Games Industry Asks WHO to Hold Fire on "Gaming Disorder"

Megalith

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The gaming industry is pushing back against the World Health Organization (WHO), which plans to legitimize “gaming disorder” as a genuine medical condition. While the agency insists gaming addiction is real, industry veterans are calling the classification a rushed decision that unfairly puts the hobby in a bad light.

The ESA called for “more conversation and education” before any classification was finalized. The WHO defined the disorder as when gaming takes over people’s lives for a year or more to the detriment of other activities and the “continuation or escalation of gaming despite the occurrence of negative consequences.” It said another meeting this year with the industry body was tentatively planned, but the dialogue did not imply collaboration with the games makers.
 
The World Health Organization.
Another group that's been infested with groupthink.

Everything's bad for you.
Everything is a disease.
Everything should be curable.
Just give us more money you fucking stupid sickos!
 
Lack of parenting disorder.

Meh, it's easy to blame parents, but what about the bulk of these addicts? Men in their 20s and 30s?

Incel disorder? 4Channers disease?

I think the truth is that anything can be addictive if it makes the right chemicals in your brain jump. Giving all of these different addictions different names makes them easier to treat, I guess. I honestly don't know if treating a video game addiction is any different to treating a gambling addiction, EA, 2K and Blizivision try to get both going at the same time.
 
Do they call it a diseases when people work like slaves for minimum wage more than half of their weeks and it
takes over people’s lives for a year or more to the detriment of other activities and the “continuation or escalation of working at that job despite the occurrence of negative consequences.” ?
 
The WHO does a lot of good, but from a medical perspective the current parameters for "gaming disorder" are too varied and preliminary. Various countries and their respective medical groups all seem to have glommed onto the idea that "gaming disorder" in some form is a possibility, but the parameters of the disease and the treatment can vary incredibly. This has left the likes of China starting to commit "overgaming" kids to essentially boot camps (and some may describe them even less favorably) that are residential programs, often without in depth or quality psychiatric help . Others even here in the states are starting "gaming addiction" treatment centers as the latest hot thing, often run by the same sleazy types who stand to profit from the "opioid crisis" and own questionable addiction treatment centers that have been popping up all over the place.

The approaches can vary wildly and the supposed underlying cause for "gaming disorder" varies too, from simply being a "lack of discipline" or other nonsense to it being like any sort of psychological addition (which I consider it to be the most likely case), to those who claim there's something that makes it distinct from other psychological addictions (including those like gambling which are closely related) sufficiently . We should really spend more time nailing down the particulars and then come forth with a well researched set of diagnosis criteria (and ideally, multiple forms and variations) before we standardize on anything
 
When in doubt point to money as that's why the World Health Organization is deciding to make it a legit disorder. Doing too much of something isn't necessarily a bad thing unless you're talking about stuff like drugs and alcohol. If people gave up on life for gaming then it's a deeper issue than playing games. Depression and other such mental disorders are usually the main cause, with gaming used as a coping mechanism. Take away the coping mechanism without solving the actual problem and then we have people turning to drugs and alcohol. Fix the problem not the symptom.
 
Sounds like a blanket term.

You can't tell me that someone forgetting they have a real child and them dying, or literally dying at the keyboard, or attempting bodily harm from an interruption of an online server doesn't deserve a new classification.

However like almost all things in moderation probally 90% are fine, playing 4-12 hours a week and fully function like people who drink alcohol, smoke, drive excessively fast, jump off tall stuff, take out loans, or sniff random objects . it can become a mental health issue and a new diagnostic would allow insurence to better cover the therapy.....


I think thats where they are going with it.

However there is always an organization that will warp it into something bad.
 
I'm addicted to chocolate and I'm waiting for my addiction to be declared a legit disorder.
That way I can claim it as a disability and retire early with a nice disability check. :rolleyes:
 
gaming is not a disorder, its a choice of what one wants to do with there free time
 
this is all part of the CONTROL OVER OTHERS thing humans are oh so good at.
 
I put addiction in the same category as allergies. I don't need an entirely new category for 'gaming' addiction anymore then I need an entire category for dandelion allergy. In both cases, the solution is to avoid the items/activities that cause the problem. Given several billion samples, pretty sure you can find someone that is addicted to almost anything you name just the same as being able to find someone allergic to substance X.

Don't punish the majority for which gaming isn't addictive because a few can't control themselves.
 
addictions are considered disease. some disease grant social security benefits. Hold fire indeed. bad medicine award huge money in lawsuit. games industry next?

i played games ALOT and now as an adult i barely function in any social setting. autistic child? aftermath of games addiction?
 
When do they recognize "Facebook disorder"?
Or social media disorder. I was sitting in a room of friends a few weeks ago. We all hadn’t seen each other in a while. Everyone was on their fucking phones the whole time, faces buried in their screens, nobody talking to each other. It’s gotten mind-bogglingly stupid.

As for gaming addiction ... it can get pretty bad. I had a buddy on WoW that played at least 15 hours a day for the last 10 years. :/ He always avoided social gatherings because he always said he had a raid to do. He lost all his friends and his wife to that game.
 
You guys are probably gonna love this. At least it's not on the same page as gender dysphoria:

Source:
American Psychiatric Association: Internet Gaming

"The DSM-5 notes that gaming must cause "significant impairment or distress" in several aspects of a person's life. This proposed condition is limited to gaming and does not include problems with general use of the internet, online gambling, or use of social media or smartphones. The proposed symptoms of internet gaming disorder include:

  • Preoccupation with gaming
  • Withdrawal symptoms when gaming is taken away or not possible (sadness, anxiety, irritability)
  • Tolerance, the need to spend more time gaming to satisfy the urge
  • Inability to reduce playing, unsuccessful attempts to quit gaming
  • Giving up other activities, loss of interest in previously enjoyed activities due to gaming
  • Continuing to game despite problems
  • Deceiving family members or others about the amount of time spent on gaming
  • The use of gaming to relieve negative moods, such as guilt or hopelessness
  • Risk, having jeopardized or lost a job or relationship due to gaming
Under the proposed criteria, a diagnosis of internet gaming disorder would require experiencing five or more of these symptoms within a year. The condition can include gaming on the internet, or on any electronic device, although most people who develop clinically significant gaming problems play primarily on the internet."

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Video games don't change the brain, or the structure of it and how it works, therefore like everything else that isn't a chemical substance with those properties it is not a real addiction.

People have lost their minds.
 
Video games don't change the brain, or the structure of it and how it works, therefore like everything else that isn't a chemical substance with those properties it is not a real addiction.

People have lost their minds.
And yet, it does.
I could take out video games in your stament and replace it with gambling... No sensible person would agree with you.
 
I have a few real addictions in life:
Coffee (caffeine). If I don't drink it, I get terrible headaches and feel like crap. I did force myself to break from it several years ago. Took about a week before I got over the physical withdrawal symptoms. (And when I resumed, man did it feel great the first few hits!)
Food. We do have physical requirements to consume food to survive. My problem is I over consume. I've been working on this for a few years - I have lost weight but need to lose more. My problem: it just tastes damn good. I ate 16 oz of pistachios yesterday. Probably 8 servings?

I'd say video games (really, I'll use the bucket term electronics) could be real. I've known a few people that likely had problems with it. This lady I'm related to has an addiction to social media. She is constantly on her phone. I blocked her from my social media accounts (which I rarely even use). She got fired from a job recently for using her phone while she was supposed to be working.
 
I put addiction in the same category as allergies. I don't need an entirely new category for 'gaming' addiction anymore then I need an entire category for dandelion allergy. In both cases, the solution is to avoid the items/activities that cause the problem. Given several billion samples, pretty sure you can find someone that is addicted to almost anything you name just the same as being able to find someone allergic to substance X.

Don't punish the majority for which gaming isn't addictive because a few can't control themselves.

Lol, you think allergies can be easily avoided? You should do some research before you make yourself look like....
 
WHO = Hey, we found something else to label, we're legit, give us more government money.

Humans form addictions, focus the money on people who want help instead. You can't help people who don't want help. Seriously though, in the end it comes down to you, take control and go do something else. I played everquest 8-12 hours a day for about 4 years. One day something clicked and I was like fuck this shit, logged out and never logged back in. I moved on to other addictions.
 
Do they call it a diseases when people work like slaves for minimum wage more than half of their weeks and it
takes over people’s lives for a year or more to the detriment of other activities and the “continuation or escalation of working at that job despite the occurrence of negative consequences.” ?

Actually yes, it's very similar to the effects of overtime, can affect cognitive ability, and comes with a list of mental, physical and social problems. Which is why it's detrimental to societies to have this kind of worker abuse become the norm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_overtime

Sadly that's not well regulated in many states or across many professions here.
 
Actually yes, it's very similar to the effects of overtime, can affect cognitive ability, and comes with a list of mental, physical and social problems. Which is why it's detrimental to societies to have this kind of worker abuse become the norm:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Effects_of_overtime

Sadly that's not well regulated in many states or across many professions here.
Worker abuse is the norm at minimum wage works.
I see regularly news about regulating video games but rarely anything to improve worker conditions, that's my problem.
 
... from a medical perspective the current parameters for "gaming disorder" are too varied and preliminary. ...the parameters of the disease and the treatment can vary incredibly.
I think that's true for just about every new psychological disorder, and has been since the dawn of time.
What do you think of treatments against female "hysteria"?
What about the treatment of "shell shock"?
 
I think that's true for just about every new psychological disorder, and has been since the dawn of time.
What do you think of treatments against female "hysteria"?
What about the treatment of "shell shock"?

Ironically, it has at time been our biases against those psychological phenomena that are the problem, often causing unfair characterization of the illnesses based on fallacious hypotheses. All the more reason we should be careful not to just stamp a label on it as a unique phenomenon, because doing so will basically stamp many patients with that same label which can often be harmful. Look at how we've learned to understand more about Autism (which is a group of symptoms more than anything) all the various subtypes (ie Asperger's Syndrome), and the patient-unique underlying causes (ie genetic, environmental substance introduction, immune reaction and/or direct effects of a pathogen, and more) some of which we don't even really understand as of yet (ie for some patients, subtle gut dysbiosis can cause autistic symptoms among other issues and healing the gut - which is way, way more complex than we ever believed even just a couple of years ago - helps the patient ). Our understanding of "shell shock" has evolved over the years along with the names (ie battle fatigue, post traumatic stress disorder ) and the early days of stamping a label created by the "best medical/psychological minds" could be harmful when it for a time was thought to indicate cowardice or mental weakness. Lets not forget that there was a time when "uncooperative" patients with all sorts of mental (or in some cases physical causing mental symptoms) illnesses were dunked into icy water, repeatedly given electro-convulsive therapy, or lobotomized needlessly.

Thus, we should learn from the past. "Gaming disorder" is too broad and can come from too many different places so to speak. Escapism, compulsion, stress behavior etc. The last thing we need is someone who runs a study and finds that one treatment seems viable for one underlying cause of gaming disorder, but it is announced both in the academic community and especially the lay community as a breakthrough "Gaming Disorder thought to be caused by lack of personal discipline. Rigorous discipline and consequence-based training in residential programs seems to be viable treatment". Now there is a supposed causal link and a supposed standard of care, which is actually harmful when applied to those with other causes of "gaming disorder" (ie those who play due to escapism , stress or anxiety are going to be made even worse throwing them into a bootcamp where they get screamed at, get told to "just focus into productive areas", and are harshly introduced to time management). This will eventually come out, but think of all the people harmed in the meantime because they jumped the gun and created a specific diagnosis for something that , in absence of any unique data, hasn't been shown to be different from other psychological additions.

There's nothing wrong with saying that the Internet or computer gaming are both actions that can psychologically addicting and/or the expression or focus of certain issues, but we should be very careful in how we proceed, I' think.
 
For many people, video games are probably a helluva lot more enjoyable than the real world.

Even if we just look at it from a purely financial standpoint, it's so much cheaper to spend $1500 on a gaming rig and a few hundred a year on games that you get THOUSANDS of hours out of than it is to spend money on real activities. If you are trying to be budget conscious, save for retirement, avoid wasting money, etc video games can be the ticket. I don't game much anymore, but Iong for the days when I'd just play Diablo 3 for an entire weekend and not spend a dime. Even basic activities with friends end up costing $50 or more when all is said and done for only a few hours.

That's just a financial perspective. It's hard to want to do other shit costs you money.
 
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