GAMING CO-EDITOR LOUISA SADLER
GAMING
ADDICTION BY JOSHUA MANGOUSTE Nowadays, a lot of people play video games (2.5 billion people in 2016). To many, this might seems like a harmless pastime. However, developers have become experts at making you spend hours sitting in front of your screen without you even realising it.
The culprit? Dopamine. The feel-good hormone that rewards you whenever you achieve something. On its own, it’s a super biological instrument that motivates us to put effort into activities where the reward might not be immediate (e.g. going to the gym). However, video games use this mechanic at the perfection
with the use of goals. By constantly rewarding the player and giving them something to achieve next, video games make the player fall into a vicious cycle. You play the game: dopamine excites you and motivates you to play more. Then, whenever you think of the game later, your brain remembers the happiness felt and reinforces the connection that video games lead to happiness, leading to a desire to play again. It is so effective that your brain secretes almost the same amount of dopamine when you play video games as when you have sex. However, video games demand
17 • G A M I N G • MY LIFE
