World of Warcraft

I know this blog is supposed to be on the bigger movements of social change, but due to recent events in WOW life I have begun to think about gaming addictions and internet addictions.First up, let me admit to you that I am an avid WOW gamer. I like to raid, I like to arena, I even like to farm. While some of my peers and all of my elders frown upon this type of gaming lifestyle, I continue to play (even after briefly quitting for a month) because of the social element – single player games like Oblivion or even the Zelda on my Wii cannot seem to interest me in the way an MMO does. I am antisocial in “Real Life” and I find comfort in talking to friends I have in the game. Sad? Perhaps, but there are many more like me.

Recently, there has been a lot of bad press about young people becoming addicted to the internet. We have all heard the horror stories about youth gamers losing jobs, failing school grades, breaking up with significant others, or forgetting to eat and sleep and dying of exhaustion due to too much gaming over a long period of time. In this paper, the subject of the pitfalls as well as the benefits of gaming will be discussed.

As the world becomes more globalized, the preferred method of communication changes, and this is a fact we have to accept, for the better or for the worse. Ever since the advent of the internet some 20 years ago, we have been communicating less via face-to-face meetings, and have instead moved towards mediums like email, video conferences, and more recently, virtual worlds like Second Life. Second Life is a “3D online digital world imagined and created by its residents”. Since its launch in 2003, it has been growing in popularity as well as media attention. Recently, many business as well as schools have been creating “Second Life” Divisions, including universities such as Harvard and Stanford, so students can experience a cutting edge classroom environment and interact with real life classmates in a virtual world. Others users will be able to shop online in a more realistic environment, for example it is increasingly popular to shop for prom dress designs in a Second Life store. This allows people to interact within the comfort of their own homes.

Coat5 sums up why meeting people online is getting so increasingly popular. “An on-line community is one of the easiest ways to meet new people. Certainly it is very low-risk. I think this is mainly due to the essential informality of on-line conversation. Rather than being required to sustain a single conversation with one or more people, relationships usually form out of numerous, often short exchanges.” While these virtual worlds indeed provide increased comfort and ease of use, there have been numerous reported problems of these virtual worlds, mostly in the form of internet addiction. The problem is especially prevalent amongst youth living in developed cities. In large cities such as Hong Kong, this affects around 40% of the youth population. It is an addiction, because these youth experience the same cravings and withdrawal symptoms as say a compulsive gambler. They feel a need to log on to communicate with their online friends. Such addictions often create tensions between youth and parents, who often don’t understand the mindset behind this compulsive gaming, often like the tensions created between alcoholics and their family members. It is an addiction because it can be treated with medicine – in fact, experts like Maressa Hecht Orzack, director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at Harvard’s McLean Hospital, refers most of her Net-addicted patients to psychiatrists for prescriptions for antidepressants and antianxiety meds.2 Governments of large cities now find the need to launch public service campaigns to combat this, trying to educate students in school to learn how to play leisurely and not get absorbed into a virtual world.

Dr. Joshua Smyth of Syracuse University recently conducted an interesting study on the effect of gaming among college students. It is published in CyberPsychology & Behavior, 2007. The study involves dividing a group of 100 18-20 year old college students randomly into 4 groups. One group was asked to play at a video arcade, group 2 was given playstations, group 3 was given the PC game Diablo II, while the 4^th group was asked to play the MMORPG (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Play Game) Dark Age of Camelot. At the end of the month, the participants were asked to rate their experience in terms of hours played, overall health; quality of sleep; perceived academic performance; perceived social life; overall well being; how much they enjoyed playing the games; the likelihood participants would continue playing the games, to name a few. The results were very interesting. Group 1 played the least amount of time in a given week, only 2.1 hours were spent in the arcade, compared to an average 14.4 hours spend on DAoC in group 4. Group 4 reported the most amount of enjoyment from playing the game, but also lowest overall health, lowest in quality of sleep, social life, and perceived academic performance. It is evident that with the advent of MMORPGs, gaming has gone to a whole new level.

One of the reasons why it is easy for young people to become addicted to an MMORPG is its compelling, immersive, and socially rich environment. This is also coupled with the relative ease of achievement. While in real life, it may take a lot of hard work to earn the respect of teachers, parents, or peers, such goals are more easily met inside a game. In a game, there are fixed achievements – play well, earn game money, get good gear. If these goals are realized, then there will be people in the game who like you, want to play with you, want to be your friend. While this may be a minature representation of what happens in real life, things happen at a much faster pace, and by not having to meet face to face, the awkwardness of meeting or talking for the first time is eliminated.

Youth gaming, however, can also have benefits. The game environment can create positive identities that contrast with the environment found in schools. In order to produce good students, teachers must motivate students to want to learn, and cultivate a love of learning. This is where a gaming environment can come in. Typically the problem with students is the lack of motivation to study, and do homework, particularly on subjects they are not passionate about. In a school environment students are expected to be motivated by themselves, or motivated solely for the fact that they may be reprimanded by teachers or parents if they do not complete assignments on time. However, in a game environment where students are motivated to achieve their goals, it may be easier to instill values that are hard to teach in school. For example, leadership skills. In MMORPGs, where a group of people play together in raids to defeat “bosses” and receive gear, some of the best raid leaders are young people in their late teens to early twenties. In a game environment, they can be exposed to the responsibility of leading a large group of people, perhaps older and wiser than them in real life, but inside this virtual world they are on an equal playing field. Some of the raid leaders I have encountered while gaming are as young as 19 years old, but yet are extremely diplomatic about leading a group of people. Even if a leadership role is not assumed, there are various opportunities to work in a team; contribute to the team and think less about personal gains but rather max benefit for the group. Complex games like MMOs also promote creativity, problem solving skills and interpersonal skills. These skills are valued highly by society, especially large corporations which operate like this on a daily basis. Had it not been for such a virtual environment, in real life, it would be very difficult for young people to be trusted with an opportunity like this to build upon their leadership and teamwork skills – they may simply be shot down as being too young or too inexperienced.

The future in gaming is huge, and more and more companies are trying to develop the next “it” game. What is challenging for society now is to educate young people to be able to exercise control over game-time, without simply asking parents to turn off the monitor, which would simply create more hostility and tensions between generations. Instead, parents should try to understand why such activities are intriguing and help their children obtain a balance between real life and online life. If such a balance can be achieved, the many benefits to gaming may be realized to its full potential.

References:

1http://www.gamasutra.com/view/feature/1675/the_academics_speak_is_there_life_.php?page=5

2http://members.forbes.com/forbes/2005/0509/054.html;jsessionid= abcNy8Tflq7_67E–D3yr?token=MTMgTm92IDIwMDcgMDU6MjU6MTkgKzAwMDA%3D

3http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second_Life

4Coate, J. (1992). Cyberspace Innkeeping: Building Online Community. email; tex@well.sf.ca.us World Wide Web, http://www.sfgate.com/~tex/innkeeping

5http://crossgamer.com/games_v_board

6http://edugamesblog.wordpress.com/2007/10/25/ engaged-to-learn-study-shows-mmorpgs-rule/

Smyth, J. M. (2007). Beyond self-selection in video game play: An experimental examination of the consequences of massively multiplayer online role-playing game play. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 10(5), 717-721.