In addition, the kind of play that people are addicted to addresses a deep psychological need.
Many of those who are addicted to computer gaming are those who don’t feel comfortable meeting life’s varied and ambiguous challenges. In life, it’s often not clear if you are “winning” or “losing”. Gaming offers a very controlled world in which victory and defeat can be clear and unambiguous. Part of the reason for widespread game addiction in Japan and Korea may be that those are societies in which there are intense pressures for young people to be high achievers along a very specific and rigid career path, offering little chance for the young to define their own quest.
Stuart Brown, Play