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Kristal Robertson
Benjamin Villarreal
English 112
December 6, 2017
Addicting to Videos Games: Is it considered an Addiction?
According to Psychology Today “addiction is a condition that results when a person
ingests a substance (e.g., alcohol, cocaine, nicotine) or engages in an activity (e.g.,
gambling, sex, shopping) that can be pleasurable but the continuation of which becomes
compulsive and interferes with ordinary responsibilities and concerns, such as work,
relationships, or health”. Additionally, addiction is a complex condition, a brain disease that is
manifested by compulsive substance use despite harmful consequence. With all these definitions
can one say playing video games is an addiction?
Firstly, what is video game addiction? According to Addiction Recovery “Video game
addiction is described as an impulse control disorder, which does not involve use of an
intoxicating drug and is very similar to pathological gambling.” They continues and stated
“video game addiction has also been referred to as video game overuse, pathological or
compulsive/excessive use of computer games and/or video games. Those suffering from video
game addiction may use the Internet to access massively multi-player online role-playing games
(MMORPGs) and multi-user domain games (MUDs). MMORPGs are networks of people, all
interacting with one another to play a game to achieve goals, accomplish missions, and reach
high scores in a fantasy world”
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Growing up, playing video games was one of the ways we used to have fun, because of
the adventure, the goal, the competition despite the game you’re playing. Based on my
observations most person will break out of the habit of playing video games at a certain age, but
there is a high level of adults being addicted to playing video games. Not just any regular video
games but mostly the online video games where they can interact with other gamers. This project
will give me full insight to person addiction and what are their back-ground story and what lead
them to being addicted.
Therefore, I want to answer these questions
1. What are the reasons for being addicted?
2. What are the consequences of being addicted?
3. How does being addicted impact your life?
Everyone has reasons for their addiction, there is always a cause for everything, most of
these persons who are addicted always had a nice life, then they are faced with a blow and turn to
video game. (Fahey) stated in his article that his life was going well, a lovely wife, serviceable
vehicle, and a good paying job. Everything was going great for him and he had no interest in
video games. He would just watch his roommate play video games and hang out with his
girlfriend. Then his blow hit him, he broke up with his girlfriend and he was depressed. His
roommate bought him a video game to cheer him up, after playing he became addicted to the
video game. Therefore, his reason for being addicted was because he was depressed about the
break up and he needed something to take his mind off it.
There are other persons who were addicted because of other reasons for example Jack Perry.
At the time he loved playing football and was hoping for a career in the field. He confessed his
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addiction to (Woods) in which Woods wrote an article about it. It all started when his parents
bought him is first Xbox and he started playing and was quite fond of it. He admits that the
reason for his addiction was because he was angry with his parents for being away so much and
it was also an escape from reality.
This also correlates with (Coates) because he plays video games as an escape from reality
and real life. At the time when he started he was going through a challenging time, his son had
just born, and his wife was faced with pregnancy related problems. Also, he had been fired from
his job and that causes his rent to be habitually late. Therefore, he turns to videos games, so he
could not face all the problems he had.
But what exactly they are escaping from? For Jack he just couldn’t bare the fact that is
