Philadelphia–A study conducted by the Philadelphia Research Center of Mental Illness has narrowed down an alarming correlation between Obsessive Compulsive Disorder (OCD)–the mental quirkiness often associated with television character Monk, and celebrities such Howie Mendel, and fanny-pack/bandanna/sunglasses enthusiast, Hulk Hogan–to the video game Q*Bert. An alarming rate of OCD has been detected in children who were born between 1978 and 1989, who may have been exposed to playing the 1980’s video game “Q*Bert” as children.
”The game’s character has a very obsessive-compulsive habit”, researcher Martin Clemens says. “He has the obsession of symmetric, color-based uniformity, and acts out on them with the compulsion to change geometric blocks into the same color”.
Clemens says that Q*Bert does not stop until all of the colors are the same, and efforts to change the colors back by Q*Bert’s nemesis are responded with the compulsion to change the colors. According to Clemens: “Q*Bert can’t be OCD himself… you have to help him act out on his compulsions to win the level”.
Q*Bert was released on many different video game consoles between the 80’s and early 90’s, which increases the contagious diffusion of OCD to spread to other potentially obsessive-compulsive people. Clemens says that adults who had played Q*Bert showed an obsessive interest with using elevators, stacking blocks, symmetry, and color uniformity. “There is this idea that there are ‘good’ and ‘bad’ colors, and all of the bad colors must be changed to the good colors”, Clemens explains.
As therapy, Clemens recommends a reversing the compulsions through playing older video games that are not as obsessed with uniformity and perfection: “We often find that our OCD patients benefit from playing not-so-organized games like many of the 90’s Super Nintendo games based on movies, athletes, and TV shows. There is less likely of compulsion for organization because a video game based on Shaq has never had a clear objective”.
Bloggledoggle hot-button question: Do you think there is a link between OCD and video games?
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Carnival of Satire (#94) | The Skwib // February 14, 2008 at 1:46 pm |
[...] has news of some interesting research that shows some 1980s Video Game Cause Obsessive Compulsive Disorder in Kids born in that era. We are somewhat skeptical, as the research is from someplace called [...]