Boston Globe Discovers Video Game Addiction

The Boston Globe has an intriguing question and answer session up with Dr. Jerald Block, who specializes in online video game addiction.

Block, a psychiatrist in Portland, Ore., recently wrote an editorial in the American Journal of Psychiatry arguing that Internet Addiction should become a new diagnostic term.

It's interesting to read his thoughts and them to compare it to the things being said by the psychiatrists I interviewed back in 1999 when I wrote a story about how researchers think that Internet and Sex addiction are very similar. Back then a David Greenfield, director for the Center of Internet Studies, told me that the Internet was addictive and that that particular form of addiction was nearing a national epidemic... yet somehow we survived.

Unlike the Globe's story, my 1999 story has at least one well-known psychology researcher arguing that obsessive use of the internet isn't really about addiction, but curiosity of a new technology.

Block, who has some genuinely interesting ideas, also talks about the tie between school shooters and compulsive computer use, making sure not to say that computers cause violence.

BLOCK: With these shooters, their last act was to turn against their own computers. As a psychiatrist, I think that's relevant.

'Craft Addicts: Do online games trigger a new psychiatric disorder? [Boston Globe]

Playing the (Harvest Moon) Field

Virtual Crack House Aids Drug Rehab

As a gamer, I've been through many virtual-reality crack houses in my time, usually with guns blazing. Duke University professor Zach Rosenthal, however, has an entirely different way of dealing with crackheads in virtual reality - curing them.

"What we're trying to do is take people into a virtual crack-related neighborhood or crack-related setting and have them experience cravings, just like they would in the real world," Rosenthal said.

When I met with Nick Yee last week to discuss his fight against The Barbarians at the Gate, we ended up going down a lot of tangents. One of the more interesting ones was his paper on superstitions in massively multiplayer online games.

Yee told me about how MMOS, which he says are in many ways a fancy Skinner Box, create a lot of odd superstitions in gamers. Not superstitions in the spiritual or religious since, but repeated behaviors driven by strong beliefs that doing one thing will lead to a certain outcome, despite evidence to the contrary.

A good example of this sort of non-religious superstition is a study B.F. Skinner did in which he instilled superstition of this sort into pigeons by feeding them pellets every 15 seconds no matter what they did. After several days each pigeon had developed its own independent superstition about what produced this manna from heaven. One though circling clockwise was necessary, another that it had to attack a spot on the cage to get the pellets. Gamers do the same thing, it seems.

Reuters has an interesting story up about MindHabits Trainer, a game developed by researchers at McGill University in Montreal which is meant to cut down on your stress, increase your confidence and make you a happier person.

The very simple game get you to look at a series of pictures and click on the faces that are smiling, avoiding the frowners. By doing this five to ten minutes a day the game has shown to help people feel less stressed and have higher self esteem.

I played around with the game this morning and find it very interesting. There are actually four different games, all of which are about getting you to accentuate the positive in your mind. I could totally see something like this hitting the DS. It seems like a perfect fit.

Online game smiles seen vanquishing the blues [ZDnet, thanks to my big bro Drew]

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