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Online Gaming Addictive?
gihan_ripper writes "The BBC
has a discussion on the addictive effects of online gaming. Reports come from Liz Woolley of Online Gamers Anonymous, and a gamer, Lynn Hall. Liz blames EverQuest for the 2002 suicide of her son Shawn, noting that game manufacturers hire employees with psychology degrees in order to make their games more addictive."
From my experience... 3+ years on Everquest, Meridian 59 every now and again since 1996, Anarchy Online for ~ 3 months, WoW, EQ2 and numerous others have wasted several years of my late-teenage life....
It's like a job, except you don't get paid for playing the game... You get hooked and end up playing for 10 hours after school every single day and all weekend..... I can't believe that Everquest ruled my life for 3 years during high school... *sob*
I'm addicted to Stephen King. I compulsively read every new book he writes; I have withdrawal cravings when he doesn't publish for a long time. I know for a fact that he has a vested interest in making his books as alluring and addictive as possible.
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I think I'll go form a support group for victims of his evilness
the games are just an outlet for his depression...you should be tackling the problem, not the symptoms...just because he played lots of games doesn't mean anything...
Just the same as driving fast, having sex, using caffine or tabacco, and gambling are addictive...
As long as you have the choice to stand your dumb ass up and leave, leave it the hell alone. When did it become OK to have no self control?
"Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity." -Anon.
Even better, McDonald's and their french fries.
Once again we come up with another irresponsible parent that's looking to lay the blame for the death of their child. Anybody that does not practice any self control (or delegation of it) is making a beeline straight for the darwin awards.
To be fair, yeah I'm an avid player of (back then) EQ and (as of now) WoW. Yeah, I did play WoW obsessively for the first few months. But it's waned down a lot. I've gotten to the mode of casual playing and truth be told I'm just too busy trying to stay on top of RL to really commit to it. My friend who just moved in the area and is going on interviews for jobs, plays a whole lot more, because he's got the time to at the moment. Sure I'm jealous, but that doesn't drive me over the edge. *sigh*
Ah, another one of the "if it doesn't take a week to gain a level, it's not an MMORPG" crowd.
Guess what, an MMORPG is exactly what that says: Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. I'd say World of Warcraft has that covered. It's massively multiplayer, it's online, and it's a role playing game (by the video game definition).
But, you are right. World of Warcraft has no staying power. You'll play it for an hour, then get bored and go do something else. Leave it for a couple of weeks, who cares?
Breeze through to the level cap, and then what? There's no end game.
Some Blizzard appologist is going to come here and say "PVP" and "Battlegrounds" but any good sized PVP raid starts some mad lag, in the 1-5 seconds variety, and Battlegrounds isn't here yet and will almost certainly have the same problem.
PVP is geared toward ganking. That's all there is to it. There's no reward for PVP, and there's no penalty. So ultimately people just go around killing whatever once they're at the cap. If you're level 20 and a level 60 comes by, you're dead, because there's no reason not to, and Blizzard says that there's a "war" between the two factions, so why not?
Oh well - but it is a fun deversion for a couple of months, so it's not a complete waste of money.
People would rather do things they enjoy, then deal with problems which they don't enjoy. In almost every case, people will pick the more pleasant thing over the less pleasant thing. Games are more fun than life, and thus its easy to overdo it. By simply calling all enjoyable things addictive, we're raising a generation of people with no incentive for self control. They don't need to control themselves, they can just blame others.
It strikes me as kind of odd to believe that unless you plan to devote your life to a game then you are not a "true" player of the game and have no business having a game in the genre that you can enjoy.
It's good, I suppose, that you've found something you enjoy so much that you actually want to spend a dozen hours a day doing it, but the fact that others only want to dabble in it shouldn't threaten you and if you don't enjoy games that cater to them, what's wrong with just not playing them?
In short, I guess I just don't see the problem. It seems like you really wanted to love WOW but found that it just wasn't enough for your outsized involvement in these types of games. Okay, so what? You've found a game in EQ2 that meets with your approval. So WOW isn't for you and EQ2 is. Where's the problem?
Read the story linking to the 2002 suicide. The "kid" was 21 years old and living in his own apartment.
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that being said, the guy had problems,
"He'd quit his job and played almost non-stop, eventually being evicted from his apartment and moving in with his mother, before leaving her home and then being put in a group home for addictive behavior."
"He was diagnosed with depression and a schizoid personality disorder and put on medication."
"Residence in the group home was voluntary, however, and he left. He then rented his own apartment, over his mother's objections, where he resumed non-stop playing."
It doesn't sound like the game developers fault. His family could have done more, but with the guy being a legal adult, it's hard for the parents to force him to do anything.
So what is the point in any game? Don't you have anything better to do with your life than move little circles around on a board (checkers) or try and throw a sphere through a hoop (basketball). I mean, seriously, that's a pretty cynical way to look at the whole thing. When you get down to that level, what's the point in anything? What's the point in life? People play MMOs and other games because they think it's FUN. Your definition of fun may differ from someone else's, but that does not give you the right to belittle what others choose to do. People need to escape the mundane reality they constantly work in to keep themselves alive. If they choose to do it via an MMO, a sport, or a bottle, that's their decision. I really don't see your point here, other than the fact that you don't like to do it.
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This isn't the sig you're looking for. Move along.
What about high-level instances? I'll be honest. I'm probably from the target market so I doubt I count as a "true" MMO gamer, but I'm not convinced by your arguments. I, too, am curious how high level content is going to play out since so much of WoW seems focussed on levelling, but I'm not necessarily disheartened by the fact that I can hit a level cap. To my mind there are two ways MMO's can challenge their users. One is by levelling. i.e. putting rewards in front of the user (skills, hit points, spells etc.) which they can only achieve through gaining experience by killing monsters. The other way is by achievement, i.e. putting reawrds in front of the user (I killed Onyxia! I got the elite warlock gear!) that can only be achievved by large groups of people working cooperatively. The first 60 levels are about the former. The rest of the high level content is about the later. At least that's how I envision it. Do I really want a game that keeps me hooked by just extending the former forever? Note that I do not fall back on PVP and battlegrounds for high end content. Frankly, I can see why a lot of lvl 60s are bored. Unless they have a tight-knit group of guildies to tackle high-end content with, they aren't going to get much out of level 60 at all. If you're not willing to make the switch into something much more cooperative than you aren't going to enjoy WoW at high levels. case closed. Personally, the best times I have had in WoW are when I've been teamed up with guildies and working cooperatively in large groups (whether those groups have been instance raiding or pvp raiding). Again, I'm only level 52, so I can't say for a fact what level 60 is going to be like, but I'm excited to get there so my guild can tackle the more strategic and complex challenges WoW has to offer.
Of course online games are addictive. offline games are addictive. People get addicted to things they enjoy. That's not news, it is common sense.
Blaming a game for someone's death? Well that's taking it a bit far. If someone was unbalanced enough to have a game as a potential trigger, then they should not be playing said game.
"why don't you just slip into something more comfortable...like a coma!"
I've actually exchanged some emails with Woolley for a past online column I wrote that mentioned her son. So before the normal rabid gaming reaction begins, let me state that she is a very nice and intelligent woman. She suffered a great loss and is trying to make something good out of it.
That said, I still don't agree with some of her positions. I think she's gotten some bad information from certain psychologists who poorly compare the brain chemistry of someone having a really instense experience to that of crack cocaine - which is simply sensationalist hyperbole.
As several will note, anything can be addictive. People can form a fetish relationship or obsessive fascination with almost anything - it's not a reason to start banning or regulating everything that fits on a shelf. We should be more worried about mental health in our culture on a general basis. Why is going to a therapist still such a blemish? And of course, who can afford it? Video gaming itself is just a symptom of these kinds of problems. You could try to ban gambling, but that won't really help a gambling addict.
This genre is not for the casual, nor the impatient. It really isn't for the younger teens, and it's definitely not for the FPS, RTS, or action gamers. It is for fiends who like to grind away and quest away for years with the goal of creating a truly sick, sick character.
To say "It's only an MMO if it is hardcore," is pure elitism.
While you may not have liked the simplicity of WoW, I in fact preferred it over the pure grind of EQ2. I also prefer the atmosphere of WoW which is more quest oriented, tying things back to helping the world, while EQ2 is more focused on just mob killing. Ultimately, the downtime in looking for a group in EQ2 ruined the game for me.
That's not to say EQ2 was a bad game, I just wasn't the audience for it. The genre can support both casual and hardcore fans. I think what has been proven there is a significant market for both hardcore and casual players, and that no single game is able to adequately capture the needs of both groups.
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An undergraduate psychology degree doesn't really qualify you to make games 'addictive'.
I strongly disagree. In fact, I can qualify you in every way that matters in just one sentence: "One of the most addictive reward patterns is intermittent rewards." There you go, apply that with gusto and you can create an addictive game. (I recommend that you also make the game itself good, you need them playing long enough to get addicted.)
For one of the most pure examples of this I know, check out the Roguelike "Angband" and its various children. (No, really, it's way more addictive than Nethack. Whether or not it is more fun is another question, but based on this standard Angband is almost empirically more addictive.)
Think about what a "rare" drop means. Think about what the random aspect of almost everything does. Even the social interactions will have intermittent rewards.
An undergrad degree in psychology is extreme overqualification. You only need a minute or two to read this post, a moment to internalize it, and some practice at applying it, and you're ready to make an addictive game, or an already addictive genre (RPGs) even more addicting.
(Note that a lot of things are addictive; ultimately, mere addictiveness is not enought to condemn something. It must also interfere with your life. We deal with this sort of thing all the time in some domains, like food, whereas in others it can blindside us... there is no "satiety" built into us for MMORPGs with a physical limit.)
However, the audience for video games seems to keep getting older and older, and I suspect we'll have video games for quite awhile.
But ask yourself why you REALLY like to play video games. What's fun about these things? And how do you feel about those reasons?
Is it because you want to face new challenges, socialize, and observe a new fantasy world? I doubt think anyone can argue these things are unhealthy, in moderation.
Or is it because you want the sense of accomplishment that comes from the level-up hamster wheel, which rewards you primarily for playing longer rather than playing better? Is it because your seeking an escape from reality?
(One could argue that these games give us the detachment from self that eastern religions advocate. I suspect otherwise, but that's far too complex to think about here.)
There was a scene from Minority Report in which someone was spending time in a virtual reality simulation of his peers praising him for receiving an imaginary reward. How much of the attractiveness of these MMORPGs comes from the very same desire for false success?
Things shouldn't be banned because they are unhealthy, but you shouldn't defend the healthiness of something just because someone is trying to ban it. The worth of an activity is in the eye of the beholder, but you shouldn't discard your own judgment just to spite people you disagree with.
Free yourself of all prejudice and bitterness, then ask yourself whether a desire for pre-programmed, treadmill success is healthy? Are you a better person after you have finished, or are you just older?
And, if any games developer happens to come down with an odd case of misplaced utilitarianism in capitalist world, maybe you should ask yourself what effect your game has on people. There are certainly MMOG games that lack any explicit level treadmill. Second Life comes to mind.
The human desire for fun exists in order to stretch our mental and physical abilities. Yet so many things we call "fun" actually contract these abilities. Worse, things we do to "relax" like watch television or smoke leave us even more stressed out and tired than when we started. The Taoists encourage us to be relaxed and alert, yet so many times we Westerners are entranced by our anxieties. We've grown so used to that state that for "fun" we invent new anxieties to entertain us on our computer and television screens.
Trying to stop it with lawsuits and laws is laughable, of course. But that does not stop my mourning.
Sure, you could get lvl 60 in no time. I never played the game, but one of my friend plays it (yeah, I know how that sounds) and he's played 16 DAYS (total time, not between when he started and today) and he's only lvl 43 or something. He just plays with his friends, learns his craft and talk with people. We're talking about someone who doesn't have a job here and does this about 8-10 hours a day.
I can't even begin to think how I could reach that level and enjoy the game as much as he does with a 40 hour work week and have a social life in the meantime. Useless I rushed through the game like you did and miss out on everything that makes the game cool.
I'm surprised that someone actually modded this tripe insightful. Starting an argument by flaming another group of people, in hopes of avoiding getting flamed is rather trollish.
In response, I have to say: You are entitled to your opinion. It really has no impact whatsoever upon any other player, and it also does not make you an "expert." The definition of an MMORPG is a world that can handle many player-characters, who play roles. WoW fills that definition rather well. If you don't like the mechanics of WoW, that's fine. You're playing something else.
I am a hardcore player, but I have a job. I don't like falling behind other players because of the fact that I have a job. Blizzard solved that problem. I don't care that endgame isn't fleshed out yet. I enjoy helping other people get there. I enjoy the high level instances. I enjoy sitting around doing nothing but chat.
You are just an AC, and in no ways an authority on what or what isn't an MMORPG. There is more to do in the WoW than just grind away and grab loot. That really isn't playing a role at all, it's more like playing an arcade game.
You need to restart your computer. Hold down the Power button for several seconds or press the Restart button.
Not that I usually comment to AC's...but hey, you didn't like the game. There's nothing wrong with you.
To me, EQ2 is for people that are NOT hardcore gamers...WoW is more hardcore. See, I can pull things out of my ass like anyone else.
A game is as hardcore or casual as you want to make it. Either one. I think WoW is just as hardcore as any other MMORPG out there on the market, AND it's more fun. But that's my opinion. You're obviously looking for something else.
EQ2 didn't grab me. Still doesn't grab me. It looks and feels like it was made by a bunch of people punching a time-clock at Sony. There's no passion, there's no vibe to it. It's like Sony threw a bunch of cash at people and said build us a sequel.
Now, if you think hardcore powergamers are people that grind away for loot then that's just sad. I'm a "hardcore powergamer" that grinded(is that a word...grend, grund my way?) his way through EQ1. I'm sick of grinding. Grinding does NOT equate into a "hardcore game" to me. If that's the definition, then I guess all these years of playing these games I was always a casual gamer.
But yes, WoW will evolve, as do all these types of games. You and others like you don't like it. Ok...move on. They can't please everyone!
And please, stop lumping groups of people into one game or another. All people are different. And your argument about a level 60 not having anything to show for with a guy that plays 4 hours a week. Trust me, there are no people that are level 60 that only play 4 hours a week...well, yet. And so what if there are? How is that taking away from your game experience that there is a level 60 out there? There were level 70 people in EQ...did that bug you too? What is this "nothing to show for it"...what do you want to show..a fucking medal?
And WHERE are you pulling these "non true mmo players" from? WTF...are you THAT elitist?
Breaking your Anonymous Coward post down, sounds like you're jealous...you wish to be exclusive. You wish to be a level 60 and no one else can touch you...just so you can parade around like it's a fucking accomplishment! WHO CARES?!?! Who cared that someone was level 70 on EQ? Who cares that you're the highest level on EQ2? No one.
There are ex EQ2 players on wow...there are ex wow players on EQ2...again...BIG FUCKING DEAL!
I'm not a fanboi (again, is this a fucking word?) of either game. I like one over the other. Will I stick with either? I don't stick with games. I play them until I get bored...then I move on. When it starts to grind again, I move on. If the "hardcore mmo player" is someone that sticks to a game that isn't fun for them anymore and just grinds...then the "hardcore mmo player" is a fucking idiot.
"Leo Fender was in a 'state of grace' when he designed the Stratocaster." -- Paul Reed Smith
I bought WoW about 3 weeks after release expecting to find a game that does what it says: caters to the hardcore and casual gamers equally. I played WoW for about 2 months only to find out that this game caters to one kind of player: non-mmo vets looking to get their feet wet in the genre. Don't argue it...it's dead on spot true.
... that's a raid. So much for doing stuff solo "casual".
... lucky! Now, let's stay you are lucky and have the other rare components for the blade. Well, slight problem, you need the master weaponsmith quest. Dungeon trips again. More time sinks. More "hard core" stuff.
- You lost your entire credibility right here. Let me clue you in on "hardcore".
I camped my Vex Thal key back in NeverQuest for over 30 hours + 3 guild raids. That was to get into the "loot" zone, the "endzone" of an expansion. Now, fast forward to WoW, if I want to see Onyxia, I have to do a long line of quests, do raids (estimated 30+ for a raid guild). Now 30+ raids vs 3 for old school EQ is not hard core? Pass the pipe please!
Now let's see the non raiding part of the game, stuff you can do solo. So let's say I want to craft this badass sword of badassness, let's call it "Arcanite Champion". This sword requires 15 Arcanite Bars. Problem is, Arcane Crystals (which is used by alchemists to make these bars, once every TWO days) are insanely rare. So I will probably spend close to 100+ hours mindlessly farming Rich Thorium Veins in the hope of getting enough Arcane Crystals. Now that's just a start. Next, I have to convince 15 of my friends to come help me kill (statistical drop rate 10%) at least 10 times Goraluk Anvilcrack in Upper Blackrock Spire. Oh wait
Let's say, you can BUY those plans in the auction house
And of course, I won't even get into "casual gamer" silly details like getting faction for Thorium Brotherhood (100+ raids or dungeon trips), Argent Dawn (days after days after days of mindless undead killing), and of course my favorite ultimate time sink: Invulnerable Mail. Oh and, Crusader enchantment. A whole 7 mobs in the entire huge WoW world can drop this enchantment (not quite true, it's 5, with 2 possible spawns, so not even 7), 1/1000 drop rate. Of course, every casual Joe will rush to this camp! Not hardcore enough?
Before you spout garbage like "WoW is not for hardcore crowd", how about actually looking into game mechanics, quests, instances, items and general level 60 gameplay more. Being a veteran EQ player, it's way more hardcore than EQ ever will be.
The exact quote is even worse:
"But I do know, however, that some of the game manufacturers do require their game developers to have degrees in psychology to make them even more addictive."
They REQUIRE their developers to have psychology degrees? I'm sorry, but I'm going to have to call bullshit on that, unless she can tell me exactly which developers those are.