An addictability score for games
Should we have an ESRB-like rating for how addictive a game is?
LFG: Learning from Games is a series dedicated to making the complex world of video game research just a little easier to understand. I post one about 2-3 times a month in between my Science Shorts and Coming Soon series.
CONTENT WARNING: Addiction
Please skip this issue if you are uncomfortable with discussions about addiction.
Hello JOMT Reader!
For better or for worse, the first thing we see when we fire up a game are its design elements. Graphic style, sound and music design, and user interfaces can make a lasting impression from the moment we start the game. As the game unfolds, we discover its story and game mechanics. It’s usually at this point when we decide whether or not to keep playing the game.
There are a couple of examples of recent games that surprised me with their design elements that have drawn me in. Fretless - The Wrath of Riffson is one such example: I enjoyed the rhythm-based combat so much, I lost track of how long I had been playing the game. On the flip side, Monster Train 2’s design choices hurt my head enough that I knew exactly how long I had been playing for. The difference between the two is very personal, so the same games may have different effects for other people.
Sometimes, those effects can lead to harmful consequences. Video games are designed to make you want to keep playing, so it’s no surprise that they’ve been linked to addiction and internet gaming disorder. Before you get fussed, I want to note that I don’t think these two words really cover the entirety of potential harmful consequences. Let me explain.
⚠️My issues with the current vocabulary
Addiction is defined as a lifelong condition that involves compulsive seeking and performing of an activity despite negative or harmful consequences1. It is most often associated with substances (alcohol or drugs) and was only included in the most recent revisions of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (5th edition; DSM-5)2 and the International Classification of Diseases (11th revision; ICD-11)3. The issue I have is that neither drugs nor alcohol were designed with addictability in mind. They were originally developed for some other purpose and people found that they could be addictive. Video games, on the other hand, are intentionally designed to keep you playing the game. There’s an external factor here that isn’t really captured by the word.
Internet gaming disorder makes an assumption that online games are more addictive than offline games, and defines the disorder from that perspective in DSM-5. ICD-11 has a much broader definition, calling it gaming disorder, to include offline games as part of the problem. In either case, my issue is that this combination of words tends to cast gaming in a negative light. If you’ve been reading my posts, you’ll know that’s not the case (and my position).
💡A new-ish concept
So what’s a good way to talk about how some people can experience negative or harmful consequences from gaming? To answer that question, I think it’s helpful to go back to how we started the conversation: game design.
Online and offline games want you to keep playing. And there are design elements within the game that keep you wanting to play. But it isn’t gaming itself that’s problematic: otherwise every game we play would lead to problems. It’s only games with specific design elements that tug at our brains to keep playing. For me, that’s turn-based games.
When those specific game design elements lead to difficulties regulating gaming behaviours, it’s known as dysregulated gaming. This is a much more appropriate term to describe what’s happening: an imbalance in the relationship with healthy gaming. It’s a more useful concept than addiction or gaming disorder.
💯Evaluating games for their addictive potential for dysregulated gaming
For now, the easiest way to understand dysregulated gaming is through the lens of addiction. That’s how many researchers have approached it to develop tools that measure the addictive potential of a game. Having read my thoughts on the matter, you’ll know that what we’re really talking about is how to measure dysregulated gaming.
There’s a lot of game design elements to consider when you think about how different players react differently to those elements:
game aesthetic features (sound, music, graphics)
game play features (mechanics, duration of game, rate of play)
game play scheduling features (promoting habit formation, time-limited events)
multiplayer features
features strengthening cognitive biases and distorted beliefs
gambling-like features
This isn’t an exhaustive list — I grouped a bunch of features that were mentioned in the article that inspired my post. The groupings help categorize and simplify some of the ways that we can measure how these elements contribute to dysregulated gaming.
Researchers have recently developed tools to measure how addictive a game can be. One of them is called the Risk Characteristics Checklist for Games (RCCG). The other is called the Saini-Hodgins Addiction Risk Potential of Games Scale (SHARP-G). I don’t have access to the RCCG but the SHARG-G elements look something like this:
multiplayer / social gameplay features
extrinsic game features (price)
intrinsic game features (experience-oriented game world, virtual / augmented reality, grind mechanic)
gambling-like game features
Several questions in each of these categories get rated, and answers to all 23 questions generates a profile that could look something like this:
What if these scores could be combined into a rating like ESRB does for age appropriateness?
It gets a little tricky when you factor in individual differences and their triggers for what could make someone at risk for dysregulated gaming. But here, I’ll borrow from the food industry again (where all of my analogies tend to gravitate towards). This could serve as an allergy warning — “May contain peanuts.” — and it’s up to the person to decide whether they will take the risk on the food or game.
There may also need to be more detailed breakdowns of these risk labels so that players are alerted to the game design elements that might trigger them the most for dysregulated gaming.
🔮Transparency is the future
As researchers continue to collect information on how we are affected by video games, I think there is an arm of the broader industry that should make the information available, accessible, and actionable so that we can all have healthy relationships with gaming. Not all foods are good for everyone — in the same way, not all games are good for everyone, but there really isn’t a good way to help us make those decisions. A framework like this could be the first step in that direction.
If you want to read the article that inspired this post, you can read it here for free: https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S2352853225000276
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https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/6407-addiction
The definition for addiction can be found on this Cleveland Clinic website.
https://www.psychiatry.org/patients-families/internet-gaming
The short summary of internet gaming disorder can be found here. Unfortunately, the manual is behind a paywall.
https://icd.who.int/browse/2025-01/mms/en#1448597234
Fortunately, the WHO makes the ICD definitions free to browse. Though, it is a wall of text.
I 100% agree. I think it would be tough to narrow down but a great start. For example, I played Balatro and liked it, but I didn’t play more than 30 minutes of the game. Sounds like I’m a rare case here. haha
I think this is a good idea to help parents evaluate which games to buy for their kids.
I do find it a tricky subject though. I only know now of a handful of cases that have been in the media where gaming became so addictive it caused the person or others harm, so there may have been other underlying issues that were triggered.