Doctor clarifies MMO addiction study

We've all heard the warnings before: If you keep playing those MMOs, you'll become addicted, or WoW players live in their parents' basement, never to see the light of day, or you'll shoot your eye out, or you'll grow hair on your palms. Many people proclaim to know what's best for everyone else, but recently a study by Dr. John Carlton of England's University of Bolton declared a similarity between MMO players (playing Asheron's Call) and traits common among people with Asperger's syndrome. In many media interpretations of this research, Dr Carlton's true findings were misconstrued.

So in a recent article at GameSpot, Dr. Carlton set the record straight. He explained that there are different levels of gaming "interest". There's a fine line though between the highly engaged and the addicted gamer. He goes on to clarify certain issues that were overlooked in previous news stories on this topic, including the fact that of the 391 people tested for this study, none were actually classified as having Asperger's syndrome. It seems the bottom line in his clarification is that more research would be needed to specifically say one way or another if MMOs actually cause addiction.