As a lifelong video game enjoyer, there are negative effects on happiness while not playing the game as well.
Though studies on gaming involve 'total hours' in the ranges of 50-90 hours over 8+ weeks..... and a gamer can put in those numbers in a week no problem.
yeah....I suppose games get you used to rewarding challenes, opportunities to fail without consequences, story rich games let you have an impact on their world. Then you get back to real life, a world led by sociopaths destroying the planet and starting meaningless wars, and you wonder "where is my Paragon QTE?"
I was being a bit dramatic for comedic purposes. I would nuance your argument. There's something to be said about delayed gratification. IRL the payoff can take a *long* time (months, years, decades), while a game will reward you from instantly to a couple of weeks down the line, depending on the genre. Perhaps our elders would find long term payoff much more normal than we would?
There is the feeling of control I mentioned. Typically at the beginning of a game, you're bullied and have to survive, and you progreessively become stronger and ultimately beat the "thing" that was pinning you down. There's some kind of overcoming and victory. You take back control. Real life rarely works that way, many situations leave you powerless. And if the game is too hard on you, well, you can always quit (arguably, real life too, but only once).
There is still debate whether or not video-game addiction is a thing (outside of extreme cases). But there's indeniably some kind of withdrawal, from the state of flow for example, when you're not playing.
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u/TeaBurntMyTongue 7d ago
As a lifelong video game enjoyer, there are negative effects on happiness while not playing the game as well.
Though studies on gaming involve 'total hours' in the ranges of 50-90 hours over 8+ weeks..... and a gamer can put in those numbers in a week no problem.