[di meliora]

In his blog, Stanton Peele, Ph.D., J.D., talks about games and addiction. http://www.psychologytoday.com/colle...ive-experience

His answer to what addiction is varies from the mainstream:

The Science of Addictive Experiences

What has held science back from acknowledging commonalities in addiction and what now impedes our ability to analyze these is a habit of thought that separates the action of the mind and the body. Furthermore, it is for concrete physical entities and processes that the label of science is usually reserved (Peele 1983e). The mind-body duality (which long antedates current debates about drugs and addiction) has hidden the fact that addiction has always been defined phenomenologically in terms of the experiences of the sentient human being and observations of the person's feelings and behavior. Addiction may occur with any potent experience. In addition, the number and variability of the factors that influence addiction cause it to occur along a continuum. The delineation of a particular involvement as addictive for a particular person thus entails a degree of arbitrariness. Yet this designation is a useful one. It is far superior to the relabeling of addictive phenomena in some roundabout way.

Addiction, at its extreme, is an overwhelming pathological involvement. The object of addiction is the addicted person's experience of the combined physical, emotional, and environmental elements that make up the involvement for that person. Addiction is often characterized by a traumatic withdrawal reaction to the deprivation of this state or experience. Tolerance—or the increasingly high level of need for the experience—and craving are measured by how willing the person is to sacrifice other rewards or sources of well-being in life to the pursuit of the involvement. The key to addiction, seen in this light, is its persistence in the face of harmful consequences for the individual. This book embraces rather than evades the complicated and multifactorial nature of addiction. Only by accepting this complexity is it possible to put together a meaningful picture of addiction, to say something useful about drug use as well as about other compulsions, and to comprehend the ways in which people hurt themselves through their own behavior as well as grow beyond self-destructive involvements (Emphasis added). http://www.peele.net/lib/moa1.html

Peele asks:

Do you see what I mean? The delivery mechanism is the thing. As I defined the phenomenon, addictions are generated by powerful, engrossing experiences that are instantly, predictably accessible.

Peele then talks of "stupid games,":

Which is why my Pac-Man addiction at the mall arcade was relatively low key. Relying on that delivery mechanism made game experiences too much work for the pay-off to be intensely addicting for most people.

But—as Sam Anderson, the Times' Sunday Magazine critic-at-large described in his history of "Hyperaddictive 'Stupid Games'"—the technology of game delivery has progressed by leaps and bounds since then. In 1989, Nintendo created Game Boy—"a hand-held, battery-powered plastic slab that promised to set gamers loose, after all those decades of sweaty bondage, from the tyranny of rec rooms and pizza parlors and arcades." Game Boy produced Tetris, and the combination of game and delivery system eventually sold 70 million copies.

Dr. Peele concludes:

Why does Anderson say stupid games are hyperaddictive? "Ultimately, I realized, these games are also about a more subtle and mysterious form of wall-building: the internal walls we build to compartmentalize our time, our attention, our lives." I believe he's right, although Anderson then follows with a non-sequitur: "Maybe that’s the secret genius of stupid games: they force us to make a series of interesting choices about what matters, moment to moment, in our lives."

It's a non-sequitur to call something addictive that offers us "interesting choices." Although in some existential way addiction is a choice, being addicted means not choosing. It is because the games are meaningless that they can be endlessly absorbing, which makes them overwhelmingly addictive.

It is their ability to take us away from what is meaningful that underlies their ability to absorb our attention and to produce the repetitive engagement and escapist gratification that are the essence of powerfully addicting experiences. And, thus, the digital game embodies the nature of addiction.

I am not a stranger to addictions. Quitting smoking was extremely difficult. The internet also is a problem. I like Peele's approach to the topic.