A New Drug
For most of my life, whenever I have had some free time, I engage in the completely unproductive activity of playing video games. I admit that with some chagrin, because I know that the rest of the world looks upon video games exactly as I described it in that sentence: “unproductive.” And that word is probably too generous a term for how some people feel about it.
From the evening my dad brought home an Atari 2600, about 1980, I have had no other hobby. Sure, in online Harris Polls and Zogby Polls, I say that my hobbies include “reading” and “sex with my wife,” but I actually read very little these days.
Anyway, recently, the Washington Post has been reporting on the negative impact of MMORPGs (Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games) on individuals and society, and I have read these articles with some interest.
One, Addiction to Online Games Spikes in S. Korea, details how 10 people have died from online game addiction in the past year. In America and South Korea, as well as elsewhere, therapists have established recovery centers for those seeking treatment for gaming addiction; and, as described in a recent article titled Lost in a Fantasy World, psychologists and sociologists are trying to discover why these games are so addictive.
One theory is that the plots of the games themselves are constructed in such a way that people with addictive personalities (like myself) find it difficult to stop playing. One young man from South Korea described playing from 8 AM until well after midnight, many days a week, and in the process he packed on ten pounds from snacking and eating only one meal of noodles a day.
This theory contends that the rewards for completing “quests,” not to mention the reward in itself of creating a character from scratch, outfitting them, and building up their skills, are so attractive that people become engrossed in constructing their virtual life at the expense of their real life.
This may well be true. Speaking from my own experience, before I was married, video games did have an addiction-like effect on me. I remember during Graduate School, I played the original Doom and (later) Quake as a stress reliever; my behavior displayed certain characteristics of addiction. I used games to escape from reality, to procrastinate on serious work I needed to complete, and to compensate for feelings of depression and inadequacy. Some Graduate Students probably drank or smoked too much to escape from the rigors of study; I played too much Quake, staying up until well past the point I should have gone to bed, at which point the stress relieved by the game had given way to physical exhaustion.
The game was an escape from the school pressures I felt. I knew it even then.
Also having played some of Blizzard’s RPGs, Diablo and Diablo II being my favorite with Warcraft a close second place, I know how addictive it can be to take a raw character in a Role Playing Game and begin the process of developing them. When I should have been writing short stories or reading a good book, I spent many, many hours playing Diablo II, searching for pieces of rare, special armor that when combined would make my character more powerful than ever.
When not playing, I searched online for “recipes” for the Horadric Cube, a device in the game that allows players to combine items such as clubs, swords, armor, and potions and create whole new, more powerful items from them.
Much of the attraction of these games stem from how these games satisfy the compulsive, consumerist desire to acquire new “stuff.” So I understand fully how someone might become addicted to an MMORPG like World of Warcraft, currently the most popular such game on the market. My understanding of myself and my own addictive personality is one reason that until recently, I have never played these games.
Another reason is my lack of sociability. The social factor in playing on-line, with and against other people, is also cited as a reason why people become addicted to these games. I’ve never had to worry about that, because I don’t want to play games with other people, or interact with other people while playing games. I’m a loner. And my inherent antipathy to social gaming has kept me away from online games in general.
So with these excuses and fears, I staved off trying an MMORPG for several years,. However, this weekend I finally gave World of Warcraft a try. I had a code for a 14 day free trial from a PC game magazine, so I loaded the demo from the CD that came with the magazine, and I signed on.
I must say, it is everything I feared. Addictive. Oh. My. Gosh. It is addictive.
I spent from about eleven until one-thirty playing the game Saturday night. Sunday night, I spent maybe an hour, from eight until nine. Afterwards on Sunday, I watched TV with Lynn until about 10:30, then went to bed. So by most standards I did not expend an exorbitant amount of time playing, but I can easily see how playing this game could get out of hand quickly. WoW offers a vast fantasy world to play in, many character archetypes to choose from, and interesting variability of experience.
Imagine for a moment that you are offered a chance to live in Tolkien’s Middle Earth. That’s a close approximation to playing World of Warcraft. Fantastic as it seems to you at first, there is a a real person behind nearly every character you meet: dwarves, humans, elves, orcs. There are hundreds, maybe an infinite number of challenges, quests, and mini-games. Or you can learn a trade or a profession and forsake adventuring in order to help other people on their adventures. There is a near-infinite amount of new clothing to buy and weapons and gear with which to arm and outfit yourself. The landscape is as infinite as the real world. There is no reaching the edge of the screen. Although you aren’t really living in Middle Earth, it’s as close as we can come to that same effect. Imagine that.
That’s the World of Warcraft.
Many of the reported negative aspects of WoW I have not found to be true. Critics complain that players find it difficult to find a good “stopping place,” by which they mean that point in a quest or activity where gamers know they can save their game and quit with a feeling of completion.
I did not find that to be true at all. In fact, since the game is automatically saved when you quit, you can quit anywhere you like. You might not have the sense of having completed what you were doing, but dealing with that feeling is one skill I’ve had to learn over the years. Especially if you’re a loner like me, you can quit at any time; I understand that it is harder to quit when you play with a group of people. Peer pressure can be felt in on-line games, as well as in real life. Imagine a football player suddenly leaving the field in the middle of a game because he has set an arbitrary time limit for his playing.
A lone gamer can say, “I’m going to quit at midnight,” and stick to that if he has willpower. No pressures, save internal pressures, are holding him to the game. I admit, though, sometimes my willpower can be weak, especially on a Friday night when there is no reason to get up early on Saturday morning. The latest I’ve stayed up to play a game (not WoW) is three AM, but that hasn’t happened more than twice.
Critics also complain that in online games, people often exhibit bullying, harassing, or otherwise negative behaviors. This was my experience with other online games, but not so with WoW. Other players were respectful and left me alone to pursue my quests. No one randomly murdered me and looted my corpse. Of course, I was not playing in a player versus player realm, where players are free to attack whomever they wish. In the “Normal” realms where I played, another player has to actually challenge me to a duel, and I have to accept the challenge, before he or she can kill me.
The sole negative experience I had was Saturday night, when a higher level player whose character was a Mage challenged me to a duel. She then proceeded to turn me into a sheep for the amusement of her and her party. After running around baaaaing for a time, I’d change back into my character’s human form only to be stricken with the sheep curse again, before I could even swing my axe. This went on until the Mage grew tired and released me. I simply abandoned the duel, figuring she was giving me an opportunity to escape.
The first character I chose for myself was that of a Dwarf warrior. I was playing in the realm called Thrall. Once you create a character in a realm, that character cannot move to another realm. You have to remember or write down the realms where you create characters, if you want to play them again. There are probably hundreds of realms to choose from, some of them “Normal” where a loner like me can simply go adventuring, and some Player versus Player and some Role Playing realms. In the Role Playing realms, you are expected to act “in character” at all times.
I named my dwarf from a favorite reference book, “Who’s Who in Anglo-Saxon England.” I chose Byrtnoth as the name for my Dwarf. Later, I created a human female warrior and named her Wilfrida.
One thing I discovered is that male players were constantly asking Wilfrida to join them in their quests, which she politely refused. I read in one of the WashPo articles that something like 80 percent of players are men, and only 20 percent are women, thus anecdotally considering the number of female characters in the game, it seems to me there must be many men like me who choose to play as women.
Or maybe I’m just a freak.
To summarize, WoW is far more like Diablo II than like the vintage versions of Warcraft. There are no resources to gather, no defenses to erect, no cities to build. The emphasis in WoW is on “getting and spending,” as Wordsworth wrote, and on completing challenges. Completing quests facilitates the getting and spending, rewarding the quester with treasure and other prizes.
The question is, having played the demo, am I now going to buy this game? It’s a tough call. I find the game to be really fun, even for someone like me who does not spend any time in the game “socializing.” But I do wonder if the game would lose some of its lustre after several months of playing. Would it begin to seem as repetitive and as lacking in variety as many games do, after a period of intense playing? Somehow I doubt that, since the game is never really “finished.” It is perpetually in development, and to some extent the people who play the game also create it, influencing events in the virtual world.
I just don’t know at this point. The game is intensely fun. I will definitely play it right up until the day my guest pass expires. Beyond that, we’ll see. To tell the truth, I’m afraid. I’m afraid that for me, a game like this could very well be like absinthe to Edgar Poe. A game can be a powerful stimulant. During times when you’re not playing, you are thinking about playing. Families can and do suffer.
I recall reading one story of a newly married couple. The husband was a WoW gamer before he married and continued playing WoW after marriage. His wife left him inside of twelve months because he appropriated every free moment for time to play the game. She began to feel that even if they had a child, nothing would change, except the burden on her would become even greater. The game can become an obsession, if not an addiction.
The question is, can it ever be a healthy obsession? Can the social aspects of gaming compensate for the fact that the gamer is nonetheless alone in his house at one AM, the blue glow of the computer screen dimming his watery eyes? I am not sure of the answer to those questions.
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Mel B. would have better things to say on the topic, but my two cents…
Video games are like any other diversion. You can do anything to the exclusion of your responsibilities and social contact, including staring at the wall, not talking to anyone. People just like to demonize video games because they glow and have microchips–it’s technology, therefore it’s evil.
If you have an addictive personality, you’ll be addicted to such. But as you said, if you keep an eye on the clock and keep a reserve of willpower, it’ll be OK.
The WashPo stories kind of also give an excuse to become sucked into such a world. “Well, the WP says it’s likely. IT can’t be helped.”
You enjoy it. It engages the mind, despite what people say about it being a complete waste of time. As long as you remember the willpower thing, even take a look at this entry every once in a while–but you seem worried enough that the worst shouldn’t happen–I say buy it. Hell, what’s the point of working so hard if you can’t let yourself have a guilty pleasure or 10?
Comment by Heather — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 1:20 pm
I agree that the dangers are overrated, although it is a little disturbing that ten people have actually died from playing video games. How does that happen exactly? Is it lack of sleep? An adrenaline overdose? None of the stories I’ve read goes into detail about how it happened.
I think it’s too easy to blame the game, and I certainly don’t blame the manufacturer for making the game “too addictive.” What, do we now need health warnings printed on video game packages? “Warning: Excessive playing of World of Warcraft can result in weight gain and divorce.”
Geez. Also, about that story of the wife divorcing her husband…someone in that same story commented that divorce was not the only alternative at the wife’s disposal. Probably the divorce was a result of something more problematic than just excessive gaming. Sometimes we look for external excuses for our own bad behavior, and games are a convenient scapegoat. That’s not to excuse someone who keeps playing to the point that his or her human relationships suffer. Merely to point out that ultimately, we all bear responsibility for controlling ourselves and keeping our lvies from spinning out of control.
Comment by Matthew — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 1:37 pm
I’m pretty sure the answer is ‘no’ on this one.
It’s funny, because it seems you and I have the same problems. In my case, it’s the X-Com games that I find to be completely and totally addictive.
Unfortunately for me, the only option to maintain sanity and and otherwise normal life is - not play them. Some people can, I think, have healthy ‘obsessions’. Though it wouldn’t be an obsession. But in this realm (video games), for me, it’s just not possible.
When I do let myself play, I do similar to you; play obsessively for a few weeks, thinking of little else, and then let it go completely and move on with life.
Very nice writing, by the way. Though maybe a little TMI about your “hobbies”.
Comment by Step — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 1:49 pm
With console and single-player games, the “letting go” is easier because there is a finite end to the game. Also, I find that as I approach the end, I begin to lose interest. There a re several games I have never quite finished because I reach a point where I know every inch of the game and every strategy, and it’s just not that interesting anymore. I don’t think WoW will have that same effect because the game is so open-ended and vast. So far, one vote for “yes, buy it” and one vote for “no, stay off that crack, Man.”
Comment by Matthew — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 1:57 pm
I don’t think the deaths had anything to do with an adrenaline overdose.
From what I read, it was a nutrition and sleep issue - mainly nutrition. The players ignored their bodies’ needs, and eventually their bodies just shutdown. Specifically, they ate junk food, didn’t drink (enough) water, and combined that with no sleep: your body can’t handle starvation or dehydration very well anyways, but to add exhaustion on top - probably led to heart failure, though I don’t remember reading the specific medical failure.
Comment by Step — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 2:45 pm
Lack of sleep, poor nutrition, general exhaustion…Heck, it sounds like I was risking death for the first six months after my son was born.
Comment by Matthew — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 2:48 pm
lol - good point!
Comment by Step — Wednesday, 30 August 2006 @ 5:40 pm
I think there’s always an effort to demonize gaming. For one, it’s usually done by an older generation that generally cares nothing for gaming. What did that generation do for pleasure?
I’ll admit I have a slight gaming problem, and like you, a major aversion to socializing with others. That’s one reason why I don’t do online gaming. I don’t want to have someone be nasty to me. I don’t want to meet new, superficial friends. Unfortunately, that’s where more of the gaming world is going.
My current obsession is Oblivion. Yes, I’m still playing that game. Oh yes. But I’m starting to feel like I need to finish. I don’t know if I’d be done with the game, or start another.
Oblivion is one-person and completely anti-social, Matt. Though there are plenty of idiots to socialize with on the game’s forums. It’s an RPG, and though it’s not literally endless, you can certainly play for a long time without becoming bored. There are a couple hundred quests and you likely won’t complete them all in one game unless you’re a schizophrenic maniac.
There’s also a very rich modding community out there — people who are creating new armor, quests, buildings and towns. So you never really have to finish with Oblivion. You can play your little fantasy without finishing or even pursuing the main quest line.
Do it. Get your game. Or better yet, go get Oblivion (if you can run it) and play by yourself.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 31 August 2006 @ 2:30 pm
Oh, and I forgot to say, no, it is not weird for you to play as a woman. There are a number of reasons a guy might do it. One … they’re truly dedicated to the game and want to try multiple characters. Serious RPGers craft many different characters.
Two … they like looking at a female body because they’re immature, ala why Lara Croft from Tomb Raider was created. Oblivion, which has many unofficial, gamer created mods, allows nakedness. And you can bet the main focus is on female nakedness, not male. Why? Because guys apparently like looking at pixelated Barbie dolls.
Three … they like masquerading and catching little homophobes off guard.
Because not as many women are gamers, guys get all excited when they run into what appears to be a female, because their little geeky selves think that if she’s a gamer, she’ll not only be cool but she’ll also understand the need to be playing the game all day.
I always play as a woman, but that’s because there aren’t enough games that allow that option. So when I can be a tough woman, I go for it. But guys don’t have that problem.
Comment by Mel B. — Thursday, 31 August 2006 @ 2:40 pm
So which category do I fall into? 1. Dedicated gamer 2. Pervert 3. Cross-dresser who calls out the homophobes
Maybe I’m a little bit all of the above. But more the first. I usually try all character classes in an RPG until I find one that I like best, that I can stick with all through the game. however, in Diablo II, the character I ended up completing the game with was an Amazon (a woman warrior).
It isn’t about appearance at all, though, because really you never see anything of your character but their backside. It’s about abilities and strengths and weaknesses.
I’ve been surprised how pleasant other players have been in WoW. If you play in a “Normal” realm, as opposed to “Player vs. Player,” people can’t kill you unless you accept a duel challenge from them. More than once I’ve found that when I’ve been in trouble, for example attacked by a snow leopard in the wilderness, if another player is nearby they are likely to come to my aid. I’ve just been walking around a town and an anonymous player has cast a positive spell on my character. Overall, the experience has been pretty positive. This kind of generosity is not what I expected from an online RPG.
I remember playing Warcraft III online and getting really irritated at high level players who went around targeting noobs like me, just to boost their standing. Not only did they beat me in five minutes time, but then they gloated obscenely about it.
So far, the sheep incident (as it shall evermore be known) is the only negative thing to happen to me while playing WoW.
And by the way, Oblivion sounds like the kind of game I like, and I’d like to try it sometime…but somehow I think I am going to get wrapped up in WoW for awhile (sigh).
Comment by Matthew — Thursday, 31 August 2006 @ 3:44 pm
Fascinating conversation. I’d like to say I have something to contribute, but I don’t, really. Frankly, I’ve always preferred pinball to strategy games (maybe I’ve just not tried enough of them?), always preferred the live silver ball rolling around and hitting buttons that light up and make noises, the crack of a new ball earned, that sort of thing. Sadly, there aren’t many pinball games around any more
I’m so obsolete…
Comment by Dawn — Saturday, 2 September 2006 @ 8:33 am
Speaking of games where other players surprised me with generosity - Kingdom of Loathing was quite an interesting game. I got addicted to that for a few months, and go back periodically. Unfortunately, the problem was I was spending so much time on it that I was neglecting other things, so I had to give it up and get back to life. I don’t seem to have a ‘halfway’ mode, unfortunately….
Comment by Step — Saturday, 2 September 2006 @ 9:39 pm
You can see the frontside of your character in Oblivion … mostly in a menu screen. But you can also view yourself in third person mode and use the camera to fully appreciate all your uh … attributes.
But if you want to talk incidents … some of the best fun I had gaming with nakedness involves Oblivion’s predecessor, Morrowind.
There was also an unofficial mod called better bodies … which made them look better in terms of seams and while we’re at it, let’s make it so they are anatomically correct.
The default state if a character is not wearing clothes, either in Morrowind or Oblivion, is wearing some sort of underwear-like garment. A step up from the loincloth, with the addition of a crude bra for women.
Anyway, in Morrowind, you play any number of random quests, and one is to help this warrior retrieve his special weapon. He claims a witch stole it from him. She also, uh, stole his clothes. So he’s now naked and wants to follow me to find this witch. I do find the witch and she explains reasonably that they uh … went off in to the bushes and he got abusive and so she put a spell on him and took his weapon and clothes. She offers to return them if he’ll just apologize. My choices: believe her or believe him. I tell him that he just needs to apologize and he says no. And he says if I won’t help him, he’ll kill me too.
Only at this point, I’m just wearing clothes and not armor to protect me. I like to look at my clothes. I’m a girl, and the armor is not attractive.
So the warrior ends up beating me to death. With his hands. Naked.
It was so embarrassing. I had to restore and rearmor and then kill a naked man. And it was still hard. The killing him, not anything else.
But it was hilarious having a naked guy follow me. Beating to death, not so much.
There’s also a den of ill-repute that I stumbled into. And all the dancers were naked.
Comment by Mel B. — Sunday, 3 September 2006 @ 11:55 pm
Dawn, there’s a Simpsons pinball machine in a local restaurant. I played it once, remembering my enjoyment of playing pinball as a child. Unfortunately, for me it’s not a game that stands up to the test of time. For one thing, depositing money for a few seconds of play doesn’t seem worth it to me. Maybe if I were better at it, I’d feel different.
Mel, that’s a pretty funny story. Also pretty disturbing that a game would include sexual violence, though it doesn’t really surprise me. I guess we can look on it as beneficial, in the sense that the player got to kill the perpetrator.
I was pretty hooked on the Sims when that game first came out for the Mac, and of course during a shower or while going potty the Sims characters’ genitalia are carefully blurred. There was a patch I downloaded that removed the blur. I did it not for any prurient reason, of course, but because it’s annoying to be treated like a child by a game manufacturer. Full nudity should have been a “parental control” option that an adult can turn off or on.
World of Warcraft is different than these games because it is played entirely online. The game files are stored locally, but I imagine it would be pretty difficult to mod the character files without breaking the game. For all I know, the files that govern character appearance may be stored online as well. That would make sense. Blizzard seems pretty intent on keeping the game family-friendly. They don’t even allow profanity while playing.
From reading the documentation and rules of use, my feeling is that any kind of hacking would result in swift punishment. Mostly, I think that’s a good thing, though a gaming purist might say that freedom to hack is a basic right of a gamer. I don’t agree with that point of view. Inasmuch as WoW is a virtual world, there needs to be some order imposed upon it so that the smart and strong don’t handicap the rest of us while making themselves more powerful.
On the other hand, late one night this weekend, I did see a character in WoW named “Analsex.” At first I thought, “That has to be some goofy Middle School kid,” but I’ve read that the average player of WoW is a male between the ages of 24 and 34. I guess if a character name is the only offensive thing I encounter while I play this game, I should consider myself lucky.
Comment by Matthew — Tuesday, 5 September 2006 @ 9:12 am