Gaming is Like Gambling! Or Maybe Not...

Scholars prodded by political entities keep releasing really silly statements about video games. The latest.

It’s hard to remember now but some 20 years ago adults panicked about video games with all the earnestness and irrationality that they now panic about smartphones and social media. Perhaps I’m wearing rose-tinted classes, but most of the video game panic seems to have ebbed. But maybe not entirely! Recently, the Council of Europe released a report by their Pompidou Group related to the issue of online gaming and gambling (which they appear to confuse and conflate with each other) entitled “Risks and Harms associated with Online Gaming and Gambling”.

At this juncture it’s hard not to roll my eyes in pretty much any context when social scientists start talking about “harms”. Such claims are invariably based on weak and correlational evidence, despite the causal language (so much for psychology 101!), and do more to promote the authors’ own social crusading and moral-do-gooding credentials than inform the public. And the whole thing feels so anachronistic. Then again, the whole “gaming addiction” nonsense kind of clunked down after it’s heyday. Only in 2018 or so did the World Health Organization (WHO) create “gaming disorder” as a diagnosis, by which time many scholars and even professional bodies such as the media divisions of the American Psychological Association and Psychological Society of Ireland regarded it with suspicion.

But this report, unsurprisingly critiqued by the gaming industry, is a mess. It’s kind of bad when academics make the video game industry look better at research than so many actual scholars are, but that’s what they’ve accomplished. But let’s take a look.

First, as with many of these statements, it’s kind of telling who’s on it. I’m generally suspicious of “consensus” statements, which almost always are selectively crafted to falsely support a particular ideological or policy agenda. Often, they’re achieved by excluding anyone who would disagree. Looking at the folks involved, I honestly don’t recognize most of the names which is a bit odd. I’m not a big fan of the dick waving that so often accompanied the video game violence debates, but recognizing only 1 name (Kiraly) out of 14 committee members feels unexpected. Then again, I’m parochial and terrible at remembering names.

But the report was organized by the WHO, an organization with serious skin in the game (and some embarrassment at how badly their roll-out of “gaming disorder” went). Vladmir Poznyak, who once admitted to me in an email that the WHO created gaming disorder in part of out pressure from “stakeholders” (another WHO official confirmed this to be Asian countries, which I presume to be China and South Korea, two big movers in this area), directly consulted on the report. Vladmir, from our exchanges, is a nice guy who means well but, honestly, this is a huge conflict of interest.

Zsolt Demetrovics, editor of Journal of Behavioral Addictions, is also listed as consultant. Again, I don’t believe Zsolt is a bad actor, but he definitely seems to have strong opinions on this issue. To Zsolt’s credit, as editor, he did accept a paper by dozens of scholars opposed to “gaming disorder” on which I was one coauthor. But he then organized a bizarre, one-sided series of comments by advocates for the addiction position, many of them simply swapping in and out of different papers like a drunken orgy, with Zsolt himself coauthoring one of them. So much for editorial independence and neutrality. To be fair, he did publish a response by an even larger group of skeptical scholars. But that all felt a bit shady…not outright unethical, but definitely odd. Ironically, it wasn’t altogether different from the whole “Fiedler on the Roof” controversy, instigated in no small part by a researcher who felt similar treatment was racially motivated. But editors have wide latitude, and sometimes their decisions suck and life goes on. It's not a big conspiracy. My point being here, again, not that Zsolt is a bad or unethical guy (I don’t think this), but rather that this committee was comprised of individuals with very public and set views on gaming addiction, but included no skeptics of the concept who might have balanced those views.

As for the report itself, it’s pretty obvious to me the authors started with predetermined conclusions and assembled convenient data (sometimes misleadingly) to support that position. The authors don’t engage with criticisms of the pathological/addictive gaming concept much at all. They don’t, for instance, acknowledge the criticisms of gaming disorder mentioned above. They make no mention of the controversies over the “gaming disorder” diagnosis, despite referring to “gaming disorder”107 times (including references to be fair). This “citation bias” actually is something of an ethical violation…it’s deeply misinformative and against the spirit of science.

In many other cases, they avoid nuances. Such as, on the issue of lootboxes (not a thing about games I love, for the record) they claim that these are harmful yet fail to note the effect sizes in this body of research are very low. Problem gamblers, for instance, may spend something like $10-40 more per month on lootboxes, than other players, according to various studies I’ve read or been involved with. Meh. That’s not an issue of regulatory concern.

A lot of the report engages in trendy academic fever-dream type stuff about “dark patterns” and other poorly research concepts. It also is blatantly hyperbolic in cliché ways such as when complaining ““Structural characteristics and game mechanics of both online gambling and online video gaming are carefully and intentionally crafted in ways that make the activities as immersive and addictive as possible.” How could the authors possibly know this? Are they mind readers? This is advocacy language, not careful science. And the US courts have been casting a skeptical eye at such claims recently.

Gaming and gambling are carelessly conflated throughout the document. There are the typical goofy and nonsensical claims about dopamine “These virtual incentives have been shown to stimulate the release of dopamine in the brain, leading to a sense of euphoria among players” or “…it is often hypothesised that the brain experiences an influx of “joy hormones” during the act of opening a loot box, regardless of its actual content.” “Joy hormones?” Did actual scientists just say that? No, that’s not how either games nor dopamine work.

Any evidence from studies that would give The Committee pause in making the most extreme claims is ignored. At one point the Committee seems to imply that playing games may turn gamers into drug dealers “This also includes the risk of being enticed into illegal activities such as drug dealing in online games.” Overall, this is sloppy, sloppy work, and should never form the basis of any policy, anywhere at any time.

Science deserves so much better than this. Why is so much of the social and medical sciences wasted chasing moral panic rabbits down highly biased rabbit holes? I don’t for one minute believe this is limited to technophobia either. We saw it with the race panic of 2020. Or the gross mishandling of the covid19 pandemic, lab leak theory included. This raises the inevitable question…what else are our scientists full of crap about? As someone who loves science, and values it as a critical part of our society’s growth, this is a painful question to have to ask.