Gaming (Ad)diction: Discourse, Identity, Time and Play in the Production of the Gamer Addiction Myth by Rob Cover Although the vast majority of studies undertaking the examination of electronic games and the emergence of a gaming culture deny that games are addictive, a stereotype of the game player as addicted continues to circulate in various strands of ego-psychology and pedagogical study and, with greater force and political affect, in popular culture, news media and governmental rhetoric. Frequently, the addicted gamers are seen as low-class, proto-violent addicted and dangerous kids (Beavis, 1998), learning to express repressed anger and aggression (Young, 1998), sociopathically isolated (Thompson, 2002), and potentially capable of perpetrating another Columbine Highschool shoot-out (King & Borland, 2003). Unlike writers such as Young who lump games and online use together and read interactivity and immersion as addiction, there is clearly a strand in popular discourse that seeks to celebrate one over the other, and to accuse games for their addictiveness. What is at stake is how the various sets of knowledges that produce and affirm the stereotype of the addicted game player are produced and circulated. Stereotypes link an image to an idea (Rosello, 1998), fixing a long-term relation between the imaginary figure of the game player and the idea that gameplaying is addictive. The image-idea operations of the stereotype work dynamically-that is, the idea of gameplaying as addictive produces a particular form of game player, while, simultaneously, the utterance of game player invokes within some discourses the danger of addiction to gaming. But this only occurs through particular sets of ingrained attitudes that have emerged partly from a high-culture denunciation of gaming as a valid form of textual engagement, and partly through a set of moral panics around gaming as they emerge every few years in a variety of contexts. Working within and studying game theory, we grow used to the idea that the stereotype is false, that gaming addiction is not real or at least far more complex than given in much popular culture depiction, and we become used to the task of ignoring popular culture and alarmist representations in order to concentrate on the manifold task of analysing gaming culture in such a way that overturns older, less-rigorously argued and indeed somewhat boring attitudes. However, it does remain a fact that the stereotyping of gameplay as addictive continues, and it comes into play in submissions to censorship boards in various countries, it informs government ministers and politicians and lawmakers in their attitude to gaming, it has discernible indirect effects on industry and development funding, it is related to the capacity to study gaming-and to fund that study-within universities and it relates to self-attitudes to gameplay. For these reasons alone the production of the gaming addiction stereotype is worthy of further analysis and further research, and of being drawn back in to the more interesting questions around the nature of gaming. As importantly, if the study of gaming is to go beyond the celebration or close analysis of games and further continue the examination of gaming sociality, then one of the political points of engagement centres on the question of gaming addiction, rather than ignoring or denouncing this unfortunate stereotype. Given the considerable and continuing research suggesting gaming is addictive that continues to be produced through certain strands of psychological and normative discourses, as well as the considerable frequency with which alarmist statements and moral panics over gaming appear in the news media and other popular culture forms, it is not enough for those studying games, advocates of gameplay or industry representatives simply to reject the claim that games are addictive. Rather, a thorough body of work that addresses the concerns that gaming is addictive is needed, and particularly work that broadens the scope of gaming by utilising cultural studies and uses/ gratifications notions in favour of an overly simplistic technological determinist understanding of the emergence of contemporary game culture. In this paper, I want to work through six concerns that intersect with arguments around gaming and addiction: the application of addiction rhetoric of game players, research into online addiction, youth, violence, and the interactive goal-seeking nature of gaming narratives. All of these are, separately and in various