What Happens When Games Replace Reality

Real life is hard, but when people rely on games to more easily fulfill life’s demands and challenges, their real lives start to fall apart.

Illustration by The Epoch Times, Shutterstock

For more than a decade, Martin Cermak, now 27, lived in two worlds—the physical one where he struggled with relationships and direction, and a digital one where he ruled as a skilled gamer.

What rocked his worlds was a breakup that left him in cold shock. His first-ever girlfriend suddenly ended their relationship after nine months of dating.

“I honestly couldn’t believe it at first,” Cermak told The Epoch Times.

For months leading up to the breakup, Cermak had fallen into a downward spiral. He had quit his job in the military, spending most of his days gaming, streaming himself gaming, or watching streams. He was also at risk of losing his part-time job, having skipped several shifts when he didn’t feel like working. Only when it was necessary did he attend his college classes, but in every other free moment, he gamed.

“I had a long and hard period of thinking, deciding what to do next. I had an idea to get back together. I had an idea to start going to church. I also had an idea to quit gaming, and I did.”

His decision changed his life.

Once stereotyped as a nerdy hobby, video games have become mainstream. Today, 70 percent of U.S. consumers identify as gamers, spending an average of 14 1/2 hours per week playing.

Real life is hard, and games offer a virtual world to escape to, where achievements and desires are easily fulfilled, and life is so much more exciting. As games increasingly draw people into virtuality, their deeper effects are beginning to surface.

An Escape Better Than Reality

“There are games that fulfill all kinds of player motivations,” Jesse Schell, a distinguished professor of entertainment technology at Carnegie Mellon University, CEO of Schell Games, and game designer, told The Epoch Times.

Multiplayer online games, mostly heavy on action and violence, seemingly meet people’s need for achievement and social connection. Open-world games give players autonomy to do anything they want to do—such as robbing a bank or mining for materials to build a house.

If you’re looking for a simple life, cozy games—often set on a farm or in a quiet village, where you can fish, farm, and chat with neighbors over tea—may draw you in. If you crave action and drama, role-playing and adventure games deliver exciting quests and compelling storylines.

Different games meet people’s different needs. Djordje Novakov/Shutterstock

Games offer an escape.

While you are behind on assignments, your character in the simulation game may be graduating with honors as valedictorian. While you suffer from social anxiety, your character in role-playing games may be maxing all the relationship goals.

“Achieving anything in real life takes a ton of effort, time, uncertainty, and emotional resilience,” Alok Kanojia, psychiatrist and cofounder of the mental health coaching company Healthy Gamer, told The Epoch Times.

“You want to get good grades? That takes years. You want to build a career? That takes decades. You want to feel confident or proud of yourself? That’s a lifelong journey of growth,” Kanojia said. “In a video game, you can go from zero to hero in a few hours. You start at level one, and by the end of the night, you’re level 10. The path is clear. The feedback is immediate. The controls are laid out.”

Douglas Gentile, a distinguished professor in liberal arts and sciences at Iowa State University who specializes in internet gaming disorder and the effects of media, said that gaming creates a false sense of accomplishment.

The brain cannot distinguish between virtual and real life, Gentile told The Epoch Times. Though the in-game achievements are intangible, the brain recognizes them as real.

“I can spend four hours building a structure in the game ... and to me it feels like I actually did something today,” Gentile said.

Apart from our brains playing tricks on us—recognizing games as real life—game designers also build in features that strengthen this trick and provide unmatchable satisfaction.

How Games Draw You In

Traditional entertainment such as music and books provides people with an experience, though none comes close to the immersive experience that animated reality games provide.

Game design aims to create an organic human experience in an inorganic situation.

“Designing a game involves a balance of mechanics, dynamics, and aesthetics,” Milijana Komad, a UI/UX designer, told The Epoch Times. “Mechanics are the rules and systems; dynamics refer to how players interact with these systems; and aesthetics are the emotional responses evoked.”

Combining these elements with a storyline and world-building creates a game that feels meaningful and makes players invested.

Game Juice

Game juice is a critical component of games. It’s the way the sound of your footsteps shifts as your character moves from carpet to wood floor, or how blades of grass bend underfoot when stepping into a meadow.

It’s the candies in Candy Crush that immediately reward you with a white flash of light as you make the right connections and the affirmations, such as “Excellent,” that pop up on your screen just as you hear a male voice say them.

Immediate feedback is essential for players to feel that they have implemented the action of the reward. Game juice gives players a satisfying sense of control and enhances the immersive experience.

In Candy Crush, game juice comes in the form of instant feedback—like a white flash of light or pop up praise on the screen—whenever you make the right matches. Gabriel Bouys/AFP via Getty Images

Flow State

The flow state keeps players playing. It is a highly euphoric state of mind first recognized by psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi in the 1990s. Originally, the flow state was identified as occurring in professionals such as musicians or scientists who derived an intense sense of euphoria from being immersed in their work—where time seems to disappear and feelings of self fade away. The flow state is linked to achievement and a sense of proficiency.

Games have since aimed to replicate the flow state by closely matching the players’ skills to the difficulty they encounter in the game.

Games create flow states by closely matching the player’s skills to the game’s difficulties. The Epoch Times

“It is very important to gradually ramp up how much actual skill a game requires,” Schell said. “If a game demands too much skill, it is frustrating. If it demands too little, it can be boring. A good game finds that ‘Goldilocks place’ right in the middle.”

However, players may not actually be becoming more proficient. There is a difference between virtual and actual skills.

“Actual skill is when you build a real skill, like getting better at doing double jumps in a game. Virtual skill is when you get some kind of game power-up, like a more powerful sword, that lets you seem more skillful, when really you just have more power than you did before,” Schell said.

From Fun to Compulsion

Up to 10 percent of gamers have a gaming disorder—commonly known as an addiction—and the reasons are many. Games cause a large release of dopamine, a chemical in the brain that is important for motivation.

Like chocolate, sex, and methamphetamines, games are highly dopaminergic. Games double the brain’s baseline level of dopamine.

Gaming can affect many areas of our brains that are linked to addiction. The Epoch Times

Games are immediately gratifying, which is intimately linked to addiction.

“Cigarettes are proof that you don’t have to get super high or hallucinate ... to get addicted, you just need to get the feeling right away. So it’s always about getting what you want when you want it,” psychiatrist Clifford Sussman, who specializes in treating internet and video game disorders, told The Epoch Times.

The instant gratification of games derives from how they immediately respond to the player’s actions—level-ups and improvements occur much faster than they do for activities in real life.

Games can also fulfill a person’s psychological needs to escape stress or gain autonomy, achievement, or relationships.

“Escapism is an often cited motivation for gaming,” Daria Kuss, an associate professor in psychology specializing in psychological aspects of internet and technology use at Nottingham Trent University, told The Epoch Times. Her research has shown that those who game to escape are at a greater risk of developing addictions.

“Gaming urges aren’t just about desire—they’re usually meeting some deeper need,” Kanojia said.

“For some people, games are the only place they feel competent. Or the only place they feel socially connected.”

When people rely on games to fulfill all their needs, their real lives start to fall apart.

Gentile compares relying on games to fulfill psychological needs to feeding human food to wild bears in a national park.

Feeding bears human food won’t necessarily harm the bears, just like how games are not inherently bad for people, he said.

However, bears that learn to get food from people no longer forage and hunt for food as they are supposed to.

“So you shouldn’t feed the bears, not because it’s going to injure them. It’s because if they actually get too dependent on getting food from humans, they'll forget how to forage, and they won’t be able to survive when there’s no one there to feed them.”

The same applies to people and games. It is especially important for gamers still in their formative years, like children, not to learn to derive their only sense of fulfillment and purpose from gaming.

One reason gaming is so addictive is that it provides instant gratification and fulfills psychological needs. Michael Gottschalk/Getty Images

The Flip Side of Fun

Addictions don’t just take hold because something feels good; they’re also painful to let go of.

Just as dopamine gives pleasure, it also gives pain. For some people, engaging in certain behaviors over time becomes less about seeking pleasure and more about avoiding the pain of withdrawal.

Emerging neurological research has shown that the areas in the brain responsible for pain and pleasure are co-located, psychiatrist Anna Lembke, professor of psychiatry and addiction at Stanford University, said in a previous interview.

Dopamine can be naturally generated in our daily activities, such as when eating food, when you feel hungry, and by exercising.

Highly pleasurable experiences cause a greater dopamine peak, while mildly pleasurable experiences cause a smaller peak. However, after a peak, dopamine doesn’t return to the original baseline but dips past it, causing a sensation of pain to recalibrate dopamine levels.

The higher the dopamine peak, the greater the fun—the deeper the post-peak fall, the greater the pain.

However, the brain is wired against repeated pleasures—the activity will feel less fun the second time around. Constant dopamine spikes can cause long-term lowering of baseline levels. This may explain why some gamers may game even when they no longer find it fun, but will continue to do it anyway just to feel their normal state of pleasure, since their pain-pleasure balance has been drastically skewed.

Another aspect of the low-dopamine state is an ensuing lack of motivation to do anything else, such as chores and work, contributing to other parts of their lives falling apart. This results in pain, which leads the person back to gaming, feeding a negative spiral.

Video game addictions, like most others, are often considered comorbid mental health conditions. It is unclear which is the chicken and which is the egg, but video game addictions are always linked to worsened mental health, Gentile said.

Once players became addicted, “their depression worsened, their anxiety worsened, their social phobia worsened. If they stopped being addicted, then those all got better. So clearly, gaming is important on its own.”

Alarm Signs

How often one plays a game isn’t necessarily an indicator of whether they have a gaming disorder.

“If someone’s gaming four hours a night and their grades are good, their relationships are solid, their mental health is OK—I’m not going to call that a problem,” Kanojia said.

What matters is if other aspects of a person’s health suffer, such as lost sleep, dropping grades, or being unable to maintain personal hygiene.

“All addictions are defined by how severe the problems are caused by you not being able to stop whatever activity it is that you’re addicted to,” Sussman said. “In other words, the more severe the problems are, the more addicted you are.”

Kanojia said to watch out for signs of irritation and emotional dysregulation.

Mood changes are indications of a dysregulated, dysfunctional limbic system—the brain center responsible for regulating emotions, Kanojia said. The limbic system also helps us learn from negative experiences. Without it, we may repeatedly make the same mistakes.

Regain Control

Many addiction support groups practice abstinence and suggest avoiding triggers such as entering bars or tobacco stores. However, the abstinence model can be hard for gamers to practice, since there is really no safe place to escape to or avoid.

“Screens are so ubiquitous in our culture and society, and it’s so necessary. You can’t stay out of the proverbial bar because you need a screen for work, you’re always going to get cues [to game],” Sussman said.

His treatment protocol, therefore, focuses on a plan where people learn to regulate their day-to-day screen activity.

Sussman recommends a three-day screen fast—eliminating all screen use for entertainment—as well as withholding from substances and other things that provide instant gratification.

Experts often recommend abstaining from a substance or behavior for around a month to reset the brain. Lembke said that a month would generally give a person the opportunity to reflect on what life would be like without doing the things that are currently driving them.

“I’m not saying taking a dopamine fast for a month is curing your addiction,” Lembke said. “It’s the amount of time on average [that] it takes for people to sort of have that aha moment.”

During abstention, people can choose activities that are less immediately gratifying, such as board games instead of video games.

After the period of prescribed screenfast, some may choose to quit games forever, while others may choose to play games in a controlled manner. For those who wish to continue playing, Sussman recommends they intentionally schedule their day and environment to self-regulate their screen use.

For example, he suggests designating only one room or area for screen time. Once people leave that place, they no longer use their screens for social media and gaming. However, he said, bedrooms should not have screens because the person would always be getting the signal to play.

These guidelines can also be applied to gamers without addictions, but who wish to improve their productivity.

Kanojia suggests that those struggling with concentration should avoid gaming or using social media for the first few hours of their day, since high dopamine can deplete motivation for doing other things.

“The earlier you spike your dopamine, the more depleted you are when you actually need to get stuff done. If you game first thing in the morning, your brain’s like, ‘Cool, that was the highlight of the day,’ and now everything else feels like a slog.”

“Even when gaming isn’t addictive, it can still make other things feel less engaging. That’s not always a problem—but it’s something to be aware of. If you notice yourself needing more stimulation to feel anything, that’s probably a sign to recalibrate.”

In stopping gaming, as with other addictions, there is a period of withdrawal, when the craving can become painful. This can kick in within the second or third day, and generally disappears within a month.

Game addicts run the risk of trying to placate their cravings for games with other things such as watching gaming videos and streams, going on social media, or substance use, which are just as pleasurable.

“When you get rid of one source of instant gratification or dopamine, oftentimes, people will switch to another,” Sussman said.

Therefore, it is important that when people come off their addiction, they intentionally opt for things that are less dopaminergic.

Ronnit Nazarian, licensed clinical psychologist at Fifth Avenue Psychiatry, said that people who have a gaming or screen addiction often have emotional triggers that may drive them into an anxious or depressed state, which could cause them to seek gaming for comfort. Much of her work with her clients, who are mostly children, is to understand their triggers for certain feelings and desire to play video games.

After identifying their triggers, Nazarian helps patients develop healthier coping mechanisms to manage their anxiety and the stressors that come up in their lives.

“A healthier coping mechanism would be one that helps you regulate your emotions and allows you to be more in the present moment,” Nazarian said. This is different from video games that take people out of the present moment, and people may have a harder time or even dread returning to reality, she stated.

Healthier alternatives could include deep breathing, exercising, meditation, or connecting with people—ways to introduce real, tangible meaning and entertainment to your life.

Living as a Healthy Gamer

Each of us has cravings, be they food, shopping, or a glass of wine.

“Life is just more stressful now. We’ve got higher expectations, more isolation, economic pressure, information overload. Social media creates this constant comparison cycle. Technology has outpaced our ability to adapt emotionally. And so yeah—people are overwhelmed. It makes total sense that they’re looking for something—anything—to help them cope,” Kanojia said.

Kanojia, who plays games and is a former gaming addict, said that it is important to derive pleasure and happiness outside of games.

Neurologically, there are different flavors of happiness.

“The trap gamers fall into—and I say this from experience—is we get caught chasing dopamine highs. But over time, that builds a sort of emotional malnutrition. You’re getting pleasure, but not nourishment,” Kanojia said.

There are more nourishing types of happiness that require hard work, patience, and impulse control, which he links to serotonin, a slower-acting chemical in the brain than dopamine.

Activities that boost serotonin tend to be less immediately pleasurable. These include exercise, sufficient sleep, eating healthy food, exposure to the sun, meditation, and managing stress.

“Serotonin and true happiness do come from effort. And the irony is, the more you chase an easy life, the harder your life becomes. But the more you’re willing to do hard things today, the easier your life becomes tomorrow.”

“I think the key isn’t to say, ‘Don’t play games.’ It’s to build a life worth living—where your core needs are actually being met in the real world. Because when that happens, gaming becomes fun again,” Kanojia said.

Moreover, gaming isn’t all negative, Kuss said. Gamers have certain skills that nongamers do not have, such as enhanced hand-eye coordination and reaction time.

Cermak’s New Reality

On April 21, 2019, Cermak made his first journal entry on the Game Quitters forum. He announced to the forum that he was quitting games and starting a three-month fast.

Three months turned into a year, and now, six years.

The week Cermak quit gaming, he suddenly found himself with an extra eight to 10 hours a day. With this newfound time, he focused on building his English-teaching business, which had previously languished.

“I was able to spend more time studying and following through on projects and commitment,” Cermak said.

Cermak never got back together with his first girlfriend, and later wrote in his journal that they were going in different life directions.

His diary in the Game Quitters forum continues to grow strong—every week, he posts his plans for the week with other people hoping to control their compulsions better.

He got his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in economic geography and is now in a two-year relationship that is going strong.

“I’m looking forward to being with my girlfriend, spending time with her, maybe starting a family.”