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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."
Single player video games are bad enough, being easy escapism from actually having to live. MM games are much worse. Since MM games are based in a live online world, you cannot save your game at any time and return to it just as you left it later. When playing with other people it is socially hard to stop in the middle of a quest, since you will waste your teammates' time in finding a replacement for your group. You are in constant competition with others in your guild, etc to level up. If you fall to far behind you will no longer be able to do quests with your friends. Finally, the way MM games are financed, you pay a flat monthly fee for unlimited usage. Someone who plays 20 hrs a week gets twice as much "game time per dollar" as someone who plays 10 hrs. This provides a further incentive to play as much as you can. Playing World of Warcraft sucked up a huge percentage of my free time. Even after I stopped playing, I still havn't worked up the courage to cancel my account yet because I don't want to lose my character.
Where's one of those twelve step programs when you need them? "-Hi my name is Greg and I am a WOW addict. -Hi Greg!"
"Overhead, without any fuss, the stars were going out."
Who funds this crap? And don't they have real science to do? And can't we please, please just have the real news on Slashdot?
I have never played or even seen someone play a MMORPG. Yet, I am a huge fan of RPG games, enough so that I've been working on creating my own since June. So why haven't I jumped on the MMORPG bandwagon? Well that's an easy question to answer.
I'm afraid. I'm terrified that I will become an addict like so many others, and then my performance will degrade at my job, my grades will lower, I'll become less productive, and I'll sleep less. Then when I realize my life has become so horrible and ugly, what will I do? I'll probably start playing the MMORPG *even more* to escape from my reality.
That scenario is so terribly realistic for me, I'm not even going to take the chance. FFXI will probably be the only FF game I will never play (unless Square-Enix decides to make another FF MMORPG...)
Hero of Allacrost, a FOSS RPG for *NIX/*BSD/OS X/Win
From the article:
I do not believe all online games are inherently bad or evil.
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.
Um, no. No they do not. What game developers might do is hire a Psychologist who has studied Human Computer Interaction, a branch of Cognitive Psychology which is concerned with, among other things, the usability of computer software.
As games become more complex, it becomes necessary to design an interface which is easily used, but not restrictive. Anyone who's played an MMORPG knows the importance of a good HUD. That's what's at hand here; game developers are hiring more Cognitive Psychologists to aid in the design of their game's interface.
The area of Psychology she's referring to is Psychopathology (i.e., "mental illness"). Psychologists in this realm study addiction... very different from those who study HCI.
Maybe this is some FUD she picked up from her lawyer, Jack Thompson? (Refer to second article)
Shawn was a high school buddy of mine, and it's surreal every time this hits the news.
We all happened to be gamers, my little posse of guys that didn't fit into the other clicks. Some of us were somewhat popular, some were gossipers, some (like myself) were computer geeks, but one thing we found we had in common was gaming. I'd sneak my N64 into the big projector room by the library so we could play Goldeneye during lunch break. Before the administration became uptight about lab usage, we'd play Quake anytime several of us showed up to school early. We tended not to have the greatest social skills (Shawn maybe being exemplar there) but we got along anyway; we were all decent guys just wanting to get the heck through high school so we could go have our own lives.
I'm not going to pretend I knew Shawn super-well; sometimes he'd hang out with us and sometimes he wouldn't, but I know his problems didn't come from video games. I have nothing but sympathy and sorrow for his family, but Sony didn't destroy Shawn; he did that himself. At least one guy from our little rag-tag group went on to get addicted to alcohol, too, but that's not the fault of the brewing companies, even if they know full well that alcohol can be addictive, even if they put plenty of research into making the stuff taste good and encourage recurring business. Bigger surgeon general's warnings would not have helped.
I need to disclaimer all this by saying that I personally haven't developed any self-destructive addictions. I haven't gone through it, so my perspective is void of first-hand experience. That said, I still put the responsibility not to allow some activity (smoking, playing video games, whatever) take over a person's life, on that person. We should avail them to help, and support them in finding help if we see that they are slipping, sure. But what sense does it make to talk about freedom and liberty if we won't also talk about accountibility and responsibility.
Shawn was a good guy, but I'm not sure he entirely understood that every effect has a cause, that things don't "just happen". His gaming addiction and his suicide were built piece-by-piece, over a long time, including the few years when I knew him. It was obvious he had problems, but it wasn't obvious, or inevitable, that those problems would culminate in the way they did. Every choice he made contributed. Maybe if we'd shot hoops instead of playing Quake, his choices would have been different. Maybe mine would have too, and maybe I would have wound up in some suicidal spiral instead. I find it more plausible that my not having committed suicide is a result of the decisions I made in life, rather than the existance of addictive and/or damaging things in life. Laws don't keep people from getting hooked on crack, and just because nicotine is legal doesn't mean everybody gets addicted to smoking.
Again, I truly feel for Shawn's family, and the families of everybody who has ever committed suicide, for any reason.