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 Dr. David Walsh, founder of the National Institute on Media and the Family, recently talked with GameCyte about video game addiction and answered questions about how NIMF determines the winners and losers of its annual "Video Game Report Card."
In response to implications that the NIMF has been co-opted by the gaming industry, Dr. Walsh said:
I think from the perspective of the gaming community, if we’re tough on the industry, we’re out to lunch — we’re a bunch of idiots who don’t know what we’re talking about. If we acknowledge industry progress, then somehow we’ve been bought out. So I don’t expect to get winning grades, because that’s not our role. Our role is to provide information for parents, and that’s what we do.
Dr. Walsh also talks in-depth about a major concern of his and the National Institute on Media and the Family, video game addiction:
I think that there is some evidence that video games do have more of an addictive potential to them than other forms of media, and I think the reason is because it’s interactive. When I’m watching a movie or a television program, I can certainly get engrossed in that, there’s no question about that, and if I get really wrapped up in a good movie, the two hours of the movie can go by in a — it seems like the blink of an eye — but I think the very nature of video games as interactive, where I become involved in not just viewing the action but directing the action, I think make it a different psychological experience. I think part of the popularity of video games is that they are engaging — that’s why people like them so much, is because they are enjoyable, and engrossing. For the majority of game players, it’s an enjoyable, engaging, engrossing activity. For some people — and once again, we don’t know what exactly’s going on, we don’t know how big the percentage is — for some people, it appears that that very interactive and engaging element for them becomes something that’s very difficult to control.
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