People overestimate the power of chemical dependency. There are plenty of habit-forming chemicals that do not create physical dependency to any great degree (marijuana) and there are many more that do but not until there's an established cycle of habitual use (alcohol). There are also plenty of chemicals that create physical dependency yet are not prone to habitual abuse (antiseizure medications, for instance).
Chemical dependency is neither necessary nor sufficient for addiction. Stop focusing on it.
That's beside the point. The point was people were comparing Video Game addiction to Drug Addiction, namely, Crack. No one mentioned Marijuana, so stop bandying it around as the poster child for how drugs aren't really that bad. As I stated in my previous post, the chemical dependency created by Crack, to be specific, is a problem which causes actual physical harm to the otherwise addicted person, something that Video Game addiction does not. No matter how habitual your video game habit is, you will never develop a physical dependancy. In other words, if one is to be rid of their addiction to Crack, or Alcohol, one must submit oneself to a dangerous and difficult detoxification program, as well as therapy (wether group or through a specialist), that might be required for the video game addict. As was stated before, the parallel between gaming and gambling addiction is fair, the one between gaming and drug addiction is not.
I also wanted to address the person who posted about how books are far more valuable than games.
To that I say: it entirely depends on the book and the game.
Thanks to the games I've played, I have learned about world economics, history, works of classical literature, learned the rules of sports that I had otherwise no interest in, developed an interest in linguistics and honed my basic math skills, among many other things I'm sure.
I would venture to say that the things I've learned from games far outvalue the things the lady on the bus who reads nothing but harlequin romance novels has learned.
My interest in games has lead me to pursue the arts and literature, so dismissing them as having no value is offensive to me, as it has proven to me to be not only an outlet, but also a gateway to the larger world, as I'm sure they have been to others.
This issue came up, naturally enough, on the City of Heroes forums, and this is basically what I had to say about there:
I tend to think that people addicted to video games could just as easily be addicted to other activities, such as gambling or what have you.
In my opinion, video game addiction is probably more of a symptom of other problems (depression, social anxiety disorders, etc), then the actual disease. Focusing on the video game part of a person's problem seems like an excessively narrow way to look at someone having major issues
I also worry that by concentrating on the "video game" portion of a person's problems, they may not get the best care they could have if they were being treated for the root causes of their problem. I'm not a psychologist, nor have I studied pysch, so I may be totally off base on that I guess.
Has television ever been studied as addiction? I mean, it must have been at some point I would think, and that would seem like a somewhat comparable activity,
That's beside the point. The point was people were comparing Video Game addiction to Drug Addiction, namely, Crack. No one mentioned Marijuana, so stop bandying it around as the poster child for how drugs aren't really that bad. As I stated in my previous post, the chemical dependency created by Crack, to be specific, is a problem which causes actual physical harm to the otherwise addicted person, something that Video Game addiction does not. No matter how habitual your video game habit is, you will never develop a physical dependancy. In other words, if one is to be rid of their addiction to Crack, or Alcohol, one must submit oneself to a dangerous and difficult detoxification program, as well as therapy (wether group or through a specialist), that might be required for the video game addict. As was stated before, the parallel between gaming and gambling addiction is fair, the one between gaming and drug addiction is not.
Okay, fair enough. I agree with everything you've said here.
Fine, then if I were to compromise in my argument and accept that Game companies must accept at least a part of the responsibility for the effect their product has on those pre-disposed to addiction, what would you reccomend is the "responsible" thing for them to do?
Well, first I want to make sure it's clear that I'm not suggesting legal intervention. I don't think the effects of video game addiction are nearly as serious as the effects of drug addiction or gambling addiction, so they don't warrant state interference. I don't think you suspect that I'd argue such a thing, but I could just see somebody coming into the thread and accuse me of being a nanny-stater when that's not what I'm arguing in this case.
Anyway, I dunno if I'd boycott a company just because they produced an addictive game. I don't really believe in boycotts anyway. And I'm not going to accuse them of the flagrant irresponsibility shown by the tobacco companies. I think the MMO companies are not evil, just naive. I do think that they should do more to entice people who play in shorter play sessions specifically for the reasons you've mentioned - it could be a lucrative market, we're talking professional people with lives and money who can only play a few hours a week, their monthly fee is worth just as much and they use up fewer network resources.
What I like to see are things like WoW's rest system, which encourages people to take breaks. More bind spots so corpse runs aren't as long. Fast travel systems available at all levels so you don't have to spend hours running from hunting spot to hunting spot. Content that's conducive to shorter play sessions. Luckily I think most American MMOs are swinging this way - each successive generation of MMOs seem to be more casual-friendly than the last. It's games that are popular in the southeast Asian market like Lineage that really need to reconsider their design visions.
Something that I've advocated on more than one forum is the idea of incremental questing. Let's say we determine that a certain raid drop is worth X number of dragon kill points or whatever the raiders are calling it these days, and that translates to Y gamer-hours. So for example the devs decide that the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is worth 20 hours of an experienced gamer's time. They should also implement a quest for the Divine Explosive of Antakya, a very similar but not quite identical item, that can be obtained through 20 hours of single-group and solo content. Why? Because raids require that you be online for 4-6 hours at a time during prime time - long play sessions that require that you give up other social interaction. If I want to play for 2 hours a day between 6-8 am before work, or 3 hours a session at 2 am on a Saturday night after I've come home from the bars, not only can I not experience anything even remotely resembling the true high-level game of fantasy MMOs like EQ or WoW, but I can't get even remotely the same rewards. And why not? I'm willing to put in the same amount of time and the same amount of work - I'm just not willing to do it at 6 pm PST on a weekday night. Raiders say that this means I'm a less dedicated gamer and I deserve lesser rewards. Okay, fine, I'll be okay with that - but at least offer me content that, if not equal, is at least a close second place rather than giving raiders the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch while giving me the Shitty Vendor Trash Drop of Suckage.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
Comparing WoW to crack is a pretty ridiculous stretch. Gambling I could see as being pretty analagous, but crack just isn't.
It is not as far as you would think, WoW destroys lives as does crack. I believe some one earlier asked us if we had seen a WoW player away from his computer for a day, and i have. They are hopeless when they are not playing the damn game, they are talking about it. They are always looking forward to their next FIX of WoW, just like a Crack head is always looking for their next FIX of Crack. Both can cause you to Flunk school or lose jobs.
It doesnt matter if you destroy your sleep schedule with Crack or WoW, it has the same effect. It doesnt matter if you lose intrest in every other aspect of life becuase of WoW or Crack, the effect is the same. While you can not get AIDs from playing video games, you can from sharring drug needles, and that is about the only thing that seperates them in my mind. You pay for both of them and you can spend just as much on WoW as Crack. (Someone posted earlier on the guy who built a new comp and bought gold for it, and that is very common.) Both destroy lives, end of story.
If you really are unaware of the differences in the mechanics of addiction between crack and WoW, and by that I mean the differences in the mechanics of a chemically addictive substance that you put into your body and your body then builds a physical dependence upon and a game that you have a hard time walking away from because you're rewarded for not walking away from it, you really have nothing to add.
The difference is that the dopamine/opioids from an endogenous source (i.e. a needle) messes with your system. Dopamine/adrenaline is the payoff for games like WoW - it's a feel-good chemical. Hence extreme sports 'adrenaline junkies' are engaged in the same physical reaction as junkies as are WoW players. It won't flood your receptors endogenous substances like heroin do, letting you OD + shutting down all of your endorphin production. But the same behavioral/chemical response - getting a feel-good chemical in response to a stimulus - applies. Hence, you become chemically addicted to the behavior triggering the stimulus. It's not as bad for the reasons discussed, but it's the same chemical and physiological process.
The guy who died of dehydration or a burst bladder or whatever in south korea playing starcraft wasn't doing some psychological thing alone - it was chemically based. Our ENTIRE BRAIN is dependent on chemical stimuli. Trying to posit some sort of 'will' that can overcome 'weakness' in the human brain is like 18th/19th century philosophy of mind crap.
What I like to see are things like WoW's rest system, which encourages people to take breaks. More bind spots so corpse runs aren't as long. Fast travel systems available at all levels so you don't have to spend hours running from hunting spot to hunting spot. Content that's conducive to shorter play sessions.
Thats interesting to me in that CoH has many of those things. Fast travel available early (you can get a jetpack by level 5), no corpse runs since there isn't "loot" in the true sense, ability to get stuff done in short play sessions, at least at lower levels, as well as a system where players of any level can team together(sidekicking).
Ideally, we'd get games combing all those features, but I think we'll have to wait for another generation or two of MMO's to come along for that to happen.
What I like to see are things like WoW's rest system, which encourages people to take breaks. More bind spots so corpse runs aren't as long. Fast travel systems available at all levels so you don't have to spend hours running from hunting spot to hunting spot. Content that's conducive to shorter play sessions.
Thats interesting to me in that CoH has many of those things. Fast travel available early (you can get a jetpack by level 5), no corpse runs since there isn't "loot" in the true sense, ability to get stuff done in short play sessions, at least at lower levels, as well as a system where players of any level can team together(sidekicking).
Ideally, we'd get games combing all those features, but I think we'll have to wait for another generation or two of MMO's to come along for that to happen.
I played CoH for the first year it was out and found it very shallow. Fun, kind of arcadey, but not nearly as deep as other MMOs. Not a criticism, it's aimed at a different crowd, but kind of apples and oranges.
I assume other people have said this, but ANYTHING can be addictive if a person can be addicted to it. Video Games do not exhibit some unique quality. EVERYTHING could be on that list.
Is the nature of video games not to be a fun, rewarding passtime? If you take out the addictive qualities of that passtime, what happens to it? Why would anyone bother?
If I don't get a feeling of progress, or any type of reward for the effort I put into my passtime, what possible reason can there be for that passtime to exist?
I don't know. Why do people bother with non-MMOs? Why do people play Halo, or Starcraft?
I'll tell you the reason: because those games are capable of providing entertainment in ways that are not conducive to addiction. When I get bored I turn on my Xbox360 and I play a few games of Halo 2, then I turn off the Xbox and do other things. There is no game mechanic there pressuring me to sit in front of it for hours at a time; I don't feel like shit for skipping raids and missing out on shiny loot.
There is still reward there, in Halo, a sense of progression -- albeit a far weaker one -- but that is fine because, guess what, people still play it.
And that business model works too, and it's far less harmful to the player.
But I get the feeling here that the crux of the argument here is that some of you are accusing MMOs of purposefully including types of gameplay that, in some sort of back-handed way, is taking advantage of people with addictive personalities. However, like I stated before, that would seem to me to be counter-productive to business, since, I would think that the companies would want to foster a gaming community of casual gamers who will stay subscribed to their game for a long time, in order to complete the content a bit at a time, rather than pander to addicts who will play hardcore for a couple of months, before eventually burning out on the game and moving on to their next addiction.
This is a good argument. Like Feral says:
I do think that they should do more to entice people who play in shorter play sessions specifically for the reasons you've mentioned - it could be a lucrative market, we're talking professional people with lives and money who can only play a few hours a week, their monthly fee is worth just as much and they use up fewer network resources.
And I struggled with this for a while...
...until I took macroeconomics, which taught me about the concept of sunk costs, among other things.
It's true that casual gamers use up less bandwidth and server resources, but that has no effect on the company's decision-making process since servers and bandwidths are already paid for.
Secondly, the thing about casual gamers is that they are unreliable customers; you don't know when they are going to cancel their subscription and move on to another game. From a business forecast perspective this is a bad thing. Instead, you want people to invest significant amounts of time and energy into the game so that quitting is more difficult for them. Hence, they become more reliable customers, even though they are technically paying the same amount.
Not only that, hardcore players are much more likely to come back after being burned out and quitting.
Thirdly, hardcore players also buy other game-related merchandise. They buy hats, t-shirts, collectible cards. They attend BlizzCon, which generates a ton of revenue. They tell their friends about the game and pressure them to "give it a try" (and the game has trial subscriptions for this very reason). Furthermore, they are much more likely to play future games by the same company, especially if it is the same franchise (for example, World of Warcraft 2).
A hardcore, dedicated player is far, far more valuable to the company than a casual one with questionable loyalty.
I also wanted to address the person who posted about how books are far more valuable than games.
To that I say: it entirely depends on the book and the game.
Thanks to the games I've played, I have learned about world economics, history, works of classical literature, learned the rules of sports that I had otherwise no interest in, developed an interest in linguistics and honed my basic math skills, among many other things I'm sure.
I would venture to say that the things I've learned from games far outvalue the things the lady on the bus who reads nothing but harlequin romance novels has learned.
My interest in games has lead me to pursue the arts and literature, so dismissing them as having no value is offensive to me, as it has proven to me to be not only an outlet, but also a gateway to the larger world, as I'm sure they have been to others.
It is true that games can be a good, fun introduction to topics you would otherwise never discover.
But the fact of the matter is that those topics tend to be very limited in scope, and the depth of their coverage within the game tends to be shallow. And since we're talking about playing games at the expense of reading books here (or vice versa), and not your particular case where you have used games to gain an interest in certain fields, this is what matters for the purposes of discussion.
And honestly, how many people possess the same level of curiosity as you do? How many people go look up the literative origins of elves and orcs after playing WoW, and find themselves immersed in Tolkien or something? My guess is, very few.
This, to me, reeks of those lawsuits filed by fat people against whatever their favorite food chain is, suing them for being too delicious. Is it wrong for food chains to want to make food that tastes good? In the interest of protecting the health of their costumers, is it their responsibility to make sure that the food doesn't taste too good? If their clientele makes a request of them, should they ignore it for fear that it might lead to people becoming addicted to their product? It's a well known fact that many restaurants put things like flavoring, additives and sugar in their foods to make them taste better. Clearly this is an evil ploy by heartless corporations trying to trick easily influenced gluttons to destroy their lives.
I suppose responsible business ethics should teach: "sell a product the people want, just make sure they don't want it too much."
I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.
The difference is that fast food companies are required to inform their customers about the shit they put in their food. If you go to a McDonalds and ask them what they put in their BigMac, they have to hand you a nutrition label. Can I expect the same amount of informational forthcomingness from Blizzard? Considering how absolutely secretive they are about their game, I strongly doubt it.
And let me point out that fast food companies over the past 5 years have been making serious effort to make their foods more healthy, at the expense of taste. Maybe they figured killing their customers isn't the best business practice, hmm?
MMO developers, not so much. Or at least, not yet. But there is one thing that will get them to start considering it: public awareness about how terrible their games can be.
The difference is that the dopamine/opioids from an endogenous source (i.e. a needle) messes with your system. Dopamine/adrenaline is the payoff for games like WoW - it's a feel-good chemical. Hence extreme sports 'adrenaline junkies' are engaged in the same physical reaction as junkies as are WoW players. It won't flood your receptors endogenous substances like heroin do, letting you OD + shutting down all of your endorphin production. But the same behavioral/chemical response - getting a feel-good chemical in response to a stimulus - applies. Hence, you become chemically addicted to the behavior triggering the stimulus. It's not as bad for the reasons discussed, but it's the same chemical and physiological process.
So, um, I think you mean 'exogenous' - from an external source - when you refer to heroin.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
The difference is that the dopamine/opioids from an endogenous source (i.e. a needle) messes with your system. Dopamine/adrenaline is the payoff for games like WoW - it's a feel-good chemical. Hence extreme sports 'adrenaline junkies' are engaged in the same physical reaction as junkies as are WoW players. It won't flood your receptors endogenous substances like heroin do, letting you OD + shutting down all of your endorphin production. But the same behavioral/chemical response - getting a feel-good chemical in response to a stimulus - applies. Hence, you become chemically addicted to the behavior triggering the stimulus. It's not as bad for the reasons discussed, but it's the same chemical and physiological process.
So, um, I think you mean 'exogenous' - from an external source - when you refer to heroin.
yeep! that's what i get for doing this on little sleep (boo harry potter) i'ma go edit now..thanks.
Something that I've advocated on more than one forum is the idea of incremental questing. Let's say we determine that a certain raid drop is worth X number of dragon kill points or whatever the raiders are calling it these days, and that translates to Y gamer-hours. So for example the devs decide that the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is worth 20 hours of an experienced gamer's time. They should also implement a quest for the Divine Explosive of Antakya, a very similar but not quite identical item, that can be obtained through 20 hours of single-group and solo content. Why? Because raids require that you be online for 4-6 hours at a time during prime time - long play sessions that require that you give up other social interaction. If I want to play for 2 hours a day between 6-8 am before work, or 3 hours a session at 2 am on a Saturday night after I've come home from the bars, not only can I not experience anything even remotely resembling the true high-level game of fantasy MMOs like EQ or WoW, but I can't get even remotely the same rewards. And why not? I'm willing to put in the same amount of time and the same amount of work - I'm just not willing to do it at 6 pm PST on a weekday night. Raiders say that this means I'm a less dedicated gamer and I deserve lesser rewards. Okay, fine, I'll be okay with that - but at least offer me content that, if not equal, is at least a close second place rather than giving raiders the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch while giving me the Shitty Vendor Trash Drop of Suckage.
Normally in this situation I'd come in and say something about EVE but I think we all know I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the game. But! I do think one of the better things the game did was decouple improvements in your character stats from an actual in-game grind. There still is a grind (for money) but by virtue of the stunningly good economic system you can do as little or as much as you want for that.
This isn't ideal, but it's getting there - somewhere there's a balance between rewarding people for "commitment" - which people do want to be rewarded for, and providing accessibility to the general populace.
If you have a choice between goofing off and taking care of your responsibilities, and you constantly choose to goof off, you'll lose out in the end, and you'll deserve to.
Most of the time, you get out of life what you put into it, and that's as close as life ever gets to being fair.
Now, what's important is to stop making excuses for people who choose to ignore their responsibilities. I play a few hours of WoW most weeks, and I play games in general more than most people do, but I still know when to put the games away and take care of business. Most of the time. And if I were harder-working, if I devoted more time to finishing more of my projects, I'd have a more successful life. I know that. I don't always make the best use of my time, but it's always my choice how to spend it. Not Blizzard's, not anyone else's but mine. And more people need to realize that, instead of pointing fingers elsewhere and trying to find excuses to fail.
Actually I think the important point is that there's a world of difference between people who are just lazy and people are genuinely addicted to something.
When it comes to hobbies, "addiction" is such a broad term that it's basically meaningless. A guy can always put down a game if he has something more important to do. If he decides not to, that's his choice, and it'll probably end up being his problem sooner or later.
Before MMOs were big, I knew a guy who decided to drop out of school and play Counterstrike all day. His long-term goal was to die of malnutrition before he was 30. Not sure if he ever succeded. Before that, another guy did the same thing, only with bridge and poker.
Labeling these things "addictive" just artificially shifts responsibility away from where it belongs — with the people who choose to play all day.
Whatever you want to call their playing style, people have responsibilities, and they can either fulfill them or not. Nothing prevents them from making either choice. Yeah, some people can be their own worst enemy — I can be mine sometimes — but that's their problem to solve, not Blizzard's to be sued, condemned, or regulated for.
It doesn't work to think of addiction as though anything people can enjoy doing automatically counts as potentially addictive, and anything that people enjoy doing a lot is now an addiction thanks to these wacky activist psychologists. But addiction, even one based on psychological dependency, should actually mean something and there are ways to divine addictiveness.
Take gambling. Gambling's an easy one because the response/reward pattern is so clear cut. The reinforcement inherent in a slot machine's design is phenomenal. The pattern of payout, the investment of the player, the physical interaction, the lights; all of this creates a system of reinforcement that the human brain is designed to respond to. That's what makes gambling addictive and that's why it ruins lives and that's why it's taken seriously. Blame shifting doesn't even come into it until you understand the mechanism.
So the question is, how do these reward systems play out in various types of video games. I think that's where people need to start looking before you can make any rational argument about potential addictiveness, and where responsibility lies. So, just out of curiosity, what are the kinds of patterns of reinforcement built into MMOs?
They say that more research should be done - but seem to think that there isnt anything to indicate that holds any special properties making it a risk.
Yeah, I don't think it was ever expected to be taken seriously. It was a group throwing ideas out. There's a whole lot of shit going on with addiction and the revised DSM at the moment. It's a really ambiguous area. Some dudes even want have some dumb argument about whether the word addiction should even be used in DSM V.
If you really are unaware of the differences in the mechanics of addiction between crack and WoW, and by that I mean the differences in the mechanics of a chemically addictive substance that you put into your body and your body then builds a physical dependence upon and a game that you have a hard time walking away from because you're rewarded for not walking away from it, you really have nothing to add.
The difference is that the dopamine/opioids from an endogenous source (i.e. a needle) messes with your system. Dopamine/adrenaline is the payoff for games like WoW - it's a feel-good chemical. Hence extreme sports 'adrenaline junkies' are engaged in the same physical reaction as junkies as are WoW players. It won't flood your receptors endogenous substances like heroin do, letting you OD + shutting down all of your endorphin production. But the same behavioral/chemical response - getting a feel-good chemical in response to a stimulus - applies. Hence, you become chemically addicted to the behavior triggering the stimulus. It's not as bad for the reasons discussed, but it's the same chemical and physiological process.
In the same sense that you're chemically addicted to breathing, yes. But that's not a terribly useful way to frame the term "chemically addicted".
The guy who died of dehydration or a burst bladder or whatever in south korea playing starcraft wasn't doing some psychological thing alone - it was chemically based. Our ENTIRE BRAIN is dependent on chemical stimuli. Trying to posit some sort of 'will' that can overcome 'weakness' in the human brain is like 18th/19th century philosophy of mind crap.
So how exactly do people get over things like depression or quit smoking without drugs? I mean, there's no such thing as willpower afterall, just chemicals that decide what you're going to do. I can hardly blame you if the chemicals in your brain force you to run over puppies with a lawnmower or what have you. That would be, like, sooo 18th century of me.
In the same sense that you're chemically addicted to breathing, yes. But that's not a terribly useful way to frame the term "chemically addicted".
Not quite. A drug is, technically speaking, anything that changes your body's natural chemistry. By that definition anti-perspirant and toothpaste are drugs, and yes it's possible to become chemically dependant on those drugs even if it's only to a very minor degree and it doesn't last any longer than a couple days beyond the cessation of it's use.
The guy who died of dehydration or a burst bladder or whatever in south korea playing starcraft wasn't doing some psychological thing alone - it was chemically based. Our ENTIRE BRAIN is dependent on chemical stimuli. Trying to posit some sort of 'will' that can overcome 'weakness' in the human brain is like 18th/19th century philosophy of mind crap.
So how exactly do people get over things like depression or quit smoking without drugs? I mean, there's no such thing as willpower afterall, just chemicals that decide what you're going to do. I can hardly blame you if the chemicals in your brain force you to run over puppies with a lawnmower or what have you. That would be, like, sooo 18th century of me.
I think video games are addictive. I don't honestly, realistically consider things like anti-perspirant or toothpaste to be "addictive" within the scope of this discussion, I don't think it's the same thing, but I do consider video gaming to be addictive. It's primarily psychological and habitual, but so is the addiction to smoking. Yes, the chemical addiction to nicotine is very real, but that addiction is only a very small part of the over all addiction to "smoking" which is primarily habitual and psychological.
Where I balk is when peopel try to classify anything that's addictive as a "disease". I have a real problem with that because it means that the addiction itself isn't the problem of the individual. It's a complete abdication of repsonsibility. "It's not my fault because I'm addicted to something that makes me act like a fuck-head, and that addiction isn't my fault because it's a disease and I ahve no control over it!" Nuh-uh, not good enough. Man up and take responsibility for your behaviour.
Werrick on
"Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be rude without having their skulls split, as a general thing."
Well, not to be flippant but... yeah, there's no real evidence for a seperate "willpower" that exists independant of the reactions that take place in the brain. It's not yet determined that there definitely isn't one, but it makes sense to emphasize the idea that your body and brain are very interconnected, and that from all available evidence your mind is a physical construct. Addiction that alters you in a signifianct way physically can make it hard to quit.
Is the nature of video games not to be a fun, rewarding passtime? If you take out the addictive qualities of that passtime, what happens to it? Why would anyone bother?
If I don't get a feeling of progress, or any type of reward for the effort I put into my passtime, what possible reason can there be for that passtime to exist?
I don't know. Why do people bother with non-MMOs? Why do people play Halo, or Starcraft?
I'll tell you the reason: because those games are capable of providing entertainment in ways that are not conducive to addiction. When I get bored I turn on my Xbox360 and I play a few games of Halo 2, then I turn off the Xbox and do other things. There is no game mechanic there pressuring me to sit in front of it for hours at a time; I don't feel like shit for skipping raids and missing out on shiny loot.
There is still reward there, in Halo, a sense of progression -- albeit a far weaker one -- but that is fine because, guess what, people still play it.
And that business model works too, and it's far less harmful to the player.
Bull.
We're only talking about MMOs here since they're the most flagrant offenders when it comes to attracting addicts. But let me tell you, when I was a kid, I was totally and completely addicted to my NES/SNES. I would stay up at night dreaming of even the shittiest games. Heck, I skipped two days of school to finish Who Framed motherfuckin' Roger Rabbit on the NES. ROGER RABBIT! I was lucky, I had a strong support structure at home and parents that made me get out of my fucking room from time to time despite my vehement protestations. Eventually, they sold my SNES on me and forced me to get a life. I am positive that having to do that was a heart-wrenching decision for them, but it was the right one. Thanks to them, I am able to enjoy my hobby in moderation while enjoying a good job, a beautiful girlfriend and all the other good things life has to offer.
I had (maybe still do have) issues as a kid and my family helped me overcome them. It's not Nintendo's fault I might have missed out on some opportunities as a kid. Heck, it was almost despite them that I was addicted! The addiction was a problem in my own psychological makeup. The fact that it was video games I was addicted to was inconsequential, I could just have easily been addicted to He-man figurines or bad sci-fi, like some other friends of mine were, often re-reading the same book over and over in lieu of partaking in ostensibly "healthier" activities.
What I'm saying is that I take exception to the notion that MMOs building addictive properties into their games is somehow more reprehensible than any other type of video game out there. The conventions of MMOs are what makes them MMOs. It's a genre that dictates: "Hey, this is a game that you can play with a whole bunch of strangers from around the world and do shit with them". If you feel somehow diminished because you can't make time to play the game with other people to complete content that was designed for large groups, that isn't the game's fault. Heck, if I can't make a raid or whatever, I say "sorry guys, can't come tonight, good luck!" and leave it at that! The fact that not everyone is able to do that doesn't make Blizzard bad guys.
I also wanted to address the person who posted about how books are far more valuable than games.
To that I say: it entirely depends on the book and the game.
Thanks to the games I've played, I have learned about world economics, history, works of classical literature, learned the rules of sports that I had otherwise no interest in, developed an interest in linguistics and honed my basic math skills, among many other things I'm sure.
I would venture to say that the things I've learned from games far outvalue the things the lady on the bus who reads nothing but harlequin romance novels has learned.
My interest in games has lead me to pursue the arts and literature, so dismissing them as having no value is offensive to me, as it has proven to me to be not only an outlet, but also a gateway to the larger world, as I'm sure they have been to others.
It is true that games can be a good, fun introduction to topics you would otherwise never discover.
But the fact of the matter is that those topics tend to be very limited in scope, and the depth of their coverage within the game tends to be shallow. And since we're talking about playing games at the expense of reading books here (or vice versa), and not your particular case where you have used games to gain an interest in certain fields, this is what matters for the purposes of discussion.
And honestly, how many people possess the same level of curiosity as you do? How many people go look up the literative origins of elves and orcs after playing WoW, and find themselves immersed in Tolkien or something? My guess is, very few.
So, because not everyone is as inquisitive as me, the entire gaming industry should be dismissed as a worthwhile passtime? I was trying to point out the fact that there are redeeming qualities to games, that dedicating a lot of time to a game can be condusive to greater learning, and is not a complete waste of time as some people suggest. The fact that not everyone gets out of it what I do does not invalidate my point.
This, to me, reeks of those lawsuits filed by fat people against whatever their favorite food chain is, suing them for being too delicious. Is it wrong for food chains to want to make food that tastes good? In the interest of protecting the health of their costumers, is it their responsibility to make sure that the food doesn't taste too good? If their clientele makes a request of them, should they ignore it for fear that it might lead to people becoming addicted to their product? It's a well known fact that many restaurants put things like flavoring, additives and sugar in their foods to make them taste better. Clearly this is an evil ploy by heartless corporations trying to trick easily influenced gluttons to destroy their lives.
I suppose responsible business ethics should teach: "sell a product the people want, just make sure they don't want it too much."
I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.
The difference is that fast food companies are required to inform their customers about the shit they put in their food. If you go to a McDonalds and ask them what they put in their BigMac, they have to hand you a nutrition label. Can I expect the same amount of informational forthcomingness from Blizzard? Considering how absolutely secretive they are about their game, I strongly doubt it.
And let me point out that fast food companies over the past 5 years have been making serious effort to make their foods more healthy, at the expense of taste. Maybe they figured killing their customers isn't the best business practice, hmm?
MMO developers, not so much. Or at least, not yet. But there is one thing that will get them to start considering it: public awareness about how terrible their games can be.
I object to your use of the word "terrible" here. You make it sound like, in order for a person to enjoy a game "properly", they must submit themselves to hours and hours in front of their screens devoting time to being "successful". This is patently false. How you derive enjoyment from a game is entirely up to you. As I've stated before, if you feel diminished because you can't reach certain goals within the game in a reasonable amount of time, that isn't the game's fault. The game isn't going "ha-ha, you suck" because you don't have every piece of epic loot you want, that fallacy is in your head.
I never got all of acheivements in Geometry Wars. I guess that makes me less of a person.
And if game makers are so irresponsible, how do you account for Blizzard taking out their old "honor system" model? The original intent of the honor system was to reward the players who had managed to earn the most amount of honor points in a week. What happened? Addicts began dedicating all of their free time to ensure they'd be at the top of the heap, forcing anyone else who desired that position to dedicate even MORE time, and so on and so on. A destructive spiral began to take place and the designers took note, removing that function from the game. From your cynical business standpoint, the honor system was an ideal model, as it caused the players to derive content from each other! You wouldn't have to lift a finger! But the idea got out of hand, so Blizzard kiboshed it. Let us also not forget how they de-emphasized large-scale raid content in the expansion, which seems to be the other major point of contention here. I think that certainly shows a degree of responsibility on Blizzard's part, and other companies are taking note.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
It doesn't work to think of addiction as though anything people can enjoy doing automatically counts as potentially addictive, and anything that people enjoy doing a lot is now an addiction thanks to these wacky activist psychologists. But addiction, even one based on psychological dependency, should actually mean something and there are ways to divine addictiveness.
Take gambling. Gambling's an easy one because the response/reward pattern is so clear cut. The reinforcement inherent in a slot machine's design is phenomenal. The pattern of payout, the investment of the player, the physical interaction, the lights; all of this creates a system of reinforcement that the human brain is designed to respond to. That's what makes gambling addictive and that's why it ruins lives and that's why it's taken seriously. Blame shifting doesn't even come into it until you understand the mechanism.
So the question is, how do these reward systems play out in various types of video games. I think that's where people need to start looking before you can make any rational argument about potential addictiveness, and where responsibility lies. So, just out of curiosity, what are the kinds of patterns of reinforcement built into MMOs?
Item drops are more or less the uneven, random payouts you expect from slot machines - in other ways it's more regular - grinding for XP and item collecting. So if you are goal-oriented you might stick around to get 'one more level'. Alternatively, those big raids can take hours on end to coordinate, so if you committ to it, you're stuck there for many hours on it.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
Is the nature of video games not to be a fun, rewarding passtime? If you take out the addictive qualities of that passtime, what happens to it? Why would anyone bother?
If I don't get a feeling of progress, or any type of reward for the effort I put into my passtime, what possible reason can there be for that passtime to exist?
I don't know. Why do people bother with non-MMOs? Why do people play Halo, or Starcraft?
I'll tell you the reason: because those games are capable of providing entertainment in ways that are not conducive to addiction. When I get bored I turn on my Xbox360 and I play a few games of Halo 2, then I turn off the Xbox and do other things. There is no game mechanic there pressuring me to sit in front of it for hours at a time; I don't feel like shit for skipping raids and missing out on shiny loot.
There is still reward there, in Halo, a sense of progression -- albeit a far weaker one -- but that is fine because, guess what, people still play it.
And that business model works too, and it's far less harmful to the player.
Bull.
We're only talking about MMOs here since they're the most flagrant offenders when it comes to attracting addicts. But let me tell you, when I was a kid, I was totally and completely addicted to my NES/SNES. I would stay up at night dreaming of even the shittiest games. Heck, I skipped two days of school to finish Who Framed motherfuckin' Roger Rabbit on the NES. ROGER RABBIT! I was lucky, I had a strong support structure at home and parents that made me get out of my fucking room from time to time despite my vehement protestations. Eventually, they sold my SNES on me and forced me to get a life. I am positive that having to do that was a heart-wrenching decision for them, but it was the right one. Thanks to them, I am able to enjoy my hobby in moderation while enjoying a good job, a beautiful girlfriend and all the other good things life has to offer.
I had (maybe still do have) issues as a kid and my family helped me overcome them. It's not Nintendo's fault I might have missed out on some opportunities as a kid. Heck, it was almost despite them that I was addicted! The addiction was a problem in my own psychological makeup. The fact that it was video games I was addicted to was inconsequential, I could just have easily been addicted to He-man figurines or bad sci-fi, like some other friends of mine were, often re-reading the same book over and over in lieu of partaking in ostensibly "healthier" activities.
What I'm saying is that I take exception to the notion that MMOs building addictive properties into their games is somehow more reprehensible than any other type of video game out there. The conventions of MMOs are what makes them MMOs. It's a genre that dictates: "Hey, this is a game that you can play with a whole bunch of strangers from around the world and do shit with them". If you feel somehow diminished because you can't make time to play the game with other people to complete content that was designed for large groups, that isn't the game's fault. Heck, if I can't make a raid or whatever, I say "sorry guys, can't come tonight, good luck!" and leave it at that! The fact that not everyone is able to do that doesn't make Blizzard bad guys.
I also wanted to address the person who posted about how books are far more valuable than games.
To that I say: it entirely depends on the book and the game.
Thanks to the games I've played, I have learned about world economics, history, works of classical literature, learned the rules of sports that I had otherwise no interest in, developed an interest in linguistics and honed my basic math skills, among many other things I'm sure.
I would venture to say that the things I've learned from games far outvalue the things the lady on the bus who reads nothing but harlequin romance novels has learned.
My interest in games has lead me to pursue the arts and literature, so dismissing them as having no value is offensive to me, as it has proven to me to be not only an outlet, but also a gateway to the larger world, as I'm sure they have been to others.
It is true that games can be a good, fun introduction to topics you would otherwise never discover.
But the fact of the matter is that those topics tend to be very limited in scope, and the depth of their coverage within the game tends to be shallow. And since we're talking about playing games at the expense of reading books here (or vice versa), and not your particular case where you have used games to gain an interest in certain fields, this is what matters for the purposes of discussion.
And honestly, how many people possess the same level of curiosity as you do? How many people go look up the literative origins of elves and orcs after playing WoW, and find themselves immersed in Tolkien or something? My guess is, very few.
So, because not everyone is as inquisitive as me, the entire gaming industry should be dismissed as a worthwhile passtime? I was trying to point out the fact that there are redeeming qualities to games, that dedicating a lot of time to a game can be condusive to greater learning, and is not a complete waste of time as some people suggest. The fact that not everyone gets out of it what I do does not invalidate my point.
This, to me, reeks of those lawsuits filed by fat people against whatever their favorite food chain is, suing them for being too delicious. Is it wrong for food chains to want to make food that tastes good? In the interest of protecting the health of their costumers, is it their responsibility to make sure that the food doesn't taste too good? If their clientele makes a request of them, should they ignore it for fear that it might lead to people becoming addicted to their product? It's a well known fact that many restaurants put things like flavoring, additives and sugar in their foods to make them taste better. Clearly this is an evil ploy by heartless corporations trying to trick easily influenced gluttons to destroy their lives.
I suppose responsible business ethics should teach: "sell a product the people want, just make sure they don't want it too much."
I'm sorry, I just don't buy it.
The difference is that fast food companies are required to inform their customers about the shit they put in their food. If you go to a McDonalds and ask them what they put in their BigMac, they have to hand you a nutrition label. Can I expect the same amount of informational forthcomingness from Blizzard? Considering how absolutely secretive they are about their game, I strongly doubt it.
And let me point out that fast food companies over the past 5 years have been making serious effort to make their foods more healthy, at the expense of taste. Maybe they figured killing their customers isn't the best business practice, hmm?
MMO developers, not so much. Or at least, not yet. But there is one thing that will get them to start considering it: public awareness about how terrible their games can be.
I object to your use of the word "terrible" here. You make it sound like, in order for a person to enjoy a game "properly", they must submit themselves to hours and hours in front of their screens devoting time to being "successful". This is patently false. How you derive enjoyment from a game is entirely up to you. As I've stated before, if you feel diminished because you can't reach certain goals within the game in a reasonable amount of time, that isn't the game's fault. The game isn't going "ha-ha, you suck" because you don't have every piece of epic loot you want, that fallacy is in your head.
I never got all of acheivements in Geometry Wars. I guess that makes me less of a person.
And if game makers are so irresponsible, how do you account for Blizzard taking out their old "honor system" model? The original intent of the honor system was to reward the players who had managed to earn the most amount of honor points in a week. What happened? Addicts began dedicating all of their free time to ensure they'd be at the top of the heap, forcing anyone else who desired that position to dedicate even MORE time, and so on and so on. A destructive spiral began to take place and the designers took note, removing that function from the game. From your cynical business standpoint, the honor system was an ideal model, as it caused the players to derive content from each other! You wouldn't have to lift a finger! But the idea got out of hand, so Blizzard kiboshed it. Let us also not forget how they de-emphasized large-scale raid content in the expansion, which seems to be the other major point of contention here. I think that certainly shows a degree of responsibility on Blizzard's part, and other companies are taking note.
I think this is exactly the point - Blizzard is recognizing that they are making content which is structured in a way that is socially destructive. They're more or less acknowledging the way the game messes with people by doing these things. Why would Blizzard do that? Because people a) acknowledge it's addictive and b) complain and c) they're afraid of someone else taking regulatory action in general.
It's precisely this type of discourse that prompts those changes. Blizzard rejected these horatio alger-like notions of 'self-discipline' when it concedes that some of its players are especially vulnerable to the way they set up the game.
I think this is exactly the point - Blizzard is recognizing that they are making content which is structured in a way that is socially destructive. They're more or less acknowledging the way the game messes with people by doing these things. Why would Blizzard do that? Because people a) acknowledge it's addictive and b) complain and c) they're afraid of someone else taking regulatory action in general.
It's precisely this type of discourse that prompts those changes. Blizzard rejected these horatio alger-like notions of 'self-discipline' when it concedes that some of its players are especially vulnerable to the way they set up the game.
Though I agree that Blizzard removing that functionality was a responsible action on their part, I don't agree with the fact that the onus was on them to do so. What they did was a good PR move in response to request made of them from their audience. However, I maintain that the original Honor system's intent was innocent and not a nefarious money making scheme on behalf of Blizzard. They wanted to institute a fun way to have PvP competition and it backfired, creating a legion of hardcore addicts who took the system to extremes it wasn't intended to go.
I think that, in this case, Blizzard removing that function from their game is not so much an admission of guilt as to the addictive nature of their game, rather than a sheepish withdrawal of a system who's addictiveness they underestimated.
To re-iterate, I'm not saying games or WoW aren't addictive, I'm simply saying that game creators need to be given some slack. They're not drug pushers.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
I think this is exactly the point - Blizzard is recognizing that they are making content which is structured in a way that is socially destructive. They're more or less acknowledging the way the game messes with people by doing these things. Why would Blizzard do that? Because people a) acknowledge it's addictive and b) complain and c) they're afraid of someone else taking regulatory action in general.
It's precisely this type of discourse that prompts those changes. Blizzard rejected these horatio alger-like notions of 'self-discipline' when it concedes that some of its players are especially vulnerable to the way they set up the game.
Though I agree that Blizzard removing that functionality was a responsible action on their part, I don't agree with the fact that the onus was on them to do so. What they did was a good PR move in response to request made of them from their audience. However, I maintain that the original Honor system's intent was innocent and not a nefarious money making scheme on behalf of Blizzard. They wanted to institute a fun way to have PvP competition and it backfired, creating a legion of hardcore addicts who took the system to extremes it wasn't intended to go.
I think that, in this case, Blizzard removing that function from their game is not so much an admission of guilt as to the addictive nature of their game, rather than a sheepish withdrawal of a system who's addictiveness they underestimated.
To re-iterate, I'm not saying games or WoW aren't addictive, I'm simply saying that game creators need to be given some slack. They're not drug pushers.
Oh, is your point that developers probably aren't acting in bad faith when they make these things? I think you're entirely correct when it comes to the designers themselves. They want to make a fun game that people will play. But a large, corporate entity like EA is going to have zero scruples about making a game that will be maximally addictive (and allow things like micropayments, etc. to maximize profit w/playtime even if it's a flat fee monthly billing model.) So trying to give a blanket pass to game publishers because they're not drug pushers is a misnomer.
I agree with you in that it would be wrong to characterize Blizzard as a 'drug pusher', just like you say. But it doesn't mean what they're selling isn't addictive. And I think increasingly they are aware of it. The more they become aware of it, the lack of treatment and diagnostic options are less justifiable. They have an affirmative duty and obligation to clean up their human impact. Not because they're "evil" or anything, but because they make a product with negative externalities.
I don't think Blizzard should be held responsible, but it's pretty ridiculous to say they don't to some degree make sure their content takes a long time. There's a reason WoW is the highest selling game of all time.
Arcade games are intentionally and sometimes retardedly difficult. Have you seen Super Mario Bros. in the arcade? WAY more damn holes to fall into. All over the place. They made the Nintendo version highly different. It has to be set up that way because it's a subscription. They need more quarters, as you will.
And yes, it's true that people pay by time period of the subscription and not the amount of time played, but seriously, the amount of time to it would take to get the gear to do arena (whether you PVP or go raid) is immense. It's not in their best interests to make it easy, or even moderately difficult, for people to get to the top. Otherwise, the profits are not as high.
I have to reiterate that while WoW is more addictive, that doesn't mean Blizzard should be responsible. As others have said--are we going to do the same thing to restaurants, TV, or anything else? Some people play a hell of a lot of Counter-Strike, but are we going to blame Valve?
Where I balk is when peopel try to classify anything that's addictive as a "disease". I have a real problem with that because it means that the addiction itself isn't the problem of the individual. It's a complete abdication of repsonsibility.
Only if you assume that you're not responsible for your own diseases. If I ram my head against a wall 17 times, I'm responsible for that headache. If I go and have sex with a different hooker every night and contract HIV which I then spread to my significant other, I'm responsible for that infection. If I have bipolar disorder and I stop taking my psych meds and I go nuts and drive a car into a farmer's market, I'm responsible for those deaths. If I have migraines and I go out and eat a bunch of pepperoni pizza and drink a bunch of diet Pepsi and those foods trigger a migraine, that's my own damn fault.
Addiction is no different. If you have that disease you are responsible for obtaining treatment, avoiding disease triggers, and complying with the judgment of medical/psych professionals.
Also, the disease model makes medical and psychotherapeutic intervention more obtainable (by increasing public funding of it under public health departments and making it reimbursable by private insurance companies); it puts social pressure on the addict to go get treated (by painting the condition as abnormal and destructive); and it helps people to understand that there are significant medical and mental health ramifications to addiction. The disease model for addiction is very useful and makes a lot of sense.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
The disease model is useful for the reasons you mention. It's a very loaded word, and it has a lot of attachments to it.
For example, you said that a bipolar person not taking meds is considered a person's decision. Under the disease model, many people say that there is nothing that could be done about many actions.
I can't think of a better alternative, given the context we work in, but it is not a perfect solution--too many people are liable to misinterpretation and then agency is often unacknowledged and medication is shoved at the wrong people.
Meh. If somebody really wants to avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior, they'll find an excuse, disease model or no.
Right. Individuals are going to be idiots no matter what. What model we use for anything here doesn't matter.
The APA, AMA, and American legal system make decisions based off this model--this does matter. I'm just saying the disease model, like others, is a flawed one.
What I'm saying is that I take exception to the notion that MMOs building addictive properties into their games is somehow more reprehensible than any other type of video game out there. The conventions of MMOs are what makes them MMOs. It's a genre that dictates: "Hey, this is a game that you can play with a whole bunch of strangers from around the world and do shit with them". If you feel somehow diminished because you can't make time to play the game with other people to complete content that was designed for large groups, that isn't the game's fault. Heck, if I can't make a raid or whatever, I say "sorry guys, can't come tonight, good luck!" and leave it at that! The fact that not everyone is able to do that doesn't make Blizzard bad guys.
I don't think you understood me. There are games out there that do not have to demand huge time investments -- usually in big chunks, at that -- in order to give the player a sense of accomplishment and reward. Before you say we're only talking about MMOs here, there are MMOs out there that have been able to get out of the Everquest-esque "raid or don't bother playing" model. EVE did it. So did Guild Wars. Both are very successful. So asserting that the addictive model is "part of the genre" is pure bullshit.
If the game design makes the player feel guilty for skipping out on raids and whatnot, yes, that is a problem in game design. This is especially true for players who play critical roles within the group -- say, the main tanks, or the healers, since their absence basically means the raid won't happen. I used to play a mage, so my spot was easily filled by someone else (although I still felt bad for not getting DKP), but when the main tank didn't make it, he got a huge deal of shit from everyone.
So, because not everyone is as inquisitive as me, the entire gaming industry should be dismissed as a worthwhile passtime? I was trying to point out the fact that there are redeeming qualities to games, that dedicating a lot of time to a game can be condusive to greater learning, and is not a complete waste of time as some people suggest. The fact that not everyone gets out of it what I do does not invalidate my point.
It very much does, as I would think that your particular case is more of an exception than the rule. Yeah, people learn things from games. But they also learn things from TV. There are some channels, like Discovery or History Channel, that are nice. Hell, you can even argue that you learned something from the last episode of Lost, or House MD, or Reno 911. Does this make TV a good educational tool? Hardly.
I object to your use of the word "terrible" here. You make it sound like, in order for a person to enjoy a game "properly", they must submit themselves to hours and hours in front of their screens devoting time to being "successful". This is patently false. How you derive enjoyment from a game is entirely up to you. As I've stated before, if you feel diminished because you can't reach certain goals within the game in a reasonable amount of time, that isn't the game's fault. The game isn't going "ha-ha, you suck" because you don't have every piece of epic loot you want, that fallacy is in your head.
I never got all of acheivements in Geometry Wars. I guess that makes me less of a person.
No, it's not.
The thing about games like WoW is that your character's power and status is a fundamental part of the enjoyment function. This is especially true since you play with other people, and the way they treat you is related to your guild status, or how shiny your sword is. Not only that, the PvP aspect is also very important; people don't like getting pwned left and right -- and that is precisely what happens if you don't have raid-quality gear. And again, this is especially true considering how much effect gear has on the outcome of a fight.
Saying that the amount of enjoyment you get is detached from your in-game accomplishments is asinine.
So if the game is dictating, "you must play this many hours with this many people for this long, and conquer this dungeon multiple times until the loot you want drops", yes, they are dictating how much I have to play in order to "properly" enjoy the game.
And if game makers are so irresponsible, how do you account for Blizzard taking out their old "honor system" model? The original intent of the honor system was to reward the players who had managed to earn the most amount of honor points in a week. What happened? Addicts began dedicating all of their free time to ensure they'd be at the top of the heap, forcing anyone else who desired that position to dedicate even MORE time, and so on and so on. A destructive spiral began to take place and the designers took note, removing that function from the game. From your cynical business standpoint, the honor system was an ideal model, as it caused the players to derive content from each other! You wouldn't have to lift a finger! But the idea got out of hand, so Blizzard kiboshed it. Let us also not forget how they de-emphasized large-scale raid content in the expansion, which seems to be the other major point of contention here. I think that certainly shows a degree of responsibility on Blizzard's part, and other companies are taking note.
Let's not be fooled for a second here: the reason they took out the original honor system wasn't because they were concerned about the well-being of their players. When you think about it, Blizzard's main gripe with the system was that it was alienating a lot of moderately dedicated players, who weren't among the "most dedicated" few. Hell, there were magazine articles covering how stupidly designed the system was. Furthermore, it was also costing them their most hardcore players; if you'll remember from the WoW forums, there were a lot of threads by High Warlords saying stuff like, "I have reached High Warlord, has been fun guys, see you in another game" because they were burned out so much. The system was removed because it was generating so much controversy and frustration that it was bad for their business.
To give credit where it is due, yeah, I believe Blizzard moved in the right direction by making the game less raid-centric. At the same time though, they made up for it in other areas, particularly the PvP Arenas and a shitload of additional faction grinds. And the raiding aspect is still there; it's just more elitist (with more difficult encounters designed for less people).
The APA, AMA, and American legal system make decisions based off this model--this does matter. I'm just saying the disease model, like others, is a flawed model (like all the others).
Well, the APA and AMA making decisions based off the disease model is like American Hammer Association making decisions based off the nail model.
As for the legal system making decisions based off the disease model, I'd say that's a good thing. Across the country over the last several years there have been "drug courts" popping up - county criminal courts designed specifically to handle drug addicts. One of the common functions of these courts is to ensure that addicts have access to (and utilize) medical and psych professional help, rather than just throwing them in jail. Part of the reason these courts are comparatively better than typical courts at dealing with addicts is because they recognize that addiction is a disease and that addicts need help.
However, they do not let addicts off the hook when it comes to personal responsibility, at all. I've watched the Santa Clara County drug court in action and they are hardcore. They will scrutinize your medical records to make sure you're actually seeing your doctor; they require documentation from your therapist to make sure you're going on a consistent basis and cooperative with therapy; they will drug test as often as twice a week; and all this is on top of the typical 12-step requirements. They absolutely put their "clients" through their paces and a couple of the judges in particular have no problem throwing a "client" back in jail if they don't follow through with a treatment program.
Feral on
every person who doesn't like an acquired taste always seems to think everyone who likes it is faking it. it should be an official fallacy.
I did psychology in college and there is some ridiculous stuff going on elsewhere; I'm mostly upset about the ramifications the DSM IV sometimes has and about some of the things that HAVE happened, so I didn't mean to make a pronouncement about...everything.
I don't know about you, but I know that I expressly seek out games wherein I am a badass who saves lives and gets the woman when I am in the throes of depression.
I don't understand why all you fucks are arguing over the 'type' of addiction an MMO may or may not have when the psychological effects (both carrot and stick, if I may remind you of Bill Roper's(?) speech) are plain to see.
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kaliyamaLeft to find less-moderated foraRegistered Userregular
I don't know about you, but I know that I expressly seek out games wherein I am a badass who saves lives and gets the woman when I am in the throes of depression.
I don't understand why all you fucks are arguing over the 'type' of addiction an MMO may or may not have when the psychological effects (both carrot and stick, if I may remind you of Bill Roper's(?) speech) are plain to see.
There are different 'types' of depression, too. If you're just feeling down for a day or two over a reversal of fortune in some way, then ways to elevate your mood make sense and are beneficial.
If it's structural depression, and it's caused by neurochemistry, people need to see a psychiatrist or psychologist to work out a way to change their chemical composition. This includes pill-popping, of which I am generally skeptical, but it still has its uses, and changes in diet, sleep patterns and exercise.
If it's structural depression and its' caused by environmental factors - physical abuse by a relative, having an icky job, having no obvious future prospects for success and happiness, or being around bad people, then video games usually retard progress on dealing with the issue. Games become an escapist crutch that forestalls people fixing their real world problems.
It's not that it doesn't help the people who are isolated cope with their problem. I am sure I can find anecdotes for people whose only possible respite will be MMORPGs, but for most people most of the time, its net effect is detrimental rather than beneficial.
I don't know about you, but I know that I expressly seek out games wherein I am a badass who saves lives and gets the woman when I am in the throes of depression.
I don't understand why all you fucks are arguing over the 'type' of addiction an MMO may or may not have when the psychological effects (both carrot and stick, if I may remind you of Bill Roper's(?) speech) are plain to see.
There are different 'types' of depression, too. If you're just feeling down for a day or two over a reversal of fortune in some way, then ways to elevate your mood make sense and are beneficial.
If it's structural depression, and it's caused by neurochemistry, people need to see a psychiatrist or psychologist to work out a way to change their chemical composition. This includes pill-popping, of which I am generally skeptical, but it still has its uses, and changes in diet, sleep patterns and exercise.
If it's structural depression and its' caused by environmental factors - physical abuse by a relative, having an icky job, having no obvious future prospects for success and happiness, or being around bad people, then video games usually retard progress on dealing with the issue. Games become an escapist crutch that forestalls people fixing their real world problems.
It's not that it doesn't help the people who are isolated cope with their problem. I am sure I can find anecdotes for people whose only possible respite will be MMORPGs, but for most people most of the time, its net effect is detrimental rather than beneficial.
Didn't you just say that everything is chemicals, i.e. that all depression (and all other psychological states) are caused by neurochemistry, i.e. invalidate your own point?
Well ege02, I think we're just going to have to agree to disagree on this because our ideas of what constitues being successful in a game are irreconcilable.
Everything you've listend as being "necessary for success" in WoW I see as being self-imposed, or peer-imposed goals and limitations. The fact that your guild requires a certain level of attendance or dedication is not the fault of WoW's but of your guild's. There's nothing preventing you from joining a more casual-friendly guild who only raids once every weekend if you must raid.
Raiding is a mechanism that was implemented into the game for people with the desire and disposable time to take advantage of them. If you don't have time or the inclination to raid, no one says you HAVE to, except maybe your guild or your own expectations about yourself in the game.
To give you an example of what I mean:
Before the expansion, I casually raised my Hunter to 60. I greatly enjoyed the ride, playing mostly on my own and only making few friends in the game. At this point, you're right, I felt that in order to keep progressing, I began to feel pressure to join a big guild and start doing the so-called "end game" content.
By and large, at this point, the game went from enjoyable passtime to obligation. I stuck with my guild for some time, went through each of the main end-game instances, simply because I wrongfully believed I "had" to.
I was wrong.
I didn't have to do a damn thing. Like I stated before, that fallacy was in my head. It took the Burning Crusade to remind me of this. Once the level cap went up and I was free to quest casually again, it reminded me of why I enjoyed WoW in the first place. My guild rushed to 70 so that they could prepare for the new endgame and be "uber" again, while I lagged behind, enjoying the new scenery offered to me by the expansion as well as the quests and so on. Eventually, my guild started raiding again, leaving me in the dust. Without remorse, I said goodbye and quit.
Now, my Hunter sits, unplayed at level 65, as I've started a new character (blood elf priest) which I play casually with my girlfriend and my real friends. I'm having a blast again, and I don't feel obligated or pressured to show up.
I'm telling you this to reinforce the point that to me, the enjoyment you get out of a video game comes from your own expectations of it, not an artificial one imposed on you by others.
Now if you want to blame the game for allowing people to gather in large groups and take on challenges, go right ahead, but at no point does the GAME penalize you for not showing up every second night to play, only your guildmates.
Societal pressure, in this case, is what is "forcing" you to dedicate all this time to the game, not Blizzard. Heck, Blizzard has even implemented a limit on how often you can re-do an instance to prevent people from dedicating all of their time to doing and re-doing an instance. You have to wait a week before going through an instance again after you've cleared it! If Blizzard really wanted you to stay in the game all the time, why wouldn't they make all the epic loot available at all times by allowing you to re-set an instance as often as you want?
From what I can tell, you resent the game from "forcing" you to dedicate so much time to it. I maintain that the game has done no such thing, that the "forcing" is happening in the form of your teamates and your self-imposed desire to be "uber", for the sole sake of being able to compete with other "uber" people on your server, bragging rights, or whatever.
I'm having plenty of fun in WoW with my crappy green gear, thank you very much.
Okay guys, I have just spent all of yesterday playing Second Life and I have to say it's strange how an empty schedule can make you addicted to a game. Rarely do I play like this but yesterday I must have played it from 11 in the morning to 1 in the morning the next day... Granted it was full of priceless memories, I actually had a ton of fun and but this should be much more of a casual thing rather than "Drain empty pointless hours here". I guess that is why some MMO's have their downsides, there isn't always something fun to do right off the bat... often you have to wait for a raid group and such which really puts the hurtin' on some people's schedules.
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That's beside the point. The point was people were comparing Video Game addiction to Drug Addiction, namely, Crack. No one mentioned Marijuana, so stop bandying it around as the poster child for how drugs aren't really that bad. As I stated in my previous post, the chemical dependency created by Crack, to be specific, is a problem which causes actual physical harm to the otherwise addicted person, something that Video Game addiction does not. No matter how habitual your video game habit is, you will never develop a physical dependancy. In other words, if one is to be rid of their addiction to Crack, or Alcohol, one must submit oneself to a dangerous and difficult detoxification program, as well as therapy (wether group or through a specialist), that might be required for the video game addict. As was stated before, the parallel between gaming and gambling addiction is fair, the one between gaming and drug addiction is not.
I also wanted to address the person who posted about how books are far more valuable than games.
To that I say: it entirely depends on the book and the game.
Thanks to the games I've played, I have learned about world economics, history, works of classical literature, learned the rules of sports that I had otherwise no interest in, developed an interest in linguistics and honed my basic math skills, among many other things I'm sure.
I would venture to say that the things I've learned from games far outvalue the things the lady on the bus who reads nothing but harlequin romance novels has learned.
My interest in games has lead me to pursue the arts and literature, so dismissing them as having no value is offensive to me, as it has proven to me to be not only an outlet, but also a gateway to the larger world, as I'm sure they have been to others.
I tend to think that people addicted to video games could just as easily be addicted to other activities, such as gambling or what have you.
In my opinion, video game addiction is probably more of a symptom of other problems (depression, social anxiety disorders, etc), then the actual disease. Focusing on the video game part of a person's problem seems like an excessively narrow way to look at someone having major issues
I also worry that by concentrating on the "video game" portion of a person's problems, they may not get the best care they could have if they were being treated for the root causes of their problem. I'm not a psychologist, nor have I studied pysch, so I may be totally off base on that I guess.
Has television ever been studied as addiction? I mean, it must have been at some point I would think, and that would seem like a somewhat comparable activity,
Okay, fair enough. I agree with everything you've said here.
Well, first I want to make sure it's clear that I'm not suggesting legal intervention. I don't think the effects of video game addiction are nearly as serious as the effects of drug addiction or gambling addiction, so they don't warrant state interference. I don't think you suspect that I'd argue such a thing, but I could just see somebody coming into the thread and accuse me of being a nanny-stater when that's not what I'm arguing in this case.
Anyway, I dunno if I'd boycott a company just because they produced an addictive game. I don't really believe in boycotts anyway. And I'm not going to accuse them of the flagrant irresponsibility shown by the tobacco companies. I think the MMO companies are not evil, just naive. I do think that they should do more to entice people who play in shorter play sessions specifically for the reasons you've mentioned - it could be a lucrative market, we're talking professional people with lives and money who can only play a few hours a week, their monthly fee is worth just as much and they use up fewer network resources.
What I like to see are things like WoW's rest system, which encourages people to take breaks. More bind spots so corpse runs aren't as long. Fast travel systems available at all levels so you don't have to spend hours running from hunting spot to hunting spot. Content that's conducive to shorter play sessions. Luckily I think most American MMOs are swinging this way - each successive generation of MMOs seem to be more casual-friendly than the last. It's games that are popular in the southeast Asian market like Lineage that really need to reconsider their design visions.
Something that I've advocated on more than one forum is the idea of incremental questing. Let's say we determine that a certain raid drop is worth X number of dragon kill points or whatever the raiders are calling it these days, and that translates to Y gamer-hours. So for example the devs decide that the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch is worth 20 hours of an experienced gamer's time. They should also implement a quest for the Divine Explosive of Antakya, a very similar but not quite identical item, that can be obtained through 20 hours of single-group and solo content. Why? Because raids require that you be online for 4-6 hours at a time during prime time - long play sessions that require that you give up other social interaction. If I want to play for 2 hours a day between 6-8 am before work, or 3 hours a session at 2 am on a Saturday night after I've come home from the bars, not only can I not experience anything even remotely resembling the true high-level game of fantasy MMOs like EQ or WoW, but I can't get even remotely the same rewards. And why not? I'm willing to put in the same amount of time and the same amount of work - I'm just not willing to do it at 6 pm PST on a weekday night. Raiders say that this means I'm a less dedicated gamer and I deserve lesser rewards. Okay, fine, I'll be okay with that - but at least offer me content that, if not equal, is at least a close second place rather than giving raiders the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch while giving me the Shitty Vendor Trash Drop of Suckage.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
The difference is that the dopamine/opioids from an endogenous source (i.e. a needle) messes with your system. Dopamine/adrenaline is the payoff for games like WoW - it's a feel-good chemical. Hence extreme sports 'adrenaline junkies' are engaged in the same physical reaction as junkies as are WoW players. It won't flood your receptors endogenous substances like heroin do, letting you OD + shutting down all of your endorphin production. But the same behavioral/chemical response - getting a feel-good chemical in response to a stimulus - applies. Hence, you become chemically addicted to the behavior triggering the stimulus. It's not as bad for the reasons discussed, but it's the same chemical and physiological process.
The guy who died of dehydration or a burst bladder or whatever in south korea playing starcraft wasn't doing some psychological thing alone - it was chemically based. Our ENTIRE BRAIN is dependent on chemical stimuli. Trying to posit some sort of 'will' that can overcome 'weakness' in the human brain is like 18th/19th century philosophy of mind crap.
Thats interesting to me in that CoH has many of those things. Fast travel available early (you can get a jetpack by level 5), no corpse runs since there isn't "loot" in the true sense, ability to get stuff done in short play sessions, at least at lower levels, as well as a system where players of any level can team together(sidekicking).
Ideally, we'd get games combing all those features, but I think we'll have to wait for another generation or two of MMO's to come along for that to happen.
I played CoH for the first year it was out and found it very shallow. Fun, kind of arcadey, but not nearly as deep as other MMOs. Not a criticism, it's aimed at a different crowd, but kind of apples and oranges.
I assume other people have said this, but ANYTHING can be addictive if a person can be addicted to it. Video Games do not exhibit some unique quality. EVERYTHING could be on that list.
I don't know. Why do people bother with non-MMOs? Why do people play Halo, or Starcraft?
I'll tell you the reason: because those games are capable of providing entertainment in ways that are not conducive to addiction. When I get bored I turn on my Xbox360 and I play a few games of Halo 2, then I turn off the Xbox and do other things. There is no game mechanic there pressuring me to sit in front of it for hours at a time; I don't feel like shit for skipping raids and missing out on shiny loot.
There is still reward there, in Halo, a sense of progression -- albeit a far weaker one -- but that is fine because, guess what, people still play it.
And that business model works too, and it's far less harmful to the player.
This is a good argument. Like Feral says:
And I struggled with this for a while...
...until I took macroeconomics, which taught me about the concept of sunk costs, among other things.
It's true that casual gamers use up less bandwidth and server resources, but that has no effect on the company's decision-making process since servers and bandwidths are already paid for.
Secondly, the thing about casual gamers is that they are unreliable customers; you don't know when they are going to cancel their subscription and move on to another game. From a business forecast perspective this is a bad thing. Instead, you want people to invest significant amounts of time and energy into the game so that quitting is more difficult for them. Hence, they become more reliable customers, even though they are technically paying the same amount.
Not only that, hardcore players are much more likely to come back after being burned out and quitting.
Thirdly, hardcore players also buy other game-related merchandise. They buy hats, t-shirts, collectible cards. They attend BlizzCon, which generates a ton of revenue. They tell their friends about the game and pressure them to "give it a try" (and the game has trial subscriptions for this very reason). Furthermore, they are much more likely to play future games by the same company, especially if it is the same franchise (for example, World of Warcraft 2).
A hardcore, dedicated player is far, far more valuable to the company than a casual one with questionable loyalty.
It is true that games can be a good, fun introduction to topics you would otherwise never discover.
But the fact of the matter is that those topics tend to be very limited in scope, and the depth of their coverage within the game tends to be shallow. And since we're talking about playing games at the expense of reading books here (or vice versa), and not your particular case where you have used games to gain an interest in certain fields, this is what matters for the purposes of discussion.
And honestly, how many people possess the same level of curiosity as you do? How many people go look up the literative origins of elves and orcs after playing WoW, and find themselves immersed in Tolkien or something? My guess is, very few.
The difference is that fast food companies are required to inform their customers about the shit they put in their food. If you go to a McDonalds and ask them what they put in their BigMac, they have to hand you a nutrition label. Can I expect the same amount of informational forthcomingness from Blizzard? Considering how absolutely secretive they are about their game, I strongly doubt it.
And let me point out that fast food companies over the past 5 years have been making serious effort to make their foods more healthy, at the expense of taste. Maybe they figured killing their customers isn't the best business practice, hmm?
MMO developers, not so much. Or at least, not yet. But there is one thing that will get them to start considering it: public awareness about how terrible their games can be.
So, um, I think you mean 'exogenous' - from an external source - when you refer to heroin.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
yeep! that's what i get for doing this on little sleep (boo harry potter) i'ma go edit now..thanks.
Normally in this situation I'd come in and say something about EVE but I think we all know I kind of have a love/hate relationship with the game. But! I do think one of the better things the game did was decouple improvements in your character stats from an actual in-game grind. There still is a grind (for money) but by virtue of the stunningly good economic system you can do as little or as much as you want for that.
This isn't ideal, but it's getting there - somewhere there's a balance between rewarding people for "commitment" - which people do want to be rewarded for, and providing accessibility to the general populace.
Psychological dependence is usually much much worse.
People can handle pain better than a craving.
If you have a choice between goofing off and taking care of your responsibilities, and you constantly choose to goof off, you'll lose out in the end, and you'll deserve to.
Most of the time, you get out of life what you put into it, and that's as close as life ever gets to being fair.
Now, what's important is to stop making excuses for people who choose to ignore their responsibilities. I play a few hours of WoW most weeks, and I play games in general more than most people do, but I still know when to put the games away and take care of business. Most of the time. And if I were harder-working, if I devoted more time to finishing more of my projects, I'd have a more successful life. I know that. I don't always make the best use of my time, but it's always my choice how to spend it. Not Blizzard's, not anyone else's but mine. And more people need to realize that, instead of pointing fingers elsewhere and trying to find excuses to fail.
Before MMOs were big, I knew a guy who decided to drop out of school and play Counterstrike all day. His long-term goal was to die of malnutrition before he was 30. Not sure if he ever succeded. Before that, another guy did the same thing, only with bridge and poker.
Labeling these things "addictive" just artificially shifts responsibility away from where it belongs — with the people who choose to play all day.
Whatever you want to call their playing style, people have responsibilities, and they can either fulfill them or not. Nothing prevents them from making either choice. Yeah, some people can be their own worst enemy — I can be mine sometimes — but that's their problem to solve, not Blizzard's to be sued, condemned, or regulated for.
Take gambling. Gambling's an easy one because the response/reward pattern is so clear cut. The reinforcement inherent in a slot machine's design is phenomenal. The pattern of payout, the investment of the player, the physical interaction, the lights; all of this creates a system of reinforcement that the human brain is designed to respond to. That's what makes gambling addictive and that's why it ruins lives and that's why it's taken seriously. Blame shifting doesn't even come into it until you understand the mechanism.
So the question is, how do these reward systems play out in various types of video games. I think that's where people need to start looking before you can make any rational argument about potential addictiveness, and where responsibility lies. So, just out of curiosity, what are the kinds of patterns of reinforcement built into MMOs?
Doctors reject the idea that video game addiction is a mental disorder akin to alcohol
They say that more research should be done - but seem to think that there isnt anything to indicate that holds any special properties making it a risk.
In the same sense that you're chemically addicted to breathing, yes. But that's not a terribly useful way to frame the term "chemically addicted".
So how exactly do people get over things like depression or quit smoking without drugs? I mean, there's no such thing as willpower afterall, just chemicals that decide what you're going to do. I can hardly blame you if the chemicals in your brain force you to run over puppies with a lawnmower or what have you. That would be, like, sooo 18th century of me.
Not quite. A drug is, technically speaking, anything that changes your body's natural chemistry. By that definition anti-perspirant and toothpaste are drugs, and yes it's possible to become chemically dependant on those drugs even if it's only to a very minor degree and it doesn't last any longer than a couple days beyond the cessation of it's use.
I think video games are addictive. I don't honestly, realistically consider things like anti-perspirant or toothpaste to be "addictive" within the scope of this discussion, I don't think it's the same thing, but I do consider video gaming to be addictive. It's primarily psychological and habitual, but so is the addiction to smoking. Yes, the chemical addiction to nicotine is very real, but that addiction is only a very small part of the over all addiction to "smoking" which is primarily habitual and psychological.
Where I balk is when peopel try to classify anything that's addictive as a "disease". I have a real problem with that because it means that the addiction itself isn't the problem of the individual. It's a complete abdication of repsonsibility. "It's not my fault because I'm addicted to something that makes me act like a fuck-head, and that addiction isn't my fault because it's a disease and I ahve no control over it!" Nuh-uh, not good enough. Man up and take responsibility for your behaviour.
-Robert E. Howard
Tower of the Elephant
Bull.
We're only talking about MMOs here since they're the most flagrant offenders when it comes to attracting addicts. But let me tell you, when I was a kid, I was totally and completely addicted to my NES/SNES. I would stay up at night dreaming of even the shittiest games. Heck, I skipped two days of school to finish Who Framed motherfuckin' Roger Rabbit on the NES. ROGER RABBIT! I was lucky, I had a strong support structure at home and parents that made me get out of my fucking room from time to time despite my vehement protestations. Eventually, they sold my SNES on me and forced me to get a life. I am positive that having to do that was a heart-wrenching decision for them, but it was the right one. Thanks to them, I am able to enjoy my hobby in moderation while enjoying a good job, a beautiful girlfriend and all the other good things life has to offer.
I had (maybe still do have) issues as a kid and my family helped me overcome them. It's not Nintendo's fault I might have missed out on some opportunities as a kid. Heck, it was almost despite them that I was addicted! The addiction was a problem in my own psychological makeup. The fact that it was video games I was addicted to was inconsequential, I could just have easily been addicted to He-man figurines or bad sci-fi, like some other friends of mine were, often re-reading the same book over and over in lieu of partaking in ostensibly "healthier" activities.
What I'm saying is that I take exception to the notion that MMOs building addictive properties into their games is somehow more reprehensible than any other type of video game out there. The conventions of MMOs are what makes them MMOs. It's a genre that dictates: "Hey, this is a game that you can play with a whole bunch of strangers from around the world and do shit with them". If you feel somehow diminished because you can't make time to play the game with other people to complete content that was designed for large groups, that isn't the game's fault. Heck, if I can't make a raid or whatever, I say "sorry guys, can't come tonight, good luck!" and leave it at that! The fact that not everyone is able to do that doesn't make Blizzard bad guys.
So, because not everyone is as inquisitive as me, the entire gaming industry should be dismissed as a worthwhile passtime? I was trying to point out the fact that there are redeeming qualities to games, that dedicating a lot of time to a game can be condusive to greater learning, and is not a complete waste of time as some people suggest. The fact that not everyone gets out of it what I do does not invalidate my point.
I object to your use of the word "terrible" here. You make it sound like, in order for a person to enjoy a game "properly", they must submit themselves to hours and hours in front of their screens devoting time to being "successful". This is patently false. How you derive enjoyment from a game is entirely up to you. As I've stated before, if you feel diminished because you can't reach certain goals within the game in a reasonable amount of time, that isn't the game's fault. The game isn't going "ha-ha, you suck" because you don't have every piece of epic loot you want, that fallacy is in your head.
I never got all of acheivements in Geometry Wars. I guess that makes me less of a person.
And if game makers are so irresponsible, how do you account for Blizzard taking out their old "honor system" model? The original intent of the honor system was to reward the players who had managed to earn the most amount of honor points in a week. What happened? Addicts began dedicating all of their free time to ensure they'd be at the top of the heap, forcing anyone else who desired that position to dedicate even MORE time, and so on and so on. A destructive spiral began to take place and the designers took note, removing that function from the game. From your cynical business standpoint, the honor system was an ideal model, as it caused the players to derive content from each other! You wouldn't have to lift a finger! But the idea got out of hand, so Blizzard kiboshed it. Let us also not forget how they de-emphasized large-scale raid content in the expansion, which seems to be the other major point of contention here. I think that certainly shows a degree of responsibility on Blizzard's part, and other companies are taking note.
Item drops are more or less the uneven, random payouts you expect from slot machines - in other ways it's more regular - grinding for XP and item collecting. So if you are goal-oriented you might stick around to get 'one more level'. Alternatively, those big raids can take hours on end to coordinate, so if you committ to it, you're stuck there for many hours on it.
I think this is exactly the point - Blizzard is recognizing that they are making content which is structured in a way that is socially destructive. They're more or less acknowledging the way the game messes with people by doing these things. Why would Blizzard do that? Because people a) acknowledge it's addictive and b) complain and c) they're afraid of someone else taking regulatory action in general.
It's precisely this type of discourse that prompts those changes. Blizzard rejected these horatio alger-like notions of 'self-discipline' when it concedes that some of its players are especially vulnerable to the way they set up the game.
Though I agree that Blizzard removing that functionality was a responsible action on their part, I don't agree with the fact that the onus was on them to do so. What they did was a good PR move in response to request made of them from their audience. However, I maintain that the original Honor system's intent was innocent and not a nefarious money making scheme on behalf of Blizzard. They wanted to institute a fun way to have PvP competition and it backfired, creating a legion of hardcore addicts who took the system to extremes it wasn't intended to go.
I think that, in this case, Blizzard removing that function from their game is not so much an admission of guilt as to the addictive nature of their game, rather than a sheepish withdrawal of a system who's addictiveness they underestimated.
To re-iterate, I'm not saying games or WoW aren't addictive, I'm simply saying that game creators need to be given some slack. They're not drug pushers.
Oh, is your point that developers probably aren't acting in bad faith when they make these things? I think you're entirely correct when it comes to the designers themselves. They want to make a fun game that people will play. But a large, corporate entity like EA is going to have zero scruples about making a game that will be maximally addictive (and allow things like micropayments, etc. to maximize profit w/playtime even if it's a flat fee monthly billing model.) So trying to give a blanket pass to game publishers because they're not drug pushers is a misnomer.
I agree with you in that it would be wrong to characterize Blizzard as a 'drug pusher', just like you say. But it doesn't mean what they're selling isn't addictive. And I think increasingly they are aware of it. The more they become aware of it, the lack of treatment and diagnostic options are less justifiable. They have an affirmative duty and obligation to clean up their human impact. Not because they're "evil" or anything, but because they make a product with negative externalities.
Arcade games are intentionally and sometimes retardedly difficult. Have you seen Super Mario Bros. in the arcade? WAY more damn holes to fall into. All over the place. They made the Nintendo version highly different. It has to be set up that way because it's a subscription. They need more quarters, as you will.
And yes, it's true that people pay by time period of the subscription and not the amount of time played, but seriously, the amount of time to it would take to get the gear to do arena (whether you PVP or go raid) is immense. It's not in their best interests to make it easy, or even moderately difficult, for people to get to the top. Otherwise, the profits are not as high.
I have to reiterate that while WoW is more addictive, that doesn't mean Blizzard should be responsible. As others have said--are we going to do the same thing to restaurants, TV, or anything else? Some people play a hell of a lot of Counter-Strike, but are we going to blame Valve?
Only if you assume that you're not responsible for your own diseases. If I ram my head against a wall 17 times, I'm responsible for that headache. If I go and have sex with a different hooker every night and contract HIV which I then spread to my significant other, I'm responsible for that infection. If I have bipolar disorder and I stop taking my psych meds and I go nuts and drive a car into a farmer's market, I'm responsible for those deaths. If I have migraines and I go out and eat a bunch of pepperoni pizza and drink a bunch of diet Pepsi and those foods trigger a migraine, that's my own damn fault.
Addiction is no different. If you have that disease you are responsible for obtaining treatment, avoiding disease triggers, and complying with the judgment of medical/psych professionals.
Also, the disease model makes medical and psychotherapeutic intervention more obtainable (by increasing public funding of it under public health departments and making it reimbursable by private insurance companies); it puts social pressure on the addict to go get treated (by painting the condition as abnormal and destructive); and it helps people to understand that there are significant medical and mental health ramifications to addiction. The disease model for addiction is very useful and makes a lot of sense.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
For example, you said that a bipolar person not taking meds is considered a person's decision. Under the disease model, many people say that there is nothing that could be done about many actions.
I can't think of a better alternative, given the context we work in, but it is not a perfect solution--too many people are liable to misinterpretation and then agency is often unacknowledged and medication is shoved at the wrong people.
Meh. If somebody really wants to avoid taking responsibility for their own behavior, they'll find an excuse, disease model or no.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Right. Individuals are going to be idiots no matter what. What model we use for anything here doesn't matter.
The APA, AMA, and American legal system make decisions based off this model--this does matter. I'm just saying the disease model, like others, is a flawed one.
I don't think you understood me. There are games out there that do not have to demand huge time investments -- usually in big chunks, at that -- in order to give the player a sense of accomplishment and reward. Before you say we're only talking about MMOs here, there are MMOs out there that have been able to get out of the Everquest-esque "raid or don't bother playing" model. EVE did it. So did Guild Wars. Both are very successful. So asserting that the addictive model is "part of the genre" is pure bullshit.
If the game design makes the player feel guilty for skipping out on raids and whatnot, yes, that is a problem in game design. This is especially true for players who play critical roles within the group -- say, the main tanks, or the healers, since their absence basically means the raid won't happen. I used to play a mage, so my spot was easily filled by someone else (although I still felt bad for not getting DKP), but when the main tank didn't make it, he got a huge deal of shit from everyone.
It very much does, as I would think that your particular case is more of an exception than the rule. Yeah, people learn things from games. But they also learn things from TV. There are some channels, like Discovery or History Channel, that are nice. Hell, you can even argue that you learned something from the last episode of Lost, or House MD, or Reno 911. Does this make TV a good educational tool? Hardly.
No, it's not.
The thing about games like WoW is that your character's power and status is a fundamental part of the enjoyment function. This is especially true since you play with other people, and the way they treat you is related to your guild status, or how shiny your sword is. Not only that, the PvP aspect is also very important; people don't like getting pwned left and right -- and that is precisely what happens if you don't have raid-quality gear. And again, this is especially true considering how much effect gear has on the outcome of a fight.
Saying that the amount of enjoyment you get is detached from your in-game accomplishments is asinine.
So if the game is dictating, "you must play this many hours with this many people for this long, and conquer this dungeon multiple times until the loot you want drops", yes, they are dictating how much I have to play in order to "properly" enjoy the game.
Let's not be fooled for a second here: the reason they took out the original honor system wasn't because they were concerned about the well-being of their players. When you think about it, Blizzard's main gripe with the system was that it was alienating a lot of moderately dedicated players, who weren't among the "most dedicated" few. Hell, there were magazine articles covering how stupidly designed the system was. Furthermore, it was also costing them their most hardcore players; if you'll remember from the WoW forums, there were a lot of threads by High Warlords saying stuff like, "I have reached High Warlord, has been fun guys, see you in another game" because they were burned out so much. The system was removed because it was generating so much controversy and frustration that it was bad for their business.
To give credit where it is due, yeah, I believe Blizzard moved in the right direction by making the game less raid-centric. At the same time though, they made up for it in other areas, particularly the PvP Arenas and a shitload of additional faction grinds. And the raiding aspect is still there; it's just more elitist (with more difficult encounters designed for less people).
Well, the APA and AMA making decisions based off the disease model is like American Hammer Association making decisions based off the nail model.
As for the legal system making decisions based off the disease model, I'd say that's a good thing. Across the country over the last several years there have been "drug courts" popping up - county criminal courts designed specifically to handle drug addicts. One of the common functions of these courts is to ensure that addicts have access to (and utilize) medical and psych professional help, rather than just throwing them in jail. Part of the reason these courts are comparatively better than typical courts at dealing with addicts is because they recognize that addiction is a disease and that addicts need help.
However, they do not let addicts off the hook when it comes to personal responsibility, at all. I've watched the Santa Clara County drug court in action and they are hardcore. They will scrutinize your medical records to make sure you're actually seeing your doctor; they require documentation from your therapist to make sure you're going on a consistent basis and cooperative with therapy; they will drug test as often as twice a week; and all this is on top of the typical 12-step requirements. They absolutely put their "clients" through their paces and a couple of the judges in particular have no problem throwing a "client" back in jail if they don't follow through with a treatment program.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I did psychology in college and there is some ridiculous stuff going on elsewhere; I'm mostly upset about the ramifications the DSM IV sometimes has and about some of the things that HAVE happened, so I didn't mean to make a pronouncement about...everything.
I don't understand why all you fucks are arguing over the 'type' of addiction an MMO may or may not have when the psychological effects (both carrot and stick, if I may remind you of Bill Roper's(?) speech) are plain to see.
There are different 'types' of depression, too. If you're just feeling down for a day or two over a reversal of fortune in some way, then ways to elevate your mood make sense and are beneficial.
If it's structural depression, and it's caused by neurochemistry, people need to see a psychiatrist or psychologist to work out a way to change their chemical composition. This includes pill-popping, of which I am generally skeptical, but it still has its uses, and changes in diet, sleep patterns and exercise.
If it's structural depression and its' caused by environmental factors - physical abuse by a relative, having an icky job, having no obvious future prospects for success and happiness, or being around bad people, then video games usually retard progress on dealing with the issue. Games become an escapist crutch that forestalls people fixing their real world problems.
It's not that it doesn't help the people who are isolated cope with their problem. I am sure I can find anecdotes for people whose only possible respite will be MMORPGs, but for most people most of the time, its net effect is detrimental rather than beneficial.
Didn't you just say that everything is chemicals, i.e. that all depression (and all other psychological states) are caused by neurochemistry, i.e. invalidate your own point?
Everything you've listend as being "necessary for success" in WoW I see as being self-imposed, or peer-imposed goals and limitations. The fact that your guild requires a certain level of attendance or dedication is not the fault of WoW's but of your guild's. There's nothing preventing you from joining a more casual-friendly guild who only raids once every weekend if you must raid.
Raiding is a mechanism that was implemented into the game for people with the desire and disposable time to take advantage of them. If you don't have time or the inclination to raid, no one says you HAVE to, except maybe your guild or your own expectations about yourself in the game.
To give you an example of what I mean:
Before the expansion, I casually raised my Hunter to 60. I greatly enjoyed the ride, playing mostly on my own and only making few friends in the game. At this point, you're right, I felt that in order to keep progressing, I began to feel pressure to join a big guild and start doing the so-called "end game" content.
By and large, at this point, the game went from enjoyable passtime to obligation. I stuck with my guild for some time, went through each of the main end-game instances, simply because I wrongfully believed I "had" to.
I was wrong.
I didn't have to do a damn thing. Like I stated before, that fallacy was in my head. It took the Burning Crusade to remind me of this. Once the level cap went up and I was free to quest casually again, it reminded me of why I enjoyed WoW in the first place. My guild rushed to 70 so that they could prepare for the new endgame and be "uber" again, while I lagged behind, enjoying the new scenery offered to me by the expansion as well as the quests and so on. Eventually, my guild started raiding again, leaving me in the dust. Without remorse, I said goodbye and quit.
Now, my Hunter sits, unplayed at level 65, as I've started a new character (blood elf priest) which I play casually with my girlfriend and my real friends. I'm having a blast again, and I don't feel obligated or pressured to show up.
I'm telling you this to reinforce the point that to me, the enjoyment you get out of a video game comes from your own expectations of it, not an artificial one imposed on you by others.
Now if you want to blame the game for allowing people to gather in large groups and take on challenges, go right ahead, but at no point does the GAME penalize you for not showing up every second night to play, only your guildmates.
Societal pressure, in this case, is what is "forcing" you to dedicate all this time to the game, not Blizzard. Heck, Blizzard has even implemented a limit on how often you can re-do an instance to prevent people from dedicating all of their time to doing and re-doing an instance. You have to wait a week before going through an instance again after you've cleared it! If Blizzard really wanted you to stay in the game all the time, why wouldn't they make all the epic loot available at all times by allowing you to re-set an instance as often as you want?
From what I can tell, you resent the game from "forcing" you to dedicate so much time to it. I maintain that the game has done no such thing, that the "forcing" is happening in the form of your teamates and your self-imposed desire to be "uber", for the sole sake of being able to compete with other "uber" people on your server, bragging rights, or whatever.
I'm having plenty of fun in WoW with my crappy green gear, thank you very much.