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How Warcraft Really Does Wreck Lives
An anonymous reader writes "There's a great blog post about how World of Warcraft can ruin lives, it's written by a person that was for a long time a member of the largest council on what is now one of the oldest guilds in the world." This is a story that is very familiar to a lot of folks. I know people who are actively wrecking their lives and risking their jobs by playing too much of a video game.
It is the setup of the game. It really cannot be enjoyed in short bursts like most games can. You need to finish an hour long dungeon to get any rewards out of playing. Most other games you can drop in for a few 5 to 15 minute rounds. Then again it also speaks out for the woeful lack of discipline many people have... myself included. However i have yet to let it hurt my grades. Must get that glove... beastlakers... .>
You mad
Games do not wreck people's lives. People wreck their own lives.
Some people gamble, some people cheat on their spouses. Some other people do drugs, and others drink too much. Some people are slackers, some people are workaholics. And yes, some people play video games too much.
Whichever way you look at it, people have a choice. They can stay grounded in reality with minor diversions into fantasy-land (whatever form that fantasy may take) and keep their lives balanced, or they can throw their lives away. Saying that World of Warcraft, The Jerry Springer Show or The Devil made you do it is a cop out.
Heard this kind of nonsense 25 years ago about other games (e.g. dungeons and dragons). The truth is some people have problems between their ears. The problem isn't WarCraft or any other game.
People wreck their own lives.
Anything can, could, and will happen.
Nothing new here, nothing at all...
-jcr
The only title of honor that a tyrant can grant is "Enemy of the State."
News Flash: Too much of anything is bad for you.
Stories effectively identical to the post came out when EverQuest was the big thing, came out when MUDS/MUSHES were the big thing, and have probably come out for every liesure activity developed in the history of man.
The only thing surprising about this is that it continues to surprise people when it happens. If you let your life get consumed, guess what, it gets consumed!
I read this yesterday I think and by now stretch was THIS guy's life wrecked. He put on a bit of weight, stopped some of his other hobbies and wasn't in touch with his friends as much. He met his current girlfriend in the game so lets put this in perspective. By some measures he's done okay.
That is a good post. Basically sums up WoW for a lot of the "hardcore raider" types.
MMORPG's are like being on a treadmill with someone dangling a treat in front of you. Every once in a while you might get a taste, but they will never let you have it because as long as you want what you can't have (perhaps the feeling of 'winning'?) you will keep paying 15 bucks a month to get closer and closer to and end that keeps drifting further away.
Blizzard has made what is arguably the most addictive MMO ever appealing to human nature's greed, and the need to feel accomplished.
Up until last month I was one of those types too. I played WoW EVERY night and every free moment. I would be lying if I said I did not enjoy it.
But a few things intersecting caused me to take a step back.
First was the alpha for the expansion. After a week of playing that I realized all the godly best-on-the-server epic gear my priest had would soon be shit since at level 70 (in some cases earlier) I would get gear at or better than the current gear I had. This basically meant when the expansion came out not only would I have to "grind" out 10 more levels, but from a gear standpoint it would be like re-starting the game.
Secondly, I enrolled in a couple of classes and had some family stuff come up. Between the alpha making me concerned, and real life keeping me busy several nights a week, I have gotten to the point where I do not even feel like logging in most of the time.
Logging in means raiding. Raiding means farming for consumables etc. Farming means work.
It's at this point you begin to realize WoW is like a second job - but one you pay to work at.
I agree with your sentiment, but having played both D&D and WoW, I can say it's not the same experience.
D&D requires that you have friends, sit down with them in person (yes, now you can play online, etc), and play for some set amount of time. Usually there's a point where the DM says something like 'I'm going to bed' and everyone stops. It requires that everyone gets together, schedules a time to meet, and that the DM put work in before you start playing.
WoW on the other hand never needs to stop. It plays as long as you want to play, and if you are in a large enough guild, then there are always people around for you to work with. Even without a guild there are people out there looking for a pickup group. MMORPGs exacerbate the situation.
Part of the fun with D&D and any r/l gaming is that you are in a time crunch and know it. How far can we get? Think quick, come up with interesting solutions. Laugh and make. Even if you want to play all night, someone in your group is going to be tired and want to stop, so you all have to stop. MMORPGs take away all the restrictions and really enable you to become 'addicted' in all the ways that you might to something else.
I will shred my adversaries. Pull their eyes out just enough to turn them towards their mewing, mutilated faces. Illyria
This guy really hits on what I think is the biggest problem with MMO's. There's no end game. If winning is really important to you (and it's an important part of games in general), then you're never going to be satisfied.
I don't play WoW, but I do play Eve-Online, and it's basically the same thing for a lot of people. They've built big and powerful alliances, they control vast in-game resources, and they're deeply involved in all of the political intrigue in the game. But they're stuck at this terrible point where no matter how much they collect, how much territory they control, there's still tons more out there.
Just like many wealthy people in life spend their money trying to procure more wealth, the means and the end have become basically the same thing, watching a few numbers constantly increase. And since there's an infinite supply of higher numbers, there's no final goal to be reached. You end up playing to win a game that can't actually be won. Not because you're unskilled or aren't working hard enough, but because there is no game-mechanic that qualifies as winning.
Yet it still manages to sweep up lots of people, and stings them along until they burn out. But at least with real life wealth, if you eventually realize what's going on and gain some perspective on life, you've probably got a decent pile of money to support you as you move in a new direction. When you burn out on a video game and decide to leave it, you've likely sacrificed a lot of what you had in the real world.
One time I threw a brick at a duck.
For God's sakes its just a stupid video game. It's not a terrorist. It's not a pack of wild dogs. It's not a drunken driver. It's not a chemical that creates fatal dependencies in your body. Its a VIDEO GAME.
If you can't stop playing it, obviously you have issues. Your life is not in balance, and your obsession to the game is just a symptom of the imbalance.
The game is not wrecking your life, you are.
I play World of Warcraft. I average about seven hours a week (four on sundays, and three more on tuesdays, because thats when all my friends can also play). It is fun. It is not wrecking my life. My character doesn't level up at light speed but so what? It is just a game.
Who do you get to be an expert to tell you something's not obvious? The least insightful person you can find? -J Roberts
my god- forget "RTFA" how about READ WHAT YOU REPLIED TOO!
the opening of the third of three sentences follows.
I haven't played it myself
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
I also didn't like how he compared WoW to "the worst drugs on the market" or whatever. He said WoW was WORSE than those. Please. He played daily for a year and then quit with no desire to go back. Try that with heroin.
"THERE IS NO JUSTICE, THERE IS ONLY ME." -Death
"Try that with heroin."
Fsck heroin, try that with plain ol smokes. It's been almost 4 years and I still want one now and then...
-nB
whois gawk date unzip strip find touch finger mount join nice man top fsck grep eject more yes exit umount sleep dump
btw, referencing D&D in this is the wrong game, D&D was never said to be something that will ruin your life
I beg to differ... It's not so popular now but back in the 80's when a) I was into D&D and b) Mazes and Monsters came
out people like this were everywhere! And this guy is jut one
example (albeit an extreme one).
My opinion then was that it's ridiculous to blame the game/manufacturer and as far as WoW is concerned my opinion hasn't changed.
Creationist Textbook Stickers Declared Unconstitutional by CowboyNeal
That's a really good point. Relating the time spent playing WOW vs. time spent watching tv.
I play about 2-3 hours a day at a sitting but definitely don't play every day.
My wife growls at me for the time I watch playing wow but I'm able to have a conversation with her and watch tv at the same time (my tv and PC are in the same room).
Why is it (generally in the minds of non-gamers) that time spent with the TV is somehow "better" than time spent gaming?
I suppose that if you completely coccoon into the game vs. remaining aware of the outside world it's a problem but that applies to anything.
I often play wow with both my girls on my lap telling me what to kill and which quests to run. (most of my toons are also female because the girls name them).
Seems like yet another media sponsored backlash against time spent away from the tv.
Hmm...
/played if you know your way around). A few random other alts that are fun, but highest level on any is 42, with 3 days played.
:). I manage my workday so that I don't spend an hour stuck in traffic. I exercise, 2-3 times a week, pre-raid.
My warlock has 97 days played. Over almost 2 years. Call it 600 days, that's probably about right.
My druid has like 20-25. Hunter is way less (you can level a hunter to 60 in about 5 days
Yeah, I play a lot. I have a full time job, a wife, a house, two dogs, and still take vacations, go to movies, and see friends. I do plan the friend time around the raid time occasionally. But at about the same rate that my wife plans friend time around knitting circle time, scrapbooking time, etc.
It's a hobby. I make time for it, schedule it. Have I lost sleep over it? Yeah. How many folks have lost sleep because of their hobbies? Anyone who has any passion about them.
Where'd the time come from?
I watch no television. I cook really fast (stir fry in 30 minutes, fried chicken with mashed potatoes and gravy and veggies in 45, grilled steaks and veggies in about 30...). I'm eating healthier (even homemade fried chicken is healthier than takeout burgers) than before, because it's faster to make my own food than go out of my way to pick up something. (Side note: Parents, teach your kids how to cook, and they'll figure out, eventually, that they're better at it and faster at it than restaurants that serve bad-for-you food, even counting cleanup time). I've pretty much given up drinking. I've streamlined the household chores, doing a bit more than my share to keep wife aggro down
In other words, all things that are probably better life choices in the long run.
One bad thing is I'm not reading nearly as many books as I used to. My books read/year is way way down.
My lifestyle (good job, no kids) has given me an excess of free time. This is how I choose to spend it.
Not too long ago, I saw that there are three videos on one of the more... interesting torrent sites I frequent that are titled:
"World of Whorecraft" (NSFW, duh)
And judging by the screenshots, I think I found someone I can look down on even more than tentacle-loving hentai freaks.
It looks like regular porn, but the girls are wearing elf ears and leather straps and stuff.
But, OK, that's not the worst part.
The worst part: The ONE, SINGLE attractive mid-20-ish college educated young woman that I've ever had in my classes (I'm an IT Trainer. A geeky, hopelessly introverted one who will probably be a lifelong virgin) is a WoW freak. She's about 5'10", blonde, big eyes, long legs and has a little bit of a fitness-model look. She went rock-climbing in the Andes on her last vacation. She really nice and well adjusted (maybe other than playing WoW...) Seriously good looking girl... And she's a geek of the "Lord of the Rings/Magic the Gathering" variety, which probably means she'd fulfill every possible fantasy for about 3/4 of the Slashdot population.
I told her about the "Whorecraft" thing and sent her a link to the site (We send each other off-color jokes and stuff all the time). This is what she wrote back.
"I have an outfit like that. I use it to get (her boyfriend's) attention when he's been raiding too much."
There is no fucking justice in the world.
That's all I'm going to say.
Well, OK, also, people who play WoW now frighten me more than ever.
-- I wanna decide who lives and who dies - Crow T. Robot, MST3K
WoW and other similar online games are generally designed to be Skinner Boxes: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Skinner_box
You do enough of the required behavior and get a reward. The key is to make the reward incentive strong enough to continue the behavior.
In WoW, and other online games, the goal is to keep the player paying money to the company to keep playing. What attracts players? A good game, marketing, other gamers, escapism, etc. The players, thusly attracted, must be kept entertained reasonably. A guy from Atari used to talk about how they developed games and thought about things like Skinner Boxes.
My comment is not particularly insightful or novel -- just google for Skinner Box and WoW. It's a connection that lots of folks have made.
Part of dealing with the problem is to recognize it when it comes at you and and realize the manipulation taking place. I don't think that the WoW owners are evil for operating their Skinner Box, as ultimately it is an issue that, IMHO, drops to the level of "personal responsibility." I'd like to see more education for kids so that they can recognize these sorts of traps in life.
We teach kids to cross streets, to stay away from old wells, not to smoke, not to shoot heroin, not to get into cars with strangers, etc. Why don't we teach them some basic life skills like recognizing likely "modern day" traps where the danger is not as obvious? Things like shopping and the dopamine connection. How fast food places manipulate their seating to encourage you to leave. How grocery stores manipulate you into walking around the entire store to get to the milk.
While I mentioned "personal responsibility" above re: WoW, the fact that some folks are either more educated about such things or more innately sensitive to the manipulation of SB's should not result in us thinking of those who fall prey to SB's as being morally deficient or lacking in self-control. To some extent, they may not recognize the danger until the SB behavior is so reinforced that changing it is difficult. I have often wondered if there are chemical or physical changes in the brain in gaming addicts that are akin to those who are addicted to alcohol or drugs, for instance. Ignorance of possible harm, rather than lack of self-control, can likely explain at least some of the fallout or collateral damage that can result from overdoing online (or offline) games.
I'm sure that we will see someone ultimately argue that online games (since they are new and shiny and an "in" target) are psycholocigal conditioning devices. I suspect that, as with DOOM in the Columbine case (and GTA, and others), that video games, online and otherwise, will continue to be whipping boys in criminal cases and possibly in the tort system (regulation through litigation).
In any case, I understand the perils of gaming to some extent, and that understanding has helped to inform my personal decisions about doing it. Likewise, I'll try to educate my kids about it. I think that seeing these stories from time to time, though we all roll our eyes at them, is probably useful on the whole, as it reminds us that excesses are often unplanned and that they take their toll over time.
GF
Lots of petrified grits
Bitingly insightful. It is as if the self-aggrandizing he is exhibiting is a backlash against a perceived lack of significance. I apologize if I'm stating the obvious here, but it hasn't really occured to me until you mention it, as it explains some of the ridiculous arrogance that seems common on the Internet.
at least he was taught the truth. There's no point to life, we're just meat sacks. would his life be any better if he was stuff full of a mythology du jour? no he'd just think that it was because at some point in the future they'd get harp lessons.
I support the troops. I pay f'ing taxes.
Anything can be an addiction, and video games are no different. However, with the advent of MMO's, game addition has become much more social and mainstream than before.
From the article...
This is true of Blizzard, however, it should be noted that this did not start with WoW. EverQuest(EQ) was the pioneer of the 'mainstream' MMO. Every heard of the phrase 'EverCrack'? Anyone who's played EQ has. There was a group formed called EverQuest Widows that comprised of people who left their husband / wife because of their game addiction. Or Husbands / Wives who had an affair with someone they meet playing this online game.
Of course, it isn't just EverQuest, it's an MMO thing, or possibly just restricted to the Fantasy genre as I've not heard of these same issues nor have I ever been as addicted to MMO's such as City of Heroes / Villans, Star Wars, or Matrix. I've seen these issues in EQ, Dark Age of Camelot (DAoC), and World of Warcraft (WoW).
During my time in DAoC, I actually experianced a real life situation where a wife who recently left her husband due to his game addiction. A wife I met playing DAoC with her and her husband. She joined DAoC to try and spend more time with her husband only to be left to level her own toon, while her husband ran off to do 'end game' raids.
This couple had other problems that an MMO addiction amplified. And their story will be familiar to a vast number of people. WoW, did not start this kind of 'extreme' addiction, but being the largest MMO, it will introduce it to the most number of people.
MMO and game addiction for myself, almost killed my college education. Of course, I've been addicted to Nintendo since I was 8 (and Pong and Intellivison before that). I hated sports until I was 12 when I started Football, despite my parents forcing me to wrestle between 8-12 year of age. I was overweight when I was a kid and I didn't get out and play with a lot of kids. My favorite gifts where Tiger Electronic hand held games. So, suffice it to say, I've been an 'addict' for a long time. However, the MMO and it's 'vitual' reality and the ability to actaully people with other people (co-op multi-player games where my favorite however you had to find a friend to play Nintendo with you) pulled me deeper than ever before. Dusk to Dawn game sessions. Skipping class (in college), passing oppurtunties to party (in one of the US's highest rated party schools), little to no studying. 10 mins reading a book, and I'd be thinking "If I kill these mobs, I can get this item! I can just farm those and level!"
It was after DAoC experiance that I had to regain control. Then I studied in Europe for a year with no outlet to really play video games at all. It was a great way to break the habit. When I returned from Europe, WoW was released. I still bought and played it on release day. I even had some long game sessions. However, it was much easier to pull myself away than before. My GPA went from 2.0 to 3.4. I went out at least twice a week with friends and visited my family more often.
The beauty of WoW is that it's extreamily easy to get a character to the 'end' level (whatever that may be at any given time). while all the other games I played make it so hard and difficult, that I've never actually 'maxxed out' a character in any other game.
Video Game addiction is a serios thing that gets little attention due to it's 'taboo' idea or possibly sound 'silly'. I don't th
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
Why is it (generally in the minds of non-gamers) that time spent with the TV is somehow "better" than time spent gaming?
I'm a non-gamer, non-TV owner (and no, I don't claim that makes me better than you or anyone else, just the choices I've made) so I can't answer the exact question you asked, but here's some differences:
TV is more or less an extension of the passive entertainment offered by reading. There's not much correlation between the nominal effort you put into it and what you get out of it - in the case of a few shows (Farscape) you have to make some kind of commitment to watching and understanding the entire ark, but most TV shows you can watch any one episode and generally understand what's going on. MMORPGs on the other hand, by their very nature, tend to reward the amount of time spent on them. Someone who plays one hour a week will be much worse off in the game world than someone who spends one hour a day. This leads to a different relationship to the user where people who have self control issues (very often the types drawn to MMOs) can be sucked into online games in ways that interfere with what society has deemed "normal" life.
TV uses the normal human cues for non-verbal expression - eyes, facial expressions, tone of voice, etc. MMOs lack subtle non-audio signals and the audio quality I've heard for the voice discussions on WoW have left me unimpressed to the point I suspect that it masks some important tonal information. I've had friends who I've known exclusively online for fifteen years or so and place great value on the electronic communication that allows those relationships, but I also recognize that we miss out on a great deal of the subtle nuances of human expression, that TV at least offers a faximily of.
In what I consider a plus for gaming, TV is a passive activity, while MMOs allow interactivity with hundreds and thousands of other people. Most of my friends that game do so as much to interact with friends who are physically distant as much as they do to play a game per say.
Lastly, MMOs allow for addictive escapism in a way that TV doesn't. TV enables viewers to ignore their lives and daydream about how they could be different, but MMOs allow users to actively create an alternate persona that fills in voids in their life or covers over their own flaws. Whether this is a good thing or not is a matter of debate. On the one hand, I don't necessarily view it as worse than someone who comes home from work and drinks to escape their problems, but on the other, any tactic that allows someone to ignore the problems of their life is problematic to me in that it encourages people to not actually deal with their issues.
But as I said, it's just a matter of the choices we all make for ourselves.
My point is that there isn't anything inherantly wrong with the game, or playing it, for most people. The vast majority will be able to balance their play time with the rest of their life with no trouble whatsoever. When we focus on the relativly few cases of real obsession with the game, we miss the point. It makes it look like Blizzard is at fault, and that anyone who plays their evil game will become addicted and suffer the consiquences. Attatudes like that are of no help to anyone. What we should be asking is: "What about this person made him become addicted to a game?" Not: "What about this game made this person become addicted to it?"
I agree that game addiction is a real issue, but the focus should be the person, not the game, since that is where the problem lies.
If forums teach us anything, it is that logic and critical thinking should be required courses in the public schools.
there is no chemical addiction going on here.
That's not quite true, though many would accuse me of picking nits. In this case, the chemical addiction is to a chemical produced by the body, not introduced externally. Either way, it's chemical, though.
The Spoon
Updated 6/28/2011
People who beleive that they are superior, or that god is on their side, are dangerous. And that doesn't just hold true for religion; people who hold to non-religious ideologies that maintain a view of self-superiority are just as bad (see: fascism in the 20th century and social darwinism in the 19th as examples of ideology that gave it's adherants a warm fuzzy feeling of superiority). A little humbleness could do the human race some good.
Plus, I've seen what happens when the only thing driving morality is fear of the afterlife. If a fanatic honestly believes that god wants them to do something immoral, then they'll do it, and to hell with whoever they hurt or kill in the process. Is this somehow better than the apathy displayed by the GP?
Humans are humans. Regardless of reason, religion or era, they have the capacity for evil. To suggest that somehow the modern era is worse than the previous eras is to ignore all the apathy, ignorance and violence of those time periods. To suggest that any religion or ideology can prevent evil is to ignore mankinds capacity for fanaticism. At best it's rose-coloured glasses, and at worst it's an unhealthy desire to return to the bad old days.
Not to say we've improved very much mind you, but I take issue with the idea that there was some better era centuries or millenia past.
Erotic is when you use a feather. Exotic is when you use the whole chicken.
Oh man, that troll is 30 ft. high. Wow.
Why, oh, why mods, are you giving him Interesting and Insightful mods?
Bury the troll, but first, lets set him on fire:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Epicureanism
There we go. Now, I'll go out on a limb here, and say that one can believe in evolution and contraception and not be a wanton hedonist. I'll assert that, because that describes me quite well, as well as most of the circle of friends I keep.
From the above mentioned article, you'll see that a very wise Greek had some pretty good ideas about this, roughly 1700 years ago. I especially like the description, "seek modest pleasures in order to attain a state of tranquility and freedom from fear". That sounds pretty damn good to me.
However, we certainly don't need to believe ourselves to be the chosen people of some abstract God to have self-worth. That feeling comes from the level of efficacy in your own life. If you feel that you need to believe you were created with a higher purpose by a higher being to have self worth, well good for you, but it certainly isn't necessary for me to get my rocks off. (Notice the hedonistic comment there? It was intentional)
I'm not going to even touch on the contraception comment, Google around for that one, you'll find plenty of scientific research proving that one to be a red herring almost as big as the aforementioned Troll.
Bottom line: I don't need my Invisible Friend in the Sky to make me feel good about myself. I'm not alone either.
And yea, I know you didn't mention God in your post. To bad, he's the big white elephant in the margins.
>There's no point to life, we're just meat sacks.
Then why do you guys care how he wastes his?
I know why *I* care; why do *you*, if you *honestly* believe that there is no point to life?
Because we've evolved to be social creatures: the well being of the other tribe members contributes to our well being.
You care for the afterlife-treat you were promised if you show an invisible father figure that you did what you were told, I care because I act with others as I would have them act the rest. If someone needs help that I can give, I help.
You can't take the sky from me...