In the past with games there was really no issue with addiction to them, such as chess, draughts, any board games and card games. But there has always been an issue with addiction to games where you can bet, which means either games you partake in yourself, or games that others play on which you place bets. This can be just about any game or sport, from the traditional ones such as horse racing and boxing, to more recently darts and in case of gambling games that you are playing yourself, it usually means games of the types that are played in a casino.
With the advent of computers, computer games developed at the same time. On computers the games played and developed were simulations of board- and card games, but also new ones, such as arcade games such as Defender, Donkey Kong and simulations such as flight simulators, and sports games. I suppose the earliest sports game was ‘Pong’, which is a minimalistic tennis simulation.
Whereas with non-computer games there is virtually no issue with addiction, this is very different with computer games even without an aspect of gambling. Usually this is because of several factors. The first one is the presence of scores, a high score table and being able to share scores with others, thus seeing what they can do. Many people then spend a lot of time trying to beat those scores. Another way to play games is speedrunning, this is really the same in that the score becomes the time, and the lower the time the better. The question is, do these players actually enjoy playing these games? Often the enjoyment is secondary. It becomes a bit comparable to high level sports, where you need to train a lot which most athletes have issues with in the sense of not enjoying that part of the requirements to become good at the sport, be it because of needing to eat a lot, because of the need for weight lifting for strength training, or because of the fact that training is simply not the same as competing and what people like most of all in sports, is not the exercises, but playing the sport the and aspect of competition.
With computer games there are also addiction issues in that adrenaline is pumping through the player’s body because of the action. Especially with games where you need fast reflexes this can and does result into even having to control your playing style (be aware of needing to relax from time to time) to not let the adrenalin level rise too much, otherwise it can get so high that your hands will get to shake and you can’t properly play any further for a while! This effectively ends your game and possibly your high score attempt.
Another effect is that your brain mulls over the movement patterns and other issues in games, which can result in thinking a lot about the game even when you are not playing. This can happen while you are sleeping too, showing the issue with playing too much, which is a certain kind of addiction even if it doesn’t feel like an addiction.
“One more game” is the feeling of someone who may be addicted. You can of course just like it and not be at all addicted. An important factor to prevent addiction is to be aware when you play a game to win money of whether you are actually having fun, and so whether you like the game itself, and if not, just stop playing it!
The same goes for gambling such as to name one, Woo Casino, which has similar addictive issues, but which can have more severe consequences, namely financial ones. I would advise anyone here too to be aware of what you can afford to lose, and whether you actually like placing bets or playing games where you invest money that you may then lose.
