
There you have it. Games are about as addictive as eating a Big Mac
One thing you frequently hear from detractors of games is that they’re addictive, placing Diablo players on the same boat to rehab as smack junkies. But as the psychotherapist Mike Langlois proves with hard empirical evidence, this is totally blown out of proportion. The key piece of evidence for games’ addictive qualities is dopamine, a neurotransmitter released in your brain when you do pleasurable things, like crossing the finish line in Mario Kart in first place, or, you know, smoking methamphetamine. But as Langlois’s graphs point out, all pleasurable acts aren’t created equal. Games merely double your dopamine amount, which is…