Ethics in the Videogame Industry: A Mythbusting and Scientific Approach

This article is an enhanced write-up of the talk I gave at the Game Developers Conference (GDC) in March 2019.

Videogames are one of the most popular forms of recreation in the world and they will generate over 150 billion US dollars in 2019, yet they often generate terrible press. For example, some games are accused of making players violent, or to turning them into addicts. I’ve been in the videogame industry for over 10 years and the latest game I’ve worked on (as director of user experience at Epic Games until I left on October 2017), Fortnite, is played by about 250 million players. It’s also under scrutiny by many concerned parents who fear that the game might have some negative impact on their children. Some parents have been reporting, for example, that their children play Fortnite at the expense of their education, health, or even personal hygiene. It saddens me that videogames can have a negative impact on some people’s lives but I’m also frustrated by the fearmongering I’ve been witnessing, most of it with no solid scientific ground. This fearmongering — and sometimes even scapegoating — around videogames can distract the public and lawmakers from identifying and addressing the real potential of  videogame play, and tech in general. As a result the game industry is often defensive when responding to the horrible things it’s accused of, which is understandable but fails to build a constructive dialog. We, videogame developers (i.e. all the professionals participating in crafting a game), have a responsibility as content providers to foster this dialog. 

Here I offer my perspective on ethics in the game industry from a cognitive science standpoint (given my doctorate in cognitive and developmental psychology) coupled with my expertise in game user experience through my work at Ubisoft, LucasArts, Epic Games, and current experience as an independent game ux consultant. Below, I will discuss addiction (and attention economy), loot boxes, dark patterns, and violence. For each of these topics I will identify the main public concern, what science has to say about it, and then offer some suggestions on what game developers could do to address the related concerns. 

Tldr: This piece is long, because all the topics are nuanced and often complex, so the tldr (too long, didn’t read) takeaway is: be careful of shortcuts claiming that videogames have an effect (whatever effect this might be). I encourage you to read the long story…

1. Videogame “addiction“

o   Main public concern regarding “addiction” to games

Many parents are worried because they see their children spending a lot of time playing video games. They hear about a “gaming addiction” that is affecting some players and fear that their loved ones will become addicts and suffer in their school and work performance and in their social relationships. There is also concern that games are “designed to be addictive” and to provide “dopamine shots” to the brain. In some countries, such as South Korea and China, video gaming has been recognized as a disorder and treatment programs have been established. In fact, China has recently introduced a curfew on online gaming for minors (even though the shutdown policy in South Korea was not found to impact sleeping hours in teenagers).

o   What science says about addiction

What is crucial to determine here is the following: is there a specific type of addiction related to videogames requiring a specific treatment, and can games create such an addiction? Before tackling these questions, let’s first assess what an addiction is, because simply being engaged with a game and playing for several hours per day is not enough to be considered an addiction. Addiction refers to pathological behavior that has a precise definition. There are addictions tied to the use of a substance, such as alcohol, opioids, or tobacco. In these addictions, the substance generally creates a physical dependence. For example, heroin binds to opioid receptors in the brain, creating a surge of pleasurable sensation. It is extremely addictive as it is disturbing the balance of hormonal and neuronal systems, and its impact cannot easily be reversed, creating a profound tolerance and physical dependence. Other substances don’t create such a dramatic physical dependence, or can create a dependence that is mainly psychological, which of course does not mean that their effects are less concerning.

Other addictions are said to be “behavioral,” which means that they are not substance-related, such as addiction to sex, shopping, or sports. As I’m writing these lines, only “gambling disorder” is mentioned as a behavioral addiction in the DSM-5 (Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders), the manual used by mental health professionals to diagnose mental disorders. There is also mention of an “Internet gaming disorder” in the DSM-5 but as a condition requiring further research, along with caffeine use disorder. Nonetheless, the proposed symptoms to diagnose an Internet gaming disorder are the following:

A diagnosis of Internet gaming disorder requires gaming causing “significant impairment or distress” and experiencing at least five or more of the listed symptoms within a year. It is worth noting that there is no consensus on these “Internet gaming disorder” symptoms, pulled from substance addiction, and they are in fact currently heavily debated.

In late 2017, the World Health Organization (WHO) announced that in the upcoming edition (11^th Revision) of the International Classification of Diseases (ICD), gaming disorder would be identified as a new disorder. I do not debate that some people experience problematic gaming that might distress them, and that they need help. However, the larger question is whether gaming disorder is a specific type of addiction requiring a specific treatment. Some people have problematic behavior with sports, yet there is no specific sports disorder recognized by the DSM-5 or the ICD. Some researchers estimated that only 0.3 to 1% of the general population might qualify for a potential diagnosis of Internet disorder (Przybylski et al., 2016), while it is estimated that there are over two billion gamers across the world. Among those who play videogames, it was found that more than 2 out of 3 players did not report any symptoms of Internet gaming disorder. Many researchers claim that problematic gaming should be best viewed as a coping mechanism associated with underlying problems such as depression and anxiety that arise from neuro-chemistry independent of game play. While it is important to recognize and help people suffering from problematic gaming, the concern according to those researchers is that focusing on a “gaming disorder” would create a moral panic, and would stigmatize billions of gamers. The risk would then be creating a mental “illness” that didn’t previously exist, as neuroscientist Mark Lewis puts it. This is why the creation of the first gaming detox camps are raising concerns for many: the strong focus on videogames could distract from the real origins of the symptoms, such as child negligence or anxiety, while many of these videogame rehab programs are extremely expensive. Of course, other researchers and health professionals find that having now a recognized “gaming disorder” will raise awareness on the suffering of those addicted to games and will encourage more research to ultimately help them more adequately.

Lastly, some scientists suggest that videogames are designed to be addictive and compare some game mechanics to machine gambling, which they say could activate the brain’s so-called “reward system” in the same way as drugs like cocaine or heroin do. I will leave aside the behavioral psychology aspect of gambling (conditioning and variable rewards) for now, as I will tackle these notions in the next section. I will stay focused on explaining here why some people are concerned that videogames might give “addictive dopamine shots” to players. The term “brain-reward circuitry” (deemed a gross oversimplification by some neuroscientists who deplore the increase of “neuroquackery”) is used to describe what is going on in our brains when we learn, for example, that an action can lead to a “reward”. A reward is anything that we perceive as being a good outcome, from enjoying a tasty meal to receiving a love message from someone we care about. When we want such a reward, dopamine is slowly released in the brain to motivate us, which is overall useful since we have survived so far by seeking good outcomes and avoiding pain. However, according to neuroscientist Mark Humphries, suggesting that dopamine is released when we receive a reward is not exact. He explains that dopamine is released fast when we didn’t expect to receive a reward, yet get one. Mark explains that dopamine “signals the error between what you predicted and what you got. That error can be positive, negative, or zero. It is not reward. Dopamine neurons do not fire when you get something good. They fire when you get something unexpected. And they sulk when you don’t get something you expected.” 

So it’s not a surprise, nor it is a brain malfunction, to have dopamine released when we play a fun videogame that makes you want to reach goals in a challenging environment that can also make you experience setbacks, or unexpected good outcomes. Because if it wasn’t the case, it would mean that playing games was a boring activity. Dopamine is present in our brains all day long as we learn about our environment, are motivated in doing something, receive messages from friends, do our daily meditation, play games, or even move around. Parkinson’s disease is due to a low level of dopamine in the brain, for example. So the new Silicon Valley “dopamine fasting” trend does not make any sense. You do not want to get lower dopamine levels in your brain. What is true though, is that certain drugs, like methamphetamines, give a massive surge of dopamine in the brain, which is why they are so addictive. It’s not having dopamine released in the brain that can be a problem, it’s the amount released. A study by Koepp et al. published in Nature in 1998 showed that playing video games increased the levels of dopamine in the brain by about 100%. Which can seem a lot, but so does sex. Meditation was also found to increase dopamine levels by 65%. As a comparison, an illicit drug like methamphetamine increases dopamine levels by over 1000%. As Markey and Ferguson (2017) point out, if videogames that are enjoyed across the world by over 2 billion people were as addictive as illicit drugs, we would have a massive epidemic to address. 

In sum, pathologic gaming does exist and some people do need help. However, the scientific debate around the existence of a specific addiction to videogames, and its causes and treatments is far from resolution. This sensitive topic requires further research, especially given the attention it gets from policy makers. In the meantime, distinguishing between excessive gaming, problematic gaming, and addictive gaming (Kuss et al. 2017) can help avoiding stigmas, downplaying true addiction suffering, and overall dispeling the moral panic.