A new article in the Sydney Morning Herald called "Beware, there be dragons" discusses issues about people becoming addicted to MMORPGs and other games, leaving them with no job, friends or family.
Dr Maressa Hecht Orzack regularly fields calls and emails from people hooked on World of Warcraft or from family members desperate for help. Orzack, an assistant professor at Harvard Medical School, is the director of the Computer Addiction Study Center (www.computeraddiction.com) in Belmont, Massachusetts.
Nick Yee, a PhD student at Stanford University, (www.nickyee.com) agrees. He studies World of Warcraft and similar games such as EverQuest. He has surveyed 3300 players and says as many as 50 per cent say they are "probably" or "definitely" addicted to the play.
Yee disputes the easy use of the addiction label these days. To him, addiction is a medical term, a description of a physical dependence on a substance. The word, he says, is too often thrown around loosely by the media and even players themselves. To describe extreme gamers, those whose play interferes with the normal functioning of their lives, he prefers the term "problematic usage".
Yee believes a game such as World of Warcraft can be enticing to some because it delivers a sense of empowerment that their real lives lack.
"For example, a lot of teenagers feel that they don’t have power in the real world - that no one really cares about what they do, that they really can’t be a person of worth in the real world," he says.
"But then they log on to these games and suddenly they are heroes. They can cast down a rain of fire, they can resurrect people from the dead, they can save other people. That gives them a real sense of value.
Sue Morris, a clinical psychologist originally from Sydney and co-author of the book Online and Personal: the Reality of Internet Relationships, talks to a lot of parents grappling with what to do about the lure games such as World of Warcraft hold over their children.
She worries about the "addictive quality" of these games and says there tends to be a technological generation gap - parents don’t really understand what their youngsters are doing when they are gaming online, making it hard to police.
Infofile
China has imposed strict time limits for people who play popular online games such as World of Warcraft, the Shanghai Daily reports.
The anti-addiction game policy was put in place last October and requires players to register with the government. It is estimated there are 26 million online gamers in the country.
After five hours online, the restriction discourages any more play by no longer allowing gamers to rack up points or weapons in the game.
Adult players swiftly condemned the measure, leading the government to announce last December that it would change it so that only those aged under 18 are confined to the five-hour limit.
Fun with fantasy
Of all the computer games played by Rob Pardo’s six-year-old daughter, she loves World of Warcraft the most.
"She has Barbie computer games, she has Sponge Bob computer games. But she always plays World of Warcraft," says Pardo, one of the wizards who created the phenomenally popular online game now played by millions of people around the world.
It’s not your typical title. World of Warcraft, also known as WoW, pulls you in from the very start - plunking you into an imaginary world with an immediate sense of purpose and adventure.Sue Morris, a clinical psychologist originally from Sydney and co-author of the book Online and Personal: the Reality of Internet Relationships, talks to a lot of parents grappling with what to do about the lure games such as World of Warcraft hold over their children.
She worries about the "addictive quality" of these games and says there tends to be a technological generation gap - parents don’t really understand what their youngsters are doing when they are gaming online, making it hard to police.
Read the article on the website for more info. There’s about four pages worth.
