Not every gamer is like Cartman in that South Park episode “Make Love, Not Warcraft” (pictured above), but with games becoming increasingly longer – Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim and The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt are both well over 100 hours in playtime – it’s not implausible for a gamer to end up that way. While this could categorically be considered gaming addiction, a new report suggests that more than half of the survey’s participants disagree with the notion that excessive gaming can foster a similar addiction to alcohol, drugs, and gambling.
Qutee, a website dedicated to bolstering online community discussion through analytics and data, conducted a survey polling from 886 comments and 4,500 votes. The participates were asked 251 discussion topics, including issues of community, stress, skills, friends, hobbies, enjoyment, and various other problems related to games. And it seems the survey has produced some staggering but expected results.
According to the survey, 89 percent of gamers feel gaming is beneficial to society, with 44 percent saying that the most important benefit of gaming is improved emotional well-being. This can be attributed to games like Gone Home and That Dragon, Cancer, where the focus isn’t violence but rather the emotional connection between the characters. In regards to the conflation between video game violence and real-world violence – which has resurfaced from the debates of the late 90s and early 00s – 93 percent of gamers feel the media’s obsession with violence and gaming is unjustified, with almost two-thirds of gamers saying they made up to five friends through gaming. (The report further points out that 37 percent of these people say they’ve made more than five friends through gaming.) This isn’t surprising, as the games industry continues to force-feed always-online, multiplayer-only experiences. These games are predicated on groups of players who must communicate in order to complete the objective; games like Tom Clancy’s The Division, Overwatch, and Rainbow Six Siege come to mind.
What’s most interesting is the topic of gaming as an addition. The report asks its participants, “Do you think gaming addiction should be ranked alongside drug/alcohol/gambling addiction?” And, unsurprisingly, the results yield a resounding no. 51 percent of gamers feel gaming shouldn’t be categorized under alcohol/drug/gambling addiction, whereas 23 percent of gamers believe gaming should be treated as an addiction. But there are plenty of people on the fence with regards to this topic, as 26 percent of gamers are unsure whether gaming should be considered an addiction. This report comes just a few months after the World Health Organization (WHO) added gaming as an addiction to an updated draft for the revised International Classification of Diseases (ICD), which is scheduled to be submitted to the 144th Executive Board Meeting in January 2019 and the 72nd World Health Assembly in May 2019.
The report goes into further details on other topics as well, so be sure to check out the full report for free here.
[Source via COGConnected]
