[Infowarrior] - As Virtual Universes Grow, So Do Ranks of the Game-Obsessed

[Richard Forno]

Lost in an Online Fantasy World
As Virtual Universes Grow, So Do Ranks of the Game-Obsessed
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/08/17/AR2006081700
625_pf.html

By Olga Khazan
Special to washingtonpost.com
Friday, August 18, 2006; 3:52 PM

They are war heroes, leading legions into battle through intricately
designed realms. They can be sorcerers or space pilots, their identities
woven into a world so captivating, it is too incredible to ever leave.
Unfortunately, some of them don't.

Video games have often been portrayed as violence-ridden vehicles for teen
angst. But after 10 people in South Korea -- mostly teenagers and young
adults -- died last year from game-addiction causes, including one man who
collapsed in an Internet cafe after playing an online game for 50 hours with
few breaks, some began to see a new technological threat.

Participation in massively multiplayer online role-playing games, also
called MMORPGs or MMOs, has skyrocketed from less than a million subscribers
in the late 1990s to more than 13 million worldwide in 2006. With each new
game boasting even more spectacular and immersive adventures, new ranks of
gamers are drawn to their riveting story lines. Like gambling, pornography
or any other psychological stimulant, these games have the potential to
thrill, engross and completely overwhelm.

The most widely played MMO, Blizzard Entertainment's World of Warcraft, has
6.5 million players worldwide, most of whom play 20 to 22 hours per week.
Thousands can be logged in simultaneously to four different WoW servers
(each its own self-contained "realm"), interacting with players across the
globe in a vast virtual fantasy setting full of pitched battles and other
violent adventures.

Brady Mapes, a 24-year-old computer programmer from Gaithersburg, Md., and
an avid WoW fan, calls it a "highly addictive game -- it sucks the life out
of you."

An MMO differs from an offline game in that the game world evolves
constantly as each players' actions directly or indirectly influence the
lives of other players' characters. In WoW, players can simply attack one
another, interact with the environment, or role-play in more complex
relationships. More time playing means greater virtual wealth and status, as
well as access to higher game levels and more-exciting content.

In addition, online gamers can join teams or groups (called "guilds" in WoW)
that tackle game challenges cooperatively. Fellow team members see
membership as a commitment and expect participation in virtual raids and
other joint activities. The constant interaction with other players can lead
to friendships and personal connections.
'All I Could Think About Was Playing'

"The main reason people are playing is because there are other people out
there," said Dmitri Williams, an assistant professor at the University of
Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, who has researched the social impacts of MMOs.
"People know your name, they share your interests, they miss you when you
leave."

As MMO fan sites filled with raving gamers proliferate, so have
online-addiction help blogs, where desperate recluses and gamers' neglected
spouses search for a way out.

"I don't want to do everything with [my husband], but it would be nice to
have a meaningful conversation once in awhile," writes one pregnant wife on
Everquest Daily Grind, a blog for those affected by excessive use of another
popular fantasy MMO. "He does not have much interest in the baby so far, and
I am worried that after it is born, he will remain the same while I am
struggling to work and take care of the baby."

Another gamer writes that she was angry at her boyfriend for introducing her
to online gaming, which began consuming her life at the expense of her
personal and academic well-being.

"But I think deleting [your] character doesn't work, because the game haunts
you," she said. "All I could think about was playing."

Kimberly Young, who has treated porn and chat-room addicts since 1994 at her
Center for Internet Addiction Recovery, said that in the past year video
game fixation has grown more than anything else.

"In MMOs, people lead wars and receive a lot of recognition," Young said.
"It's hard to stop and go clean your room. Real life is much less
interesting."

The trend echoes across the continents, with game-addiction treatment
centers cropping up in China in 2005 and this summer in Amsterdam. In South
Korea, where 70 percent of the population has broadband Internet access, the
Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity offers government-funded counseling for
the game-hooked.
'The Real World Gets Worse'

The games are set up to be lengthy, with a quest taking six hours or more to
complete. The organization of players into cooperative teams creates a
middle-school-esque atmosphere of constant peer pressure.

"You're letting other people down if you quit," Young said. "If you are
good, the respect becomes directly reinforcing."

According to research performed by Nick Yee, a Stanford graduate student and
creator of the Daedalus Project, an online survey of more than 40,000 MMO
players, the average player is 26 years old; most hold full-time jobs.
Seventy percent have played for 10 hours straight at some point, and about
45 percent would describe themselves as "addicted."

Yee believes escapism to be the best predictor of excessive gaming. A person
who plays MMOs in order to avoid real-life problems, rather than simply for
entertainment or socialization, is more likely to experience what he calls
"problematic usage."

"People feel like they lack control in real life, and the game gives them a
social status and value that they are less and less able to achieve in the
real world," Yee said. "As a result, the real world gets worse and the
virtual world gets better in comparison."

Liz Woolley, a Wisconsin software analyst and veteran of Alcoholics
Anonymous, founded Online Gamers Anonymous in May 2002 by adapting AA's
12-step addiction recovery model to help gamers quit cold-turkey. Woolley
recommends getting professional help for underlying issues and finding other
hobbies and real-world activities to replace gaming.

"Addicts want to live in a fantasy life because you can't do a 'do-over' in
real life," she said. "It can be hard to accept. You have to let them know,
'Hey, this is real life. Learn to deal with it.'"
'Every Player Has a Choice'

"People are reluctant to point a finger at themselves," said Jason Della
Rocca, executive director of the International Game Developers Association.
Excessive use "is a reflection of friction in that person's life. They
shouldn't use the game as a scapegoat."

Casual gamers may find it difficult to advance to the game's highest levels
in the face of more dedicated rivals, such as Mapes, the Gaithersburg WoW
fan, whose highest-level warrior character is a force to be reckoned with.
"If I go up against someone who only plays for one to two hours, I'll
decimate them," he said. "There are other games out there if you only want
to play a couple hours at a time."

That dedication sometimes pushes Mapes to see the game as more of a chore
than a pastime. "Sometimes I realize that I'm not having any fun, but I just
can't stop," he said.

Several of the MMO researchers interviewed for this story pointed out that
many game companies employ psychologists who analyze the games and suggest
ways to make them easier to play over long stretches of time.

Della Rocca argues that because online games' monthly subscription rates
remain constant regardless of how many hours a subscriber spends on the
network, developers profit less when gamers play more intensively.

The psychologists "monitor subjects playing the games in order to eliminate
flaws and points of frustration," Della Rocca said. "The notion that we are
trying to seduce gamers is a fabrication of people who don't understand how
games are developed."

Since Blizzard Entertainment released WoW in 2004, calls to Online Gamers
Anonymous have more than tripled, according to Woolley, who said the
industry is directly at fault for the suffering of the people she tries to
help.

"I think the game companies are nothing more than drug pushers," she said.
"If I was a parent, I wouldn't let them in my house. It's like dropping your
kids off at a bar and leaving them there."

The signs of excessive MMO use are similar to those of alcoholism or any
other dependency -- tolerance, withdrawal, lying or covering up, to name a
few. However, many in the industry are hesitant to call it an addiction
because, in the case of MMOs, the nature of the problem is based on how it
affects the user's life, not the amount of time spent playing.

According to tvturnoff.org, Americans spend an average of 28 hours a week
watching television, a fact that has yet to spawn a bevy of dependence
clinics.

"If a person was reading novels excessively, we'd be less likely to call
that 'addiction' because we value reading as culture," said the University
of Illinois's Williams. "We see game play as frivolous due to our Protestant
work ethic. There's plenty of anecdotal evidence out there to suggest this
is a problem, but it's not the role of science to guess or bet."

Mapes, who has played other engrossing titles such as Medal of Honor and
Diablo and eventually set them aside, said the decision to control excessive
gaming is one any player can make.

"Ultimately, every player has a choice to stop," he said. "I've stopped
before, and I've seen other people stop if they get burned out."
'No One Was Talking About It'

Woolley disagrees, especially after witnessing the bitter outcome of her
son's Everquest obsession.

Shawn had played online games before, so she didn't suspect anything
different when he picked up the newest MMO from Sony. Within months, Woolley
said, Shawn withdrew from society, losing his job and apartment and moving
back home to live a virtual life he found more fulfilling.

After a number of game-induced grand mal seizures sent Shawn, who was
epileptic, to the emergency room repeatedly, he chose to pay ambulance bills
rather than stop playing. The medical professionals he saw treated his
external symptoms but dismissed his gaming condition.

"They told me, 'Be glad he's not addicted to something worse, like drugs,'
and sent him home," Woolley said.

On Thanksgiving Day 2001, Woolley found 21-year-old Shawn dead in front of
his computer after having committed suicide. Everquest was on the screen.

Readers' responses to an article written about the incident in a local
Wisconsin paper poured in, and the national attention Shawn's story
subsequently received prompted Woolley to start up a self-help Web site. In
the four years since its launch, Online Gamers Anonymous
(http://www.olganon.org/) has had 125 million hits and registered more than
2,000 members, Woolley said.

"I realized that gaming addiction was an underground epidemic affecting
thousands of people, but no one was talking about it," she said. "I wasn't
worried about pressure from the gaming industry. I thought, 'You already
took my kid, you can't take anything else.'"