II. Points for discussion
1. Is the article in question similar to the previous English article? In what
way?
2. Why do modern video games become more and more violent?
3. Have you played any of the cited games? Do you enjoy playing
computer games? Do action games teach you violence?
4. Is it possible to explain to a teenager that violent video games should be
abandoned? Are teenagers likely to give up games off their own will?
5. Do all violent games influence teens in the same way? Can parents do
anything in this respect?
6. Must the Russian government pass a certain law on computer games or
is it an overreaction?
I CAN’T STOP PLAYING ANY TIME I WANT
Videogames have an addictive quality. Does this mean we’re hooked
“Games are custom-tailored to get the attention of the human brain “
Early this August a 28-year-old South Korean man died of heart failure after playing the computer game Starcraft for 50straight hours. Wren the story hit the wires, you could almost hearall the parents of teenage gamers across the planet collectivelyshriek: "I told you so!"
Even the most ardent defenders of gaming culture—and I happen to be one—have to admit that videogames have an addictive power that is stronger than the siren songs of other media. You sit down to play Halo for a few minutes after dinner, and the next thing you know it's midnight. You find yourself daydreaming new strategies for your characters in The Sims while sitting through a meeting at work. Most of us manage to avoid the 50-hour marathons, of course, but even five straight hours of Starcraft is obsessive enough.
There's a neurological explanation for that addictiveness. The human brain is wired to respond strongly to situations that combine both the promise of reward and the exploration of new environments. The neuroscientist Jaak Panksepp, a professor emeritus at Bowling Green State University, calls this the "seeking circuitry" of the brain. Its evolutionary advantages are easy to understand: brains wired to search their environments for food or shelter or mates are more likely to survive and pass their genes on to the next generation. The seeking circuitry is largely controlled by the neurotransmitter dopamine, which also plays a crucial role in most addictive drugs.
Among all forms of popular entertainment, videogames are uniquely designed as hybrids of reward and exploration: you probe a virtual world, looking for a veritable treasure chest of prizes—access to new levels, new weapons, magic coins, special privileges. This is not the cognitive environment of movies or music or books—we don't "explore" these forms in anything but the more figurative sense of the word. Reward exploration is the defining experience of gaming, which means it is custom-tailored to attract the attention of die human brain. No wonder studies have shown that gameplay triggers dopamine release in the brain.
Here's where we need to be careful. Noting the connection between dopamine and gameplay is not reason to assume that videogames are the digital version of crack cocaine. Addictive drugs are dangerous because they alter the supply of neurotransmitters directly. Since we don't ingest videogames, they're limited in their immediate chemical power over the brain. Besides, many life experiences that we cherish and encourage in our kids activate the dopamine system. The high-school honors student who works hard to earn that A and her parents' praise—her drive for intellectual reward is triggering dopamine release in her brain as well. On some basic level, that's what her drive is.
Right now, of course, the virtual rewards of gaming tend to be childish or violent, though a growing number of games offer more sophisticated pleasures. But as the gaming generation grows up—the average player is now 29—those rewards will become less fanciful and escapist in nature. Ten years from now the line between real life and games will have blurred significantly. Saying that someone is "addicted" to a game will sound as odd as saying someone is addicted to having friends, or keeping up with his extended family.
People spend so much time in multiplayer games like EverQuest and the burgeoning communities of There and Second Life not because they want to finish the game the way my generation wanted to make it all the way to the end of Рас-Man or Myst, but because they've literally become part of the world in which they live; die fate of their own characters has become emotionally tied to their own fate as human beings. And because these spaces are where they've made some of their closest friends, even if they've never seen them face to face. In 10 years, the idea of having a virtual avatar will be almost as commonplace as having a virtual address (think e-mail) is today.
Will that mean that we're "addicted" to these online environments? No more so than many of us today are addicted to talking on the phone. We readily accept the idea that the phone is a legitimate channel of communication, even though it compresses our voice into a pale imitation of itself and leaves the rest to the imagination. We've lived with the phone medium for long enough that it doesn't seem artificial anymore. We'll go through the same acclimation process with our on-screen avatars. No doubt there will be something playful in exploring these new spaces with our virtual friends. But it won't be a game.
Stephen Johnson
/Newsweek, Dec. 15, 2005/