Another one that feeds on a defining characteristic of human beans. For as long as man has been man he's been exploring new frontiers. A strange obsession with putting flags in places where flags have never been placed before that has taken us from the depths of the ocean to the cheeses of the moon and pretty much everywhere in between.
And that primeval urge to explore is in full effect when playing games. There are fewer things more satisfying than watching a virginal piece of the map expose itself after hours of hard work. What new adventures await within its borders? Obviously the only way to find out is to spend the next few hours exploring it.
But exploring in games isn't limited to treading new terra firma and making the jump from ice level to fire level. Exploration is not just for games with huge worlds. The sense of exploration in games and the thing that makes it such a factor of game addiction is the wide-eyed shift from the familiar to the unfamiliar.
Sure, that can be unlocking a new island in GTA or entering a new dungeon in Zelda, but it can also be the feeling of trying a new song in Rock Band, a new puzzle in Professor Layton or a new car in Forza. It's all the same thing. It's about charting everything that the game has to offer.
Hell, back in the day when graphics were nothing but blocks we'd invest hours getting to level two. The fact it was the same as level one only a bit faster and in a different shade of gray didn't matter. The thrill of getting to something new was still a reward worth working for.
4. The relief of escaping
Whenever bad addictions are discussed, escapism always makes an appearance as one of the main reasons for 'why people do it'. People love to escape, whether it's through the ingestion of hard drugs or with a good Mills & Boon paperback. Whatever floats your boat. And let's face it, life can be a bit crap sometimes and escapism is a great antidote to the daily grind.
Of course, needing to escape and choosing to escape are two very different perspectives. We choose to escape and are happy to be plugged into a game for longer than the health warnings in manuals probably recommend if we ever took the time to read them.
Video games can switch off the world outside the game. If you're having so much fun shooting terrorists, it's hard to pull yourself away when the alternative is sorting through a pile of tax returns, failing at DIY or 'knuckling down' to some impossibly tedious school assignment. Obligatory moral footnote: Neglecting responsibilities is bad.
And you know what? Even when life is swell and beautiful, it's great to get lost in a game for the very simple reason that it's entertaining. They're not boring and they're fun to play. Otherwise we wouldn't bother and being addicted to them would be a pretty stupid waste of time. Right?
3. The impossible to resist challenge
The battle for self-betterment should not be underestimated. Gamers aren't easy quitters. No one likes getting beaten by a game, so unless a challenge feels impossibly hard, we'll keep plugging away tirelessly until we are victorious. Anyone that has played Trials HD will be familiar with this concept.
Undoubtedly one of the most addictive games ever made, the majority of Trials players spend a lot of time failing. Bizarrely, this seems to be the very thing that makes Trials so bloody impossible to stop playing.
A very literal game of trial and error, learning how to manipulate the bike and master each section of the track is a real test of mental endurance. But it's an irresistible challenge. The kind of masochistic challenge that gamers seem to thrive on for some perverse reason.
When you're being beaten by any game, walking away simply isn't an option. We've all done it, so we know that the lingering taste of defeat is pretty unpalatable and inevitably leads to depression and self-loathing - two characteristics of the 'addict' that are worth avoiding if at all possible. There's really nothing for it but to keep playing.
In fairness, it's probably not the challenges themselves that make games so addictive, but more the sense of achievement and self-satisfied smugness that you get when you finally step up and rip that challenge a new one.
