Peer Reviewed Article

1.  Peer reviewed academic article:

·         Gaming (Ad)diction: Discourse, Identity, Time and Play in the Production of the Gamer Addiction Myth by Rob Cover

2.  Author’s thesis

·         The social myth of gamer addiction has come from the same rhetoric used to describe drug addiction and both addictions are looked at as dangerous because the addicted person is spending too much time in an untrue reality.

3.  Evidence the author uses to support the main idea.

·         Cover, “if the study of gaming is to go beyond the celebration or close analysis of games and further continue the examination of gaming sociality, then one of the political points of engagement centres on the question of gaming addiction, rather than ignoring or denouncing this unfortunate stereotype.”

·         Cover suggests that new technology has been given a stigma of addiction much like that of gambling, pornography and sexual compulsion because they exhibit repetitiveness.

·         Cover, “any concept of addiction involves a notion of behaviour change and a desire for or experience of repetition.”

·         Lart, “Addiction is sometimes presented as an experience of moral disorder, a physical failing, a social failing, or as an infectious disease that must be contained or monitored for fear of spreading addiction from one body to another.” (Lart, 1998).

·         Cover discusses that specific games are not necessarily viewed as addictive, but the choice to play video games is viewed as addictive because it involves interacting with a virtual world that is a work of fantasy, much like a drug addict escapes reality.

·         Cover, “there is no evidence to suggest that gameplay involves the shirking off of a self-aware subjectivity and a complete immersion in a narrated character that is violent.  Nevertheless, the stereotype persists, and it is this sterotype that supports a continuing assertion of gameplay as addictive on the basis of a spurious connection between the stereotype of the drug addict as a violent menace and the understanding of gaming as a "release" from the constraints of identity into some sort of primal, violent mode.”

·         Cover, “This "excessive" loss of time is often used to justify the addiction claim-the idea that too many people are spending too much time with a games machine, much as one presumes a drug addict spends too much time "on drugs," as it were. This is to continue the misreading of immersion or interactivity as addiction (p.46).”

·         Cover, “Whatever the personal or social value in gameplay, it remains that in the discourses of moral panic passion is re-written as addiction, supported by the witness of a player’s time and dedication. It is of course ironic to note that a passion for career, a sporting activity or even legitimate politics is seen as "healthy," whereas passion for that which is in digital form is represented as dangerous or addictive-a reaction to the continued novelty of games as opposed to other, more essentially "physical" or "localised" activities.”

·         Cover, “Where the television is thus thoroughly marked by cycles of clock-time, gaming is marked by unstructured time, and it is that which causes anxiety enough for those who would in conservative terms see time as responsibly measured (by work, family) that they look to the analogy with drugs and drug rhetoric, as well as the concept that lengthy periods of play are an indication of addiction.”

·         Cover, “Gaming is understood as addictive not because games are compulsively used, but because in representing their conceptual universe as "unreal" they are likened to drugs, and thereby become subjected to a discourse of drug addiction.”

4.  Alternative and Opposing Ideas

·         Cover quotes numerous authors with this statement, “Frequently, the addicted gamers are seen as low-class, proto-violent addicted and dangerous kids (Beavis, 1998), learning to express repressed anger and aggression (Young, 1998), sociopathically isolated (Thompson, 2002), and potentially capable of perpetrating another Columbine High school shoot-out (King & Borland, 2003).”

·         Rob Cover shows an example of opposing ideas with an excerpt from a Melbourne, Australia newspaper called “The Age”.  The article was titled, “Why Computer Games Should Worry Parents” which listed three negatives of children playing video games those being: a) games usurp the creativity involved in playing with legos, b) games along with DVD’s and TV distract from reading and c) games are compulsive and addictive.

·         Young, “five to ten percent of internet users are addicted-she concludes that therefore five million Internet users are addicts on the basis of alcohol/ gambling use/ addiction differentiation estimates.”

·         Young, “In my survey 97 percent of all respondents reported that they found themselves spending longer periods of time-on-line than they intended" (Young, 1998, p.36).”  In Young’s opinion, the loss of time correlates to addiction.

5.   Evidence sources that work against the author’s thesis.

·         From the New Zealand Office of Film and Literature Classification, “A player’s exposure to these [violent] aspects of the game is not fleeting. A proficient player could take up to an hour to complete each of the 24 levels. The length of time it takes to complete the game, and the necessity to repeat the killings in ever more gory fashion on each level if one does not complete that level at first attempt, increases exposure to material that initially disturbs, but which must be accommodated to complete the game…. To succeed in this game, a player must learn over an extended period of time to acquiesce in, tolerate, or even enjoy, the violence he or she inflicts. (2003).

·         Senator Kay Hutchison who points to some statistics on television violence but goes on to suggest that "if a child is playing video games, that number is multiplied and the violence is at his own hands. He pulls the trigger, he likes it, he has fun, and his score goes up" (Kent, 2001, p.547).

·         Davis, “After use of the Internet, Jeanne "began sharing her most personal thoughts and intimate details of her life" with online friends ("not her husband or real-life friends") and soon began exchanging erotic messages and enjoying cybersex. Likewise, players of MUD Interactive Games (Davis, 2001) are seen by Young as ignoring their real families who "are in the next room singing and laughing with holiday merriment" (1998, p.89), and Young does indeed bewail the fact that we no longer "know the names of the people next door" and that families "hardly ever eat together"

6.  How does this academic article differ from traditional game reviews and new games journalism?

·         This article is very certainly not an example of a traditional game review for numerous reasons.  First of all, this game is not focused on one game or even one genre of games; it is focused on a subject relating to video games as a medium.  Traditional game reviews perform a service to game consumer so that they don’t end up buying a game that they will not enjoy.  This article is also certainly not an example of new games journalism much for the same reason, this article doesn’t relate to the analysis of one game.  Rob Cover’s article on gaming addiction relates to the public perception of video games as a whole.  He discusses the similar public views of video games to drugs and violence and is not at all interested in discussing any one game.  Nor is Cover looking in depth at the design of a game, he is attempting to start a conversation with the goal of advancing the study of video games. 

Works Cited

Cover, Rob. "Gaming (Ad)diction: Discourse, Identity, Time and Play in the Production of the Gamer Addiction Myth." Game Studies Vol. 6, Issue 1Dec. 2006 January 16, 2008 <http://gamestudies.org/0601/articles/cover>.