By: Arthur Liao
You pick up your XBox controller and start getting into a new game that’s trending. You play for hours every day. Then, one day, you wake up and walk to the kitchen to get ready for school, you see a caption, “MOM, HEALTH: -100.” This experience is called GTP, and gamers who play regularly and intensely are at risk of developing it.
A recent meeting of Australian and New Zealand psychiatrists discussed the condition, known as Gaming Transfer Phenomenon, or GTP, which can cause video game players to see things that aren’t really there, otherwise known as hallucinating. This condition is considered to be related to GD gaming disorder, where gamers can’t stop playing and even skip meals to play games. According to the New Zealand College of Psychiatrists, they believed that 10 percent of young people in Australia and New Zealand developed GD during the Covid-19 pandemic .
Teenagers that play video games for hours and hours at a time every day have reported seeing “health bars” above people’s heads and hearing narration when they do daily tasks. Psychiatrist Kavita Seth stated that problems begin when a gamer is playing to the point where they are unable to stop themselves and become angry if someone else tries to stop them. Children and teens choose gaming over studying, sleep, eating, and other activities. Dr. Seth explains that, “They prioritize it over sleep, over having meals, going to school, completing school homework, completing social activity.”
Psychologist Angelica Ortiz de Gortari claims to have come up with the name “GTP” during a study in 2010. A 17 year-old gamer who was featured in Dr. de Gortari’s study started seeing “player stats” in real life after playing World of Warcraft. Daniel Owens, another hardcore gamer, was playing Portal 2 for hours every day for nearly a week, interrupting his sleeping patterns. Daniel also said, “The day Super Mario Sunshine came out, I couldn’t sleep a full night for nearly a week after playing it. It was a terrible experience.” He then told reporters, “I’ve never had anything bleed into my waking life, though, but I can see that possibly happening to a person that plays video games more frequently.”
Dr. de Gortari believes that the key factors in prolonged game-play such as sensory overload and entering a trance state of mind plays a major part in the condition. She said that GTP is a good reason to reflect on how well the human mind will cope with technology in advance.
Bibliography: https://www.kidsnews.com.au/health/gamers-at-risk-of-gaming-disorder-and-hallucinations-research-shows/news-story/ac19e87b01e8debb7519a620e5cc2fe6