(Blog) World Health Organization Fallacy. Or, how do I Psychology?
Videogames. What can be said about them? They are a fun and interactive gaming medium that immerses players into a world of adventure, action, coded in a way that will make people feel the accomplishment of challenging themselves and... basically just having a stress-reliever. It is a way that makes us feel comfort and joy during our down times.
So why then has there been so many controversial issues involving them? It is amazing how a majority of the controversy we seen in the past decade or two involves videogames in some ways. Many of these claims such as videogames are harmful to minors and it teaches children to become murders and killers when it has been proven many times to not be the case. (Case in point; mentally disturbed individuals suffering from bullying, domestic abuse, problems with school and peer-pressure.) Games were an outlet for them, and one could say it is a primary motivator. Bug I tend to disagree, as correlation does not equal causation. The wonders of Psychology.
Videogames teaches people to become sexual predators or that they are culturally offensive and politically insensitive, again disproved on several accounts. Some critics even try to attack the culture and community. If there is one thing mainstream media and the public does not understand is you can't bully the sleeping dragon.
So I bet you are probably wondering; where does the WHO and Gaming Disorder come in? SticksNTricks, this is the primary topic you wanted to discuss given your title.
Well... we're starting right now.
First let me get this out of the way and say; there are many contributing factors that lead to this atrocious claim of there being a mental disorder among people who play videogames. Let us dive into this rape upon basic psychology and why the World Health Organization does not know what the fuck they are talking about.
The issues of Video Gaming Disorder can be summed up into three parts. 1. Lootboxes 2. Competitive Multiplayer Games. 3. The majority audience.
About a year ago, it is an issue that is still a hot topic of debate even now. Videogames, especially multiplayer focused ones, have this mechanic which operates on the functions just like what a slot-machine would. These gambling mechanics are under the guise of mini-games meant to gauge players out of their money to make needless cosmetic or game enhancing performances in order to get ahead in the game. Players will spent time and money into a game they had already paid for, just to get that sweet sweet new sawn-off, dragon skinned shotgun in CSGO.
While EA primarily capitalized off of this concept, it was the likes of CSGO, TF2, DOTA 2 by Valve and Overwatch by Blizzard that employed these kind of marketing habits. There are people with addictive personalities, and there are folks that can be easily invested into the concept of pay-to-win of the sorts. These are not fun little game mechanics that improve the game experience. They are exploitative predatory practices developed by corporations that had caused a good noticeable amount of people, one by the alias of Kensgold, to pay for a game-of-chance to get an unlock-able hero or item or skin. Even going so far as to spend over 17K on these lootboxes.
What does this have to do with WHO and Gaming Disorder?
The Lootbox fiasco prompted a lot of controversy in Hawaii and even gotten the government involved. EA was treading on thin-ice, and making vague blanketed arguments in support for lootboxes did not impress any of the officials in Hawaii. This lead to the ESRB being changed up a bit to add 'ingame purchases' rather than classifying them as 'gambling.' Because Lootboxes were big in the money making field.
This is where the connection starts to come together though; the government's involvement (and lack of rectifying) the issue regarding Lootboxes, the fact that there are people with gambling addictions or people with addictive personalities exploited by lootboxes, drawn the attention of many people from the health-profession to videogames. This was all going on when Battle Royale games were becoming a thing.
Battle Royales are highly competitive, team-based or free-for-all where players climb through the ranks to beat the other players. Sounds familiar right? It's the multitude of game modes brought on by previous games such as Halo or Team Fortress 2. It wasn't new. It was just a game based around one particular type of game mode.
Fortnite capitalized off of what PUBG had started. Fortnite was free-to-play, and it brought in a large audience. Not just adults, but adolescents too. Considering we're still progressing in an age where parents are not taught how to properly care for or teach their children, and they will set them in front of a TV screen and let the cartoons babysit them. Considering cartoons appeal to a large general audience, not just the kids, you can see where the children's development patterns begin and where it will end.
The same can be said with videogames. Though it was not like ten years ago where everyone was worried about their kids playing videogames. Videogames were the next babysitters now. Gaming is a culture, while it is not as extreme enough to be made into a sport, the likes of which South Korea seems to encourage, leading to a sort of cultural and competitive obsession, I.E. Starcraft, Overwatch, League of Legends, DOTA 2, etc, videogames still tie to a community that players can socially interact in. People with addictive personalities or those who are competitive are more than likely to get drawn into games like these. The same can be said for kids, at their youngest age, becoming competitive and engaging in ranked matches in Fortnite and peeing themselves, or teenagers who become restless and even die after playing for over 40 hours straight. (Again, some ties to South Korean gaming culture.)
These three points could not have spurned any time later. Much later. The psychologist within me is practically banging my brain against my skull that the WHO could make such glaring mistakes in their findings. The gross misrepresentation of the situation we've been dealing with here for over six months now has reached to the point where Correlation =/= Causation is ignored and the organization is ready to just write this off as a mental disorder without even double checking their findings or consulting with psychological experts rubs me the wrong way.
I hope this situation can be rectified.
So why then has there been so many controversial issues involving them? It is amazing how a majority of the controversy we seen in the past decade or two involves videogames in some ways. Many of these claims such as videogames are harmful to minors and it teaches children to become murders and killers when it has been proven many times to not be the case. (Case in point; mentally disturbed individuals suffering from bullying, domestic abuse, problems with school and peer-pressure.) Games were an outlet for them, and one could say it is a primary motivator. Bug I tend to disagree, as correlation does not equal causation. The wonders of Psychology.
Videogames teaches people to become sexual predators or that they are culturally offensive and politically insensitive, again disproved on several accounts. Some critics even try to attack the culture and community. If there is one thing mainstream media and the public does not understand is you can't bully the sleeping dragon.
So I bet you are probably wondering; where does the WHO and Gaming Disorder come in? SticksNTricks, this is the primary topic you wanted to discuss given your title.
Well... we're starting right now.
First let me get this out of the way and say; there are many contributing factors that lead to this atrocious claim of there being a mental disorder among people who play videogames. Let us dive into this rape upon basic psychology and why the World Health Organization does not know what the fuck they are talking about.
The issues of Video Gaming Disorder can be summed up into three parts. 1. Lootboxes 2. Competitive Multiplayer Games. 3. The majority audience.
About a year ago, it is an issue that is still a hot topic of debate even now. Videogames, especially multiplayer focused ones, have this mechanic which operates on the functions just like what a slot-machine would. These gambling mechanics are under the guise of mini-games meant to gauge players out of their money to make needless cosmetic or game enhancing performances in order to get ahead in the game. Players will spent time and money into a game they had already paid for, just to get that sweet sweet new sawn-off, dragon skinned shotgun in CSGO.
While EA primarily capitalized off of this concept, it was the likes of CSGO, TF2, DOTA 2 by Valve and Overwatch by Blizzard that employed these kind of marketing habits. There are people with addictive personalities, and there are folks that can be easily invested into the concept of pay-to-win of the sorts. These are not fun little game mechanics that improve the game experience. They are exploitative predatory practices developed by corporations that had caused a good noticeable amount of people, one by the alias of Kensgold, to pay for a game-of-chance to get an unlock-able hero or item or skin. Even going so far as to spend over 17K on these lootboxes.
What does this have to do with WHO and Gaming Disorder?
The Lootbox fiasco prompted a lot of controversy in Hawaii and even gotten the government involved. EA was treading on thin-ice, and making vague blanketed arguments in support for lootboxes did not impress any of the officials in Hawaii. This lead to the ESRB being changed up a bit to add 'ingame purchases' rather than classifying them as 'gambling.' Because Lootboxes were big in the money making field.
This is where the connection starts to come together though; the government's involvement (and lack of rectifying) the issue regarding Lootboxes, the fact that there are people with gambling addictions or people with addictive personalities exploited by lootboxes, drawn the attention of many people from the health-profession to videogames. This was all going on when Battle Royale games were becoming a thing.
Battle Royales are highly competitive, team-based or free-for-all where players climb through the ranks to beat the other players. Sounds familiar right? It's the multitude of game modes brought on by previous games such as Halo or Team Fortress 2. It wasn't new. It was just a game based around one particular type of game mode.
Fortnite capitalized off of what PUBG had started. Fortnite was free-to-play, and it brought in a large audience. Not just adults, but adolescents too. Considering we're still progressing in an age where parents are not taught how to properly care for or teach their children, and they will set them in front of a TV screen and let the cartoons babysit them. Considering cartoons appeal to a large general audience, not just the kids, you can see where the children's development patterns begin and where it will end.
The same can be said with videogames. Though it was not like ten years ago where everyone was worried about their kids playing videogames. Videogames were the next babysitters now. Gaming is a culture, while it is not as extreme enough to be made into a sport, the likes of which South Korea seems to encourage, leading to a sort of cultural and competitive obsession, I.E. Starcraft, Overwatch, League of Legends, DOTA 2, etc, videogames still tie to a community that players can socially interact in. People with addictive personalities or those who are competitive are more than likely to get drawn into games like these. The same can be said for kids, at their youngest age, becoming competitive and engaging in ranked matches in Fortnite and peeing themselves, or teenagers who become restless and even die after playing for over 40 hours straight. (Again, some ties to South Korean gaming culture.)
These three points could not have spurned any time later. Much later. The psychologist within me is practically banging my brain against my skull that the WHO could make such glaring mistakes in their findings. The gross misrepresentation of the situation we've been dealing with here for over six months now has reached to the point where Correlation =/= Causation is ignored and the organization is ready to just write this off as a mental disorder without even double checking their findings or consulting with psychological experts rubs me the wrong way.
I hope this situation can be rectified.
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