Addicted to success

Videogame “addiction” has so many negative connotations. Yes gamers may become socially inept and introverted; yes gaming may be a way to leave the real world and its problems; escaping into a world of fantasy and surrealism. But what about how this addiction could be beneficial to the player, as in it might have a large influence on the person and actually helps them in life.

 The term “addicted” may be used from an outside perspective, blatantly labelling someone heavily engrossed in an activity yet “Obsessed is a word the lazy use to describe the dedicated”and through this compulsion and dedicated though comes success, success at whatever you mull over day after day. There is a book by Malcolm Gladwell called “Outliers: The Story of Success” which examines the factors that contribute to high levels of success. Throughout the book, Gladwell repeatedly mentions the "10,000-Hour Rule", claiming that the key to success in any field is, to a large extent, a matter of practising a specific task for a total of around 10,000 hours. If we look at gamers who are dedicated to playing, some have turned out to be professional gamers, participating in eSports around the world and earning big dough. For the League of Legends Season 2 World Championship, the grand prize was $1 million. Videogames are taken rather seriously when reaching high level competitive play and only the devoted can handle the pressure and skill required to get there.

 Douglas Gentile, a leading scientific expert on the positive and negative effects of media, does claim that videogames do provide beneficial effects. He says "playing video games is neither good nor bad. Existing research shows that they are powerful teaching tools, and therefore we need to harness that potential, aiming to maximize the benefits while minimizing the potential harms." (http://archive.news.iastate.edu/news/2011/dec/naturevg) Although the “problematic use” of games may seem detrimental to society and to that person, we need the context and understand that person as to why they play, it may lead them to huge success and greatness and this doesn’t apply to just videogames. Bill Gate’s dedication gained him access to a high school computer in 1968 at the age of 13, and spent 10,000 hours programming on it; which may be seen as addiction; but completely influenced his career and our society as we know it. 

Perhaps we should stop prejudicing addicts. We don’t know what compels them to keep playing games; it may be the constant rewards they achieve building up dopamine or the social aspect of MMOs and connecting with their online friends. Everyone is unique and has different ways dealing with things; you cannot just envelop everyone under the same definition of “addicted”. It is only through moderation that video games can be fully utilised for the positive effects they can have on a person. If we start at self-control and discipline, perhaps we can change this discourse surrounding games.