Gaming Disorder

SUBOTRON arcademy

Aleksandra Jarosz
Psychologist, Game Designer “Fantastic Fetus” (Poland)

In 2017, the loot boxes in “Star Wars Battlefront II” started a big debate about gambling in games. Two years later, The World Health Organization (WHO) announced gaming disorder as a new mental health condition. This brings risks to the game industry. In the next years, we will observe the growth of censorship in legal regulations. The fragile image of games in society will experience another attack. There can be many reasons behind WHO’s decision but for sure we as a game industry gave them a lot of arguments to put gaming disorder in the newest International Disease Classification. Game creators should think about how to avoid dark patterns. Loot boxes, microtransactions, games as a service and building habit mechanics are provoking the biggest concerns. It is the last moment to discuss ethics in the game creation process. Will the game industry share the fate of the tobacco industry? Will we as a game industry take responsibility and try to stop the wave of negative consequences that are approaching the gaming world?

Biography
Aleksandra Jarosz is a Psychologist, game designer and co-founder of Pigmentum Game Studio. The latest released title is “Fantastic Fetus”, a pregnancy Tamagotchi where you are taking care of a pregnant woman and creat a fetus with superpowers. The previous game she was working on was “Indygo”, a narrative adventure game about depression. Currently, she is working on her Ph.D. project at the Academy of Fine Arts in Katowice.