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One in Nine MMOG Players Addicted?
Gamespot is running a piece looking at a UK study which may indicate serious addiction problems among a large number of Massively Multiplayer gamers. The study, conducted at Nottingham Trent, showed that almost 12% of a 7,000 person study group showed symptoms of serious addiction, as laid down by the World Health Organization. From the article: "The survey was filled in by a self-selected sample comprising mainly of males with an average age of 21, and was concerned principally with the potential for addiction to online gaming. [Director of the International Gaming Research Unit Mark] Griffiths said, 'I'm sure if we'd done this survey looking at non-online players, looking at gamers that play on stand-alone systems, my guess is that the prevalence of addiction-like symptoms would have been much less prevalent.' According to Griffiths, the problem with online games is there will never be a point where the player has battled the final boss, tied up the story, and can turn the computer off with a feeling of satisfaction."
Just after one more ding...
If we don't fight for ourselves no one will.
Just because I quit my job to play WoW, that doesn't mean a thing...Besides, I'm moving to China.
Gamespot seems dead to me, so instead:
yes, ofcourse we show "symptoms" of addiction, my question is what does the WHO say about the number of these symptoms that we need to show before we are clasified as addicted, and howmany people showed those signs.
Meh, can't say more with out TFA beign up
Do Or Do Not, There Is No Spoon, There Is Only Zuul. Everything in the above post is probably opinion.
also... 8 in 9 MMO players are liars.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
I had to quit playing WoW because that's all I did with my free time. I was in a serious raiding guild, and filling out my tier 2 set and getting ready for Naxx was all I seemed to care about. One morning, I woke up from a dream about killing Onyxia, and I decided that was too much. I got out of bed, deleted the WoW from my hard drive, and canceled my account. My wife was pleased as punch. But now, everything in my life seems so much duller now. I have taken to playing ATITD since it is too boring to become an obsession. Perhaps I should take up heroin? *shrugs* But, I do have to say that unlike many addictions, WoW was fun until the end. But, I no longer think WoW == RL.
I know for some people it's not the fact that there is "no end" but rather they enjoy the online friendships they create and log in just to talk to their online friends. I know I've logged in just to ask a friend how their surgery went, if they had their baby yet, how their day at work was, etc and not even step foot out of the main city area.
Some people just use MMO's as a glorified chat client too with leveling as a side part of it.
Yes I've played Oblivion. Maybe it could become addictive if it were an online game with no clear end. But I seriously doubt Oblivion will ever incite players to spend thousands of hours (and up to 100+ hours a week for weeks on end) playing at the expense of family, work, sleep, and other essential things. That's the kind of behavior brought on by MMOs such as EQ and WoW that causes people to call them addictive. I myself just quit WoW after spending about 2000 hours in the game over the last 15 months - and that's not much compared to what a lot of people have racked up in the same time span.
There is no -1 Disagree mod. Slashdot.org/faq defines mod options. USE IT.
4 in 7 journalists addicted to putting meaningless statistics in headlines?
These "gaming addiction" studies are getting annoying.
Addictions that involve the taking of a substance are one thing. Quite a different thing are pseudo-addictions that are merely "addictions to enjoyment" without any artificial chemical agent.
We are ALL "addicted" (in a sense) to enjoyment or pleasure or happiness or whatever turns us on --- we are always trying to maximize these things, at the expense of those that we do not enjoy. "Addiction" to our pleasures is the normal human condition.
The alleged "gaming addict" is just a gaming enthusiast who takes his or her gaming enjoyment to an extreme, but that doesn't make it a medical condition unless you are eager to find medical conditions in everything.
"The question of whether machines can think is no more interesting than [] whether submarines can swim" - Dijkstra
This all goes back to using vague terms to label people as "bad".
I can't see the article, so I'll ask: do they have specifics? Are we simply judging by the amount of time? If so, who are we to judge how people spend their time?
Or are they basing it on real things, like losing jobs, flunking schools, etc? If 1 in 9 wow players have either lost a job or flunked out of school in the past year, that's a pretty ugly stat.
-Jeff
Please learn the difference between a dissenting opinion and a troll before you moderate.
While I can't read the article probably because it was slashdotted, the quote above looks like typical media exageration. If you want a study on "addiction" to MMO's to be taken seriously, you might want to classify it on several different levels:
1) Destructiveness of the addiction
2) Severity of Withdrawal
3) Prevalence of addiction in general
Saying 11% of player are addicted to MMOs means nothing without quantifying what you consider "addiction". It's also meaningless without considering the side effects of addiction. 100% of people are "addicted" to oxygen, but that's not a very useful claim since there's no quantifyable affect of that "addiction". The severity of the withdrawal is important to consider, because a destructive addiction that is very hard to drop is more dangerous than one that is easily quit, like MMOs. Lastly, before you go all hog wild about how 11% of MMO players are addicted, I'd like to some useful background material like how many bingo players are addicted to bingo, how many musicians are addicted to music, how many quilters are addicted to quilting, and how many hockey players are addicted to hockey. After all are they amateur atheletes or are they just addicts waiting for their next exercise fix?
Many people have a tendency to invest a lot of time in individual pursuits for a while, whether it be atheletics, school, work, sex, or TV. The question with these studies is always going to be are the people addicted, or just enjoying themselves and socializing with friends online?
Fanatically anti-fanatical
I was in the closed beta and open beta. I remember having LAN parties that summer with some other friends who were in the closed and open as well...plainsrunning, the kodo stomp bug, the whole bit... FANTASTICALLY wonderful time. Then release day. Each of us got a copy. For that entire weekend, it was all we did.
Time goes by.
I've created a multitude of chars, I have made hundreds of in-game friends, I have made hundreds of in-game enemies...I have hosted and been hosted at many many RP events...I have laughed with excitment at finally getting that drop, and cried when a good friend in my main's guild died. I have quit for 2 weeks, only to return to it. I have quit for two months, only to return to it. I have been at the point of playing only 8 hours a week. I have been at the point of playing 8 hours a day (with a full time job and a family mind you)
I have experienced every angle and part of WoW. About 6 months ago, I slowly weened myself away from it. I had realized I had missed out on a large volume of games as a result of WoW. I am as we speak going through all the amazing xbox ps2 and gamecube games that I missed...even a dreamcast game or two that I never got around to finishing.
I do not regret a single minute spent playing WoW. Some of my most fond and cherished gaming memories (and even a couple in-general life memories) came as a result of my WoW addiction...an addiction which I shall never be over nor one that I ever wish to be free from. There is not a single day that I do not think about playing it again.
Some day, I will double-click on that icon again. Some day, I will thrust myself back into that amazing and fantastic world. Some day, the extensions of my concious and soul shall live again.
Until that day arrives, keep a space around the campfire for me. I have a hilarious story involving a kodo, a troll, and a dwarf's kid sister.
Living With a Nerd
An interesting note FTA:
I don't reply to Anonymous posts; if you have something to say to me, identify yourself or I won't reply.
If you're 1 of 9, where's 7?
Yeah, the difference is that bingo is only in session at certain times, but you can log into WoW anytime, so people addicted to bingo display their symptoms less often.
I work in a casino with bingo and we definitely have diehards who would rather miss a family occasion (if any of them even lived near family - lots of our players retired in the general area) than miss bingo. They show up with their big ol' bandolier of daubers, their lucky troll collection, etc etc.
Frankly I don't care much about addiction unless it's hurting people. Neither the WoW addiction nor the bingo addiction are serious unless you're neglecting responsibilities or something.
I know someone whose father is a gambling addict and they would be traveling internationally one month, and stuck in some hovel the next. My father is an alcohol addict and I eventually stopped speaking to him until he got clean because nothing else was working - he's been straight for three years. *shrug*
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
/ sex
Line starts over here --->
"The past was erased, the erasure was forgotten, the lie became truth." ~1984 George Orwell
A big cause of cigarette addiction is psychological. People can get through two weeks (after which, most of the physical dependency is gone) and still pick it up again because of the pyschological factors.
Just because it's not physical addiction doesn't mean it's not an addiction; they are just weak-willed.
I was wowed by its beautiful graphics, and visually-sensory based immersive world.. but I quickly found that i cared nothing for the characters around me and my own character, unlike the baldurs gate series which i am revisiting. Just read the dialogues in the first game - we hardly ever get that level of writing in games. Mostly, crpgs are dumbed down for the broad market and the mtv attention-span.
My addition also lies in interesting narration. A discourse i feel part of - with characters i can relate to. When its all about the "dings", you dont really care about stuff except modifiers and stats (which granted is a big part of the sense of "false" accomplishment).
Game devs.. please satisfy my basic-human need for good story-telling; but storytelling that i can interact with; where my choices affect the outcome so your story becomes my story. This is what i miss in most games
- Mad, ingenous - they've both left you puzzled -
I think that most of the allure to MMOs is that you are playing with other real people, of course if you compare MMO results to an offline game there is going to be a staggering difference.
Why do people get "addicted" to MMOs? I think it is because of the interaction with other people. Someone joins a guild, they play with other people frequently, they become friends with people in their guild. Now they aren't just playing a video game, they are playing a video game WITH FRIENDS.
I play MMOs quite a bit and played World of Warcraft for over a year. When my RL friends stopped playing the game became boring to me because I was no longer playing with friends. I might have a looser type of addiction to MMOs as I can't wait for the next one to come out so that I can play it with my friends. I also tend to quit MMOs maybe a month or 2 after my friends stop playing because I do befriend some of my guildmates. I find myself logging onto the game and checking my friends list; if no one is on then I quit the game, if someone is on then I talk to them and play.
Other people, the people you would consider hardcore addicts, might not have many RL friends so the people in their guilds become good friends, maybe even best friends and talking nearly every day. These people will continue to play as long as their internet friends are playing and if their internet friends are in the same low-friend-count situation then they will keep playing which leads to a group of people whose playing habits become dependent of each other. Since one person will only quit if the other quits, and visa versa, no one ever quits. Perhaps when an unforeseen event occurs, such as a person losing internet access or their computer breaking, then one person is forced to stop playing and the dependent counterpart person decides to stop playing because his friend is no longer playing.
I don't buy into this B.S. about the game making addicts because you can "never beat the last boss" and never truly win the game. These people are addicted, yes, but not to the game. They are addicted to something that the game can give them: a friend, fame, or anonymity.
If the game is all you can think about, and you find yourself irritated that you're unable to play because you're "tied down" by things like social functions, work, sleeping, etc you're probably addicted.
No, that's a sign of obsession. Obsession can be bad, it can even be a part of addiction, but it isn't addiction. Obsession can also be something that you're just a lot more intersted in than whatever else you are doing. Did I think about WoW almost constantly when I was playing it the most? Yes. But so what? I would think about wrestling almost all the time when I was doing that because I liked wrestling more than I like Senior AP English or my job at Little Caesars. I was obsessed, sure, but at the end of the day it wasn't anything harmful (uh, except the whole starving myself part, different story), and when the season ended I was sad (withdrawal?), but oh well, that was it. That's not addiction.
Addiction is when you want to stop the behavior, but can't.
Addiction is when the behavior is harming yourself and your loved ones, but you can't stop yourself from doing it and continuing the harm.
Your typical adult nicotine addict (like my mother) knows it's bad for them, doesn't actually like cigarettes and wishes they could stop, but when they try they find themselves unable to.
An alcoholic, who frequently is in denial about their problem, may black out and fall down the stairs breaking a leg, go to jail for drunk driving, lose their job, their wife, their friends, even their home and still continue drinking.
It is certainly possible to be addicted to a video game, and believe me I can feel the pull when the hit-the-lever-fifty-times-get-a-peanut mechanics of all MMOs kicks in. There are people who have lost spouses and jobs to WoW. There are people who don't even find the game fun anymore but still play, even to the point of losing their jobs. Those people are addicted. Your average loser who plays 40 hours a week, who only talks about WoW with their friends, but still holds down their job and maintains whatever passes for their social life while still getting a kick out of Pwning N00bz0rs, they're just obsessed.
The enemies of Democracy are
But in our cult, you get to kill dragons, not wait for a judgement day that just never seems to come (next year maybe!). Yes, you lose touch with family like a real cult-- guildies will even scorn you for leaving for family time ("WTF, you're logging? Come on, we've been planning this raid all week. We need your DPS, dude.").
In our cult, we don't go door to door spouting crazy nonsense that would get our asses kicked if people didn't feel so bad for us. We stay indoors, like good crazy people should.
And like a real cult, the other members may feel real sadness and loss when you have to "disconnect". "What do you mean FlowerGirl quit cause of RL issues? But she... but she... she was our recruitment officer, and she laughed at my jokes :("
My script don't crash! She crashes, you crashed her!