WHO to classify 'gaming addiction' as mental health disorder

[dlevere]

Video games are an acceptable way to entertain oneself and pass time. But over indulgence could mean a mental health disorder, says the World Health Organization.

http://www.nydailynews.com/life-styl...icle-1.3721762

[Combusto Dragon]

i now play games for 1 or 2 hours, not 100 hours

[bungholio]

If people had more enjoyable and better things to do, they probably wouldn't be glued to games. At the same time, game makers are starting to make all of their games to draw people in, play faaaaaaaar longer, and encourage them to buy all of these stupid little loot boxes and tiny worthless things to milk people. There was a point in time were you wouldn't really find much of any games that would keep you playing longer than a month because you didn't need to, you've explored all there is and unlocked and experienced all there is. If you're going to declare the addiction a disease, start looking at these game developers too because they are heavily into it. It's not a coincidence every game is turning into a massive open world map with a thousand side missions and a bunch of DLC and loot boxes and whatever else with online, it's heavily helping to create the addiction. If you're not looking at how the games are designed, then it's about as goofy as calling every drug addiction an addiction and completely ignoring the suppliers like they are in no way at fault for it.


Know what I like about modifying games? I'm not grinding 1000+ hours for stupid crap when I can get everything as needed when I feel the need. Make a bunch of multipliers for experience/money and stuff gained, have all items, unlocks all abilities, get all maximum upgrades, get any equipment you want. It's a cure for the disease and shouldn't be treated like a crime, but it is because that cuts into profits from people making mindless endless garbage to keep you addicted and continually paying. The game makers are the ones that came up with DLC, pay to play, online, all that. I make no effort to help make the situation worse, but a possible good side effect of crappy online cheaters is they chase people out of games and kill the addiction so maybe they'll hopefully go do something more useful with their life than spend years upgrading to max level on some online junk like prestige or whatever in Call Of Duty and whatever else. Some games have become less games and more like the equivalent of sitting at a slot machine constantly feeding in the coins while on meth slowly getting a tiny bit more out of that slot machine. I'm all for praising short single player experiences like Resident Evil 7. It's a short experience that isn't the best financial choice for the creators, but it is good for the players to not sit there wasting their lives for months and years.


I also get the benefit of seeing a little BS from modding games, like ALL of the DLC is right there on the game disk. I'm kind of fine with paying for a bit more content, but it needs a name change because if it's right there on the disk and I bought the disk, it's mine and I'm not paying extra. I also don't like messing with menus only to see the DLC that was slowly released over a year's worth of time was there from the beginning, just removed and sold separately. I'm kind of fine with it, but I'd like them to be up front and honest about it rather than lying about it. Game modding proves there's some BS. I got all of the DLC from Disgaea D2 A Brighter Darkness because it was all on the disk as they released it, same for Warriors Orochi 3 and Ultimate and whatever others I've forgotten, and I just got to see Resident Evil 6 had all the menus and stuff in place for mercenaries proving to me they already had the content, they just removed it and sold it in separate portions later.


When I look at how games have changed since the old days, it's looking bad to me. The Gamecube/PS2/Xbox generations were about the last generations free of this BS. It slowly started going to crap in the PS3/Wii/Xbox 360 generation, and now here at the PS4/Switch/Xbox One generation there's almost no point in even looking for anything good anymore because most of it is made to milk as much time and money out of you as possible while giving back as little as possible in return. By the time these consoles are through, I'm sure if I ever bothered playing the games, I'd probably find less than 50 of the thousands that weren't addiction inducing money milking garbage devoid of anything useful or interesting. I know it's not the easiest to continually come up with new and fresh content and ideas, awesome stories, and keep up with the graphical technology whatever junk, but this current generation is just sucking so far. I can't seem to move past the PS3.


I also forgot how much it annoys me when I see friends mindlessly grinding for trophies. Play 1000+ hours for things trophy, kill 10,000+ enemies for this, rescue 1000 allies, whatever. Worthless time wasting garbage. These new consoles can just go in the garbage and we need to go back to good old board games or something, this garbage is isolating us in rooms on a microphone and anonymity making people into lonely worthless time wasting fools. I hope my codes are getting people through these time wasting junkers with less frustration so people can continue on with more meaningful and better things in life. Go visit friends and family, have a good time. Don't sit in a room grinding on stupid trophies and trying to be an online shit-talker hiding in anonymity online with a microphone, it's just destroying people's minds.

[dlevere]

I'm playing this Blackjack game on my phone that is highly addictive.

[bungholio]

Nooooooooooooooooooooooooooo! We'll never see you again! We've lost another soul to the addiction.

[dlevere]

Yup, just got done playing it.