issue 1 09 - APS Member Groups - Australian Psychological Society

Excessive Videogame Playing68order to yield the desired rewards (“Like youget 10 points and you need 3000 so you’ve justgot to keep farming them for a long, long timebefore you can get what you’re after” [G4, M,16]).None of the male participants reportedenjoying the process of grinding, but many feltthat there was no other way to satisfy theirpersonal sense of completion concerning avideo game (“Trying to finish something orunlock something and not necessarily enjoyingthe game, but just wanting to get it done.Satisfying the need for completion” [G1, M,24]; “I played the same level 10 times to getthe full set of armour. So that gets frustratingbut you have to do it if you want theitems” [G6, M, 27]). There were no data in thestudy to suggest that female participants hadexperience or interest in using grindingstrategies.Belief that no amount of time spent playing is‘long enough’Many participants reported to continueplaying a video game even when theexperience ceased to be fun or pleasurable.This led to a discussion of when players feltthey had played for ‘long enough’ and whetherany features of video games prompted theplayer to end a playing session. The majorityof female participants indicated that theyusually quit a video game when they hadfinished a level in the game, or felt bored bythe game. In contrast, many of the maleparticipants reported that they never felt theyhad played ‘long enough’ in a typical playingsession. The desire to continue playing whenthe game was no longer fun was attributed tothe variable reward structure of the game (i.e.,the notion that the next reward might be ‘rightaround the next corner’), and also to the factthat many of the games they played had nodefinitive ‘end point’. As one participantstated, “I never really feel like I’ve played agame for long enough. There’s alwayssomething more because I don’t really getgames that have an end” [G3, M, 16]).Online role-playing games, such asBlizzard Entertainment’s World of Warcraft,are known for their lack of a conclusion andcan be played indefinitely. The virtuallyunlimited quantity of rewards in some videogames can lead some players on aninterminable effort to obtain as many rewardsas they can. Concurrent reward structures liketwo in-game tasks running simultaneously,multiple ‘experience bars’ or other onscreenmeters of player progress, and completing onegoal and being close to the next kept manyparticipants from taking breaks. For thisreason, some participants reported that theyonly stopped playing a video game when theyfelt too physically sore or fatigued to continue(“When my arms and hands are gettingsore” [G6, M, 32]; “When my fingers aren’tmoving fast enough or my hand isasleep” [G4, M, 16]), or when an externalevent like meal times or a partner’s request tostop forced them to exit the game (“Someother external factor, like tea time, that drivesyou away” [G7, M, 30]). The key point is that,for some players, the video game playingsession does not terminate itself naturallythrough play.Excessive playing has negative psychosocialconsequencesIt is clear that video games can offer adistinct and rewarding experience to the enduser. Therefore, it is not surprising that manyof the respondents reported that it was difficultto regulate video game playing and sometimesplayed video games for excessive periods. Thefact that the video game machine is located inthe home environment appears to make itdifficult for players to take time away from thegame,The only thing I don’t like is thatyou can get so involved that youjust want to keep going and youcan’t get away from it because it’salways there [G2, M, 16].Some participants referred to some videogames as being “addictive”, but this term wasemployed to emphasise both the positive andnegative aspects of the game. A commonThe Australian Community Psychologist Volume 21 No 1 June 2009