Random Friday Thoughts on Kingdom Hearts and Sexism and Addiction

and stuff.

I got Kingdom Hearts this week, after hearing a lot of people say good things about it. It’s a console game, so it’s up on the PS2, which I haven’t turned off in a couple days because I can’t find a memory card, although I imagine I can find cheat codes to get past the opening screens if there’s a power surge.

In it, I am an impossibly gorgeous anime-style boy named Sora who is marooned on a small island with a girl and an even more gorgeous boy. The graphics are marvelous, the gameplay is console-y, and yet again I’m in a movie simulation. Like KOTOR. This was never my favorite type of game to begin with, I like strategy and puzzles and simulations and sandboxes much more.

It sure is pretty though.

On the great Knocked Up controversy, I’m just letting you – Instigator Person – know that although I appreciate receiving a link to a recent and even angrier article about it on alternet, I’ll deliver pages and pages of timeless blogprose on Knocked Up right after they make an MMO out of it. It may have a lot to do with gender, but it doesn’t have anything to do with games, or the artificially created realities where I live.

And I’m just going to go back and refer to the article I linked by Borat’s uncle or whatever, Simon Baron-Cohen, on the brain hardware involved in creativity. Some people have read-only brains, and other people tend to make multiple mental copies of ideas and situations they encounter. I, as a xeroxbrain, have quite a few compatibility factors with those whose brains are write protected, but judging one as superior to the other is brainism. So while I can understand that a particular person only wants to see movies that are cinema verite while another only wants to see speculative sci fi or symbology-juggling fantasy, the idea that one is better than the other is akin to proclaiming that someone with a (more often male) math oriented brain is inherently better than someone with a (more often female) socially oriented brain.

I think this brain mechanism fact has a lot to do with the fact that one person might see a movie and seethe with rage because it doesn’t reflect the world as she sees it, while another person might see that movie and be inspired to create something that more accurately reflects the world as she sees it, or might react with something like “I liked the first hour but for the second hour I would have put in more dancing midgets.” Kind of like how a phrase like “a=(5x - y) = a+y” might make different people have different emotional reactions.

However, only people whose brains continually copy samples from consensus reality and weave them into their own particular dance mix can really appreciate the difference. They may not know what it’s like to have no imagination, but they can imagine what it might be like. This is more than many of the angry people who mistake a protagonist for a universal symbol of humanity can do, but then again, it must be terrifying for them to live in a world full of seemingly insane delusions.

Anyway, there were a lot of comments to the alternet piece that agree with how I seem to feel about this movie (which I haven’t seen) and object to the author’s interpretation. I object to the author’s interpretation too, obviously she’s got a write-protected brain and is only doing a sort of rehash of previous articles about the same thing rather than letting it motivate her to blog, write, sim, machinima, color with crayons or otherwise create her own version (although I don’t blame her for going for the cash). And I’m not going to link it, because I don’t like alternet, but I think that’s enough information to help anyone interested in it to track it down.

On game addiction, my friend from another server left a comment up after I was snide about the movement to have the AMA classify habitual video game playing as an addiction, so I thought I’d put that here in the blog rather than respond to it in comments.

I'm not personally comfortable with the tag of "addiction" for gaming, but I do strongly believe that for X% of the gaming population there's an unhealthily COMPULSIVE aspect to it that needs to be addressed when it crossed the boundary and begins openly interfering in the gamer's work/money/relationships or causing child neglect.

"Addiction" doesn't seem too far from the mark, though, after reading hundreds of stories in the WoW widow forum. I'm struck by the ready applicability of substance abuse symptoms/treatment to problem gaming. The statements made by gamers to their "widows" are depressingly similar to those reported by spouses of alcoholics:

"This is the only thing I enjoy in the entire universe and you want to take it away from me."
"I don't have a problem, you're causing the problem."
"I can stop any time I want to (but I don't want to because this is the only thing I enjoy in the entire universe.)"
"Other people game a lot more than me." (or its subset, "I still have a job! I still take showers!")
"I only play because I need relief from my stressful job.”

Yes, good points. I’m a hardcore gamer with a fair amount of obsessive focus myself, and I am obviously strongly to one side of the issue.

As far as openly interfering in work, job, childcare and so on: many things do, and each generation seems to have an especially new and problematic one. The “addiction” terminology comes from the fact that for the baby boomer generation, it was drugs, which are addictive from a medical standpoint – once you get accustomed to taking them, your tolerance goes up and you will have physical symptoms if you try to quit.

That appears to be basically what the AMA is objecting to. Alcohol’s addictive, and heroin, and tobacco. But not collecting Pokemon cards or building model railroads on card tables in the basement, or, strictly speaking, gambling, or gaming.

However, all those things (and more) might turn into compulsions. There’s a fun book about this called Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds, which was written in 1941 and covers fads for alchemy, tulip collecting, sending crusaders to recapture the holy lands, witch hunting and more.

In fact I think I did a paper on something similar back when I was in school. Charleston marathons in the depression, sixties schoolgirls competing for the longest-ever chains of intricately folded gum wrappers, and of course games, a favorite subject for the obsessive.

I knew a couple that broke up over chess once. He was always off with his friends, playing chess. She couldn’t play chess. She didn’t understand the fascination.

There is an unfair and sexist stereotype that attributes most of this obsessive type behavior to men. After all, the idea of WoW Widows is a play on a previous cliche, football widows. But compulsive behavior is not just a manly thing, there are plenty of women who get seriously attached to their games, or their Beanie Babies, or other interests.

I’m one of them. Sometimes the obsessive focus has to do with finishing a project at work or hitting a deadline, and sometimes it has to do with grinding to level 70. Most of my friends have it too, being that they’re for the most part gamers and writers and musicians and people that have to have at least a little bit of overwhelming focus in order to do what they do. Oh yes, my pets are obsessive as well. Particularly the rabbit. He gets fixated on particular areas of the floor and will dig away until he hits raw floorboard, unless I stop him by putting a stack of cardboard there. He’s also been known to gnaw on things until the corners of his mouth bleed, for no apparent reason.

Taken to extremes, compulsive behavior can manifest as Obsessive Compulsive Disorder – we’ve all heard of people who suffer from this washing their hands many times each day, or lining up the contents of the fridge and pantry according to some strict code. From the Wikipedia entry, because it’s 5:06 and I’m lazy,

A popular explanation for OCD is that offered in the book Brain Lock by Jeffrey Schwartz, which suggests that OCD is caused by the part of the brain that is responsible for translating complex intentions (e.g., "I will pick up this cup") into fundamental actions (e.g., "move arm forward, rotate hand 15 degrees, etc.") failing to correctly communicate the chemical message that an action has been completed. This is perceived as a feeling of doubt and incompleteness which then leads the individual to attempt to consciously deconstruct their own prior behavior—a process which induces anxiety in most people, even those without OCD.

And for the record, I don’t think I’m anywhere near having OCD but I do have to make sure the appliances are off and the door is locked before I leave the house. Sometimes several times.

You could say that OCD – like autism, and creativity, and other brain quirks – is an extreme example of a tendency that most of us have.

One which can provoke anger and frustration in people who don't have it and don't understand it.

The movie Rain Man, which came out in the 80's, shows an autistic Dustin Hoffman, who has been institutionalized for his disability.

Wired magazine, in '01, did an article about how autism-spectrum disorders are blossoming in Northern California, heartland of tech -- because in the computer industry, it's more of a talent than a handicap, and rather than being institutionalized, autistic people were moving to the Valley, falling in love and making babies, who sometimes turned out even more focused than them. Some speculate Bill Gates has extremely pronounced Asperger's.

So. Is this condition a disability? Or is it an alternative form of neural functioning that some people are predisposed to?

Most of what I've read on OCD seems to indicate it's similarly neural. Which brings us back to more brainism.

Because I hang out exclusively with other gamers and computer nerds, the fact that I'm going to go home and play games until I fall asleep and then do more of it all weekend isn't really a problem. If I had someone who had a less obsessive brain hanging around the house who would prefer that instead I did seventeen separate activities encompassing a variety of mental functions, it very well might turn into one. So therefore I try not to get in relationships with them.

Games, by their "do it again!" nature, are extremely fascinating for the obsessive. Some obsessive people indeed do have a problem with limiting their obsession focus so they can do other things in life. Meds can help, as can other forms of therapy designed to help people stop doing things they don't want to do. Others might have a big problem living in a community of non-obsessive people, the way creatives do when living with those whose brains are locked in read only mode, or the way morning people (ugh) have friction when dealing with night owls (like me).

I'm going to throw out a parallel here before I return to my games. Back to my rant a few days previous about the dramatic teenage girl. Some people really enjoy the hell out of deep emotion. They deliberately go for emo music, or they try to stir up drama in their circles of friends, everything is a life-and-death tragedy. Often it flares up in teenagers, and later in life they become less dramatic.

I, and many other people I know, can't stand that kind of behavior. We interpret it as manipulative, malicious, insane. But as far as we know, they're getting a bigger pleasure jolt from their activities than we are, maybe because they're wired differently. In turn, they look at us like we're robotic nerds (and sometimes rant about how we are cold, unfeeling sociopaths).

It's possible the main differences between us have to deal with brain chemistry. Brainism.

It's also possible that the main friction arises when one person proclaims their brain chemistry is normal and healthy, another person's style is abnormal and unhealthy, and that the other person should therefore morph into a person whose brain functions differently.

I'd imagine an obsessive surrounded by people whose focus is more broad or who prefer emotional engagement to abstract strategizing would feel like he was in heaven when logging into the game world and surrounding himself with other obsessives, in a world made just for us. He might not want to come out, even to shower.

Of course, that's because I can imagine different scenarios. Life might be easier if I were more "read only" and literal, or if my attention span were better at multitasking than locking onto one thing until I fall down from exhaustion.

But maybe not. It could be that these brain differences represent a sort of permanent impasse, and now that we have an internet and can base our social activities on finding others with compatible wiring rather than those with compatible exteriors, we'll end up separating into little tribes, obsessives over here, creatives over there, realists outside, read-onlies at work or wherever they go to have whatever they consider fun.