Overclock your brain for gaming? Ethical, social and health care risks

摘要

This is how Focus Labs (http://www.foc.us) introduced a new device to improve performance at video-games. The device is meant for self-administration of imperceptible, transcranial currents to the prefrontal cortex, and can be tuned by a smartphone app. Everybody can buy it by a mouse click. This is an example of how market goals may overcome ethics by threatening users' and gamers' health and imposing high social risks.Indeed, the boundaries between video-gaming for fun, for money, and the development of gaming addiction are subtle, and hence easily crossable. In the last decade, the online gaming scenario has completely changed. There has been an exponential growth of platforms and dedicated portals, along with a decrease of gamers' age. According to a 2012 survey (Forbes, Dec 20th, 2012, "The Year of eSports"), 4 millions of gamers currently play within the Electronic Sport League, and 8 millions in the North American Major League of Gaming (MLG). During the last year, MLG has observed a +334% increase of live viewings of online tournaments (from 3.5 to 11.7mln; +636% in the last two years), with followers from 175 different countries.