Vitality structures in ‘addictive’ game design

Abstract

For decades, research on technology use and mental health has been based on the assumption that identifiable structures of ‘design’ are psychologically relevant for their users. This has been central especially for the nosological emergence of ‘behavioural addictions’, which currently involve two formal diagnoses involving technology: problems related to playing gambling games (gambling disorder) and videogames (gaming disorder). Alas, the research on identifying ‘addictive’ design structures has suffered from major construct validity issues. To make progress across those issues, I draw from the history of ‘vitality affects’ in psychiatry and introduce vitality structures as a design-phenomenological framework that can help researchers conceptualise clinically (and non-clinically) relevant ‘bonds’ between entities of game design and corresponding player phenomenology. Vitality structures are not natural kinds to be discovered but pragmatic constructs to be created and used: they are useful as long as they communicate what is both identifiable and empirically prevalent. As a demonstration of practice, I propose working conceptualizations of three vitality structures, which surface in videogames that have been prevalent sources of self-identified problems among gaming treatment-seekers. Systematic programs of research for identifying relevant vitality structures across technological, psychological, and psychiatric contexts can lead to construct-valid and replicable design effects.