7. Empathy? I'm supposed to feel empathy during video games? I’m a psychiatrist – I empathize all day long. I don’t care about the birds or the little green piggies. They aren’t real. And I had no empathy for the falling geometric shapes in Tetris. Maybe you’re spending too much time in that accelerator, Joe.
8. Shock treatments for video game addiction? Hmmm ... we could do a study here. I don’t think we’d get past any research review boards if we proposed ECT as a treatment for video game addictions (ah, it didn’t make it past APA as a diagnosable psychiatric disorder, for one thing), but I imagine we could do a before-and-after survey of people having ECT for depression to see if their coincidental interest in Angry Birds changed with treatment. Get me the funding and I’m there.
9. Let’s talk about the anger. Are the birds really angry? The human player flings them at the structures in an attempt to vaporize the green piggies. So who’s angry: the birds, the human player, or is anger even part of this equation? Joe tells me the piggies are evil. They steal eggs. I haven’t seen them steal eggs. They just sort of sit their in their structures, waiting to see if the birds will vaporize them. I would contend that there really isn’t much emotion of any kind involved here on the part of the animated little players. Would the game be as good if the human was flinging colored balls rather than birds? If the object of destruction were a plate or a star or a non-green-piggy object? I think so.
Our audience of psychiatrist readers will be pleased to know that my Angry Birds addiction was fun, but short-lived.
Wishing you all a wonderful holiday season and a happy and healthy new year from the Shrink Rappers.
<[QM]>—Dinah Miller, M.D.
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Dr. Miller is the co-author of Shrink Rap: Three Psychiatrists Explain Their Work, recently released by Johns Hopkins University Press.