Video Games & Addiction

Prologue: Start/Tutorial

A button that was the beginning point for countless hours, unspeakable adventures and experiences in front of a screen. Start, was its name. Another one among many fallen in the development of video games, today banished or barely anecdotal. At least, without the preponderant function it knew to had. Decorative push-button in controls of all kinds, living with sticks, triggers, and even touch panels. I invoke it once again to begin and enter the influx of memory and nostalgia, on the one hand. While on the other, I shyly invite you to start comparative and critical thinking. Pressing, if I'm allowed the metaphor, such button in our minds, to give free rein to the book.

It is also an unbeatable opportunity, to lay the foundations on which the chapters will go by. Taking the example from another very characteristic videogame tool, the Tutorial. That is, the initial moment where we are taught to handle the controls, to understand the internal mechanics of the game. In short, to live and enjoy the experience that lies before us. In such a spirit, I will try to explain and guide through the meaning and form that are part of the present work.

I do not think it is necessary, mandatory to say, but you can read the entire book in one sitting. Although I advise the individual reading of the chapters. There is a plot that goes through them, even narrative, however they are not twinned in such a way that they depend on each other. Out of respect for decorum and reading, things explained before in detail, are not repeated with full extension in subsequent chapters. In addition, and while this part is beyond the control of who writes, I recommend a good and comfortable seat, in addition to proper lighting. How many great books have been terribly judged by these little great details!

Leaving aside such a funny introduction and recommendations, it is very true that video games usually manage their environment. In fact, they normally create a controlled atmosphere, where variables such as brightness or contrast are tested, then calibrated by the player. Very few human manifestations have such a privilege, indeed, most likely none. First and excellent occasion to bring this idea up.

Closer to the concept of Start and our theme, I think it is appropriate to talk about the genesis that inspired these letters. I do not mean the famous SEGA console, which cheered up so many childhoods, but rather a series of thoughts and news that ended up inevitably leading to this book. In principle, an innate curiosity linked to the observation about the underworld scene represented by video games. Genuine and natural interest in it being a key hobby in my life and, without the slightest hint of exaggeration, in my entire generation. But it was another clear trigger that served as a proverbial drop overflowing the glass.

The real Start button was pressed, when some news reached the public: The World Health Organization would include addiction to video games as a mental illness. Strong statement that was taken as a war one by almost the entire spectrum of players. Curious at least, if we take into account that for more than a decade, even its most adamant cultists refer with love to gaming with one word. Vice, being in turn to vitiate, the derived action, the effect of playing almost with compulsion, until you become saturated or not can more.

With the immediate monitoring of the facts, the roar of gamers and others did not wait. Those who know about human behavior, say that denial is the most basic of responses, and for a reason stands as the first classic phase of a mourning. Such theory seemed to be confirmed in this case. Because far from the self-criticism that the warning of a medical symposium like the WHO might suggest, the gamers faced it in a very negative way. Disregarding or mostly rejecting even the possibility. Coming to the somewhat dangerous or at least noteworthy point, of trying to justify video games and their darker facets by comparing them with drugs or much more harmful activities. A fallacy of the lesser evil in full operation.

That present led me to diagram a series of articles for the website, where I contribute my grain of sand in the sea of the online world. Tecnovortex would release two of them, but when I started writing the first one, I understood the limitations of the medium and article format for such a vast subject. Videogames and addiction: Continue?, the first, had to be trimmed, whole paragraphs rewritten, ideas barely touched and the whole presentation of the case made at record speed. The theme gave for much more and the second article, Insert Coin, far from soothing my cravings, finished catapulting them. Some of the comments, in addition, convinced me that the same thing observed in other media was replicated: There were many of us who played, but the amount of responses to such problems was leastwise very small. Few data, looks, as if it were a taboo imposed and agreed upon. The games were made to play and nothing more, not to think about their machinery.

My hope with these letters that I have put together in a very artisanal and worried way, is to give one of those much needed points of view. In particular, that of someone who, despite being a gamer since before he could even remember it, understood that the medium needed an analysis. And it still does, a serious dissection is missing, not partisan, or biased by passion or rejection of games. It is not the spirit or scope of this book to establish itself as an unwavering reference, but to bring another light and new eyes to a reality that surrounds us today. A testimony full of real anecdotes, perhaps told with brightness to the liking of the reader, and to maintain the anonymity of its parts, but not less certain.

The method assumed has been to analyze one by one, those mechanics that make the video game work. Those that we all think we know so well, to be familiar and immovable from the beginning of gaming as a hobby. With an important turn, emphasizing the changes they have suffered over the years. In such a metaphor the revelation is sustained later, that far from staying everything the same, even these concepts have been disrupted. Or we have taken care of dyeing them with the patina of nostalgia, unable to really see that the harmful components were always there. That they affected us and people we know, only we never paid enough attention to them, or we romanticize them according to our convenience.

More than one reader will be reflected in the anecdotes. That using this little tutorial and Start, they will have a clear differentiation with the rest of the argumentative text, to facilitate reading. And it is my humble wish that everyone can take a healthy and useful thinking, true motive and inspiration of this book.

Continue?

H. is an old friend. During a meeting at his house, the subject of studies appears. He was always an excellent student, very good in all the math and exacts part. His grades were among the best in the school. Suddenly, I got a confession from him. He told me the story of how he played sponsored by a cybercafé, for a while.

I, who knew him from those years and had shared countless trips to the cyber between class and class, was a little surprised. Much more, when he recognized that this sponsorship and the time invested in Counter-Strike to achieve it, had cost him to fail subjects. He also assumed with laughter, that he had kept the whole matter as secret for at least one of his parents, that he went to retest the subjects in a confidential way, and that few, very few people actually knew about the case. Deep down, he blamed that slip, which must have spanned a semester, of not having reached the grade point average for the national flag or escorts, an honour only for the best students, being that his was quite high. The story comes at me with laughs, as something overcome.

Now, I can't stop thinking that after the LAN party playing Age of Empires II at his house, he later admitted that he had to delete the game. Because it was beginning to meddle too much with his university studies.

In the narrative development of every story, at least to generalize and not enter into exceptions, there are a number of pattern features that can be found tacitly or explicitly. Start or Introduction (tutorial), Development(s) and Ending, for example. Such limitations arise from absolutely logical variables, such as the availability of time, resources and useful materials. Or at least, those intended for the tale. Not only those available to the creator, but the spectator, consumer, reader. The public, to sum it up it universally. However, the human being often uses limits as an advantage, especially artists, who have been rethinking such figures in the narrative for millennia. From starting at the end or using smart temporary breaks, to choose well at what time to reveal and hide; even connect, tie up loose ends to link beginning and end, just like in circular stories. Either way, the end is there, as the evidence displays.

Something intrinsic in the video game, is the participation of the player as a protagonist. It requires a tangible action that begins the story, very differently from the reader, who is more a spectator, as in the movies. However, when the outcome is linked to the outset, or there is not even a clear conclusion, how can we realize that the game is over? In the books there is the Cover, the Foreword, Interlude, Epilogue, End and Back Cover. There is a tangible, physical limit of where everything ends. In cinema, the lights come on, the credits roll... we are invited to leave the room in case we are still seated. This is largely due to the fact that the narrative of the videogame obeys its own rules, loaned in form from other arts. But adapted almost without noticing the dynamics and above all, the complete understanding of the game as an experience. The narrative, in fact, can be truncated, stop dead or reach the point of never continuing. Unless certain tasks, objectives, or some digital battle is won against enemies on the other side of the screen. Let us then compare such mechanics with that of a book or movie, in which the participation or not of the public is rather anecdotal. Or have we ever seen the cinema screening stop, or its development change because we go to the bathroom? A book, meanwhile, will remain written and we can even give it away. Its endings and times within it will be identical, beyond the speed of reading.

The video game is completely different, as one of its oldest and most copied engines, invites to prolong the stay in front of the screen, and requires the direct action of the public, in this case, the player. Moreover, the story may (and often remains) devoid of end, abandoned in the middle of the game, whether due to obstacles or lack of skill and understanding of the required tasks. Such a characteristic is usually evident when the gamer lost a life, opportunity or was defeated by the tests of difficulty and choices that the game presents. Frustration is immediately followed by the hope of a new possibility. Something that no doubt many of us strongly appreciate, since in theory it is always better than having to start over from the beginning.

That continuation, that extra life, seems necessary and even decisive to carry on both the experience and the narrative. In the video game and its culture, this was learned as early as in the first decades of its existence. Empirically, in the while games went from being a competition between adjacent players, to have a progress, a story and therefore an end (or a postponement of it as an objective). The word that used to be placed more frequently, and that is still seen intermittently today; The one that represented a new chance to follow, instead of keeping the abrupt end of having lost, was at the same time a question: Continue?

Continue? since then, has worked as a way to keep hooked, gain loyalty from the player, give another chance without punishing the defeat, permeabilize the knowledge that led us to lose, and save some time. On the other hand, although it no longer occurs massively and directly, it was also a good way to prevent the target audience from running out of the arcade in anger. To play one less difficult or with more rewards in the short term, and incidentally releasing coins from pockets until the virus of addiction had bitten its players. In some, it was mixed with the Insert Coin, until after a certain number, we had no choice but to start from scratch, with or without money involved. Many of these conditions would be solved later, when persistent memories became something possible, with another related mechanic, the famous Save Game. It is worth mentioning as an alternative or variant, of course, the 1UP. A specific type of extra in the form of a prize, which was almost always a reward for vice, because it occurred when we did something particular or exceeded the previous record of the arcade.

It seems that I speak about archeology of contemporary times, but some of these constants, although they have varied, the idea behind them has not. In any case, they have mutated depending on the purpose for which they are used, to add functionality, or to generate revenue. Today, the idyllic Continue? that I mention in the dark arcades of the past, does not exist in practice. This is because its younger brother, the Game Over, has been banished or blurred by the force of Auto Saves (Automatic saving of games). Even many of the modern games, and especially those that have more money and relevance in our day, online ones, do not support Game Over as a possibility.