Historically, the days of shelling out £40 – £50 on a single, complete game and then going off and enjoying it at no further cost are diminishing. Sales figures point to an acutely sharp decline in the number of big gaming publishing houses producing Triple A titles (Robinson 2013). That said, “Grand Theft Auto V” became the fastest selling game of all time in 2013 and the end of the previous year saw the release of Sony and Microsoft’s next generation of consoles, so we can safely say that we will continue to see this sales model over the next few years, at least.
From the wings, however, the free-to-play model has blossomed, initially being a hit on mobiles and social networks, and now being increasingly popular on PCs. Free-to-play games are, shockingly, actually free-to-play, with additional features, resources, power-ups and customization available to all gamers… provided they are prepared to pay. Typically these virtual goods will be inexpensive and transient; you pay a seemingly insignificant amount of money, get a temporary boost that you can use once or twice in the game and then it’s gone. A common combination is to offer a free-to-play game with an appointment system, such that players are frequently asked to wait in order to progress, but have the option to pay in order to speed things along. Some powerful examples of current free-to-play games are “Candy Crush Saga” (whose otherworldly revenue we have already mentioned), “Planetside 2” and “World of Tanks”.
Free-to-play relies partly upon a small number of users making frequent, minimal purchases. More importantly, it relies upon an even smaller number of users, termed ‘whales’, sinking an inordinate amount of money into virtual goods. It is widely understood that in order to make a game such as this profitable, there needs to be an infinite number of huge purchases that a minority of gamers can make without them running out of content to play through. This is typically achieved by pitching said gamers against one another, culminating in an arms race where, arguably, only the developers are victorious. “Clash of Clans” is an excellent example of a game that uses this model, with some users dropping literally thousands of dollars a month into the game (Rigney 2012).
The sinister undertone of the free-to-play business model is that it potentially depends upon pathological or addictive gaming in order to reach financial success. This is a growing concern, particularly in Japan, where they have begun to create laws to catch some of what they consider to be more devious mechanics within free-to-play games. Increasingly, attention is drawn to the huge amounts of money that users can easily pump into these games. For many players, this is a potential criterion for addiction – increasing numbers of gamers are finding that their need to compensate for what is missing in their lives through their gaming is now resulting in a hefty financial cost, much like pathological gambling.
These new forms of gaming, appointment and free-to-play, are arguably not problematic in themselves, much the same as hardcore gaming. Someone stealing several hours of their day to play “Clash of Clans” on their tablet is not a problem, per se, and we need to be aware that the bulk of the existing (although potentially outdated) research out there points the finger at the young male playing online hardcore games as the most frequent of the video game addicts. However, if that person fails to pick up their daughter because they need to raid that last bit of gold, or finds themselves unable to heat their house because they have spent increasingly more on virtual gems to grow their clan, then there is a serious issue that needs resolving. For those few that can’t control the way they interact with these new forms of gaming, they will need to address their lifestyle just as any hardcore gamer would.
Is This Just About Men?
While it is less and less the case that gaming is a male only pastime, boys that game to addicted levels still outnumber the equivalent girls by a whopping 50 percent (Gentile et al 2009). This forms part of a wider picture described by thinkers such as Sax and Zimbardo who believe there to be a large-scale disillusionment in the young men of today; both these writers consider video games to be one of the core reasons for this.
Games are still largely made by men for men. Women still feature relatively scarcely in game design teams. I remember a woman joining our team after about a year of my working as a game designer in Brighton. This particular artist was, by virtue of her gender, a novelty. If one is to discount certain, more female-populated roles such as art, HR and marketing teams, you are left with programming and design, two areas of the industry that are almost entirely populated by men. Exceptions exist, such as Robin Hunicke of “The Sims”, but these roles are nearly all taken up by males, a situation that is, gradually and thankfully, changing. As a result of the gender skew in development, there is a bias toward games fulfilling exclusively male fantasies, which explains the dominance of action and violence in hardcore gaming.
There is a further concern that the lack of male role models for young men has caused their mass flight into gaming. As the character of Tyler Durden said in “Fight Club”, “We are a generation of men raised by women, the last thing we need is another woman” (though that was all the way back in the ‘90s). Is it the case that many guys grow up without having a clear sense of how to be a man? Robert Bly in Iron John poetically tells us that ‘soft’ men today have lost touch with the sense of the primitive ‘wild man’. He describes the few fathers that are present in households as being bumbling fools in the background (Bly 1990) – an image that is repeated time and time again in primetime sitcoms (“The Simpsons”, “Malcolm in the Middle”, “Modern Family”, “My Family”). Zimbardo certainly links this to gaming addiction, saying that “guys become confused about what acceptable male behaviour is” and find themselves, post feminism, struggling to direct the violent fantasies that naturally occur for them (Zimbardo 2012). The hack and slash of video games, in Zimbardo’s opinion, offer an outlet for these feelings and become all consuming.
Games offer a primarily male nirvana – a playground of violence and heroics that has no tangible consequences. Being young has, over the centuries, probably become harder as much as it has become easier, but the ways in which we are able to manage and cope with this have changed dramatically. For boys, the classic hardcore form of gaming is a tailor-made outlet. For women the gaming industry is quickly developing to catch up with their interests. As a result it is prudent to consider video game addiction as being a pan-gender issue.
CHAPTER ONE
The Damage of Video Game Addiction
Nearly every day there are new articles published about video game addiction. These range from the mildly concerned to the outright scare-mongering. It is very difficult to know exactly what is at risk when a gamer plays too much, or more importantly, plays to the point of becoming addicted. This chapter seeks to bring together some of the evidence and give a realistic overview of the short and long-term risks of someone being addicted to video games.
Gaming addiction, at its most severe, can have a harmful effect on a person’s wellbeing. While there are a range of ways in which this can happen, the damage is most acute in how it affects a person’s relationship with others. It can limit confidence in social interactions as well as creating tension, alienation and conflict within a household.
There is relatively little physical risk associated with gaming too much; typically what harm is done to the body is minimal and only affects a small percentage of addicted gamers. Symptoms that do occur include: insomnia, poor attention span, motion sickness, headaches, dry eyes, muscle pains, various repetitive strain injuries, and auditory hallucinations. All of the above conditions will typically pass once the gamer ceases to game so frequently (King 2013b). There are instances where gaming has been linked to epilepsy. This is something that the gaming industry has had to address in the way