Escaping Dead by Daylight
4:59 pm. I opened my laptop and booted up Dead by Daylight. Plenty of time to get a few games in, I thought. Hours passed, and I couldn’t stop playing. One more game, I told myself. Again. And again. I played until my computer overheated and my fingertips began to burn, but instead of stopping, I put on gloves. When I eventually turned my computer off at 2:00 am, my eyes were dry, my head was pounding, and it was well past my usual bedtime. Unfortunately, this troubling sequence of events became a regular problem, and I realized I needed to escape my Dead by Daylight addiction before it got worse.
Dead by Daylight (DbD; 2016) is an online survival horror game where you can play one of two roles: survivor or killer. As a survivor, you and three others navigate a randomized map, repairing generators to power an exit gate that you can use to escape, all while being hunted by a killer. As the killer, you stalk the map, looking for survivors to injure and eventually hook. While on a hook, a survivor will bleed out until they eventually die. Survivors can be unhooked and healed by their teammates, but if they get hooked three times, they lose. The game is scary, exciting, and unpredictable, but most importantly, it’s addictive.
Behavioral addictions are behaviors that a person is dependent on, typically to the point that their life is significantly disrupted. Such behaviors can include gambling, shopping, social media use, and gaming. Gaming addiction, or internet gaming disorder, involves a decreased control over gaming habits, which can impact one’s personal, social, educational, and occupational responsibilities (Cleveland Clinic, 2022).
Irresistible by Adam Alter (2017) delves into behavioral and gaming addictions, detailing the rise of addictive technology and the hold it has on individuals. The book prompted me to reflect on Dead by Daylight, making me question if the game was a piece of addictive technology and if it had a similar hold on me. After reading Alter’s book, I indeed noticed that the game utilizes three mechanisms of behavioral addiction: goals, feedback, and social interaction.
Goal culture, according to Alter, revolves around the idea that people are more interested in pursuing a goal than the actual destination. DbD, like many games, invites the player to set numerous goals. For example, I could set goals to complete my daily rituals, to acquire 1,000,000 Bloodpoints (an in-game currency), or to increase my survivor Grade. “Numbers pave the road to obsession,” Alter says. In DbD, my Bloodpoints, my killer Grade, my survivor Grade, and my player level were all numbered systems I could increase the more I played. Because people are more interested in the journey than the goal itself, they are likely to set a new goal for themselves as soon as they accomplish the old one. Thus, as soon as I won a match, I set a goal to win again. This type of goal setting can be repeated endlessly.
Feedback is pleasurable: You want your actions to prompt a change in your environment to give you feedback on how you are doing. According to Alter, feedback is enhanced by juice, which represents all the sights and sounds in a game’s environment that make the game fun. DbD has a noisy environment: Generators make loud explosion sounds when players mess up, but pleasing chiming sounds when they succeed; the survivors groan and scream the more injured they become; and as the killer nears the player, a heartbeat sound escalates to full-on chase music. I learned from Alter that this juice stimulates primitive parts of the brain that keep people engaged. This is corroborated by research findings that both positive and negative feedback increase dopamine and boost motivation, incentivizing longer play times (Burgers et al., 2015).
While goals and feedback contribute to DbD’s addictiveness, the mechanism of the game that really captivated me was the social interaction. Social interaction can lighten your mood and promote a sense of safety and belonging (Williams, 2019). I felt this when relying on my playmates for support and working with them toward a common goal. Furthermore, stressful situations allow people to form more meaningful bonds with each other (Nevins et al., 2014). DbD’s stressful gameplay — and the fact that my playmates and I needed to work together to survive it — fostered a sense of camaraderie.
Even though I valued interacting with all kinds of people, playing DbD with my friends was harder to resist. We video-chatted each time we played together, allowing us to see each other’s faces and engage in shared laughter. Not only did these experiences make me feel more connected to my friends, but they also allowed us to strategize. Video chatting, and communication in general, was impractical to do with strangers because the people you play with change each game, and there are no in-game communication methods. Thus, playing (and strategizing) with friends was a valuable opportunity that I jumped at any chance I got. Moreover, I knew that my friends wouldn’t have as much fun if they were playing and I didn’t join them, because a stranger would take my place and disadvantage the team. That, too, made me want to play any time my friends were playing.
Behavioral addictions can bring many consequences. You might neglect your responsibilities, your health, and your relationships. Furthermore, if you rely on a certain pleasurable behavior to make you feel good, you may forget how to deal with stressors outside of that behavior, thereby worsening your mental health. Alter details some of the dangers of gaming addictions by describing a young man who was dependent on World of Warcraft: He stopped sleeping, his grades steadily declined, and he became physically ill when unable to play the game.
Like that young man, while I was consumed with my DbD addiction, I neglected my homework, my health, and even my relationship with my mother. Instead of working on my assignments well in advance, I left them until the day they were due. My sleep schedule became erratic, resulting in constant fatigue. Most significantly, I consistently disregarded my mother’s requests to spend time together.
I was not alone in struggling with a behavioral addiction to DbD, and it could have been much worse. In a post titled, “Dbd addiction? What do I do?” (Luder Zucker YT, 2018), a user on the DbD Steam forums revealed they played the game for more than 1000 hours. In a post titled, “Dead by Daylight made my life a hell” (2021), a user of the StopGaming subreddit revealed they played the game for more than 4000 hours. Others have blown through more than 9000 hours (Ayrun, 2021; Tithi, 2021).
The aforementioned anecdotes startled me, as did Alter’s examples of lives ravaged by addiction. I didn’t want to play DbD so much that I would fail out of college, as many who suffered from video game addictions had done, and so I knew I needed to act. Luckily, Alter offers some recommendations that I used to manage my DbD obsession: distance and distraction.
Distancing yourself from your addiction will help you resist the urge to engage in it. For example, if you have a phone addiction, you might keep your phone on the other side of the room while you work or sleep. Because I use my computer for work, I couldn’t get rid of it. Instead, I deleted DbD’s shortcut from my desktop, so I couldn’t see the game when I went to do work. While I still sometimes felt the urge to play, I didn’t feel the urge as often or as intensely.
Distraction provides you with an alternative to your addiction. It allows you to benefit from the positives of the addiction while removing the harm. For example, many people bite their nails as an outlet for fidgetiness. A stress ball can distract them from their addiction by providing an alternative that allows them to relieve their restlessness without harming their teeth or nails. My distraction of choice was homework. When I felt the desire to stimulate my brain with thrilling DbD gameplay, I convinced myself that working on homework would be much more stimulating and fulfilling – and it was. Homework might work for you if you are motivated by school, but if not, pick something else. The point is to pick something that will be an effective alternative for you.
With a diminished urge to play and an effective distraction, I began playing DbD less often, consistent with Alter’s recommendation against quitting cold turkey. I initially convinced myself to take a one-day break; it worked, and I didn’t play again for several days. Then I convinced myself to take another one-day break. This evolved into playing about once a week, rather than every day. Then, every two weeks. Eventually, once a month. Until now, three months have passed since the last time I played DbD, and I don’t intend on playing again anytime soon.
If you play Dead by Daylight or another video game, I encourage you to evaluate your playing. If you find yourself not being able to stop even when your body (or your mom) is telling you to, heed Alter’s advice. Create distance between yourself and your addiction and come up with a suitable alternative for it. Hopefully, in time, you’ll be able to engage in it less often and maybe escape for good.
References
Alter, A. (2017). Irresistible: The rise of addictive technology and the business of keeping us hooked. Penguin Random House.
Ayrun. [@AyrunTV]. (2021, March 23). I just hit 9K hours on DBD, I’m scared to find out how many days that is, and how much of that time was spent waiting for a game [Tweet]. Twitter. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=29oN50olk6g
Burgers, C., Eden, A., van Engelenburg, M. D., & Buningh, S. (2015). How feedback boosts motivation and play in a brain-training game. Computers in Human Behavior, 48, 94-103. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.chb.2015.01.038
Cleveland Clinic. (2022, May 27). Video game addiction. https://my.clevelandclinic.org/health/diseases/23124-video-game-addiction
Dead by daylight (v. 6.7.0) [PC]. (2016). Behaviour Interactive.
Deleted. (2021, December 5). Dead by Daylight made my life a hell [Online forum post]. Reddit. https://www.reddit.com/r/StopGaming/comments/r9lqjw/dead_by_daylight_made_my_life_a_hell/
Luder Zucker YT. (2018, September 5). Dbd addiction? What do I do? [Online forum post]. Steam. https://steamcommunity.com/app/381210/discussions/0/1733212454825659823/
Nevins, A. B. (Director). (2014, November 18). Happiness (Season 2, Episode 1) [TV series episode]. In P. Berg, B. Carroll, M. I. Goldberg, & S. Aubrey (Executive Producers), State of Play. Film 45; Herzog & Company; Film 44.
Tithi. (2021, June 25). I reached 9,000 hours in DbD (help) [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rUV8fnBZ5gU
Williams, V. (2019, April 19). Mayo Clinic minute: The benefits of being socially connected. Mayo Clinic. https://newsnetwork.mayoclinic.org/discussion/mayo-clinic-minute-the-benefits-of-being-socially-connected/#:~:text=Socializing%20not%20only%20staves%20off,even%20help%20you%20live%20longer
Grace Hyde has been a member of the Interactive Measurement Group since the summer of 2022. In the spring of 2023, she graduated from UNLV with a B.A. in psychology and a minor in family studies. This upcoming fall, Grace will attend the University of Milwaukee-Wisconsin, pursuing a Master of Library and Information Science.