Gaming and gambling addiction Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 2250 words

Gaming and gambling addiction - Research Paper Example Addicts should be provided with adequate help and treatment to get rid of the disease. However, we first need to define the gaming and gambling addiction? Secondly, roles of public and private organizations as well as individuals to stop and discourage online gaming and gambling should be well defined. Antonius has pointed out the same in his article when he say, â€Å" Studies have consistently demonstrated the existence of a small subgroup of video gamers that is seemingly ‘addicted’ to games. (Antonius et al. 205). Though initially the problem begun to erupt at a manageable scale but later on it expanded to a scale that attracted attentions of policy makers, developers and psychiatrists and there were all out efforts to address the issue. â€Å"This online component in gaming led to the initiation of (private and public) treatment programmers targeting gaming addiction. Consequently, there is increasing focus upon online games when studying video game addiction.â₠¬ . Number of research experts from all around the globe began to explore various aspects of the problem and theories are now established in game addiction. Antonius, while elaborating this talk about Korean and western researchers, â€Å"Researcher report specifically that Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPGs) are the main culprits in cases of online video game addiction.... s where the initial form of this addiction and now multiplayer online games have emerged as the most recent form that need more attention, involvement and time. â€Å"In the 1980s, games such as Centipede, Space Invaders, Pac Man, and Donkey Kong were popularized. These were single-player games against the machine and getting good at the game only meant a high score and improvement of the gamers’ eye-hand coordination. By the 1990s, gaming evolved from single-player games to gaming experiences. Gamers could become immersed in a virtual world that they helped to create. Games such as Doom and Quake were introduced that allowed players to create new rooms, customize their characters, and specify the kinds of weapons used.† (Young, 356). The advancement in the online and offline gaming were very fast and the new richer gaming features attracted the attention of most Internet users. Last two decades have seen an outburst of these games with ever advancing lucid graphics and interactive features. Obviously the grown attention of our adolescents to these trends resulted in decreased attention around their surroundings and academic activities. They may even not watch where they going because their face is buried in a game. They might also lose grip with reality because in the games they can be or do anything they want. â€Å"There are also studies that have claimed that online gaming addiction may be addictive because of self-report accounts of very excessive use of up to 80h a week† (Griffiths et al., 205-216). However, Griffiths has argued that excessive activity and addictive activity are two very different things (although admittedly they do overlap) (Griffiths, 191-197). But according to Antonius, â€Å"the present study contributes to the debate on video game addiction by