双语阅读｜Gaming: Share the data

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It’s the best way to determine whether video games are addictive

这是确定电子游戏是否会上瘾的最佳方法

No business would welcome being compared to Big Tobacco or gambling. Yet that is what is happening to makers of video games. For years parents have casually complained that their offspring（子孙；后代；子女） are “addicted” to their PlayStations（游戏机；索尼） and smartphones. Today, however, ever more doctors are using the term literally.

没有任何企业会喜欢将自己与大型烟草公司或赌博相提并论。 然而，这就是电子游戏制造商正在发生的事情。 多年来，父母一直在抱怨他们的后代对他们的 PlayStation 和智能手机“上瘾”。 到现在，越来越多的医生仍然在使用这个词。

On January 1st “gaming disorder”—in which games are played compulsively（强制地；禁不住地）, despite causing harm—gains recognition from the World Health Organisation (WHO), as the newest edition of its diagnostic manual comes into force. A few months ago China, the world’s biggest gaming market, announced new rules limiting children to just a single hour of play a day on Friday, Saturday and Sunday, and none the rest of the week. Western politicians worry publicly about some games’ similarity to gambling. Clinics are sprouting（发芽，抽条，萌芽） around the world, promising to cure patients of their habit in the same way they might cure them of an addiction to alcohol or cocaine.

1 月 1 日，随着世界卫生组织 (WHO) 最新版诊断手册的生效，“网游成瘾”——尽管会造成伤害而强迫性地玩游戏——得到了世界卫生组织 (WHO) 的认可。 几个月前，全球最大的游戏市场中国宣布了新规定，规定儿童在周五、周六和周日每天只能玩一小时，其余时间都不能玩。 西方政客公开表示，担心某些游戏与赌博有相似之处。 诊所在世界各地如雨后春笋般涌现，承诺以治愈酒精或可卡因成瘾患者的相同方式来治愈这些网络成瘾患者的习惯。

Are games really addictive? Psychologists are split（分歧；分裂）. The case for the defence is that this is just another moral panic. Killjoys of yore issued similarly dire warnings about television, rock ’n’ roll, jazz, comic books, novels and even crossword puzzles. As the newest form of mass media, gaming is merely enduring（忍受；持续；持久）its own time in the stocks before it eventually ceases to be controversial. Furthermore, defenders argue, the criteria used to diagnose gaming addiction are too loose. Obsessive gaming, they suggest, is as likely to be a symptom (of depression, say) as a disorder（疾病；紊乱；失调） in its own right.

游戏真的会上瘾吗？ 心理学家意见分歧。 辩方的理由是，这只是另一种道德恐慌。 昔日的 Killjoys 对电视、摇滚乐、爵士乐、漫画书、小说甚至填字游戏发出了类似的可怕警告。 作为大众媒体的最新形式，游戏只是在它最终不再引起争议之前在股票中度过自己的时间。 此外，捍卫者认为，用于诊断游戏成瘾的标准过于宽松。 他们认为，沉迷游戏本身很可能也可能是一种疾病，一种类似于抑郁症的症状，。

The prosecution retorts（反驳） that, unlike rock bands or novelists, games developers have both the motive and the means to engineer their products to make them irresistible. The motive arises from a business-model shift. In the old days games were bought for a one-off（一次性的；一次性付清）, upfront cost. These days, many use a “freemium” model, in which the game is free and money is made from purchases of in-game goods. That ties playtime directly to revenue.

检方反驳说，与摇滚乐队或小说家不同，游戏开发商既有动机也有手段来设计他们的产品，从而使人们无法抗拒。 动机源于商业模式的转变。 在过去，购买游戏属于一次性付清的前期费用。 如今，许多人使用“免费增值”模式，即游戏是免费的，开发商通过游戏者购买游戏内商品来赚钱。 这将娱乐时间直接与收入联系起来。

The means is a combination of psychological theory and data that helps games-makers maximise that playtime. Psychologists already know quite a lot about the sorts of things that animals, including humans, find rewarding (thanks to a long line of experiments, stretching back decades to those conducted on rats and pigeons by B.F. Skinner). Smartphones and modern consoles（现代的操作器） use their permanent internet connections to funnel gameplay data back to developers. That allows products to be constantly fine-tuned（微调的；恰到好处的；精密） and tweaked（稍稍调整；扭，拧，扯） to boost spending. The industry is even beginning to use the argot（行话；暗语；俚语） of the gambling business. The biggest spenders are known as “whales”—a term that originated in casinos.

这种方法是游戏制作者结合心理学理论和数据来最大限度地延长游戏时间。 心理学家已经对包括人类在内的动物认为有益的事情了如指掌（这多亏了之前大量的实验，这些实验可以追溯到几十年前由 B.F. Skinner 对老鼠和鸽子进行的实验）。 智能手机和现代的操作器通过使用永久的互联网连接，将游戏数据返回给开发人员。 这使得产品可以不断微调和调整以增加支出，这些行业甚至开始使用赌博上的行话，最大的消费者被称为“鲸鱼”——一个起源于赌场的术语。

While psychologists argue the finer points of what exactly counts（算作；认为） as addiction, and whether gaming’s design tricks cross the line, the industry should recognise that, in the real world, it has a problem, and that problem is growing. Now that gaming addiction comes with an official who code, diagnoses will become more common. Clinics are already reporting booming business, as lockdowns have given gamers more time to spend with their hobby. The regulatory climate for tech is getting chillier. And being lumped in the public mind, fairly or not, with gambling and tobacco will not do the industry any favours.

虽然心理学家争论究竟什么是成瘾，以及游戏的设计技巧是否越界，但业界应该意识到，在现实世界中的确存在这样一个问题，而且这个问题正在增长。 现在，伴随着官方编码，游戏成瘾诊断将变得更加普遍。 诊所成为了蓬勃发展的行业，这是由于游戏封锁让玩家有更多时间花在他们的爱好上。 科技监管环境正变得越来越冷淡。 无论公平与否，在公众心目中，将游戏与赌博和烟草混为一谈，对这个行业没有任何好处。

Self-interest on many levels

多层次的个人利益

It would be wise to get ahead of the discussion. A good place to start would be with hard data. Many of the studies underpinning（加固；巩固；支撑） the contention that games are addictive in a medical sense are woolly（糊涂的；混乱的；模糊的）: they rely on self-reported symptoms, contested diagnostic criteria, skewed samples and so on. Even basic questions about the amount of time and money spent by users are hard to answer. The industry has an abundance of data that could help. But gaming firms mostly keep details of how gamers behave secret, citing commercial sensitivity.

提前进行讨论是明智的。 一个好的起点是硬数据。 许多有关于支撑游戏在医学意义上令人上瘾论点的研究都是模糊的：它们依赖于自我报告的症状、有争议的诊断标准、偏斜的样本等等。 甚至是关于用户花费的时间和金钱这些基本问题都也很难回答。 该行业拥有大量可以提供帮助的数据。 但游戏公司大多以商业敏感性为由，对游戏玩家的行为方式保密。

In the long run, that will prove unwise. Gaming firms should make more of their data hoard（贮藏） available to researchers. If—as seems likely—worries about addictiveness are overblown（过分的；夸张的）, it is hard to think of a clearer way of showing it. And if not, it is better for firms to recognise the problem now, and do something about it voluntarily. The alternative is that regulators will force them to act. And as China has shown, once a government is seized by a fit of moral panic, it can lash out（痛批；斥责；痛打；猛烈抨击）.

从长远来看，这将被证明是不明智的。 游戏公司应该向研究人员提供更多的数据储备。 如果——似乎很可能——对上瘾的担忧被夸大了，很难用一种更清晰的方式来表达它。 如果没有，企业最好现在就认识到问题，并自愿采取行动。 另一种选择是监管机构迫使他们采取行动。 正如中国所表明的那样，一旦一个政府陷入道德恐慌，它就会猛烈抨击。