MMO Addition Hype

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John Bo

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I would like to know others' opinions on this article:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081700625.html

The reporter talks with psychologists and gamers and game devs about addiction to games, with a particular focus on MMOs. The first 1-2 pages are reasonable. Then the article descends into emotion-laden crappiness when they disclose that the founder of Game Addict Anonymous (actually Online Gamers Anonymous) is this lady whose son committed suicide after losing his job, moving back home, and playing EQ all the time. The article takes macabre joy in pointing out:
On Thanksgiving Day 2001, Woolley found 21-year-old Shawn dead in front of his computer after having committed suicide. Everquest was on the screen.
Click to expand...

And another neo-Prohibitionist movement is born.

[edit: damnit, I meant the thread title to be "Addiction" not "Addition", ah well, I R N00b.]
 
This whole MMO suicide thing is completely stupid.

Fact: MANY millions play MMOs
Fact: 16 out of 10,000 people commit suicide (global rate)

You do the math. If someone plays EQ most of the time and happens to be suicidal, what are the odds that they will do it while the game is up?

Games have nothing bad to do with emotional well being. If that person did not play the games, are they saying that they would be happier? That is completely stupid. I may be a complete dumbass, but I am fairly certain that games (especially MMOs) actually help people who are feeling suicidal by giving them more opportunities to socialize.

This would be like saying that hanging out with friends is an "addiction" and needs to be stopped. People like to do it so much and would not be able to survive without it. It is the same thing as what is done in an MMO. They are designed to socialize in a setting that makes it easier for the person playing it. I bet we would see an even higher suicide rate if there were no MMOs.

Damn psychologists and there crackerjack box degrees.
 
Well, based on probability of 13 million MMO players, it should be around 20800 people. Of course the MMO population is not the global population so this would be a different number.

Here is a tasty quote:
"Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. In 2001, 3,971 suicides were reported in this group (Anderson and Smith 2003)."

We already know one of those 3,971 played EQ. What do you want to bet more did?

What is even better is that 86% of those were males which is probably the percent that play MMOs compared to females. Also, the USA has a higher than average rate of suicide.

If I ever off myself, i'll have to subscribe to EQ first and have it on the screen. Then I can be a global news story. :)
 
Yee believes escapism to be the best predictor of excessive gaming. A person who plays MMOs in order to avoid real-life problems, rather than simply for entertainment or socialization, is more likely to experience what he calls "problematic usage."
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This seems to sum it up really. Most of the true "addicts" are people with other serious problems unrelated to the game. The games are just a way to put off dealing with reality in much the same way using drugs or alcohol do.

Some would say that this means that drugs, alcohol, and games should be outlawed. Others will say it is up to the individual to control consumption.

I find myself in the camp of the individual being responsible for his own actions. I once found myself with a bit of an addiction both drugs and mmos. I eventually realised what I was doing, and why, which helped me to confront the real problems in my life. I currently play mmos with no problems which I contribute to the fact that I am happy with my real life.
 
sickwookie said:
This seems to sum it up really. Most of the true "addicts" are people with other serious problems unrelated to the game. The games are just a way to put off dealing with reality in much the same way using drugs or alcohol do.

Some would say that this means that drugs, alcohol, and games should be outlawed. Others will say it is up to the individual to control consumption.

I find myself in the camp of the individual being responsible for his own actions. I once found myself with a bit of an addiction both drugs and mmos. I eventually realised what I was doing, and why, which helped me to confront the real problems in my life. I currently play mmos with no problems which I contribute to the fact that I am happy with my real life.
Click to expand...

I agree completely. There's a lot of people who turn to drugs and alcohol to escape from other things, but at the same time there's indisputable evidence that these devices inherently hurt a person psysically and mentally. I remember when rick james died a couple years ago, they listed it as "natural causes" and he was like 50 or something...

The bottom line is that anything can occupy a person's time if you let it, and this is just another excuse to blame something, anything, for the fact that
a.) certain people are just worthless wastes of space.
b.) the internet can make miniscule occurences of something look like commonality.

Here's what gets to me- I grew up playing sports year round, have always had more friends than i knew what to do with, and yet ive loved playing video games back to the 2600 my sister and i had growing up. Without video games, i wouldnt be as interested in computers as i am today, and sure as hell wouldnt be a software engineer loving the work im doing benefiting the defense of this country. There's tons of people like me who wouldnt be in our field developing technology that's improving the world if not for being fascinated with video games and computers growing up. Indirectly, video games are saving lives and making the world better through our work. I guess thats not as important as this high and mighty cause.

Bottom line: the people complaining about this are parents left behind by their children, and clearly have no idea where they failed, so they blame the thing they see their kid doing the most.
 
What burns me is the comments of the first poster in the article...."I almost failed out of college because of Blizzard"....That's pathetic....He almost failed because of his own stupidity, not Blizzard. People can never take responsibility for their own actions. Sigh.
 
Spaceman_Spiff said:
Bottom line: the people complaining about this are parents left behind by their children, and clearly have no idea where they failed, so they blame the thing they see their kid doing the most.
Click to expand...
Great post.
 
My friend dropped out of college last year because of WoW. Even now all he does is go to work during the day, then play WoW from 4:30pm - 2:00am. He won't even hang out with anyone anymore because he's trying to get some purple or something (I obviously don't play WoW). And almost every sentence out of his mouth is about the game: "This guy in my guild said...", "Today we were on a raid...". Suprisingly he's not the life of the party, lol
 
What is funny about this, is that many people will go through their entire life doing just this. I do it now...
 
Its easy to use PC's and gaming as a distraction from real life problems and its also easy to let this take over as your main form of entertainment if outside life is tough.

An unhappy person can look to the PC for fun and a way of feeling better.
An isolated person will quite often look for ways to fill the lack of human interaction, an MMO will satisfy some part of this and can help keep them happy.

There will be some players who are at the end of their tether and computer gaming pre-occupies them enough to keep them alive.
Effectively they have given themselves a purpose which is to do well in something they can enjoy.

The problem starts if the PC/Gaming experience goes pear shaped.
For example, losing an item that was very expensive or has taken a long time to acquire in an MMO could ruin the experience and literally leave the player with nothing more to be happy about in life.

The game itself isnt the catalyst for the problem as without the PC, they may have not lived this long anyway.
On the other hand however, a big loss in a PC game could be enough to take someone over the edge that might have otherwise survived.
This does not show that Computers are any more unsafe than other hobbies.
The problem is with the mental state of the person and medical help should be sought.

If computers werent around, some other form(s) of entertainment would be used and become subject to the same scrutiny as a possible source of suicide.
 
ScorpionV said:
My friend dropped out of college last year because of WoW. Even now all he does is go to work during the day, then play WoW from 4:30pm - 2:00am. He won't even hang out with anyone anymore because he's trying to get some purple or something (I obviously don't play WoW). And almost every sentence out of his mouth is about the game: "This guy in my guild said...", "Today we were on a raid...". Suprisingly he's not the life of the party, lol
Click to expand...

Same shit happened with a bunch of my friends. It's so sad. At least I had a few with the good sense to cancel their accounts when they go back to school, but then they just start them up again over the summer and become MMO zombies again.
 
I was addicted to FFXI for about 18 months. Then my wife and I decided to have a baby which was what finally broke the addiction for me. I realized that I wasn't being a good husband, and certainly could not be a good father while spending 6 hours/day gaming.

It wasn't about escaping reality for me, it was more about becoming l33t. To get the best gear, to unlock all of the areas, to complete the missions, to solo hella hard monsters. Unfortunately, in FFXI that means playing for hours and hours and hours on end. Sometimes it would take >30 minutes just to get to the area where you needed to be to perform a certain action or kill a certain mob. If you count the things that it took a party or an alliance for, then that time goes up tremendously.

Take for example, the time I was trying to get a Joyeuse (I was a RDM and that is the 2nd best RDM sword in the game). So, I spend several hours each night trying to get the ToD (Time of Death) of Charbydis (The notorious monster that drops the joyeuse). This monster spawns every 10-12 real life hours. And to top it off, it is not something that you can just kill by yourself, it takes ~3-4 people, most people will bring ~6-10 people with them to help. On Wednesday night, I see Charby appear and get killed, so I know that the next night Charbydis will most likely show up between 8pm and 2am. At this point I have come to far to turn back around now :/. So I log back in around 8pm the next evening, gather two other players, and we proceed to kill the 3 placeholders (lottery spawn) for 6 hours. It's now 2am (my normal FFXI bedtime) and Charbydis has still not spawned, so I figure it's too late to turn around now and decide to stick around for another 1/2 hour before going to bed (to get up at 6am to go to work). At 2:25 am Charbydis spawns and after one helluva battle and trying to compete with other players (everyone died at least a couple of times) that showed up, we finally kill Charybdis (3:45 am) and I get my sword. I ended up calling in sick to work and the wife was REALLY pissed at me, It really wasn't worth it at all...

That made me take a hard look at myself and realize that there is no game worth that, so within a couple of weeks I had given away everything I had in-game and cancelled my account. Looking back now, several months later MMORGs are just a big time trap. I by no means had the best gear in the game, I didn't get any of the items that require up to 64 people to fight through a huge area, I didn't fight the "final god" which can take up to 5 hours, I didn't get any of the items from the HNM (High Level Notorious Monsters) that spawn only once a week. How in the hell much time do people play that get those items? How much of their life do they sacrafice?

BTW I do know one of the people that I used to play with has since quit their job and now plays about 20 hours a day. Then again, I guess that's their choice.
 
Is it the games fault? or is this a personal short coming, that people fail to take responsibility for, and thus blame on everything/anything else they can? I don't see alcoholics blaming their addiction on beer, and society in general doesn't feel that its beers fault.
 
I take full responsibility for spending too much time playing FFXI.


However, I think that the comparasin between MMORGs and alcohol is valid:

You can't disagree with the following statement:

If there was no alcohol, there would not be alcoholics.
If there were no MMORPGs, there would be no MMORG addicts.

However, you can easily agree with the following:

Alcohol was blamed for many of the problems of the time, and it was banned (Prohibition). In the end, the banning of alcohol caused more problems than the alcohol itsself. So the same kind of thing would probably happen if MMORGs were banned...
 
Soldur said:
I take full responsibility for spending too much time playing FFXI.


However, I think that the comparasin between MMORGs and alcohol is valid:

You can't disagree with the following statement:

If there was no alcohol, there would not be alcoholics.
If there were no MMORPGs, there would be no MMORG addicts.

However, you can easily agree with the following:

Alcohol was blamed for many of the problems of the time, and it was banned (Prohibition). In the end, the banning of alcohol caused more problems than the alcohol itsself. So the same kind of thing would probably happen if MMORGs were banned...
Click to expand...

See the problem with prohibition and banning MMORPGs, is that you are punishing the vast majority of people who drink alcohol and MMORPGS, those will restraint. You punish those who have self control and are able to moderate their intake, and don't blame their faults on the very thing they are abusing.

I would rather society cater to the majority, rather then the lowest common denominator.
 
Soldur said:
I take full responsibility for spending too much time playing FFXI.


However, I think that the comparasin between MMORGs and alcohol is valid:

You can't disagree with the following statement:

If there was no alcohol, there would not be alcoholics.
If there were no MMORPGs, there would be no MMORG addicts.

However, you can easily agree with the following:

Alcohol was blamed for many of the problems of the time, and it was banned (Prohibition). In the end, the banning of alcohol caused more problems than the alcohol itsself. So the same kind of thing would probably happen if MMORGs were banned...
Click to expand...

+1

I would much rather some psycho asshole spend his time wrestling away the sword of long-duck-dong from the tuti-fruity monster than cruising the local grade school looking for a good time.


MMORPGS Forever!
 
TheBluePill said:
+1

I would much rather some psycho asshole spend his time wrestling away the sword of long-duck-dong from the tuti-fruity monster than cruising the local grade school looking for a good time.
Click to expand...

LOL :p
 
this article is a good read for anyone who played a MMo before.

While i think WoW is a great game , i have to say its hard to stop playing it . In my case i played WoW for a good 7 months... then i decided to just move one, but it took a certain amount of energy to just not go back. For me it felt just good playing it , discovering new horizon , fighting awesome monster , getting better stuff just felt good......

im still waiting on a MMo that could attract to a casual gamer like , cause i like to play other games ... not just one
 
arr4ws said:
this article is a good read for anyone who played a MMo before.

While i think WoW is a great game , i have to say its hard to stop playing it . In my case i played WoW for a good 7 months... then i decided to just move one, but it took a certain amount of energy to just not go back. For me it felt just good playing it , discovering new horizon , fighting awesome monster , getting better stuff just felt good......

im still waiting on a MMo that could attract to a casual gamer like , cause i like to play other games ... not just one
Click to expand...

I don't think there will ever be a MMORPG for the casual gamer. That would defeat the whole give'em a month for free and they'll be hooked for life for $12 a month after that. Come to think of it, doesn't a drug dealer offer the first "taste" for free? Striking similarity there...

I just realized that in a span of 18 months, I paid SquareEnix $80 for the game and expansions, and ~$300 in subscription fees (including mule characters). OMG, that's a total of $380, I had never figured it up before :eek:

That's enough to buy myself a sweet new video card! :mad:

And on top of that there were thousand of people paying just as much as me monthly across something like 30 servers, multiply that out and cha ching...
 
I used to play Lineage 2, and it was really time consuming. Which in and of itself is not bad, but unfortunatly it is something you have to keep on top of. Most of the time, your friends and clan are linked onyl by the game, so if you decide to pace yourself and fall behind the your freinds, suddenly you have nothing in common. So you are trapped into playing the game, if no to keep pace, then to get your mony's worth.

I have looked at MMOs since then, even played on a free Lineage 2 server for a while, but it si always the same thing : a race, against your friends, clan and everyone else.

For me the expereince was personally rewarding, I liked the feeling that my power/skill/ability was pretty much rock solid, unlike FPS or strategy games where you can begin to question yourself (bad news for me :) ). I ended up quitting rather than attemptign to regulate, it just did not seem worth it... I probably would do it again, looking back, but it is likley soemthing I will not repeat.

I ama not happy about the response these games get from the public at large though. A few poison the reputations of everyone. The vast majority of players just get addicted, but that can happen in any game (as I have seen, particurally CS :) ).

Althogh EVE looks tempting... damn it... no
Wish it had a free server.

X3 will have to do it, but I keep expecting it to be interesting and upredicable, and it isnt :(
 
Ya, I go back to school is an week. I play video games, but the are bad for my grades and my social life. So I am going cold turkey for two or three months. It sucks, but I have to do it. :(
 
MMORPG addiction is NOT overblown. One of my friends no longer works or goes to school, he doesn't talk to his friends and from all I know he simply plays WoW constantly. Another friend's sister is so addicted to WoW that she neglects her little boy. This is a very serious issue, the games are made to be addictive and made to keep people playing.


I don't think WoW and the like need to be banned, but there needs to be a lot more awareness.
 
I just happened to pass by this forum while browsing for interesting debate material (i like to debate for the fun of it rather then to prove points) and would like to add a few thing to this thread.

I am one of those psycologically unstable persons and have been diagnosed as bipolar, and i very easily get addicted to sex, drugs and games. Somehow i have managed to drag my ass up from the gutter but it hasn't allways been easy.
I used to be an abuse alcohol user for a few years, my drinking got out of hand and i ended up doing vandalism and occationally beating people up, some of whom were my friends. I alienated myself from many people by my obscene and violent behaviour, and it wasn't untill i in a fit of rage and depression tried to murder someone for no other reason then walking past me and one of my few lasting friends managed to stop me but not untill after i had halfway cut through his fingers that i had my real wake up call. I spent some time in a closed psychiatric ward and it got me thinking. I managed to stop drinking alcohol even though there have been the occational one-night relapse now and then.

Just like this i developed an addiction to online games, starting with Ultima Online 1997. This gaming addiction was the hardest one to get rid off, because it went up and down in periods. Between 1999 and 2000 i managed to take a one year break because i could afford to pay for my phone line any more, during that time i managed to get myself a job in a game store and things were looking good.
But after a while i lost my job anyways to an irc addiction that lasted for around 2 years which brought me into an internet relationship where we used to send gifts and cards irl to eachother and cybersex, but it ended when she found a guy in real life. So i went back to good old gaming and was stuck there untill this very year where i got a real life relationship through a party, it was all good but she didn't like my gaming addiction and one day when i was playing world of warcraft we had a huge fight which ended in a huge emotional breakdown for me (i had played 420 hours that month and the stress on my brain was enormous), but it did get me off the hook and only play around 10 hours a week at most nowadays.
Right now i guess i am a bit of a workaholic, i study 6 - 8 hours and spend at least another 2h working on different projects or helping out on forums every day. But at least it feels a bit more creative now.

There is no moral to my storry, it is just an insight in how the life of a gaming addict might look.
From my viewpoint gaming abuse is just as severe as drug abuse when it comes to addiction, an addict still get the shakes when not playing enough and get nervous, impatient and occationally angry without his fix when he is deep down into his abuse.
But in the end it is all about responsibility, i chose to become addicted and i chose to quit, no one made me do either. Besides a gaming addiction costs you about 20 dollars a month and you can actually earn that money back when you ebay your ingame currency, a weed or alcohol addiction costs you around 200$ each month and have a good chance of getting yourself involved with violent crime and/or heavier drugs.
However i belive that the issue about kids getting addicted is more of their parents fault then their own, a young child have not fully developed mental resistance to addictive substances and aren't self-dependant and thus don't have the same motivation to stop their abuse. (Just look at the sugar addicts.)

I could go on about this subject but my final statement is: Don't ban games, it will only turn people to worse addictions and ruin it for those that do use games responsibly.
 
Spaceman_Spiff said:
Bottom line: the people complaining about this are parents left behind by their children, and clearly have no idea where they failed, so they blame the thing they see their kid doing the most.
Click to expand...

/thread
 
Soldur said:
I just realized that in a span of 18 months, I paid SquareEnix $80 for the game and expansions, and ~$300 in subscription fees (including mule characters). OMG, that's a total of $380, I had never figured it up before :eek:
Click to expand...

So your saying, in a year and a half you spent $380 bucks on a form of entertainment? Lets say, to be objective, averaged out over the year and a half your playing time was at least at 3 hours a day. So 3 hours * 547.5 days = 1642.5 hours. Take the said $380 / 1642.5 = $0.23.

So for every hour of your entertainment (and im positive you were entertained) You payed A LOT less than going someplace like the movies or out to dinner.

Any MMO your going to play is going to cost you money, but its a lot cheaper than many different forms of entertainment.
 
Crucible1001 said:
Well, based on probability of 13 million MMO players, it should be around 20800 people. Of course the MMO population is not the global population so this would be a different number.

Here is a tasty quote:
"Suicide is the third leading cause of death among young people ages 15 to 24. In 2001, 3,971 suicides were reported in this group (Anderson and Smith 2003)."

We already know one of those 3,971 played EQ. What do you want to bet more did?

What is even better is that 86% of those were males which is probably the percent that play MMOs compared to females. Also, the USA has a higher than average rate of suicide.

If I ever off myself, i'll have to subscribe to EQ first and have it on the screen. Then I can be a global news story. :)
Click to expand...
ill put up the white house web page or sumthin
 
the olganon lady is helping a lot of people. most people can play mmorpgs no problem, but for some its really addictive and ends up destroying a lot of lives.

she lost her son, give her a break. no one is gonna topple the almighty gaming industry. not her, not jack thompson, so lets just enjoy our games and have a little sympathy for others.
 
ScorpionV said:
My friend dropped out of college last year because of WoW. Even now all he does is go to work during the day, then play WoW from 4:30pm - 2:00am. He won't even hang out with anyone anymore because he's trying to get some purple or something (I obviously don't play WoW). And almost every sentence out of his mouth is about the game: "This guy in my guild said...", "Today we were on a raid...". Suprisingly he's not the life of the party, lol
Click to expand...

Friend of mine did the same. Smart kid, straight-A student, studying to be an engineer. Got into WoW, played himself right out of college. Now he's trying to get his degree at some county college instead, luckily he has a rich family to bail him out with a job at their company even though he's a college drop-out. Myself and my roommate took a dramatic hit to our social and personal lives at the peak of our MMO gaming.

MMO addiction and alcohol addiction should get the same response. Leave MMOs and alcohol alone so that people who can handle it can enjoy it. Alcoholics and MMOaholics are people who can't handle these things responsibly and they should be the ones getting help and be responsible for abstaining. Friends and family should be on hand to point out this addiction to them, because often, they're too embroiled in it to even take a look at what it's done to their lives. After recognizing this, they'll be the ones having to make a decision about whether or not they can play in responsible amounts, or if they are unable to and should just stay away completely.

Security and freedom have a negative relationship. Gain more of one and you'll lose the other. There needs to be a balance between the two. Protecting thousands of MMO addicts from themselves is not worth millions of people sacrificing their freedom to enjoy it responsibly.

Like it or not, there is a price tag on a human life, and we pay that price every day. It may sound cold, but that's fact. Just being able to read this post on the internet means money was spent to provide you with a computer setup for the internet(There are many cases where a life can be saved for 200-500 bucks). Sometimes people are going to die so that we can live the way we do.

Leaving MMOs alone as a source of entertainment would just be maintaining the status quo we've already chosen. There are much bigger fish to fry than video games.
 
I think people are bored. You have this article saying a VERY small percentage of people .00000000000001 kill themselves over video games. Why don't they go after real causes of deaths like drunk driving, drownings, road conditions, etc. Who cares something like about people dying over video games...
 
darktiger said:
I think people are bored. You have this article saying a VERY small percentage of people .00000000000001 kill themselves over video games. Why don't they go after real causes of deaths like drunk driving, drownings, road conditions, etc. Who cares something like about people dying over video games...
Click to expand...

Because people have become used to those things as causes of death. For some strange reason people tend to accept that one cause of death might be worse than another cause of death, even if they both cause death. People tend to be more concerned about new dangers like video games, as opposed to drowning which has always been around. Other posters have said, and I agree, that in order to become addicted to video games a person has to be messed up in some other way. If that person becomes a loser and/or kills themselves, their mommy and daddy aren't going to want to believe that their "little angel" was a crazy person, so they find something else to blame. The problem is that they are blaming the symptoms instead of the actual disease.

That said, I should say that I do play WoW, but only about 2-3 hours every couple of days. I also play other video games. I don't generally watch a lot of TV, because it's too violent :)p) and there's very little on that interests me without paying bajillions for extra channels. It is nice to just veg out if I think that I'm getting too wrapped up in a game. The key, as others have said, is to recognize that anyone can get themselves into a mental and emotional state that makes it possible for them to get addicted to anything. So make sure that you have a balanced life. Play video games, watch TV, go to movies, party, have lots of IRL friends to do stuff with IRL. Probably most important, get a job you love. It not only pays for the other stuff, but it also makes you appreciate the leisure time that you have so that you can make the best use of it.
 
MMO addiction is a serious problem. People have lost jobs, marriages, and houses over it. It rarely that serious, but it will almost always cause unnecessary friction in relationships. As with all things, it's a matter of moderation.

Linking MMOs and suicide is stupid, though. If someone would actually kill themselves because of the game (I can't even think of a scenario in which game events would trigger a suicide), then the odds are they can't deal with the realities of life and would find plenty of reasons offline to end it all.

Psychological addiction is most often a symptom, not a disease. There's a reason a person invests so much into a virtual world. It's not like meth where taking a single hit can make you physically reliant on the drug; it's like pot where you become dependent on how it makes you feel, using it as a crutch.
 
I am addicted to cigarettes. I smoke 3-4 packs a day. Now I have lung cancer and I blame this on the cigarette companies, not on my weak self-control and lack of discpline.
 
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