There’s a reason that gaming rehabilitation centers are moving from Korea to the United States – we are painfully addicted to video games. And by we, I mostly mean males.

It’s kind of old news; in movies, you see the 40-year-old in his mom’s basement playing League of Legends, screaming “I’m coming in a sec, Ma. I just need to NEED TO LEVEL UP!” You never see a video game-afflicted female, nor would game manufacturers ever think they need to really pinpoint the female gender except of course when it comes to their characterization in games.

However, they do have good reason for this. Researchers at the Stanford School of Medicine actually found that men get more out of video games than women. So much more that it’s comparable to real life. I kid you not, that fake sword he won after he spent hours of doing “chores” actually counts as a real object; hence why games with swords have a $5 billion worldwide market. What is the proof, you ask?

In the study, researchers hooked 11 men and women to a functional magnetic resonance imaging machine (fMRI), which illuminates the regions of the brain that are functioning during a given activity. And while they found results were completely even when it came to understanding the game, men proved to be progressing significantly farther in the game than the women did. This was because they were much more motivated to succeed once they realized their efforts would be rewarded; in fact, their brains’ reward centers – the nucleus accumbens, amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex – lit up when they identified methods to quickly progress in the video game. The females, comparatively, couldn’t care less, according to the story.

With this data in mind, game manufacturers should stop making their products so habit-forming. While some of the blame can be pinned on those who are addicted, the style is tailored to prey on their audience. John Hopson, a game researcher at Microsoft, literally has the job to make sure games are played again and again by using information about patterns in behavior.

“Each contingency is an arrangement of time, activity and reward, and there are an infinite number of ways these elements can be combined to produce the pattern of activity you want from your players,” wrote Hopson on Gamasutra.com.

B.F. Skinner used the same method when he randomized the amount of time rats that were given pellets. This is why enemies “drop” so many valuable items randomly in World of Warcraft. It gives you the false sense that since you worked so hard, you “earned” that random prize. These games are not made to be fun. They are made to make sure that companies can profit from children playing for the insane amount of hours that they do. How else would the Chinese MMO ZT Online attract so many people to click on treasure chests all day, without the hope that they are given the jackpot?

In order to lower video game addiction numbers within our generation, and therefore increase our productivity, graduation rates and connections with real people, we need to begin with stopping games that exploit our nature as humans. The key is moderation. More games should be built like Pac Man, or others from the past, where the amount of time spent playing didn’t matter and was not as important.

Our culture also has to change its perception of what “fun” is and how that can apply to other activities. If you were just as good at playing a guitar or soccer as you are at Rock Band or at FIFA, then you wouldn’t need the game in the first place. So if you see someone you know who plays video games an average of 3-4 times a day – the estimated average for an addictive player – try to introduce him or her to other activities. An average of 31 percent of males are addicted, as well as roughly 13 percent of females so you are bound to know someone who is affected. No one, whether male or female, should have to miss out on the real world because they were too busy in their own virtual one.

Alexa Jones is a Collegian columnist. She can be reached at [email protected].