Contextualizing Pathological Gaming – A Proof-of-Concept Study

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Boonen Casper S. Christiansen Mikkel V. Ilsøe Agnete W. Staunstrup Marie M. Lundedal Nielsen Rune Kristian
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

In 2013, “Internet Gaming Disorder” (IGD) was proposed as a formal disorder, by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). We present the results of a qualitative interview study wherein we apply a screening tool to “gaming professionals”. We compare our subjects’ perception of their own gaming habits, with how they are scored by a questionnaire and discuss where and how they differ or overlap. Our results indicate that screening tools designed to measure game addiction may not measure what they are intended to measure. Questionnaire items that are not properly contextualized may over-pathologize otherwise healthy players without appropriate context. The context of the individual’s everyday life is crucial to understanding and evaluating their relationship to gaming. We argue, that de-contextualized questionnaire items are insufficient to gauge whether a given behaviour is problematic and if those problems are best understood as an addiction or something else.

 

Are Loot Boxes Gambling? Random reward mechanisms in video games

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Lundedal Nielsen Rune Kristian Grabarczyk Paweł
2018 DiGRA '18 - Proceedings of the 2018 DiGRA International Conference: The Game is the Message

In this paper we investigate the phenomenon colloquially known as “loot boxes” or “loot crates”. Loot boxes became a hot topic towards the end of 2017 when several legislative bodies proposed that they were essentially gambling mechanisms and should therefore be legislated as such. We argue that the term “loot box” and the phenomena it covers are not sufficiently precise for academic use and instead introduce the notion of “random reward mechanisms” (RRMs). We offer a categorization of RRMs, which distinguishes between RRMs that are either “isolated” from real world economies or “embedded” in them. This distinction will be useful in discussion about loot boxes in general, but specifically when it comes to the question of whether or not they represent instances of gambling. We argue that all classes of RRMs have gambling-like features, but that only one class can be considered to be genuine gambling.

 

Leaving a Never-Ending Game: Quitting MMORPGs and Online Gaming Addiction

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Lee Ichia Yu Chen-Yi Lin Holin
2007 DiGRA '07 - Proceedings of the 2007 DiGRA International Conference: Situated Play

Online game addiction has a negative image and is becoming a public concern in Taiwan. We look at this phenomenon from another perspective, through interviews with gamers who were addicted to a MMORPG but have quit playing, we believe that the multiple reasons causing gamers to leave their game can reflect some more aspects of online game addiction. We then map out how a gamer’s attachment to a game changes over time due to many factors, stressing the importance of dynamic quitting and addiction patterns to better understand the addicted gamer’s game experience over time. Lastly, we observed self consciousness in these addicted players as they selfmonitored and sought help in many ways to quit a game. We hope this study will be useful for researchers who are trying to better understand online game addiction.

 

Is Electronic Community an Addictive Substance?

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Chee Florence Smith Richard
2003 DiGRA '03 - Proceedings of the 2003 DiGRA International Conference: Level Up

In this study, we examine how online games, like the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) EverQuest, are represented and controlled through media rhetoric. We look at international attempts to regulate their use through policy, and unearth some of the ways in which media reports have constructed public opinion of online games. We then contrast those reports with an ethnographic study of the EverQuest environment. The analysis of game experience and informant testimony shows that regulation and control of games is ultimately not a correct course of action in order to heal social dysfunction, of which excessive participation in electronic communities is only a symptom.

 

Understanding Korean experiences of online game hype, identity, and the menace of the “Wang-tta”

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Chee Florence
2005 DiGRA '05 - Proceedings of the 2005 DiGRA International Conference: Changing Views: Worlds in Play

This paper presents an ethnographic analysis of case studies derived from fieldwork that was designed to consider the different ways Korean game players establish community online and offline. I consider ways online game hype and identity are formed by looking at Korean PC game rooms as “third places,”, and activities associated with professional and amateur gaming. A synthesis of the Korean concept “Wang-tta” provides extra insight into the motivations to excel at digital games and one of the strong drivers of such community membership. Korea’s gaming society has many unique elements within the interplay of culture, social structure, and infrastructure.