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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."
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.
Well, sure. When I like something a lot, I want to do it a lot. (see: sexual intercourse ) So, to some extent, everything fun has to be somewhat addictive.
And about the hiring someone with a psychology degree to help make games more addictive? Come On! When has anyone heard of someone with a psychology degree getting a job?
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."
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?
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.
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.
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)
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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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.
This post brought to you by Sony Online Entertainment.
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No power in the 'verse can stop me
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.