Local contexts of 'addiction' to online games

I’ve been a reader and friend of those on TerraNova since its beginning in 2003. Being a person who loves games, gaming, and games research, it is an absolute pleasure to be an invited guest blogger for TN this month.

I thought this would be a great time to share my plans for (dramatic epic music //) the dissertation (// dramatic epic music) so that TN readers may get a cursory idea of what I'm 'about.' My research involves taking a critical look at dominant discourses surrounding the phenomenon of “online games addiction” as it is understood in a colloquial sense, primarily the concept is presented in the mass media.  More specifically, I’m questioning the meanings of definition, regulation, and cultural value of excessive game playing in the context of Korean online game culture. My goal is to build an increased understanding of cultural factors in the evaluation and implementation of technology and the social fallouts that may coincide with that.

The widespread international concern of addiction to online games in particular, with which many TN blog readers are familiar, provides an excellent context in which to situate an examination of the interaction between Information Communication Technologies (ICTs) and users in their lived realities.  I'm especially interested in how games are a part of that inquiry, increasingly acting as a medium by which users communicate and often facilitate meaningful relationships.  By thinking of  games  as a form of meaningful communication, it problematizes  how concepts like  'addiction'  to such activities are operationalized and measured (such as 'time spent online' or 'anxiety level when not logged on'). Should we think  about games in their myriad forms differently?   

In 2002, I was conducting my own ethnography of EverQuest players, having been inspired by the player-informed work of TL Taylor, Edward Castronova, and Nick Yee that I came across while doing research on networked games (no coincidence that they subsequently formed part of the original TN authorship base…). The main objective of my work evolved into the wish to contribute a nuanced critique of what I saw in the mainstream media: the frenzied reportage of causal relationships and mystification associated with online games, the people who play them and their supposedly horrible addictions to online games. A paper explaining that ethnographic study published in Interactive Convergence can be found here. 

Once I finished that study, in 2003 my gaze could turn fully to Korea and the online game culture there. I had been intrigued by the news stories about online game addiction coming out of the country for quite a while. Korean youth were making international news headlines for their apparent excessive gaming habits and associated health problems, such as obesity or exhaustion from lack of sleep. In some cases, excessive gaming was highlighted as the reason for youth self-destruction. That is, the stories seemed to be in lieu of public service announcements, stating that if people gamed too much, they would most certainly become addicted and could die like these people in Korea. The concerns over the case of online games addiction in Korea in particular are still present worldwide.  Heck, it's still kept my interest, because the questions  are  complex and the answers multi-faceted.   

The online games phenomenon in Korea has been a double-edged sword, actually. From the business side, reports have clearly lauded the rapid uptake of ICTs in Korea, citing forward-looking policies and innovative implementation. In addition to that, many have specifically highlighted the online gaming industry and its place in popular culture as an economic strength and simultaneous path to the nation’s future and the global information society writ large. On the flipside, one can clearly not ignore the fact that there are stories of people spending hours playing video games at the PC bangs (PC rooms) in lieu of going home, studying, or eating. Implicit in these stories are the images of wagging fingers, saying, “Let this be a lesson to us all--that’s what will happen if you play games, so you’d better not. You can get addicted, LIKE A DRUG.”  Well, thoroughly dissatisfied with what I thought were incomplete representations of why Koreans were playing games so darned much, I decided to go to Korea to live the culture and see for myself whether or not the fuss was warranted.

During my 2004 ethnography in Korea, I examined the cultural, social structural, and infrastructural explanations of why Koreans had an international reputation for being particularly susceptible to online games addiction. I found that in addition to Korea’s unique cultural, historical, and geo-political circumstances as key enablers of online gaming, participation in communities oriented around those activities was a way that Korean youth (the majority of online gamers) were exercising self-determination and in many cases attempting to garner the esteem of peers. Life factors such as dense living quarters with family, a 93% unemployment rate for those ages 15-19 (KNSO, 2005), and compulsory military service for males in their early twenties, were just some of the catalysts to Korea’s reaction to and with online games cultures. It was therefore important to document and thickly describe (Geertz, 1973) how these youth negotiated these contingencies as they presented themselves in the midst of their everyday lived realities.

With a second ethnographic fieldwork stay that I plan to do in 2008, I wish to build upon my previous findings by collecting a more varied data set, incorporating a “top-down” look from government and industry perspectives. I'm looking at these sectors as laying the groundwork for what I observed in my previous “bottom-up” player-oriented findings from 2004.

Ultimately, my work would be a product situated in a point of tension (what would be the point, otherwise?), comparing empirical evidence with more traditional theoretical frameworks concerned with the underpinnings of society and technology, in order to continue addressing the nature of online gaming culture as something constantly in flux. I expect that the resulting product will expose the inherent flaws in any explanation of online gaming culture based solely on the theoretical extremes of technological determinism or constructivism.   It's  never,  after all, "Just a game."

Ahead: My next post will cover the very sentiment of games not being just games. 
Until then, pwn or be pwnt.