Pleasure from Games is
Not the Only Form of Happiness
Milano Kao
National Central
University
Abstract
Technology
is always on a move. Thanks to its huge strikes on development, commoditization
became a natural outcome of vehement competition and steady advancement.
Nowadays, in order to watch the lates movie, to dine in a first-class
restaurant or to make a reservation for the coming vacation, lining up in a
queue is no longer the necessary condition. Instead, a phone call beforehand or
even few clicks on the internet will certainly do so. However, such
commoditization brings along problems one following the other. It creates a
connectional isolation of our self and that of others. While it became doubly
common for people to own a smart phone, getting online turned out not only to
be more and more easy, but also possible at any time or anywhere.
People
start to build up forges of their own world throughout all sorts of attractions
rampanting in the Internet. Playing online games, chatting on social networks,
skimming through entertaining information and so on. At first, such behavior
will appear as a form of habit. Every hour or so, you will get on line and
check if there is any message left for you. Later on, the time will then be
limited into thirty minute, and then fifteen then five. Eventually, you will
have to force yourself hard not to connect the internet, since you could not
take your hands off the smart phones any more.
With
a smart phone in hand, life did indeed become more convenient to us, comparing
to the old days, in some way. Sending message to someone by Line and gets their
response with in a second, checking for the destination on Google map while
getting in a new environment, searching for things you are interested in right
away on Wikipedia, etc. But, with these convenience, we spaced out the distance
among others. That had become extremely ironic when the MRT was packed with
passenger, like a can of Sardine, yet what matters to the passengers were not
thing happen right beside them. Most of them have their eyes closely focused on
their phones, either displaying high concentration of the News Feed on Facebook
or indulging themselves fully into the virtual reality of online games.
Figure 1
While
this picture above shows the idea pretty well. “Life is what happens to you
while you’re looking at your smart phones.” I wonder how things changed. Life
back then seemed to be so simple comparing to now. Dad said that when he was
little, the happiest thing is to eat a red egg on birthday. Such trivial matter
was what happiness meant to them. But now, the present generation were lost in
the temptation given by sensational news broadcast by mass media or the
entertainment and excitements gain by online games. They mistook this information
as the happiness of life. Therefore, I want to discover how people create such misunderstanding
by the example of game addiction.
Game addicted happiness
According
to the article written by Eliana Dockterman, which appears on the technology
and media section of TIME Magazine, it analyzed players' addiction behavior within
mainly two aspects of discussion.
From the interview with Tommy Palm, who is one of
the game designers, Dockterman get to know what tactics King (the creator
company of Candy Crush) used. Dockterman also called on a few psychology
experts and players to understand the back-story on why those tactics worked so
well and made the game irresistible.
"Perhaps
the most genius element of Candy Crush is its ability to make you long for it.(Dockterman,2013)”
Since you can only get five chances, or say, lives at a time. Thus, whenever
you run out of lives, you will have to wait for another thirty-minute increment
to continue the play. Owning to the fact that the game actually constrains its
players from getting more lives, it urges them even more to yearn after it. That
effortless constraint tests the humanity of human beings, for people tend to have
a stronger desire for things they are not able to get in reach.
Another
reason that deals with humanity is the fact that human is suckers for sweet
talks. Most of the time, though we all know “Good advice jars on the ear.” still,
we incline to be hoodwink by the flattering speech. For example, in the game, once
you made more than one matches of the candy role in one move, words will pop up
on your screen accompanied by a voice that says, "Sweet" or either
"Delicious", considering how many combos you complete. Dr. Kimberly
Young, a pioneering expert on internet and gaming addiction, called this a
"Positive reward". In addition, she believed that it is an essential
feedback for player immersion, for that people will feel better about himself
or herself.
Beside
for the humanity test, there is also psychology factors King tied to deals with
in their tactics. Many people might questioned," Why choosing candy instead
of other symbols. Like biscuit, fruit, or even cute animals?" or questions
like, "While there are so many similar games available, why Candy
Crush?" Palm gave a direct response to those questions, "Many people
have had a very positive feeling about Candy since they were kids. (2013)"
Thanks to the happy memories with candy during childhood, players coincidentally
tied the positive association and pleasures derive from eating into the game. It
leads out their inner children. Palm continued, "And it (candy) makes for
a real nice visual game board with a lot of color and interesting shapes."
For the homepage seemed like a traditional Candy Land Board, and with the game
pieces designed as candies, players incline to believe they are transported
into an entire Candy Land experience, which is far away from reality.
Behavioral Addiction
By
observing different stages of players involved in games, Mark Griffith put
forward a list to define such behavior. The six stages are salience, mood modification,
tolerance, withdrawal symptoms, conflicts and relapse. In the story mentioned
below of my mother, I will explain the function of each stage with more detail.
My
mother brought herself an IPhone during the summer vacation, and that is when
she started to gain the habits of playing app games such as candy crush. This
behavior has become the important activity in her daily life (salience). She spends
thirty minutes to an hour on playing games after having breakfast, lunch and
dinner. Sometimes, even before going to sleep, as if following a prescription
given by the doctor. Nevertheless, the most interesting part during the
observation of mom is that it is easy to predict whether she is winning or
losing the game. The behavior of playing game changes her mood by providing either
a rush of excitement or sense of calm or even, a shout of remorse may happen (mood
modification). While the difficulties of the game advanced eventually level by
level, it become harder to go on to the next level when meanwhile, you have the
limitation of life chance. So mom began to purchase “life “in the online store,
and that represents the stage when more and more behavior is needed to get the
mood boost (tolerance). However, what happens when she fail to pass the level
even with the purchase of extra lives? Well, mom would be depressed and put
down her phone to take a break, but after finishing all of the housework, she
would return once again back to her wonderland, and that is how the behavior
returns after being given up (relapse)
There
are still two aspect I had not talked about, which are withdrawal symptoms – a
person feels lousy or irritable when unable to engage in the behavior, and
conflict – the behavior causes conflicts with other people, interferes with
other activities, or causes a person to feel a loss of control. Since I regard
addiction as something formed out of our daily habits, this list might then
provide us a way to think about whether a certain habit is making it harder to
live a life that reflects our value and contributes to our long-term happiness.
Long-term Happiness
All
of our lives we are searching for the long-term happiness. In the beginning of Nicomachean
Ethic’S Book I, Aristotle wrote, ”Every art and inquiry, and similarly every
action and pursuit, is thought to aim at some good; and for this reason the
good has rightly been declared to be that at which all things aim.” That was
his definition toward happiness. He believed that everything should all aim at
some good, even pointed out that many aims are merely intermediate aims, and
are desired only because they make the achievement of higher aims possible.
“If, then, there is some end of the things we
do, which we desire for its own sake…, and if we do not choose everything for
the sake of something else…, clearly this must be the good and the chief good.”
While discussing the chief good in our life, Aristotle proposed one and highest
aim we should seek for throughout our whole life should have the qualities same
as politics, since “though it is worthwhile to attain the end merely for one
man, it is finer and more godlike to attain it for a nation or for city-state.”
To
do so, is by policy. Yet, “what is it that we say political science aims at and
what is the highest of all good achievable by action?” Since for both the
general run of men and people of superior refinement say that it is happiness,
and further on identify living well and doing well with being happy. However,
when regard to what happiness is, they differ either from one another. At some
stages of life, they even differ from oneself By identifying happiness with happiness
with health when he is ill, and with wealth when he is poor. Overall, they consider
happiness as some plain and obvious thing like pleasure, wealth or honor.
With
the definition most people made for happiness, we can see the three distinct
way of life which different people associate with happiness. First of all, the
slavish way of pleasure; second, the refined and active way of politics that
aims at honor, and the third, the way of contemplation life which ultimately
aims at wisdom. However, why is pleasure ranking in the first place among the
other two?
The Desire Theory
Three
theories of well-being mentioned in the article of Stanford Encyclopedia of
Philosophy are successively the Hedonism, the Desire Theory, and the Objective
List Theory. But in this paragraph I will merely talk about hedonism and the
Desire Theory.
Jeremy Bentham is one of the most well-known
of the more recent hedonist. In his writing An
Introduction to the Principle of Moral and Legislation he wrote, “Nature
has placed mankind under the government of two sovereign masters, pain and
pleasure. It is for them alone to point out what we ought to do.” (Bentham, 1) Hedonism
gave their answer to the phenomenon of human beings always acts in pursuit of
what they believe will give them the greatest balance of pleasure over pain. They
think it is simply the pleasantness of pleasure and the painfulness of pain.
Yet, how are we to measure the value of the two experiences? For the reason
that there does not appear to be a single common strand of pleasantness running
through all the different experience people enjoy.” To be more practical is to
ask one-self, how is it possible to compare the pleasure one get from eating a
great meal with their families in a restaurant to reading Shakespeare alone in
a quiet corner of the library. There is obvious different aspect of pleasure
one can gain from these two incidents. Therefore, scholars argued that Bentham
seems to be placing all pleasure on a par, and further ignores the distinctions
between.
What
about other theories, can it be more precise in defining well-being to human
beings? By the suppose of experience machine, it successfully explains how
Desire Theory works in individual behavior. By planning a lifetime of
experience before hand, one can later on plug in and live out their life in a
virtual reality machine. In such case, one can go through whatever experience
they think might possibly bring out the most enjoyment and pleasantness.
However, Is it the experience that people seeks for or the result of it people
look forward to?
“Desire
is consequent on opinion, rather than opinion on desire.” (Miceli, 11)To
simplify this contention an example might be well enough. That is, for instinct,
nowadays teenagers seem to be pursuit eagerly of fame and wealth. However, do they
ever consider the difficulties they had to encounter through the pursuance? To
reach their satisfaction of desire, they skipped over tough process and dreamed
of the outcome impracticable. By doing so, they be satisfied by the desire of
fame and wealth, for they think of fame and wealth as independently goods
beforehand. However, since the pursuance of life should be about happiness,
fame and wealth might just happen to be a camouflage that confused our
attention, like those various sort of pleasure we get from the internet.
It
is not to blame that people might want to run away from reality by internet.
But once we get used to that, we might turned out getting stuck in the virtual
reality. We lost the truth of happiness through all these temptation, through
online games, through the commoditization technology had brought to us. Through
all these occupancy, we mislead our self into the pursuit of slavish pleasure
and later on took it as happiness.
Results
“many
changes occur in life, and all manner of changes and the most prosperous may
fail into great misfortunes in old age, as in told of Priam in the Trojan
Cycle.”(Tenenbaum, 236) Happiness must be consider over a whole life time, and
a truly happy person in life is he who will bear what misfortune brings most
beautifully and in complete harmony in every instance, because even in this
circumstances, something beautiful shine through..
Reference
Aristotle.
"The Internet Classics Archive | Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle."
The Internet Classics Archive | Nicomachean Ethics by Aristotle. N.p., 1994.
Web. 12 Jan. 2015.
Bentham,
Jeremy. "Chapter I." An Introduction to the Principles of Morals and
Legislation. N.p.: n.p., n.d. 1. Print.
Crisp,
Roger. "Well-Being." Stanford University. Stanford University, 06
Nov. 2001. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.
Dockterman,
Eliana. "The Science Behind the Candy Crush Addiction." Business
Money Candy Crush Saga The Science Behind Our Addiction Comments. TIME
Magazine15, 15 Nov. 2013. Web. 12 Jan. 2015.
Miceli,
Maria, and Cristiano Castelfranchi. "2.2.2." Expectancy and Emotion.
Corby: Oxford UP, 2014. 11. Web.
Tenenbaum,
Sergio. "9." Moral Psychology. Amsterdam: Rodopi, 2007. 236. Print.
Rubin,
Gretchen. "Are You "Addicted" to Something?" Gretchen
Rubin. N.p., 20 Aug. 2014. Web. 09 Jan. 2015.
