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My Life As An Online Gamer
The BBC is running a story featuring several interviews with hard-core online gamers. The article is in response to China's time limit restriction it plans to put into effect for MMOGs. From a very confused man interviewed in the article: " I think I am addicted. I've got to the stage where I feel that without gaming, I have nothing interesting to do. On weekdays, I game for about five to seven hours a day and in the weekends I will spend 15 hours a day gaming online. I once spent 48 hours in one go at a game. It's crazy, I know. I was at university then and full of energy. "
Wow, I just thought about the possible extra pain this would cause a gamer... Say you're approaching your 3 hour mark, then that super glowing all-powerful hatchet of mercyless death weidling gelatinious cube spawns... You start hacking away, get it down to 25% health, down a few more pots.... Link dead.
Come back the next day and you're respawned back in qeynos, lost exp, lost $$$, lost your group and wasted 3 hours.
Damn, that'll put a hurtin' on gamers awerite!
Do not meddle in the affairs of sysadmins, for they are subtle, and quick to anger.
"Brandon Hipsher, who lives in Indiana, says that gaming is no more addictive than watching television... Why is gaming considered addictive when other activities are not?"
I don't think he's helping his argument with that one.
what personal problems do these people have that make them want to spend so much time in gaming?
Want them to stop playing? Get them a psychologist. Addiction is only a symptom.
Everybody gets wrapped up in one thing or another. Sometimes people obsess over their jobs. Sometimes it is over a boyfriend or girlfriend. A new pet, a tv series, a sports game, cleaning the house, exercising, whatever.
Sometimes the first time you try something you really like, you get addicted for a long while before it finally gets old for you. This is not exclusive to video games by any means.
I don't think there's a psychologist alive that wouldn't say this is unhealthy, and probably a sign of a mental disorder.
My older brother got kicked out of the military for high blood pressure in February. Since then he's not found a job and he's not even considering going back to school.
He's 26, lives at my parent's house, and he plays computer games for about 14 hours a day (15 if you count the breaks for eating and such), 7 days a week.
I'm so freak jealous.
Latewire
"I think I am addicted."
... get some help.
I think you're in denial. The fact that you included the words "I think" in there was the first clue. Dude, 5-7 hours of gaming a day? 15 on the weekend? Seriously
I know, basically every enjoyable activity (with a slight twist of mind even every non-enjoyable one) can be addictive. But there are some modificators to apply for MMORPGS:
The modifiers apply to other activites as well. Playing an MMO isn't that much different than sports, movies, gambling, etc. If a particular activity doesn't explicitly try to take advantage of a modifier your brain will make it up all by itself
1. The +1 Syndrome (aka carrot-on-a-stick)
Like a runner pushing themselves for "just one more mile", or a gambler with 1 more coin, playing football for 1 more hour, shopping at just 1 more store, 1 more drink at the bar, sleeping for just 15 more minutes, etc. Basically your mind just convinces itself that the marginal investment will be made up for with some sort of reward.
2. Teamwork
4. Community
I would lump these two together. People are social creatures, we tend to gravitate to those who share something in common with us.
Teamwork lets us define ourselves by the accomplishments of a group, while competition lets us define ourselves relative to others who share similar goals.
Both fall under the umbrella of a community, where we are able to interact with those who are similar to us. Whether its the bartender, store clerk, or the player on the other team, you feel like they are part of the same group as you. Like the show "Cheers," you want to go where others know your name. Even the gambler in the dark corner of the casino will feel a sense of community through familiarity with the machines, with the waiting staff, getting a feeling of home when they play.
3. Freedom of aesthetics and personality
Often times people take on different personas even in without the anonymity of a computer. At the bar you're no longer "Bob the accountant," you are "Bob the guy who predicted the superbowl". You may not even have a name, and are just known as "the guy who chugged a 12 pack in an hour, or that guy who never missed a shot, or the guy who won the illegal street race in his old Honda"
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The articles and replies are dropping the word addition around like they are armchair psychologists. Perhaps critics see a computer resembling a television, and they don't bother understanding the underlying functions. While there are some people who might use gaming to escape from their other responsibilities (like any other form of escape), the choice to participate is just that -- a choice.
What are some reasons people would choose to participate in these online activities? Communication - no other mechanism allows people around the world to work together in-real-time to accomplish goals. Players improve communication skills to improve their game and interact with people of all different backgrounds. Teamwork - Getting involved with an epic quest that involves 5-40 other people is exhillarating. Leadership - Forming groups, clans, guilds, and partnerships is easy and fun. Players learn how to direct others while keeping the groups together. Entertainment - Games are the top-of-the-line graphical and technical achievements. Movies and many books cannot compare to the cinematics and story lines in popular games. Expenses - For as much as $50 up-front cost and $15 a month, you are allowed unlimited participation in ever-changing entertainment. Organization and Critical Thinking - Games require fast reactions, understanding complex rule-sets, and using and even creating websites. After an intense game session, you might even feel mentally exhausted.
Comparing this to addictions like smoking is ludicrous. Smoking not only has no personal value, but it is are detrimental to one's health. Gaming is safe and cheap, and there are many qualities that can improve a player's lifestyle.
I know of someone who was involved with a three month in-game leadership program. Their clan used voice communications and protocols so that twenty or more players could be lead effectively. The conclusion of this training was an epic battle where the student would lead three groups of twenty at once (60 players) and coordinate strategies for each group. This is clearly an activity that improved the gamer's well-being, while others of his age were out in smoky bars drinking each night away. Gaming, in this case, generated life-long skills.
People who would force someone, causing no problems for anyone -- including their own self, to seek psychological attention, should themselves get some immediate psychological attention.
Well, games are fun, fun is play, play = stress relief. No big science there. Plenty of people use gaming (not just videogames) as a stress reliever. In a sense this is an escape, you are taking your mind off of the object of stress, perhaps as a rough day at work.
We all have day to day stress of one type or another and "serious work", whether you are a baby or an adult. Using entertainment as an escape to get your mind off of stressful events or circumstances, is normal. It's part of what play is about.
Sometimes my arms bend back.
The thing is, people simply need to do something with their time. You can't just sit and look at the walls.
That's one thing that needs to be understood first. In the 1600's, you needed to spend 16 hours on the fields to even have enough to eat, then one or more of the following, depending on gender: hack your own firewood, patch your own roof, cook, spin and weave, patch clothes, spend hours washing clothes by hand, make your own soap, etc.
There wasn't that much of a need for daily entertainment, since you didn't actually have any time left to fill in an average day.
Since the 1900's, and especially since the mid-1900's, however, less and less of that is actually needed. You buy your clothes, not spin, weave and tailor your own crude shirts. You don't spend hours scrubbing the clothes by hand, you just chuck them in the washing machine. Heck, you don't even really need to cook if you don't want to.
There is a gradient that's very perceptible. When you listen to someone's stories along the lines of "back in my day, we had to walk to school 4 miles through snow, and we only got 6 hours of sleep after feeding the cows and chicken", they're probably not exaggerating. They actually had to. But we don't.
This, however, leaves us with more free time that we just have to fill with something. That's one thing that all those "back in my day we'd milk the cows instead of sitting on our arses and watching TV" nostalgics just don't seem to understand. Yes, they had to milk the cows and do all sorts of other tasks. I don't. It would cost me more to actually have a cow in my flat, than the milk is worth. This leaves me with time to fill with _something_ or I'd go nuts.
Some people fill it with hours after hours of tinkering on their car, some people fish, some people spend it at the pub, some people waste hours and money making digital photos, etc. And some of us use computer games. That's all.
Yes, some of them are waved around as inherently better ways, or more socially acceptable ways, to spend your time. But guess what? They're all nevertheless just ways to keep yourself busy. Don't kid yourself that going out fishing or spending hours on your car gets you some l33t survival skills or saves you this huge heap of money or whatever. They're skills that have exactly the same use as my button mashing skills: to keep you busy and entertained.
It's not decadence or some mental deffect or whatever other bullshit being waved around, it's just that humans weren't made to sit and stare at the walls. That's all.
The gradient is even more visible in countries that didn't get a head start, and had/have a faster evolution there. E.g., China. This just creates bigger generation conflicts between the granddad who still remembers manually planting rice in the swamp all day long, and the "lazy, addicted" grandson who just watches TV for hours.
And the result are such lame attempts to "protect" the youth from this newfangled waste of time. I don't think it's some evil Chinese government plot, but just a bunch of 80 year old nostalgics who just don't understand the issue.
Guess what? There's nothing to "protect" them from. They'll still have X hours a day to fill, and they won't go milk the cows like in the good ol' days in those hours. So they'll find some other entertainment, but still spend those hours on entertainment.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
The real problem is the root cause, not the symptom. We live in a meaningless society: broken families, wage slavery, cubicles, lack of community, dead gods, no religion. What else is there to believe in? We are all desperate rodents, clinging to anything that might grant us brief solace from the meaningless of life. In modern times, nihilism is the only truth. Beyond your computer there is nothing, only death.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat and wrong." H.L. Mencken
What I'm trying to say is that usually when you feel a need to reach for the usual universal nerd explanations like "because they're all idiots" or "because they all have some major mental problem", that ought to be your clue that you're talking out the ass and most likely haven't even _begun_ to understand what's really going on.
It's getting kinda tiresome to read the same rehashed pseudo-psychological BS, like (rephrased for brevity sake):
- "but you only play a muscled barbarian because you're ashamed/insecure/affraid of your body"
I'll call bullshit on that. I'm a munchkin, I play whatever has the best bonuses for my intended class. Yes, I play a Barbarian as my monk, but I also play a Dwarf as my paladin, a nerdy Erudite as my mage, and a thoroughly effeminate High Elf as my priest. I'd play a fat pimple-faced couch-potato, if that gave me better bonuses.
And, you know, there are games where your appearance doesn't give you any bonuses. E.g., City Of Heroes. Virtually all my characters there are simply variants of a nerd in jeans, a sweater or t-shirt, glasses and (for males) an unkempt beard. One of them even wears a suit and tie, just for gag's sake. But generally, none are anything I couldn't look like IRL with _very_ minimal effort. (E.g., going to the shop and actually buying a suit like that.)
- "buy you're in online games only because noone knows you there, and can't give you a reality check."
Well how's this for a reality check: probably the majority of people play online with some RL friends or at least aquaintances. E.g., every co-worker that plays EQ2 are members of the same guild and we all know who's behind which character. E.g., that that barbarian female with big breasts is a (male) coleague I see every day at work. He even jokes about us letting him win the "lottery" for loot because he's a woman.
And generally, I've been on MUDs, I've been on MMOs, I've been in FPS clans, and before all that I was on FidoNet. Knowing each other and/or occasionally meeting for a pint at the pub is rather the expected norm, not the rare exception.
- "but you prefer online communication because you're affraid of dealing with people in person."
Nope, I just prefer talking to people I share some interests with. There used to be a time when I'd take any boring (for me) topic, like the weather or football, simply because that was what was available in the immediate geographic proximity. The Internet, and FidoNet before it, allow me to skip those boring talks, and find a pool of people whose topics I'm actually interested in.
E.g., if I'd rather talk about siberian cats or ancient Egyptian history than about the neighbour's kids, or the other neighbour's football obsession, on the Internet I can immediately find enough people interested in the same thing. I can join a board, an IRC channel, a newsgroup, or whatever else dedicated to siberian cats or ancient egyptian history.
MMOs and generally online games are just such a "filter". There's a topic which you already know that people there will be interested in: that game itself. E.g., if I'm on EQ 2, chances are both me and the other guys/gals there are interested in it. That's a common interest to talk about.
And incidentally, it's not that different from the RL filters. E.g., if you go to a Metallica concert, you chances are most people there are interested in that genre. The Internet just enlarges the pool you can choose from.
A polar bear is a cartesian bear after a coordinate transform.
Historically, the Chinese Communist government has always taken action against any group or anything that gains a significant following. Anything that can compell thousands, if not millions of people to do something is a threat to government power. Online games currently have such a following in China. Not only that, as mentioned by one person in the article, they also provide an avenue for contact with people outside of China. Together, these things are a serious problem for the government. The recent uproar over GTA and the death of the South Korean player gave perfect cover to the government to crack down on something that might be a threat to their authority.
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