Living in a virtual world
By Paul Breschuk
Features Editor
September 7, 2010
 With roughly 90 per cent of its households wired to the Internet, South Korea is one of the most tech and web savvy countries on the planet. It could also be considered the videogame capital of the world, with its ever-expanding gamer population changing the country’s cultural landscape while fueling an incredibly powerful entertainment industry.
Like moths to an electric light, young adults across South Korea swarm to the many Internet cafés known as “PC Baangs,” LAN gaming centres open 24 hours a day. Regular contests between the country’s top gamers are also staged in large arenas before tens of thousands of screaming fans. But in a country where professional gamers are worshipped like celebrities, there is also a darker, less glamorous side to the videogame phenomenon.
Disturbing news stories have been steadily trickling out of South Korea in recent years, shocking readers around the world with a variety of gaming-related tragedies. Topping the list of these sad and unusual tales is the story of a Suwon couple who cared more for their computer-based “virtual child” than their real-life infant. The three-month-old baby would eventually starve to death in March 2010 while the parents, like usual, spent the day in an Internet café.
Another story from February describes a 22-year-old beating his mother to death after she objected to his incessant gaming. After the murder, he callously used her credit card for just a few more hours of online fun.
Compulsive gamers in South Korea have also become a danger to themselves. In 2005, a 28-year-old man fatally collapsed after playing Starcraft for 50 hours at an Internet café in Taegu. He had taken very few breaks while neglecting to eat or drink. At another café near Seoul in 2002, a man died after an astonishing 86 hours of continuous gaming.
Such events have prompted South Korea’s Ministry of Culture to implement restrictions on playing times, working with game companies to shut down many online games from midnight to 8 a.m. The root of the problem, however, still remains. And it goes beyond South Korea.
Dr. Shavaun Scott, a Californian psychotherapist working with compulsive gamers, recalls a familiar-sounding story: “I had one case where a fifteen year old boy, while playing World of Warcraft for two days straight, beat up his mother after she tried to shut down his computer.”
A recovered gamer, herself, Dr. Scott has seen countless patients ignoring some of the most important, basic functions of life. “Education, work, and hygiene become an issue,” said Dr. Scott. “Some people stop bathing or brushing their teeth. They stop eating regularly, stop exercising, stop seeing friends, stop doing the normal kinds of recreation that they used to enjoy… There are people who stop working or lose their job because they are playing fifteen hours per day.”
Because gaming is an abstract activity which does not involve the consumption of any substances, professionals like Dr. Scott are hesitant to use the word, “addiction.” However, she still sees examples of functioning impairment as a sign that something is wrong.
“Whether the addiction is real or not is beyond the point,” said Dr. Scott. “If they are playing too much and it is impairing their life, then it is a problem.”
Her most common patients are college students kicked out of school for poor academic performance caused by excessive gaming. “Often it is a very depressed and isolated male whose friends have given up on him,” said Dr. Scott. “He does not have a girlfriend. His parents are angry and he is feeling confused and desperate.”
Not having a girlfriend, the young man Dr. Scott describes might instead have a “gamer widow.” These unfortunate ex-partners carry the widow title as an allusion to the symbolic death of who their pre-gaming loved ones used to be.
Their sad struggles can be observed through the message boards of gamerwidow.com, where partners and spouses try desperately to make sense of their own failing relationships. Its 3,000-plus forum topics, discussing uncovered gaming-based cyber infidelities and the inevitability of divorce, shows what is really happening behind the doors of many seemingly happy couples.
Dr. Scott believes the increased sophistication of massively multiplayer online games, known as MMOs, is what has caused compulsive gaming rates to skyrocket in recent years. Hugely popular games such as World of Warcraft, Eve Online, and EverQuest, simultaneously connect hundreds of thousands of players from around the world in a never-ending, real-time gaming environment. These online realms also offer perfect hideouts for gamers wanting to escape the real world.
Needless to say, the addictive quality of MMOs is incomparable to the meager videogames of the 1990s. Vying for our attention against these behemoths, Mario and Sonic would never stand a chance. Dr. Scott explains, “I think the difference with the MMO games is that they were designed with absolutely brilliant reinforcing systems.”
One of these systems is the process of “leveling up,” which basically means the more you play, the better your character gets. Naturally, this encourages users to match or even surpass the playing hours of fellow gamers which may also lead to a vicious cycle of competitive compulsion.
Still, the games themselves should not be blamed. According to Dr. Scott, “the problem is not necessarily the game, and not necessarily the gamers, but is really what happens when games that are structured to be highly immersive and reinforcing, very much like gambling, meet people with certain vulnerabilities.” This also sounds like gambling, where destructive pairings are simply made by sheer chance.
Unfortunately, gaming and gambling share another difficulty. Kevin Gomes, a UWindsor doctoral candidate in psychology, explains the double-edged sword of these addictions.
“It is actually quite challenging to kick an addiction where the object of your addiction lies on the Internet, since using the Internet, which is so necessary in our current societal state, becomes a trigger for your addiction,” explained Gomes.
But can gaming distinguish itself from gambling in its production of positive side-effects?
Mark Griffiths, professor of Gambling Studies at Nottingham Trent University, believes that gaming can have a positive effect on peoples’ lives. In his 2005 study, The Therapeutic Value of Videogames, he has found that games can make people feel psychologically better, raise self-esteem, release stress, and allow for important personal exploration. Other studies have shown gaming to help develop problem-solving and strategic thinking skills. Videogames are even being used to help desensitize returning combat veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder.
From benefits to detriments, gaming’s wide range of extremes reminds one of the old adage, “too much of anything is not a good thing.” The outcome, it seems, depends on how each gamer chooses to play his or her games. But where should we draw the line? What is acceptable and unacceptable? The rapid evolution of technology will only make this answer more elusive.
That so many gamers are retreating further and further into a virtual world is perhaps indicative of a wider sociological problem. Obviously, by continually increasing the amount of time they spend online, they are exhibiting a fundamental unhappiness with the real world, their real lives.
“To ask whether teenagers are getting ‘addicted’ to online games is a way of not asking why our schools are failing to engage our children. To ask why some people get ‘addicted’ to their fantasy personas is a way of not asking how we expect people to derive life satisfaction from working at Wal-Mart,” writes Nick Yee, a research scientist at the Palo Alto Research Center specializing in immersive online games.
“MMOs are seductive because they empower some people in ways that the real world does not,” explains Yee. “The people who we let fall through the holes of our social fabric are caught by an alternate reality where they feel a sense of satisfaction and purpose.”
Maybe the compulsive gaming debate is only a cue for us to start changing perspectives, to prepare ourselves for the re-definition of “real life.” For better or worse, scientific advancements will eventually bring about the obsolescence of our physical bodies. In what realm will we live, then? And will it still not be a legitimate form of existence? Maybe these gamers are just beating us to the punch.
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