Pleasures of a game monitored?

This research area is insightful. Thanks to Cynthia for posting a link to this brilliant find! I especially found the correlation of spatial cognition, reward, and learning insightful.

I'm already predisposed to believe their (speculative) conclusions, yet after reading the Journal of Psychiatric Research article (Gender differences in the mesocorticolimbic system during computer game-play, I have questions. Their contrived videogame strikes me as an atypical case in the medium. How does their methodology's game of clicking moving circles quickly generalize to videogames? How does their selection pool of Stanford students (which is biased toward education and mechanical technology) generalize to males and females that typically play videogames? If someone were motivated enough to be in an higher-educational institute (that is famous for geekiness in the heart of the Silicon Valley), would not their motivation be likely to contain a predisposition for finding technical interaction rewarding? What difference would it make if the participants had been informed of what the rules of play were (which is the typical use case for computer play)? And then, there's the pet peeve I have when enjoyment and addiciton appear to be confused. If they define addiction by mesocorticolimbic activity, then what pleasurable activity does NOT meet this definition of addiction? I'm a designer (damn it), not a scientist... so I'd appreciate input.

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