make decisions in response to a game’s flow of stimuli. As the consequences of their decisions unfold, players are drawn more deeply into the experience of writing their own stories. This participation gives players a sense of power and a sense of wonder as they explore how far they can go on their personal quest.

ATTRACTION TO DIGITAL GAMES

Who Are the Players?

Many people think of digital game players as being pubescent male nerds who are solitary, reclusive, and socially inept geeks. However, surveys of digital game players have shown this stereotype to be highly inaccurate. People of all ages play digital games. The average digital game player is 30 years old; 79% of all digital game players are at least 18 years old and 21% of players are at least 50 years old. Also, 46% of all gamers are women, with women over 18 being the fastest-growing market for digital games (Gough, 2019).

Among players of digital games, there is a gender difference but that difference is not with how much time males and females play digital games; instead, the difference is in the type of games they play. Kowert, Breuer, and Quandt (2017) report that females exhibit

a strong preference for digital versions of traditional games (e.g., games that do not require a special set of skills or a large time commitment to complete), whilst males prefer more “core” genres (i.e., not casual), such as physical enactment (e.g., fantasy/role playing, action/adventure, strategy, simulation) games. (p. 137)

One reason for this difference is that

young men are socially reinforced to engage in video game play whilst young women are discouraged from engaging in the same, cross-sex stereotyped activity. As such, video games provide opportunities for young boys to meet social needs for inclusion and affection but do not serve the same functions for young girls. (p. 138)

Why the Attraction?

Digital games offer players a way to satisfy two kinds of needs—emotional as well as cognitive (Tamborini et al., 2011). As you have seen in Chapter 9, people seek out entertainment messages in order to feel aroused and to experience strong emotions. Games arouse players and can trigger emotions both when they are losing (frustration, humiliation, anger) as well as winning (joy, elation). These emotions are often more intense than the emotions normally triggered in a person’s real life.

Playing digital games also satisfies cognitive needs, such as the need for control. Many of us feel a lack of control over events in our real lives; we seem to continually work at things that fail to deliver adequate rewards. We feel that our lives are so routine that we never seem to make any progress, which Castronova (2005) refers to as the Sisyphus problem. Sisyphus was the character in Greek mythology who was doomed to push a heavy boulder up a hill and each time, as he neared the top, he would weaken from the exertion, and the boulder would roll back down the hill. Sisyphus would have to start all over again, day after day. Castronova says that many people feel that some burdens of their everyday life are too onerous to push over the top of a hill, so they play digital games where they can be successful—where they can, metaphorically, get that boulder all the way to the peak so it will roll down the other side. Thus, game playing can make people feel more successful and more in control. When playing a digital game, we can start the game any time we want. We can play as fast or as slow as we want. And with our mobile devices, we can play the games anywhere we want.

We all want challenges to motivate us, and we also want the experience of meeting those challenges so that we can feel successful. Digital games offer a sequence of gradually increasing challenges that begin with fairly easy tasks that we can finish quickly. The completion of these initial tasks serves to provide a feeling of satisfaction that is rewarding, and this motivates us to continue toward more-challenging tasks. As we complete these more-challenging tasks, the feeling of reward intensifies and our confidence builds, which propels us toward even more-challenging tasks.

Four people sit on high chairs in front of a large screen with a multiplayer game playing on it. A frame is seen around the screen that is mounted in front of them, above their eye level.

Multiplayer video games such as Super Smash Bros. Ultimate provide an ideal platform for a competitive interactive experience.

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Finally, many people are attracted to digital game playing because it offers the opportunity to socialize with others on a common task. Even though these games are highly competitive, enjoyment is increased when players band together into teams and develop strong attachments to their team members (Schmierbach et al., 2012).

The Game-Playing Experience

Psychologists who study how people play digital games have come up with two terms to describe key characteristics of the game playing experience—flow and telescoping. Flow is a term coined by social psychologist Csikszentmihalyi (1988). He observed people getting lost in tasks and called this experience flow. In order to achieve this state of flow, people must deeply immerse themselves in a task so that they lose all track of time and place. With digital games, players often get very involved in the playing of the game; they enter the game world so completely that they lose the sense that they are in the real world. Players become so focused on the pleasure of the game that other needs (such as thirst, sleep, hunger, etc.) become secondary; that is, satisfying those secondary needs gets put off in the interest of satisfying the primary need of achieving the next objective in the game. The expectation of completing the next game objective is so pleasurable that everything else is forgotten while in the flow state.

Telescoping is a term used by another social psychologist. Johnson (2005) used this term to refer to the way digital game players focus on the steps within the process of moving through a game. At any given point in a digital game, the player must focus on an immediate objective that follows from previous objectives that were successfully achieved and lead to upcoming objectives that take the player to the end of the game. This focusing on the immediate objective is viewed as the foreground, and all the other objectives are pushed into the background, where they are used only as context for the foregrounded objective. Thus, game players must keep the big picture in mind as context while they focus on the immediate objectives they face at any given point in the game. When they meet their immediate objective, they do not stop playing; instead, they feel immediately propelled onward to meet their next objective. Johnson says, “Talented gamers have mastered the ability to keep all these varied objectives alive in their heads simultaneously” (p. 54). Telescoping is not the same as multitasking. Multitasking is handling a chaotic stream of unrelated objectives, such as talking on the phone, instant messaging friends, listing to music on an iPod, and Googling. Telescoping focuses more on a sequence of ordered objectives in a hierarchy of priority and moving through them in a logical sequence.

Experiencing flow and telescoping can be very intense and rewarding. It can be similar to a narcotic that continually draws players back into the game so they can continue to trigger the rewards of arousal and achievement.

CREATING DIGITAL GAME PLATFORMS

The video game industry is very healthy, with revenue increasing each year. In 2019, it generated a record high of more than $152 billion, which included sales of hardware, software, and peripherals. Worldwide, the digital gaming industry employed 220,000 people in the United States alone (Wilson, 2019).

Digital gaming, however, is a very risky industry. Only about 3% of digital games earn a profit because the costs of development are so high. For example, the cost of developing Star Wars: The Old Republic was $200 million and the cost of developing Grand Theft Auto V was $265 million (Valente, 2019).

Designing Digital Games

The process of designing a new digital game is a complicated task that requires teamwork in the blending of many different types of skills. Design teams of about 12 to 20 people—each with different specialized skills—work on developing each game, which typically takes about 15 to 18 months to create and test. Some of these team members must have marketing skills to be able to identify potential niche audiences that are not currently having their gaming needs met. Other team members must understand human psychology well enough to design game-playing features that will attract the targeted players, pull them into the gaming experience, and condition them so they will want to play the game continually. Some design team members must be artistic enough to develop a compelling look, feel, and sound of the game. And other team members must be skillful computer programmers in order to write the code to make all these ideas work on the screen.

This complicated process of digital game design can be organized into nine steps (Castronova, 2001). First, an idea is conceived and sketched out in a demo. Second, a team of designers determines what a player will do while playing the game. Third, artists render the environments and characters. Fourth, programmers write the digital code to make the game work as envisioned by the game designers and artists. Fifth, when enough code is written, an alpha version of the game is tested to see how well it works. Sixth, corrections are made to fix bugs and to make the game run more smoothly. Seventh, a beta version is tested by making it available to more players. Ideally, this beta testing creates a community of avid game players by making the game available to download for free during a trial period. Eighth, when management is satisfied with the beta testing, the game “goes gold” and is released to the publisher. And ninth, the publisher designs the box, reproduces the game disks, and distributes them to wholesale and retail outlets.

Sykes (2006) elaborates the game design process by pointing out that game developers must make three fundamental decisions about the game they want to design. These decisions concern the category of play, formality of play, and the affective tone. As for category of play, Sykes says that there are six types as determined by the objective of the game. These six categories of play are agon (competition is the primary focus, enjoyment is derived from competing), alea (games of chance), mimicry (play involving make believe, players take on a new identity), ilinx (players seek vertigo, the temporary destabilization of the perceptual system, such as in fairground rides), exploration (exploring new places and discovering new things), and social play (contact with others by joining special clans with secret languages, nicknames, initiation rites, etc.). While there is a different niche audience for each of these six, the popular games usually combine two or more of these features in a single game to appeal to a broader base of players.

As for formality of play, Sykes (2006) says there is a range in the number of rules that a game can have. At the informal end of this range are games with very few rules or rituals; players experience the spontaneous expression of the animalistic impulse to play. At the formal end of the range are games with many rules and rituals that require discipline to follow; players who learn the rules best and who are capable of using those rules to their advantage succeed the most.

Affective tone refers to the kinds of emotions designers want the game to trigger in players. Sykes again points out that there is a range open to game designers. One emotion that these games are typically designed to trigger is aggression; designers figure out ways to put players in conflict situations with other players and the computer so that players feel they must fight to survive. Game designers build levels in which a player must fight off increasingly stronger opponents to get their rewards. Another popular feeling that designers try to trigger is mystery or suspense: Players must figure out what is happening before something bad happens to them or others.

In addition to the design decisions outlined in the above paragraphs, designers also follow some generic rules to ensure that their games are able to attract players and condition them for repeat playing. There are six design rules that apply to all successful digital games. Game developers carefully follow these rules in order to reduce the risk that players will reject their games. First, there must be some reward to the player, and the rewards must only go to the good players. Bad players should be punished, but the punishment should never be for something that happened outside a player’s control. Second, the game should be relatively easy to learn. Of course, some games are very complex, but the complexity is not revealed to a player in the beginning. Instead, the complexity is gradually revealed step by step as the player moves through the game. Third, the game should be predictable. The game should follow logical rules so that players can predict the outcome of their actions. Fourth, the game should be consistent. The outcome of a particular action must always be the same. Fourth, there should be a fair degree of familiarity. This means that designers should consider what players bring to the game and use it. And sixth, the game should be challenging. If it is too simple, players will quickly lose interest. Instead, designers must build layers in which players advance to greater and greater challenges to keep them playing.

Marketing Digital Games

Who is in the market for digital games? As you saw above, demographics are not good indicators of the digital gaming market. People of all ages play digital games, and females are as likely as males to play digital games. Therefore, marketers have moved beyond demographics to use psychographics in their market analyses as a way to identify the kinds of people who are likely to play the games they design. One such psychographic scheme identifies four types of digital game players: explorers, socializers, achievers, and controllers. Explorers are players who are curious and want to wander around inside the game world to discover all its territories and experiences. Socializers are players who like to interact with other players. They want the game to present challenges that require forming groups so that players have an opportunity to work together in accomplishing shared objectives. They want social interaction in the games; they want opportunities to join clubs and engage in cultural activities with others, such as weddings, parties, and other social rituals. Achievers are players who are attracted to the games in order to build something, such as a city, an empire, or great personal wealth. Finally, controllers are players who want to dominate others. They want games with a high degree of competition so they can figure out ways to defeat and dominate worthy opponents.

While games are typically marketed to players, game developers also market their game code to other game developers. This is called the middle-ware market. There are would-be designers of games who lack the depth of programming skills required to design a game from scratch; these developers buy game engines, which includes the basic programming needed to support a game. They use these game engines to construct the specifics of their games (characters, settings, decision points, etc.) from the basic code (Castronova, 2001).

TYPES OF GAMES

Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs)

A popular form of digital games is the MMORPG. The earliest example of this type of game was MUD (multi-user dungeon), which was a digital translation of the popular Dungeons & Dragons board game. It “allowed multiple users to interact with the world and each other simultaneously via the Internet—and pit their avatars against each other in battle using a server-based incarnation of D&D’s die-rolling system” (Ivory, 2009, p. 15).

One of the most popular and elaborate MMORPGs is the World of Warcraft (WoW), which was released in 2004. In order to play WoW, players must purchase the computer software and pay a monthly fee of $14.99 to play online. By 2009, WoW had 11.5 million players worldwide, making it the most successful online video game in the world (Fritz, 2009). But over time, as other MMORPGs have grown in popularity, the intense competition for players has reduced the number of WoW’s regular players significantly to about 7 million players by 2020 (Altar of Gaming, 2020).

A screen with the World of Warcraft, Mists of Pandaria game open on it. A banner below the logo shows the tabs for home, game guide, community, and media options among others.

Massive Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games (MMORPGs) can deeply immerse players in a rich, expansive world full of endless tasks and quests.

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Players of WoW inhabit a medieval world called Azeroth, where their avatars roam across landscapes, fight monsters, complete quests, and interact with other players.

Azeroth is a complex virtual world composed of two primary landmasses: the western regions of Kalimdor and the Eastern Kingdoms. Both of the areas are subdivided into distinct regions, with each having its own unique geography, ecology, culture, and inhabitants. Players move their characters through these “zones” in search of adventure, treasure, fortune, reputation, and conquest. The ostensive goal of WoW is to explore the world of Azeroth while “leveling up” a character, defeating a whole host of monsters, acquiring equipment and rewards, and interacting with other players from around the world. (Boyns et al., 2009, p. 68)

All players begin the game at Level One and gradually gain the appropriate amount of experience to move from one level to the next. New players spend months building up their characters while avoiding being killed (called ganked in WoW) by more experienced players. As a player advances in the game, the challenges become more difficult, and the rewards become more substantial. After months of play, the good players get to Level 60, where they join with other players in guilds and undertake intricately planned raids on dungeons to kill dragons and engage in massive rumbles against other guilds. The initial version of WoW offered 60 levels, but this was increased to 70 levels with the Burning Crusade expansion.

The game-playing experience involves the completion of quests, the discovery of new territories, and combat with the enemies created by the game designers. Quests are frequently the most efficient means of gaining experience and they often provide substantial material rewards such as clothing, magical items, or weapons. There are over 2,000 quests currently available in the game and each requires players to successfully complete unique tasks. Each of these adventures reflects different types of quest modes. For example, collection quests require players to investigate Azeroth and collect specific items, while delivery quests enlist players to act as couriers of messages from one region to another. Discovery quests involve seeking out specific territories or locations, killing quests require a specific number of enemies to be slain, and dungeon quests are composed of a combination of types (Boyns et al., 2009).

Castronova (2005) says,

The fading of boundaries between our world and the synthetic worlds of cyberspace is what justifies serious inquiry. . . . As the lines disappear, we move toward a state in which there is really no barrier to a complete translation of every interpersonal human phenomenon on Earth in the digital space. (p. 48)

Castronova (2005) conducted a study of users of these games and found that about 57% said they would quit their real-world job and work in the cyberworld if they could make enough money there to support themselves, and three-quarters of players wish they could spend all of their time in the cyberworld (p. 59).

The boundary between cyberworlds and the real world has also been breached in the realm of the economy. Each MMORPG cyberworld has its own internal economy in which players are given opportunities to perform a range of work-like tasks and earn some type of “coin of the realm” for this work. Players can then enter into exchanges with other players. In this way, players can satisfy their game-playing needs and gradually amass wealth within the game. In the early 2000s, some players began trying to sell resources they earned within game worlds to people in the real world for real-world currency. For example, players of EverQuest would work at menial tasks in that particular cyberworld; they were paid around 300 platinum pieces an hour on average. Some of these players sold their platinum pieces on eBay to other EverQuest game players for U. S. dollars. The exchange rate at the time was about $3.50 U.S. for 300 EverQuest platinum pieces. Thus, a person could go to work in EverQuest and make $3.50 per hour (Castronova, 2005). Of course, $3.50 an hour is far below the minimum wage in America, but in other countries, it is a good income. Ambitious people in poor countries could enter the EverQuest cyberworld, perform a task such as hammering metal into suits of armor by clicking a mouse all day, and sell these suits of armor to other EverQuest game players on eBay. As of 2004, eBay was hosting about $30 million of annual trade for goods that only existed in synthetic worlds. Much of this trade was for real currencies, meaning that eBay was in the foreign currency exchange market (p. 149). eBay has since banned the sale of virtual goods on its site, but there are other sites (e.g., Craigslist) where virtual goods can be sold; many games have developed their own sites for the exchange of virtual goods. This has led game marketers to create their own cryptocurrencies, such as platinum pieces in EverQuest and Linder Dollars in Second Life. Some entrepreneurs have also created cryptocurrencies outside of video game worlds, including Bitcoin. By the end of 2017, the exchange market for cryptocurrencies was averaging daily trading volumes of over $50 billion, which is more than the daily trading volume of the New York Stock Exchange (Williams-Grut, 2017).

Digital Games as Sport

Digital gaming has become so popular that it has grown into a major sport. Many colleges now recruit digital game players and offer them athletic scholarships worth up to $19,000 per year. Varsity digital game players wear team jerseys displaying the logos of their sponsors. Team members are required to engage in daily practicing, which can range up to five hours per day. The Collegiate StarLeague (CSL) began in 2008 with 25 schools participating. By 2020, it had grown to 70,000 students competing in teams from 1,800 universities in North America (Collegiate StarLeague 2019/2020, n.d.).

There are also professional leagues of video gamers, and these contests are regularly televised on major cable channels such as ESPN. According to SuperData Research, 93 million people watched an e-sports event in 2015. When the League of Legends held its pro World Championship in October 2013, it drew a viewership of 32 million, which was a much larger audience that the 26.3 million people who watched Game 7 of that year’s National Basketball Association finals (Gregory, 2015). By 2018, the viewership of all e-sports on television had grown to 380 million, and it was expected to grow to over 550 million viewers by 2021 (Koch, 2019).

Some players of digital games have gotten so good that they have attracted fans who pay to watch them compete. There are even websites (Twitch and Mixer) that are dedicated to fans who want to watch people play digital games. In 2018, viewers spent 8.4 billion hours watching gamers being livestreamed on Twitch, which is a company that Amazon bought in 2013. One gamer who is known as Ninja attracted 14 million followers on Twitch (“Video Games,” 2019).

“Our culture loves video games, and it’s difficult to imagine what our lives would be like without them,” explains Barton (2017).

After the “Great Video Game Crash of 1983,” prognosticators were all too ready to declare that the “fad” of video games was over. Obviously, that didn’t happen, and video games have only gotten bigger and better since the glorious days of Pac-Man, Space Invaders, and Donkey Kong. (Barton, 2017)

ADDICTION TO DIGITAL GAMES

The biggest concern about digital games is their addictive nature. Polls find that 90% of American children under the age of 18 play video games (Kamenetz, 2018). This widespread use has led social critics to claim that digital game playing will lead to considerable numbers of people becoming addicted. There is some evidence to support this claim. Kamenetz has found that about 8% of all digital game players meet the conditions for addiction.

Fear of addiction has been directed especially at MMORPGs (Yee, 2002). Alter (2017) explains why MMORPGs are so addictive:

Many players band together to form guilds—teams of allied avatars—which is part of what makes the game so addictive. It’s hard to sleep at night when you know three of your guild-mates in Copenhagen, Tokyo, and Mumbai are on an epic quest without you. (p. 17)

Games such as WoW “attract millions of teens and young adults, and a considerable minority—up to 40%—develop addictions” (Alter, 2017, p. 17). Alter calls WoW “one of the most addictive behavioral experiences on the planet. Almost half of all players consider themselves ‘addicted.’ An article in Popular Science described WoW as ‘the obvious choice’ when searching for the world’s most addictive game. There are support groups with thousands of members, and more than a quarter of a million people have taken the free online World of Warcraft Addiction Test.”

There are examples of digital game players becoming so addicted to playing these games that it has led to their death. For example, a Korean player was found dead of exhaustion after spending 80 continuous hours in Lineage without a break. An EverQuest user committed suicide triggered by a feeling of desperation conditioned by events within the game world (Castronova, 2005).

China is so concerned about digital game addiction that it has asked designers of digital games made in the U. S. to build tools into their games to track how much time minors spend online playing these games so that the games will cut off access to people who try to play more than two hours a day. In response, Riot Games has added an anti-addiction system to the Chinese version of its League of Legends to comply with China’s new regulations (“China’s Video Game Surveillance,” 2019).

Addiction Defined

There is a difference between heavy use of digital games and addiction to gaming. Addiction in general requires that a person lose control over performing certain behavioral sequences: The person does not only want to perform certain behaviors, the person has to perform them and cannot prevent themself from performing them obsessively. The American Psychiatric Association (APA) says that merely depending on a substance or behavior isn’t enough to warrant a diagnosis of addiction.

Many hospital patients depend on opiates, for example, but that doesn’t make all hospital patients opium addicts. The missing ingredients are the sense of craving that comes from an addiction, and the fact that addicts know they’re ultimately undermining their long-term well-being. . . . The truth about addiction challenges many of our intuitions. It isn’t the body falling in unrequited love with a dangerous drug, but rather the mind learning to associate a substance or behavior with relief from psychological pain. (Alter, 2017, pp. 80, 89)

A 2011 extensive review of the literature on behavioral addiction found that 41% of the world’s population has suffered from at least one behavioral addiction over the past year (Sussman et al., 2011). To arrive at this conclusion, the researchers examined 83 published studies of behavioral addictions (gambling, love, sex, shopping, internet, exercise, and work addictions) as well as substance abuse addictions (alcohol, nicotine, and narcotics) that included 1.5 million respondents across four continents. They found that these addictions are not trivial because they include the loss of ability to choose freely whether to stop or continue the behavior and the experience of behavioral-related adverse consequences. Alter (2017) adds, “The age of behavioral addiction is still young, but early signs point to a crisis. Addictions are damaging because they crowd out other essential pursuits, from work and play to basic hygiene and social interaction” (p. 10).

The APA recognizes internet addiction as a serious behavioral problem. The APA says that internet addiction has four essential components: (1) excessive internet use, often associated with a loss of sense of time or a neglect of basic drives; (2) withdrawal, including feelings of anger, tension, and/or depression when the computer is inaccessible; (3) increasing tolerance, including the need for better computer equipment, more software, or more hours of use; and (4) adverse consequences, including arguing, lying, poor school or vocational achievement, social isolation, and fatigue (Aiken, 2016, p. 70). While the APA statement focuses on internet addiction, its criteria apply to all forms of the media.

The Addiction Progression

Addiction to digital gaming is not an immediate effect; it takes a long time to evolve as people move through a progression of effects from displacement to dependency to addiction. This progression to digital game addiction begins innocently enough with a drive to find digital experiences that are better in some way (e.g., more emotionally intense and satisfying) than the experiences one can find in one’s real life. When people find such an experience, they feel happy and rewarded, so they repeatedly perform those behaviors in the hope of continuing to experience those rewards. Not everyone who is attracted to the media ends up enslaved by an addiction effect, but many people do.

Displacement

As experiences with digital gaming are rewarded over time, people gravitate to these digital exposures and experience a displacement effect, in which digital experiences increase and crowd out other kinds of experiences. People begin decreasing the time they spend with non-media activities as their time with the media continues to increase. Thus, people stop relying on the media to add to their total set of real-world experiences and instead use media exposures to substitute for real-world experiences. For example, television was found to displace book reading through two mechanisms: It deteriorates attitudes supporting book reading and it deteriorates children’s ability to concentrate on reading (Koolstra & Van der Voort, 1996).

Digital games provide players with a cyberworld that is often much more attractive than their real world, so players shift their time and resources into these cyberworlds (thus displacing their real world). For many players, the cyberworld offers experiences they cannot get in the real world, so players move into the cyberworld and live their lives there, where they create economies, political systems, friendships, romantic attachments, and careers.

The displacement effect is especially serious with heavy players of MMORPGs. In his book Synthetic Worlds, Castronova (2005) argued that

the synthetic worlds now emerging from the computer game industry . . . are becoming an important host of ordinary human affairs. There is much more than gaming going on there: conflict, governance, trade, love. The number of people who could be said to “live” out there in cyberspace is already numbering in the millions; it is growing and we are already beginning to see subtle and not-so-subtle effects of this behavior at the societal level in real Earth countries. (p. 2)

It appears that many people are experiencing displacement. For example, Alter (2017) found that the average American ages 8 to 18

spends more time communicating through screens than she does with other people directly, face-to-face. Since the turn of the new millennium, the rate of non-screen playtime fell 20 percent, while the rate of screen playtime increased by a similar amount. (p. 237)

Critics argue that digital gaming is displacing real-world interpersonal relationships, but research on this is contradictory. For example, a longitudinal study examined gaming and non-gaming–related friendships and social support among a representative sample of social online players (i.e., people who play online video games with others) and found that playing digital games with online or offline friends is not related to perceived social support, positively or negatively, cross-sectionally or longitudinally (Domahidi et al., 2018). In contrast, Williams (2006) found that some kinds of existing friendships eroded; the most social players became more insulated from one another, which has been referred to as social cocooning. Also, some people are able to use digital game-playing to improve their interpersonal skills and then use those improved skills successfully in developing interpersonal relationships in the real world.

A young man sits in a dark room, in front of a computer with his hands on the keyboard. He is wearing headphones and a lamp is seen on the table.

While many people may joke about being “addicted” to video games, there are some whose personal health and social lives suffer from their compulsive playing, meeting the definition of addiction.

iStock.com/Vesnaandjic

Displacement by itself can be a positive effect if the growing amount of media experiences serve a person’s needs better than the alternative experiences they are replacing. However, it can also be a negative effect if the displacement primarily serves the needs of the media at the expense of the person, especially if it moves on to dependence and eventually to addiction.

Dependence

The next step along the addiction progression is achieved when displacement turns into a dependence effect in which people develop a reliance on particular digital experiences; that is, people not only prefer these digital experiences, they require them. This is typically a negative effect when people reach a point where they begin to lose control over their exposures and habitually seek out particular kinds of digital exposures without considering whether those exposures are satisfying their needs or not. At this point, the media conditioning has become so successful that people mindlessly continue with repeated exposures without evaluating the degree to which those continued exposures are useful in satisfying their needs.

This dependency effect is explained by how people allow the media to reinforce their exposures into a habit then into a dependency (Ball-Rokeach & DeFleur, 1976; Himmelweit et al., 1980; LaRose & Eastin, 2002; Lazarsfeld et al., 1944; McIntosh et al., 2000; Shah et al., 2001; Slater, 2003).

Compare & Contrast Displacement and Dependency

Compare: Displacement and dependency are the same in the following ways:

· Both are long-term effects that can arise from engaging in digital gaming experiences over a long period of time.

· Both are steps along the progression leading to an addiction effect.

Contrast: Displacement and dependency are different in the following ways:

· Displacement refers to people increasing their media use so that those increases take time away from other activities whereas dependency refers to people developing a reliance on digital gaming as they habitually seek out digital gaming experiences without considering whether those experiences are satisfying their needs or not.

· Displacement is an effect that has less-serious consequences for people than does the dependency effect.

Addiction

People have progressed all the way to addiction when they realize that their behavioral patterns of exposure to particular digital media no longer deliver positive experiences and yet they are unable to eliminate or even alter those behavioral patterns. They have reached a point where exposure to particular media experiences (e.g., competing in digital games, contacting virtual friends, buying products online) no longer triggers positive emotional states (happiness), yet people continue performing their exposure habits even though those habits now typically trigger negative emotional states (disgust or loathing). At this point, people realize that they no longer want to perform the behavioral sequence but continue to do so anyway because they have lost control over their behavior; this is the clearest signal that a person is addicted to the behavioral sequence. “Even as you come to loathe Facebook or Instagram for consuming too much of your time, you continue to want updates as much as you did when they still made you happy” (Alter, 2017, p. 87).

While the addiction progression is primarily behavioral, it also involves affect because of the way it triggers emotions. It involves physiological elements of arousal that come from engaging in behaviors with the expectation of reward (increases in dopamine and/or adrenaline).

The path to addiction is long and relies on many factors to continue its progression. Research has shown that the most influential factor in this progression is reward—as long as that reward is variable. A variable reward schedule is one in which people are not rewarded each time they successfully complete a task. This is a powerful way to condition people’s behaviors because it increases their desire to continue engaging in tasks in two ways. When people are rewarded, their motivation to engage in the task again is increased so they can feel the pleasure of reward once again. But the absence of a reward can also increase people’s desire to continue engaging in the task because their desire to experience the reward increases even more. When people are rewarded every time they are successful, they can become bored because the rewards become too routine and there is no surprise. What makes the variable reinforcement schedule so powerful is not the rewards but the failures that become motivators to keep trying for the rewards. Coming off a recent loss is deeply motivating.

To some extent we all need losses and difficulties and challenges, because without them the thrill of success weakens gradually with each new victory. That’s why people spend precious chunks of free time doing difficult crosswords and climbing dangerous mountains—because the hardship of the challenge is far more compelling than knowing you’re going to succeed. (Aiken, 2016, p. 169)

Over time, people’s behavioral patterns are strengthened by a variable reward sequence, and those behaviors become even more fixed (harder to alter; Aiken, 2016).

Increasing the game difficulty also increases conditioning. If the games were so simple that players always won, then the drive to compete would wear out soon, as players learn that it does not matter how well they play because they will always win. But games that have increasing levels of difficulty ensure that players will often run into problems they cannot solve, so they need to work harder to figure out the barriers to reward so they can achieve those rewarding feelings once again.

If we are mindful of our media exposures and take control over our decision making, we can avoid addiction. However, the media are working hard to prevent us from thinking too much about our choices; they prefer we default to habits that they can program and control. In his book, Irresistible: The Rise of Addictive Technology and the Business of Keeping Us Hooked, Alter (2017) puts it succinctly: “In 2004, Facebook was fun; in 2016, it’s addictive” (p. 5).

MEDIA LITERACY

What are the implications of digital gaming platforms for media literacy? Some of these implications are personal and some are broader. The personal implications are things you need to consider as an individual so that you can avoid risks of negative effects and increase the probability of positive effects. The broader implications refer to the way the increasing use of digital gaming has been changing society and the economy.

Personal Implications

As you continue to rely on digital gaming platforms, the most important thing you can do to increase your media literacy is to keep making a clear distinction between opportunity and addiction. Your control over using the media to satisfy your needs increases when you use digital games as opportunities to satisfy your personal needs more efficiently and more effectively. These games can expand your experiences and give you many opportunities to move significantly beyond the limits imposed by your everyday life. These experiences can give you a much richer understanding of your strengths and a greater ability to work on your weaknesses at your own pace and in your own way.

These same digital games, however, can lead to addiction if you allow them to condition you so strongly that you cannot control your time with them. Digital game playing can grow so addictive that these games consume a great deal of your resources without delivering commensurate satisfaction. They can alter your mental programs to such a degree that you keep living your life through these platforms even though such an existence is making you unhappy and depressed. If you become addicted to one of these platforms, it takes over your personal goals and you slavishly work to achieve the platform’s goals beyond the point where the game is bringing you any excitement or pleasure.

When you use these platforms, keep your own personal goals in mind. Prosocial goals are those that help you function better and more successfully with other people and in society. Thus, users who spend time with digital games that teach business principles, leadership, interpersonal interaction, and the like are learning the value of prosocial behaviors and are developing their prosocial skills. However, almost all of these competitive games condition antisocial behaviors such as fighting, stealing, deceiving, and even killing. The players who spend time with these games will learn that antisocial behaviors are successful in resolving conflicts. Players become conditioned to use these antisocial behaviors in order to be successful in the game, and this learning may carry over into their real lives.

How important are competitive interactive platforms to you? Try working through Exercise 12.1 to take an inventory of your playing experiences. If you never play digital games, then you cannot do Exercise 12.1, but do not ignore this issue. Instead, ask yourself why you have been avoiding them. Are all your needs currently being met by spending your time in other ways? Are there games that could help you develop skills you would find valuable? Are there games that could provide you with more emotional experiences?

Broader Concerns

The growing popularity of digital games, especially MMORPGs, is changing economies and societies. While there is little you can do as an individual to slow down these types of changes, you can position yourself to take advantage of these changes when you learn how to anticipate them.

One economic change that is likely to have major implications as we move into the future is the way people are shifting resources from the real world into digital worlds through gaming. When people spend their resources in virtual worlds, those resources get translated into currencies that are new and not well understood. For example, people create goods and services within a MMORPGs and are paid for those efforts within that game. This has generated new forms of money. Cyberworkers typically are not paid in real-world currencies but instead are paid in currencies that exist only in particular cyberworlds. This creates the need for new currency exchanges.

Often, game players will take the goods and services they produce inside a virtual world to a market outside that game world. This shift also transfers resources from the real world to virtual worlds and has the effect of reducing the vitality of real-world economies. Thus, the gross domestic product (GDP) of real-world economies would shrink while the cyberworld GDP would grow. It appears that this is already happening.

For example, Bitcoin is a cryptocurrency (form of money) that was invented in 2008 and is already used worldwide. Internet companies (such as Facebook, eBay, and Yahoo) accept it as well as real-world companies (such as AT&T, Fidelity, and Western Union). It is used in 100 countries, and in the U.S., over 200,000 companies accept it (Money Morning, 2013). Virtual currency is also attracting the attention of banks such as JP Morgan Chase, which filed for a U.S patent in 2013 to develop a payment system utilizing virtual cash.

When resources move back and forth between cyberworlds and the real world, it raises questions about taxation. The Internal Revenue Service, which collects federal taxes on income earned in the United States, is struggling to figure out how to tax income that Americans earn in virtual worlds. If someone works in a cyberworld producing virtual products but then sells those virtual products in the real world, should that income be taxed? If so, what country should do the taxing? Or what if people work in a cyberworld and barter those virtual resources for real-world products—should they be taxed as income? If so, how can we assess the value of those barter products in cyberworlds?

SUMMARY

Digital platforms offer a wide variety of competitive experiences for users. There is nothing inherently negative or positive in any of these experiences. Whether an experience is rendered negative or positive depends on how you engage with the platforms and how you use those platforms to achieve your own goals. When these platforms are used strategically as tools to provide you with experiences to satisfy your needs for arousal, emotion, building skills, and connecting with other people in meaningful and rewarding ways, they can be very valuable. However, when these platforms begin to dominate your life by consuming your resources while returning only frustration, false experiences, and isolation, they can be very harmful. The media literacy perspective offers you a way to make more conscious and more meaningful assessments about the degree to which various platforms are meeting your particular needs.

Digital games offer competitive experiences that lead to a wide range of effects, especially behavioral, affective, and cognitive. Although research into the phenomenon of digital games is relatively new, there is already a considerable amount of evidence that these games trigger attraction to the game and that continual game playing reinforces this attraction, even to the point of addiction. The games are emotionally arousing; players are drawn deeper into the play and experience feelings of enjoyment and aggression. The game-playing experience also triggers all sorts of cognitions, especially perceptions of immersion, flow, control, and competency.