Have you ever spent hundreds of hours on a game that you couldn’t put down? Video games can sometimes be very addictive, so a study to seek to scientifically determine which games were the most addictive.
The shortcomings of video games scrutinized
A few years ago, video games were very badly perceived by many people, considering this hobby as a waste of time, even as a mind-numbing or violent hobby. Yes these stereotypes have fortunately subsided over time, they persist despite everything and even continue to interest certain researchers. Remember that in 2019, the WHO officially recognized video game addiction as a disease … Before recommending people to play it when the Covid-19 pandemic landed.
You can think all the bad things you want from this kind of opinion, but you also have to know how to recognize certain flaws in video games, in particular the particularly addictive side of some of them. It is on this theme that a team of British researchers has focused, who have thus established a list of the 20 most addictive games. And the winner is…
Rocket League, most addictive video game
At the top of the podium of the most addictive games, we find Rocket League (2015), this somewhat special online football game, since it’s aboard small cars that you must manage to score more goals than your opponents. The RPG Littlewood (2020), in which you have to rebuild, customize and develop your city, comes second, followed by Demigod, a MOBA released in 2009.
Speaking of MOBA, the most famous of all, League of Legends, ranks fifth in the standings. Also in the 20 most addictive games according to this study conducted by a team of researchers from the Private Rehab Clinic in the United Kingdom, we find mastodons such as Fortnite (9th), Skyrim (14th), or The Sims 4 (19th). Overall, you will find that the majority of the games mentioned (entire list visible below) are multiplayer games, or role-playing games in which the main quest is not the heart of the game. And for good reason: Martin Preston, founder and general manager of the clinic that conducted the study, explains via Entertainment.ie that all these games don’t really have « predefined endings » and therefore there is no time « where the players finished their challenges and tasks », which are constantly renewed. This is where their very addictive side comes from.
A dubious method
If this study was conducted by professional researchers and that its results are therefore the result of a scientific research method, we can still somewhat question the method followed. In fact, the researchers relied on a list of « only » 50 games among the most popular on the rating aggregator Metacritic. From there, they researched which ones had the most reviews in which the term « addictive » (« addictive ») was mentioned. In the case of the first game in the ranking for example, Rocket League, they are all the same 14.5% of total reviews that mention this word.
If this method therefore makes it possible to give an idea, it is difficult not to judge This study is very limited in its scope. (why not more games studied?) and to note that the term « addictive », in addition to not necessarily having a pejorative connotation, can easily be used wrongly and through. So it might have been better to conduct a study related to the time spent by players on different games, or something else. For your part, do you consider this study reliable? Do not hesitate to share your opinion with us in the comments!