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Do we need another thread on MMORPGs and addiction?
Feral
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Yes we do!
It is a common premise that MMORPGs are more addictive than other video games. People spend lots of hours on them, kids in Southeast Asia forget to eat while playing them, etc etc etc.
It is a common counterargument that perhaps it's not that MMORPGs are particularly addictive, but that the kind of people who might choose to play MMORPGs are the kind of people who want to immerse themselves for long hours in a video game.
So how do we test that counterargument? A controlled experiment where we randomly assign people to play either MMORPGs or other video games... which is exactly what a researcher at Syracuse University just did.
The experimental design:
Abstract here. (Note that the participants were primarily white males. This may have affected the results.)
Each group's total playtime for the month was measured and compared, and each group was asked questions such as: "Did it [the game] interfere with academics?" "How did you sleep?"
Note that this design does not test the "addictiveness" in a medical sense of an MMORPG. Addiction is a loaded word, and the abstract at least avoided using that word. However, it does test whether the MMORPG genre itself affects game-playing-related behaviors.
The results?
On the one hand, MMORPG playing did seem to negatively affect the players' overall life and health. On the other hand, there appeared to be a trade-off - despite the lost sleep and poorer academic performance, the players enjoyed the game more and made new friends.
I do think that there is a certain amount of self-selection that goes on among MMORPG players - they're more likely to be people who want to play a video game for long hours. However, this new study suggests that MMORPGs themselves have design elements that make them more 'addictive' or at the very least more conducive to longer play sessions. I personally think that MMORPG developers should be cognizant of the potential addictive power of their games and take measures to make them more short-session-friendly - WoW's rest system, for example, rewards people for taking longer breaks between play sessions. To contrast, the travel system in original Everquest - where it could take a significant amount of time just to find a group and travel to their location - punishes people for playing in shorter sessions. MMORPGs should implement more features like WoW's rest system and fewer features like original EQ's travel system.
It is a common premise that MMORPGs are more addictive than other video games. People spend lots of hours on them, kids in Southeast Asia forget to eat while playing them, etc etc etc.
It is a common counterargument that perhaps it's not that MMORPGs are particularly addictive, but that the kind of people who might choose to play MMORPGs are the kind of people who want to immerse themselves for long hours in a video game.
So how do we test that counterargument? A controlled experiment where we randomly assign people to play either MMORPGs or other video games... which is exactly what a researcher at Syracuse University just did.
The experimental design:
Cognitive Daily wrote:Joshua Smyth recruited 100 college students to play one of four randomly-assigned video games free for a month. They played the games on their own time, in a campus "game laboratory" (or in an arcade for the arcade group). The only requirement was that they play the game for at least an hour a week. The arcade group could play any of the games in the arcade; one group played Gauntlet: Dark Legacy on a PlayStation 2; one group played Diablo II on a computer, and the final group played the MMORPG Dark Age of Camelot.
Abstract here. (Note that the participants were primarily white males. This may have affected the results.)
Each group's total playtime for the month was measured and compared, and each group was asked questions such as: "Did it [the game] interfere with academics?" "How did you sleep?"
Note that this design does not test the "addictiveness" in a medical sense of an MMORPG. Addiction is a loaded word, and the abstract at least avoided using that word. However, it does test whether the MMORPG genre itself affects game-playing-related behaviors.
The results?
Article abstract wrote:The MMORPG group differed significantly from other groups after 1 month, reporting more hours spent playing, worse health, worse sleep quality, and greater interference in “real-life” socializing and academic work. In contrast, this group also reported greater enjoyment in playing, greater interest in continuing to play, and greater acquisition of new friendships.
On the one hand, MMORPG playing did seem to negatively affect the players' overall life and health. On the other hand, there appeared to be a trade-off - despite the lost sleep and poorer academic performance, the players enjoyed the game more and made new friends.
I do think that there is a certain amount of self-selection that goes on among MMORPG players - they're more likely to be people who want to play a video game for long hours. However, this new study suggests that MMORPGs themselves have design elements that make them more 'addictive' or at the very least more conducive to longer play sessions. I personally think that MMORPG developers should be cognizant of the potential addictive power of their games and take measures to make them more short-session-friendly - WoW's rest system, for example, rewards people for taking longer breaks between play sessions. To contrast, the travel system in original Everquest - where it could take a significant amount of time just to find a group and travel to their location - punishes people for playing in shorter sessions. MMORPGs should implement more features like WoW's rest system and fewer features like original EQ's travel system.
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.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
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On the one hand, have someone play WoW.
On the other hand, have someone play a customized version of Diablo II in which the leveling system is slowed down to the point where leveling happens at more a MMORPG pace. So the game is still functionally the same, but it necessarily takes 10 times as long to complete it.
I think it's clear that MMORPGs are designed to encourage obscene time commitments, regardless of whether they're "addictive" in any sense of the word. But the nature of the gameplay has always made me curious. The actual combat gameplay is pretty... lame. It's point and click. Grinding requires that you basically point-and-click a bazillion enemies to death in turn. It's a kind of gameplay that I would think would be lambasted in a non-MMORPG environment. Yet people come back for more.
You might say it's the social environment, but most, or at least a lot, of grinding happens solo. You wander into a field and slap around enemies by yourself. It's often a bad thing if someone else comes there, because they might zomg jack ur lootz. But even though it sounds boring as fuck, it's a prereq to any raiding at higher levels, and people do it without complaint.
In short, on paper, it looks like a losing concept. And yet it isn't. I'd like to understand why.
Grinding also appears in non-multiplayer games. Diablo, like you said consists mainly of pointing and clicking on loads of enemies as do lots of JRPGs. The difference between these and MMORPGS is just that in one you fight until you get a bit of storyline and in another you fight until you get to a bit where you play with others. Levelling up clearly appeals to a lot of people.
Why is the lottery so popular?
An incentive does not require a genuine reward to be effective. That's really all there is to it.
The study might be new but the "addictive" design elements are known to have been in existence for a very long time. WoW developers at one point, when they were explaining the game's quest and leveling up aspects, admitted that they were very careful in designing the rewards to make sure players kept playing; the rewards were distributed so that they weren't common enough that they became meaningless, but also that they were given out frequently enough to make sure player interest is retained. So if addiction is related to the frequency and conditions in which the reward pathways in the brain are lit up by a stimulus, then yes, MMOs definitely have addictive elements, by the admission of the designers themselves (at least in the case of WoW).
WoW's rest system is a joke. It wasn't put in place to encourage people to take breaks. It was put in place to discourage them from feeling like they're staying behind their more hardcore friends, i.e. to make sure they didn't quit.
I like the system of Chinese MMOs better, where experience and loot gain and other rewards start diminishing after you play non-stop for a certain period. That's perfectly reasonable; you can still play, but the addictive elements are taken away after a while.
I find that the combat gameplay gets significantly more entertaining at higher levels in most games. At the beginning, you get one or two spells or abilities, so you run up and click your own or two spells or abilities over and over again. This is true of many action RPGs, not just MMORPGs.
I do agree, though, that there are more entertaining games out there. In terms of raw gameplay, most single-player games and FPSes are more fun. But it's hard to accurately criticize MMORPGs without playing them extensively as they change significantly as you level. My experience having a level 70 character in WoW is significantly different than any other MMO experience I've ever had before.
I would not play WoW or any other MMORPG if I did not have real-life friends who play. The multiplayer aspect takes the less-than-stellar gameplay referenced above and makes it much more palatable.
Yeah, I think that farming and grinding are shitty. They're just entertaining enough to not make me quit. (I did quit EQ over it.) And I think that WoW and all MMOs in general would benefit by requiring less grinding. However, it's necessary to have some solo-able content because solo content is, ironically, conducive to shorter ad-hoc sessions. If I only have 20 minutes to play, I'm not going to jump into a group. I'm going to solo for a little while.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
That makes sense to me, and I've been told that WoW's rest system was like that in beta, but the "hardcore" players hued and cried until it was changed.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
I've thought about this for a long time too. I've reached the conclusion that, in the end, it is about a player's desire to be appreciated and praised. Every time a player creates a new character to start the game from scratch, they do so with aspirations of eventually gearing up that character enough so that they dominate damage or healing meters, or mitigate the most damage when they tank raid encounters, or be popular in high-powered PvP endeavors such as the Arena.
These people admit that they find pre-end-game content boring as hell, which is normal when they've leveled up four or five characters to raiding status and are still making new ones. So why do they put themselves through this process that is by their admission little different from self-flagellation? The more and more I think about it, the more I find my explanation plausible: they don't feel appreciated enough in real life - maybe because of boring jobs, boring friendships, boring relationships and marriages - so they turn to a video game where they'll be liked and respected by like-minded people. And they do whatever it takes to get that.
From all my friends that have done regular 40-man raids, all their good stories are about stupid stuff that happened due to human interactions. The fun part was hanging out with 40 other people, not an actual game mechanic or feature.
It was weighted to arrive at the desired outcome from the start by the way they chose the games.
Care to elaborate?
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Problem is that the experience of having a level 70 character necessarily includes the experience of levels 1-69.
Point is I don't think you're right-- I think "I've played for thirty hours so far. I'm told after five hundred, teh gameplay changes considerably" is an apt criticism.
On the contary, I think the existence of Diablo 2 - a game that is one of the most notoriously addictive non-MMO games out there - among those games means that the games were not chosen to arrive at a specific outcome.
I mean if they had chosen a golf game, a baseball game, and an MMO, then I'd understand your concerns.
Or they could just find the endgame content more challenging and thus more satisfying to complete. I don't think it's fair to lump everyone into the same category as the shut in that needs appreciation because they're not socially able to obtain in the real world. The end justifies the means in this situation. And since they've done it so many times before, it doesn't take them long to do it anyway so it's not as though the process is some arduous journey. I don't think either of our descriptions quite describe every player, but I think they both describe a certain kind of player.
I know that I played these games because I liked playing with my friends and enjoyed the challenge of new and more difficult content.
Some MMOs have require a much longer time commitment? It took me about 25 hours to get to the level cap in Guild Wars while it took me about 150 hours to hit the cap in WoW for the first time.
And this thread is going to be a horrible clusterfuck of "WoW is a horrible game which is digital crack and only retards could possibly enjoy the repetitive gameplay"
(I may be biased)
It's cheaper than most gym memberships.
It's cheaper than learning a new sport or hobby.
It's cheaper than going to bars once per week.
It's cheaper than seeing two new movies at the theaters per month.
Hell, add to this the incentive to replace balanced meals with cheap snacks, and you get yourself one fantastic deal, economically speaking.
Okay, it's an apt criticism. You shouldn't have to sit through 200+ hours of meh to get to the fun part.
(Although honestly the point where WoW gets fun for me is around level 20, and I've heard similar sentiments from other people. If it really was 69 levels of suck then I wouldn't have bothered at all.)
However, I don't think it's accurate to say that the combat system of WoW or any given MMO is just point-and-click as it gets more complicated later on.
I do think that MMOs developers need to accept that many players don't need their hands held through the basics of RPG combat. Those of us who have played WoW, EQ, Diablo, etc. can easily skip the first 20 or 30 levels of WoW and still know pretty much what we're doing. They need to dump the newbie grind and replace it with a straightforward tutorial mode.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
Diablo 2 is also 8 years old (an eternity by the standards of the medium). It is extremely dated even compared to DAOC.
It would be like comparing how "addictive" Ultima I is compared to Ultima VII.
I don't think that I've ever met a person that plays an MMO that does so because it's cheaper than doing something else. Generally those people that don't do the things you listed weren't likely to do so anyway, and play MMO's. Granted, if your money is extremely tight, these things are correct but I think by and large economics plays little role in determining whether or not to play an MMO. I'm not arguing that it's not a great deal, economically, I'm just saying that I don't think most people take that into consideration.
Yeah, but even end-game content stops being challenging and satisfying after a period. Sure, for a while you and your buddies progress through content, fight new mobs and bosses and get new loot. But once the novelty wears off - and it always does - all you have got left is encounters you have done a hundred times and have memorized every aspect of.
The challenge and satisfaction of end-game content may appeal to new players, but not for most veterans.
I understand what the study was trying to do, and I've spent a lot of time thinking about what a better comparison would be in vain, but I have to agree with Riemann here. Diablo 2 is horrifically outdated and outright ugly nowadays, Arcades have virtually nothing left in them anymore, and Gauntlet, Dark Legacy was just not a very fun game at all.
And even then, comparing the amount of content in each game is wildly disparate, or the level of interaction with that content. It's an apples to ipods comparison.
I dread the upcoming Spore though. I reckon it will destroy me, even though I guess it's not really a MMORPG.
They obviously tried to choose games with similar features and content.
In any comparison on video games in any experimental design, there's going to be somebody who comes in and says, "Well of course it happened that way because the game they used sucked!"
People still widely play Diablo II. It's obviously still compelling for a number of people. I think you're overstating how dated it is.
the "no true scotch man" fallacy.
One of the justifications I used when playing WoW was that it was a lot cheaper than the 2+ games I'd be buying per month otherwise.
You know, the funny thing is you're right. Most people I know don't play MMOs because they're cheaper, at least not initially.
What I noticed however is that when they're trying to justify their (in my opinion) bad habits, the argument of saving money always, always comes up. I've tried to convince a lot of people to quit WoW, and at one point or another they have pointed out that they've saved a lot of money by not registering at a gym or not going to the bars like the rest of us did. And this is more true for my friends who made 35-40k than those who made 70-80k; the guy says he's saving money for grad school by playing WoW and you can't really argue with that reasoning.
Moving this out of an edit above:
This study is especially bullshit because time spent on these games is so very dependent on how much you enjoy that particular game and how it is designed. Their sample size is simpley not large enough to avoid having personal taste acount for more than the differences they saw between games - 100 participants total, divided among 4 categories.
Gauntlet Dark Legacy in the arcades is designed to be played 5 minutes max per session (coin op profits ho!) and the PS2 port of it is really sup-par (having played both).
I for one can't stand the interface for Diablo II. I bought it, have tried to get into it on multiple occasions. Yet despite being almost the exact "target demographic" of the game can't stand it.
Even among MMO players DOAC is a weird choice. It is on one extreme end of the MMO space in terms of gameplay. Someone who did not care much for PvP would not find much there. Whereas someone who would be turned off by (for example) LOTRO's lack of such might dig it.
Again, the sample size is way too small and and is populated entirely with college students from a single university for it to have any value whatsoever.
They tried, but it was really not much of a comparison. I think the closest thing you could get to it would be having them play Oblivion (or X3 versus EVE) or something, games that come close to having the same depth of content as an MMO without the social aspect.
The fact is, Diablo 2 and Gauntlet: Dark Legacy might have the same thematic content as DAoC, but the depth of content is absolutely different.
Every time I hear "DAoC," I think of it circa early 2002 when I played.
It wasn't very fun back then. Not sure if it's any better now.
I find it simply to be an easier(for people who aren't very good at it in IRL) way to socialize, often with persons you already share a common interest with.
It's probably a bit against what the study said, but I'm still holding the "MMOPRG's "addicts" of today are simply the IRC "addicts" of 10 years ago" line. Different people, same phenomenon.
It's true that the time investments have gone down considerably, but you'd be mistaken if you thought this is because Blizzard doesn't want their players to pay as much.
The real answer is bot programs, those little things you can set up in the background that will do quests for you or farm items for you while you're away from your computer. Back in the old days, the fact that grinding money required huge time investments was an incentive for people to use bots to do the farming for them. Now that they have Daily Quests with which you can make as much as 250 gold per day in just a few hours, the incentive to use bots is much weaker.
I mean there's a huge law suit going on between Glider and Blizzard right now that is focused on this whole thing, where Glider's main argument is that WoW requires significant time investments and Glider's purpose is to give players that don't have as much time a chance to compete. I wouldn't be surprised if Blizzard's main purpose in creating and expanding Daily Quests was to ruin that argument.
I loved Wing Commander II. One of my favorites ever. If I was assigned it in a study like this I would probably spend <1 hour a week just because I've been there, done that.
That is so fun. Especially when you blame someone else for it just before you do it.
Games that are not pay-as-you-play would naturally be geared towards giving you a rewarding experience as efficiently as possible so you're ready to buy another game.
Games that are pay-as-you-play would naturally be geared toward more and more investment of your time.
Arcade games, however, are on a difference scale. An hour a week or less at the arcade would likely pull in a good bit of money, more than an MMORPG.
So I would expect that a game that charges you by the month would want to encourage you to play for months and months (which, barring things liem the rest system, would likely tend to encourage you to paly all the freakin time), a game that charges you buy the play would want to hook you in and then kill you and ask for another quarter over a brief of time, and other games would encourage you to get a satisfying experience and then be done and buy another game.
And I definitely think that, if you spent most of your leisure time on it, an MMORPG is very cost effective. Like fast food is a cost effective way to get fat or craps is an effective way to spend time gambling.
However, I'm not so convinced that this experiment shows much. While I don't agree that Diablo II being 8 years old means much (look at StarCraft), I think that some factor ought to be included as to how successful/popular each of these games are in the marketplace. For example: I bet a Halo or GTA would score up there with the MMORPG or even higher.
This is another reason I think many people play these games, some things are just fun. MMO's allow you to (an extent) make your own fun whether it's with other players, the encounters or in a chat room.
You wanna know a more fun trick?
At the beginning, when everyone is in the tunnel, you type:
/me has reported you AFK. Type "/afk dispute" to dispute this claim.
And there's always like five or six morons who type it and get kicked out and everyone laughs.
Just a heads up, Blizzard won that lawsuit.
Yeah, not surprised.