This also brings social gaming in as a concern - what is the moral stance on games what have been specifically and deliberately engineered with said biological and psychological pathways in mind, with addiction as an intended outcome as opposed to an accidental and marginal one?
Biologically perhaps, psychologically no. This "trick" you speak of is the sense of progression and rewards given that makes a game fun to play.
I've never once seen a game that is not fun, but is addicting. Although my friends have said Master of Orion 3 fits that description, but I never actually saw them ever play it so I think it was a joke.
If somebody knows where to find the talk please post it, my google-fu is weak today. He also compares the iphone to a swiss army knife and the ipad to a "swiss-army-kitchen-utensil" (i.e too bad to be really useful and too big to fit in your pocket). The talk was just a few weeks after the first ipad release. It also contains alot of other talk about the future of gaming for the general masses, facebook games and gaming anything in life(like shopping), etc. If that's enough to trigger anyones memory.
The farmville comparision i was refering to is probably this one http://mediacommons.futureofthebook.org/content/cultivated-p...
http://www.g4tv.com/videos/44277/dice-2010-design-outside-th...
Activities that people get addicted to (like gambling or videogames) are only psychologically addicting. Yes, of course psychological addiction does have physical effects (dopamine levels in your brain, for instance), but we can still clearly differentiate addictive drugs from addictive activities.
To be addicted simply means one will seek out the thing they are addicted to at great cost. They'll neglect all sorts of important things and put the object of their addiction above all else.
To be dependent means ones body needs a substance to function normal. Usually this means keeping withdrawl at bay.
You can be dependent but not addicted.
The only difference between drug addiction and an addiction to, say, playing games is that you are not dependent upon the games. In reality however the cost of both are just about equal. The one difference being that many substances will cost you your health directly while games will cost you your health indirectly. In both cases however the psychology is the same and so is the neurobiology. But because games don't literally replace already existing neurotransmitters you don't get dependence. But what you do get with games, just like substances, is your reward pathway being excited to the point where you begin seeking out the thing that excited that pathway over and over. Nothing else excites that pathway as much and so you then crave that thing.
People look at gaming and drugs and think its a no-brainer that they're so clearly different but they aren't. Addiction is addiction no matter the object of addiction.
You know what the real difference between gaming addiction and drug addiction is? Stigma. What everyone thinks they know about addicts/addiction.
Anecdotally, I know someone who was on three pots a day, and he had a miserable month when he quit cold-turkey. Some of that was withdrawal, but some of that was also probably him having to adjust to a wake-sleep cycle without the aid of stimulants.
