I was someone who was initially sceptical of video games, but my now-adult children and their partners have worn me down. Games can tell great stories and provide aesthetic experiences impossible in any other medium while also being fun and relaxing.
The gamers in my life have shown me that gaming can foster skills and creativity, something some employers also recognise. The United States Federal Aviation Administration has run a successful recruiting campaign targeting gamers because of their excellent hand-eye co-ordination, quick decision-making and ability to stay alert while glued to a screen for hours.
Most parents recognise the positive aspects, but many are also sick of children in foul humour after hours of playing and having meltdowns because their parents want them to stop.
But the problem is bigger than individual families can manage. The people who changed my mind about games as a medium are increasingly worried about the direction that medium is taking.
A blog by independent game developer Joey Schutz critiques the systemic aspects driving addictive gaming. He draws heavily on Natasha Schüll’s analysis of casino machine games in Addiction by Design: Machine Gambling in Las Vegas.
Schüll’s central insight is that machine gambling is not primarily about money. Instead, gamblers are in search of a flow state that allows players to “manage their affective states and create a personal buffer zone against the uncertainties and worries of their worldâ€.
While flow states are good, both gambling machines and video games can weaponise them to the extent that some players become numb to everything else.
Like gambling machines, video-game software allows almost instantaneous restarts, which means you can play again before your executive control kicks in. Schutz cites psychologist Dr Ben Lewis-Evans, a user-experience researcher at Epic Games, which created Fortnite. He dismisses the popular idea that a dopamine hit equals pleasure. Research shows that dopamine drives desire – that is, reward-seeking rather than enjoyment.
Instead, Lewis-Evans urges game designers to use classic operant conditioning principles, such as well-designed feedback and varied reward schedules, to keep people engaged. Another developer describes having something to capture attention every 40 seconds. No wonder parents find it hard to manage games designed with input from psychologists to maximise playing time.
Compulsion loops were not so central to earlier games, but narrative games with beautiful aesthetics are ruinously expensive to create today. Commercial pressures and high costs mean games as artistic endeavours can risk financial disaster for developers.
Despite growth in revenue, operating profits for gaming have stalled since 2019. Roblox has 150 million daily users, many of them under 13 and some as young as five, who generate all its content. Its quarterly engagement now equals Steam, PlayStation and Fortnite combined. And it is still not profitable, in much the same way that Amazon did not make a profit for years.
It is also a deeply disturbing and ugly platform. Last year, a 24-year-old man was jailed in Ireland for harassing and blackmailing a girl he first communicated with on Roblox when she was 15. This week, US child safety advocates, including Jonathan Haidt’s Anxious Generation Movement, have filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission about Roblox. They cite its failure to protect children from predators and its exploitative commercial practices. The platform is rife with sexually explicit content, trolling, misogyny, and adults posing as children.
Although Roblox is free to play, children are immediately encouraged to buy desirable items using its virtual currency, Robux. Some children do not realise they are spending real money, while others spend every penny they receive on Robux. Roblox, which is already facing multiple lawsuits, says it is introducing robust age controls and blocking adults from chatting with children.
Given that a report on UK age verification says some children have got around the age-control technology by using make-up pencils to draw hair on their faces, confidence cannot be high. Roblox also says the majority of its players play completely for free – no comfort to parents who are down hundreds or even thousands of euro.
A generation who grew up gaming and are now parenting may be less inclined to worry. Recently, I witnessed a thirtysomething dad play a console game. He told his four-year-old son that he could watch so long as he did not interrupt. Observing the child’s heroic restraint, immediately resisting every urge to comment or jiggle, reminded me of men from my father’s generation who would gruffly allow a child (mostly boys) to watch while they chopped wood or tinkered with an engine, so long as they stayed quiet. Gradually, the boy would be allowed to help.
There is a school of parenting which suggests that instead of making children the centre of the universe we should welcome them into adult life by allowing them to accompany us in tasks. But adults need to be thoughtful with their engagement with any medium and doubly so when introducing children to it.
Introducing children to gaming can open them to wonderful artistic experiences and social opportunities. Or it can open up yet another front in the war on their time, attention and peace.
