Article on MMORPG Addiction in Christian Science Monitor
I'm not a regular reader of CSM but from time to time I peruse their technology section. Here's an article that asks the questions: Are Multiplayer Online games more compelling or more addictive?"
Notable Quotes:
"The games, with names like"City of Heroes," "The Legend of Mir," and "Asheron's Call" "are made to be addictive," she says." - Maressa Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmon,t Mass.
"For a lot of people, in their real lives they don't get to be a hero," he says. "Suddenly, [in the game] they're a cleric who can resurrect a warrior, can save other players. [Or they're a] a wizard who can cast out a rain of fire ... someone with great powers...A teenager might be the leader of a guild with 100 or more players, many of whom probably are much older". That's "very seductive" for someone who might not be entrusted with much responsibility in real life, Yee says. - Quote from Nick Yee Graduate Student Researcher at Stanford
"Players also may choose to play as characters of the opposite gender. Their motives are varied. Some think they will gain an in-game advantage: Women characters are more likely to be treated better and given more help by the other players, Yee says. But they also can be "treated like a second-class citizen." If a female and male character are of equal fighting strength, he says, the male character is usually asked by the group to lead an attack.
On the other hand, women who play as male characters often "say they didn't realize how cold, hierarchical, and impersonal a lot of male-male b"onds can be," Yee says."
"In general, MMORPGs are getting an unfair rap, Delwiche says. "When television was introduced, there was much concern about TV addiction," he says. "New media historically have tended to engender a lot of fear ... that bad social messages will be imparted." -AaronDelwiche, Aassistant professor of Communication at Trinity University in San Antonio
Comments
Sounds just like the stuff those hardcore right wingers where saying (and continue to) about TSRs Dungeons and Dragons.
"It's escapist, pagan endoctrination; feeding on the tendencies of our disenfrancished youth."
Crap I tell you. That said, it is scary when certain people... spend more time clicking in a virtual world than dancing in the real one!
Fantasy is cool, but real life flesh, blood, and ether, is even better.
Posted by: SEDinehart | October 13, 2005 10:26 AM
Amen brothers!
Posted by: Anonymous | October 14, 2005 9:22 AM
Word. My mom made me throw away my Dungeon's and Dragon's starter kit in 6th grade during the "its devil worship" hysteria in the early 1990s.
But yes, spending tooooooo much time in the virtual world can be a bad thing.
The two reasons I stopped playing WOW are because:
1) I got major back cramps for sitting at the comp for too long
and
2) That I didn't play consistently enough to keep playing with a group of friends. Therefore whenever I needed to quest, I would have to form a pick up group which ended up taking just 1-2 hours to get started.
When you sit down to play a game, you don't want to be spending an hour organizing just to go into a dungeon. I have a hard enough time getting people to hit up a bar after a long day of classes, I don't want to have to do the same in a fantasy world.
Sometimes, I just don't understand how people can keep coming back day after day to deal with issues like that. It was fun, but I can only afford to play games on my own time and not on others time. Until a game arises that addresses that, I'll be sticking to my handheld DS games.
Posted by: Paul | October 14, 2005 11:16 AM