issue 1 09 - APS Member Groups - Australian Psychological Society

Excessive Videogame Playing63allows for some flexibility in its interpretation,as well as the capacity to identify personswhose playing may be more excessive thanothers. It is not intended as a tool for thediagnosis of ‘excessive’ players, but as ageneral guide for considering issues that mayrelate to excessive video game play insignificant ways.Community psychology is concernedwith the study of people within the context oftheir own settings and social systems. Orford(1992) has argued that individuals are in a stateof continuing transaction with the varioussettings in which they spend time as part oftheir everyday lives. This transaction ischaracterised by reciprocity: the individual’sparticipation within their social system affectsthe system at large, and the variouscharacteristics of the system also affect theindividual. This interplay between person andcontext, it is argued, cannot be broken downinto smaller units of analysis, but must beconsidered as a ‘gestalt’ entity. Video gamesare often considered as complex socialcontexts or social spaces (Fisher, 1995; Jansz& Martens, 2005; Valentine & Holloway,2002), therefore a community psychologyapproach may offer a new perspective on whysome individuals become excessive players,and may offer some practical solutions forhelping these individuals.A reanalysis of Allen and Britt’s (1983)feedback model of social class andpsychological disorders may be useful inunderstanding excessive video game playing.In their model, there is a relationship betweenstressful life events and psychologicalproblems which is mediated by social class.Social class acts in two main ways: it affectsthe likelihood of stress, and the speed withwhich the feedback between the psychologicalproblem and stressful life events occurs. Forexcessive video game players, it may be usefulto consider the role of social class in thismodel in an additional way. There is a greatdeal of literature that shows how a player cantake on a ‘new’ social class (i.e., status asdefined by the video game context, mostnotably within online games but this is alsoapplicable to offline, ‘stand alone’ games) andcan become an integral part of the socialnetwork associated with the video game(Engelberg & Sjoberg, 2004; Jansz & Tanis,2007; Valentine & Holloway, 2002). A socialrole in the video game may grant a person atemporary release from stressful life events. Asa player’s video game status increases (i.e.,becomes more powerful and recognised byothers), it may be perceived as more importantthan the player’s social class in the real world(which may be less upwardly mobile). It isimportant to note that the resources – personal,social, economic - available to the player in thevideo game may far outnumber those availablein the real world. In this way, the modelpredicts that a large divide between a player’svideo game status and real life social class, inconjunction with stressful life events, willincrease vulnerability to playing video games toexcess.Research into excessive video gameplaying is limited in the Australian context.However, there have been a number of studiesoverseas which have examined the importanceof structural characteristics in video games inexplaining the appeal of video games(Chumbley & Griffiths, 2006; Johansson &Gotestam, 2004; Wood, Griffiths, Chappell, &Davies, 2004). Other studies have emphasisedthe importance of the social nature of videogames in explaining why some individualsbecome highly involved (Griffiths, Davies, &Chappell, 2004; Ng & Wiemer-Hastings, 2005).Charlton and Danforth (2007) stated that manyvideo games may be attractive becauseplayers take-on the role of acharacter in a virtual environmentin which a story line evolves overtime and the time frame in which anevent will occur is unpredictable...[and] they are particularly good atinducing operant conditioning viavariable-ratio reinforcementschedules (p. 1534).The Australian Community Psychologist Volume 21 No 1 June 2009