That cliffhanger book, however, doesn't compel you to abandon all other activities while waiting for the next one. There isn't an open cycle by which more time invested returns, linearly, more rewards. All those other media have at least discrete closure: even if it's a cliffhanger, I don't have to - in fact, I have no reason to - watch the same episode over and over and over until the next one comes out.
But with MMOs, you do have a reason (in game terms) to do just that.
People cybering and such in Second Life is only sex addiction if it is an activity people continue to engage in even when it threatens things they value. In other words, if it screws up your marriage and you continue to engage in it, yes, it's (part of a) sex addiction.
I think there's a lot of resistance to the idea that anything that's not a chemical being "addictive." But that's kind of an artificial mind/body distinction at play. What makes chemicals addictive, after all, is the patterns of responses in the human brain to exposure to them over the long term. Other cognitive activities also create neuro-chemical responses (after all, I can increase your production of adrenaline just by scaring the hell out of you, but the act of scaring the hell out of you isn't, itself, chemical.) MMOs are a suite of activities and environments which frequently enough lend themselves to an addictive response, and I think they do it through a socially-reinforced system of semi-predictable rewards.
The standard for addiction is when people give up on healthy developmental goals, understood however makes sense for that person, and opts instead for the addictive behavior or substance.
In other words, when you start to lose thing that matter to you, but carry on with the addictive behavior, that's addiction.
I have seen marriages dissolve because people played MMOs instead of spending time with their family. I've known people who have failed out of college and graduate school, because they became obsessed with MMOs. I play MMOs myself, and I can see it at work. The "secondary world" aspect misses the main addictive element of MMOs - which moves it from obsession to addiction. That's the reward structure: you can play and predictably get rewards.
One can be obsessed with Tolkien or Star Trek, in that the secondary world becomes more important than the real one. Since films, books and television don't offer an ongoing, unclosed reward structure that works to the extent that you put time into the activity, those obsessions don't become addictions.
That's why I think it makes sense to call MMO's addictive. They are always there - they never "satisfy" but promise the next reward, and then the next, and then the next. There is a social reinforcement element to it (which is an aspect of other addictions as well - alcoholism can certainly have a social aspect to it.)
The research observed that while people were playing, they identified the relationships with other players in-game as meaningful, but when they stopped playing, they ceased to describe it as such. To me, that is a lot like a heavy drinker's "bar friendships" - when they stop drinking, those friendships mean a lot less.
The defensiveness by gamers when confronted with this sort of analysis is depressingly predictable, as well.
If it had been a Condaleeza Rice, there wouldn't be this cynicism. Even though (we) on the left disagree with Rice rather strongly, we see her as a formidable intellect, capable of running the country, with gravitas and energy. She would pull a lot of support from independent and undecided women who are impressed with her professional credentials and her achievements, as well as the implicit demonstration that McCain is comfortable having such an accomplished woman run as his partner.
Instead, he picks a fly-weight with no real experience, a lot of parental responsibilities, and a background as a beauty-pageant contender. Palin was chosen because she could never actually eclipse McCain in any way. That he left his first wife to pursue an attractive younger woman is something that people will remember when they note this pick.
As someone who want Obama to win, I have to admit that I had been worried about McCain's recent gains. With this pick - and with the profound insecurity that it reveals - McCain's campaign has just imploded. I'm a lot less nervous about this election.
Metaphysics, including claims that we are the equivalent of "brains in vats", or that our perception of the material world is some kind of illusion or other, would be in the category of philosophy (of a generally not-interesting sort) and stand outside of science.
The creationist version of that sort of exercise includes the idea that all the evidence that contradicts the Genesis account of creation is actually a deceptive illusion, and that 6000 years ago, someone created fossils and other evidence that "seems" millions of years old.
"Black" isn't like Irish or Italian or even Japanese. It is a racial category based on appearance. There are people who have "black" and other non-white ancestors but are white - they look white, people will treat them as if they were white, etc. Being black is like being blue-eyed: it doesn't matter if your mother was green-eyed, if your eyes are blue, they're blue. You're not "half green-eyed."
Actually doing the work that one loves is a privilege for a minority - and I'm in that minority, after a career change (and a temporary dip in income that, at some point, will be overcome.) I was in IT, now I'm an academic. I view the privilege as being as much a matter of luck as anything else.
The down side is that I'm always thinking about my work, and it puts pressure on my family. When I had a job I was "meh" about, I would leave it at the office when I came home (I started my family after leaving that job, but the phenomenon still holds.) Now, save for wee bits of online-forum-posting procrastinations (cough), I come back to my computer and work when my wife and baby are asleep. I make a lot of commitments for projects and such that make me travel over weekends, or keep me out a bit late, and I chafe a little when I turn those commitments and such down to "spend more time with the family" (and I do enjoy my family - but I identify with my work.)
The housing bubble came from the competitive pressures introduced by over-generous lending practices. The bubble had a stronger effect in more desirable areas, because the competitive pressure was all the stronger. Even now, the problems of that sliver of the home-owning population that financed during the height of the boom do not reflect on the total productivity of the Californian economy.
You know, when you look around and see just how many people that you know over the age of about 55 actually do have cancer of one sort of another, you start thinking that maybe, just maybe, we should be so glib about it.
My mother-in-law (in the UK): breast cancer in remission. My father-in-law: died from blood cancer (associated with the plastics he worked with as an engineer.) My mother: in chemotherapy. Two of my closest friends: each with one parent suffering intense cancer.
I don't know what the historical patterns are, but I'm really inclined to be cautious when it comes to the possibility that some substances are carcinogenic, particularly insofar as we have generations growing up with so many new substances in their living environment, for which we have no real historical data.
Well, we have a cultural difference then: accusing someone of spouting BS (instead of saying "you're misinformed" - which, insofar as I was never making a claim about when and how I could get tethering, I wasn't) is a greater attack on intellectual integrity that accusing someone of being overtly combative, which is what my expression (which, in my circles, is both considered humorous and acceptable) is. Perhaps we should exchange diplomats someday to cross the profound cultural divide.
The fact that I would want to be protected in case I was identified as tethering indicates that, indeed, I do know what's in the default contract, and will not sign it without revisions.
Where I come from, accusing someone of spouting BS is insulting language. If you don't want to go personal, don't use that phrase lately.
The point is that there are other ways to get apps on the iPhone than the App Store, and there is more than one App Store (or rather, non-US users have access to different apps than US app store users.)
Now, if you read the thread, you would note that I don't have an AT&T contract, I don't have an iPhone, and I'm explaining the conditions under which I would be willing to switch. Is that so hard for you to understand?
What the hell are you talking about, "spouting BS?" I don't know whether it is possible to run that app, or another one with the same function yet, or not. My issue with AT&T is whether my service will be terminated if/when I am able to enable that on my phone. There's no BS involved.
As I understand it, anyway, NetShare is available on iPhones in other countries. I have SIM cards for the UK and Peru. I may be able to install the app through one of their app stores, I don't know.
Most gold farmers are not hackers (apparently, many of the hackers are located in Russia) and some are victimized by the hackers themselves. The gold sellers are the markets for the hackers, it's true, so they are connected indirectly. But the guy who is killing things in game to sell for gold to sell to players isn't the guy who stole an account and liquidated its virtual goods to sell. The first is a behavior that is generally consensual for everyone involved (after all, everyone has an equal "right" to repetitively kill bears and wolves - or rather, repetitively killing bears and wolves is within the rules and meta-rules of the game) , the second is a mugging.
Your attitude is more like saying you'll never go to an Italian restaurant again because you were once assaulted by a mafioso.
What MMOs have done to fun: they've hamstrung the idea of intrinsic reward. It used to be that things were fun because they were fun, but we've become so beaten down by the work ethic, that we can't even enjoy ourselves anymore unless we feel we've "earned" it. It's even gotten so that we don't enjoy ourselves unless we feel like we're earning something.
So people will take their leisure time - and work. Unproductively. That 7 hours grinding in the Outlands benefits no one. It isn't volunteer work, it isn't producing goods for human needs, it is just work for the sake of feeling like work. It's the conspicuous "consumption" of labor time.
Blizzard would rather take everyone's money, really - yours, the gold-buyers, and even the gold-farmers. And you deserve the apoplexy that your rage about some guy who doesn't speak English running around killing bears to sell the gold is giving you.
Gold farming is in some ways comparable to illegal immigration in the US. It is technically against the law, but covertly tolerated, because things would break down if it didn't happen.
The day that players start getting banned en-masse for buying gold is the day that Blizzard gets tired of making money.
The reason it seems odious is because the very act of farming highlights the paradox that threatens the very reason one plays: MMOs are work disguised as leisure.
It's not the 12 year olds who buy high-level gear: the kids are the ones with more time than money. It's the busy thirty-somethings who want to have fun for a couple hours a week that pull out their credit cards to buy gold.
Slashdot Mirror
That cliffhanger book, however, doesn't compel you to abandon all other activities while waiting for the next one. There isn't an open cycle by which more time invested returns, linearly, more rewards. All those other media have at least discrete closure: even if it's a cliffhanger, I don't have to - in fact, I have no reason to - watch the same episode over and over and over until the next one comes out.
But with MMOs, you do have a reason (in game terms) to do just that.
People cybering and such in Second Life is only sex addiction if it is an activity people continue to engage in even when it threatens things they value. In other words, if it screws up your marriage and you continue to engage in it, yes, it's (part of a) sex addiction.
I think there's a lot of resistance to the idea that anything that's not a chemical being "addictive." But that's kind of an artificial mind/body distinction at play. What makes chemicals addictive, after all, is the patterns of responses in the human brain to exposure to them over the long term. Other cognitive activities also create neuro-chemical responses (after all, I can increase your production of adrenaline just by scaring the hell out of you, but the act of scaring the hell out of you isn't, itself, chemical.) MMOs are a suite of activities and environments which frequently enough lend themselves to an addictive response, and I think they do it through a socially-reinforced system of semi-predictable rewards.
The standard for addiction is when people give up on healthy developmental goals, understood however makes sense for that person, and opts instead for the addictive behavior or substance.
In other words, when you start to lose thing that matter to you, but carry on with the addictive behavior, that's addiction.
I have seen marriages dissolve because people played MMOs instead of spending time with their family. I've known people who have failed out of college and graduate school, because they became obsessed with MMOs. I play MMOs myself, and I can see it at work. The "secondary world" aspect misses the main addictive element of MMOs - which moves it from obsession to addiction. That's the reward structure: you can play and predictably get rewards.
One can be obsessed with Tolkien or Star Trek, in that the secondary world becomes more important than the real one. Since films, books and television don't offer an ongoing, unclosed reward structure that works to the extent that you put time into the activity, those obsessions don't become addictions.
That's why I think it makes sense to call MMO's addictive. They are always there - they never "satisfy" but promise the next reward, and then the next, and then the next. There is a social reinforcement element to it (which is an aspect of other addictions as well - alcoholism can certainly have a social aspect to it.)
The research observed that while people were playing, they identified the relationships with other players in-game as meaningful, but when they stopped playing, they ceased to describe it as such. To me, that is a lot like a heavy drinker's "bar friendships" - when they stop drinking, those friendships mean a lot less.
The defensiveness by gamers when confronted with this sort of analysis is depressingly predictable, as well.
I know heroin addicts who later became addicted to Everquest, after cleaning up from heroin.
I think it's more complicated than that.
If it had been a Condaleeza Rice, there wouldn't be this cynicism. Even though (we) on the left disagree with Rice rather strongly, we see her as a formidable intellect, capable of running the country, with gravitas and energy. She would pull a lot of support from independent and undecided women who are impressed with her professional credentials and her achievements, as well as the implicit demonstration that McCain is comfortable having such an accomplished woman run as his partner.
Instead, he picks a fly-weight with no real experience, a lot of parental responsibilities, and a background as a beauty-pageant contender. Palin was chosen because she could never actually eclipse McCain in any way. That he left his first wife to pursue an attractive younger woman is something that people will remember when they note this pick.
As someone who want Obama to win, I have to admit that I had been worried about McCain's recent gains. With this pick - and with the profound insecurity that it reveals - McCain's campaign has just imploded. I'm a lot less nervous about this election.
Metaphysics, including claims that we are the equivalent of "brains in vats", or that our perception of the material world is some kind of illusion or other, would be in the category of philosophy (of a generally not-interesting sort) and stand outside of science.
The creationist version of that sort of exercise includes the idea that all the evidence that contradicts the Genesis account of creation is actually a deceptive illusion, and that 6000 years ago, someone created fossils and other evidence that "seems" millions of years old.
"Black" isn't like Irish or Italian or even Japanese. It is a racial category based on appearance. There are people who have "black" and other non-white ancestors but are white - they look white, people will treat them as if they were white, etc. Being black is like being blue-eyed: it doesn't matter if your mother was green-eyed, if your eyes are blue, they're blue. You're not "half green-eyed."
Actually doing the work that one loves is a privilege for a minority - and I'm in that minority, after a career change (and a temporary dip in income that, at some point, will be overcome.) I was in IT, now I'm an academic. I view the privilege as being as much a matter of luck as anything else.
The down side is that I'm always thinking about my work, and it puts pressure on my family. When I had a job I was "meh" about, I would leave it at the office when I came home (I started my family after leaving that job, but the phenomenon still holds.) Now, save for wee bits of online-forum-posting procrastinations (cough), I come back to my computer and work when my wife and baby are asleep. I make a lot of commitments for projects and such that make me travel over weekends, or keep me out a bit late, and I chafe a little when I turn those commitments and such down to "spend more time with the family" (and I do enjoy my family - but I identify with my work.)
The housing bubble came from the competitive pressures introduced by over-generous lending practices. The bubble had a stronger effect in more desirable areas, because the competitive pressure was all the stronger. Even now, the problems of that sliver of the home-owning population that financed during the height of the boom do not reflect on the total productivity of the Californian economy.
You know, when you look around and see just how many people that you know over the age of about 55 actually do have cancer of one sort of another, you start thinking that maybe, just maybe, we should be so glib about it.
My mother-in-law (in the UK): breast cancer in remission. My father-in-law: died from blood cancer (associated with the plastics he worked with as an engineer.) My mother: in chemotherapy. Two of my closest friends: each with one parent suffering intense cancer.
I don't know what the historical patterns are, but I'm really inclined to be cautious when it comes to the possibility that some substances are carcinogenic, particularly insofar as we have generations growing up with so many new substances in their living environment, for which we have no real historical data.
Yes, it was an analogy - within the context of the game, the TOS is law. Outside of the game, they're just a consumer agreement.
Well, we have a cultural difference then: accusing someone of spouting BS (instead of saying "you're misinformed" - which, insofar as I was never making a claim about when and how I could get tethering, I wasn't) is a greater attack on intellectual integrity that accusing someone of being overtly combative, which is what my expression (which, in my circles, is both considered humorous and acceptable) is. Perhaps we should exchange diplomats someday to cross the profound cultural divide.
The fact that I would want to be protected in case I was identified as tethering indicates that, indeed, I do know what's in the default contract, and will not sign it without revisions.
Where I come from, accusing someone of spouting BS is insulting language. If you don't want to go personal, don't use that phrase lately.
The point is that there are other ways to get apps on the iPhone than the App Store, and there is more than one App Store (or rather, non-US users have access to different apps than US app store users.)
Now, if you read the thread, you would note that I don't have an AT&T contract, I don't have an iPhone, and I'm explaining the conditions under which I would be willing to switch. Is that so hard for you to understand?
What the hell are you talking about, "spouting BS?" I don't know whether it is possible to run that app, or another one with the same function yet, or not. My issue with AT&T is whether my service will be terminated if/when I am able to enable that on my phone. There's no BS involved.
As I understand it, anyway, NetShare is available on iPhones in other countries. I have SIM cards for the UK and Peru. I may be able to install the app through one of their app stores, I don't know.
Who the hell pissed in your bitch flakes?
By getting that app elsewhere.
There's a difference between offering it/supporting it, and not canceling my service if I figure it out on my own.
That's the America's Army model of identification.
Most gold farmers are not hackers (apparently, many of the hackers are located in Russia) and some are victimized by the hackers themselves. The gold sellers are the markets for the hackers, it's true, so they are connected indirectly. But the guy who is killing things in game to sell for gold to sell to players isn't the guy who stole an account and liquidated its virtual goods to sell. The first is a behavior that is generally consensual for everyone involved (after all, everyone has an equal "right" to repetitively kill bears and wolves - or rather, repetitively killing bears and wolves is within the rules and meta-rules of the game) , the second is a mugging.
Your attitude is more like saying you'll never go to an Italian restaurant again because you were once assaulted by a mafioso.
What MMOs have done to fun: they've hamstrung the idea of intrinsic reward. It used to be that things were fun because they were fun, but we've become so beaten down by the work ethic, that we can't even enjoy ourselves anymore unless we feel we've "earned" it. It's even gotten so that we don't enjoy ourselves unless we feel like we're earning something.
So people will take their leisure time - and work. Unproductively. That 7 hours grinding in the Outlands benefits no one. It isn't volunteer work, it isn't producing goods for human needs, it is just work for the sake of feeling like work. It's the conspicuous "consumption" of labor time.
Blizzard would rather take everyone's money, really - yours, the gold-buyers, and even the gold-farmers. And you deserve the apoplexy that your rage about some guy who doesn't speak English running around killing bears to sell the gold is giving you.
There are games like that. They're call real-time strategy games, or first-person shooters.
Gold farming is in some ways comparable to illegal immigration in the US. It is technically against the law, but covertly tolerated, because things would break down if it didn't happen.
The day that players start getting banned en-masse for buying gold is the day that Blizzard gets tired of making money.
The reason it seems odious is because the very act of farming highlights the paradox that threatens the very reason one plays: MMOs are work disguised as leisure.
It's not the 12 year olds who buy high-level gear: the kids are the ones with more time than money. It's the busy thirty-somethings who want to have fun for a couple hours a week that pull out their credit cards to buy gold.
You're an art director, aren't you?