I may not be a doctor but with the assistance of Google and Wikipedia I can diagnose illnesses with the best of them (Yay for the Internet! Take that schooling!) and I’ve noticed a trend in gamers that we should all be aware of. Gaming, both board and Role-Playing, can cause Obsessive Compulsive Disorder! That’s right. We thought it was a harmless pastime when we were all really willing developing one of the twenty most disabling illness in the world! At first I thought it was the other way around. That gaming attracted the OCD type. Maybe it was playing with the chits, or the rules systems that had a place for everything. It is easy to see how comfortable and satisfying gaming could be to the OCD afflicted individual. What I’ve come to realize is that the games themselves encourage behavior that is congruous with the symptoms of OCD. For those not familiar with the symptoms I’m talking about see here, especially the Perfection, Superstition, Order, and Miscellaneous sections.

Let’s take a look at Board Games. What’s the first thing you do before playing? You sort the pieces, shuffle the cards, arrange everything in its correct spot on the table, and maybe count everything to make sue all the pieces/cards are there. Then playing the game: following the rules, perfecting the strategy, moving the chits around, tracking the commodities tables, whatever happens in the end you win. Ooo! Feel that warm tingly feeling? You might think it is merely the thrill of victory, but no it is the endorphmic reward that your brain gets for doing things the OCD way. The more times you play a particular game the more positive reinforcement of your OCD behavior. This happens to all of us. Even if you lose the game the fun of playing can be the positive reinforcement. A string of good luck can lead to the development of certain repetitive practices that we perceive as lucky. . From rolling the dice a certain way to thwacking the top of a deck before drawing, we ritualize the playing of the game. We start to rely on them, and eventually they become so ingrained that we don’t even think about it. There is also the trend of wanting to play a game ‘just right’.  Win or lose we usually have a feeling of what we could have done better. We try to develop the perfect strategy even in games that are totally random. It doesn’t happen over night but slowly over the years of gaming we are developing habits that are consistent with OCD.

Even RPG players can develop these symptoms. Now I know D&D has always had a bad rap about it causing Satanism and suicide but this is different. This is based on the wisdom of the Internet after all not some moldy religion! While RPGs may not create as many OCD symptoms as board games they do hone them. A detailed character generation system can feed right into OCD and playing that character can give the same positive feedback as a board game. Game Mastering also can feed the Order and Perfection symptoms. However I think the OCD GM may get less positive reinforcement than others, because their players will end up sabotaging their perfectly made plans. And, of course, both players and GMs are superstitious, but then I’ve never met a gamer who wasn’t.

So be warned all you gamers! Preserve your mental health. Only play games you don’t enjoy. And if you see these symptoms in your gamer friends encourage them to seek psychiatric help at once.

Disclaimer: It occurs to me that some might take offense at parts of this. I assure you all that I mean no offense to OCD sufferers, Doctors, Gamers, or anyone else I might have put off. Except those morons in the AMA who came up with that stupid video games being addictive thing. Morons. All of them.