addicts
Latest
The Soapbox: Gaming addiction isn't about games
When I was 21, I was miserable. I was stuck in a long-distance relationship with someone I couldn't trust and could barely see, I was stuck with no real career opportunities, and I had my entire lifestyle ripped away from me unexpectedly. I felt like I was willing to climb, but I didn't see any handholds out of the pit I was stuck in. The only thing I looked forward to was the end of the day, when I could crawl into a game and let my actual day-to-day life evaporate into memory. I wasn't an addict. Barely. This isn't a plea for sympathy; all of this happened years ago, and it's not where I am now. Things got better. This is a talk that we need to have about addiction because the few times that addiction gets brought up, it's addressed by people who seem to have only the vaguest grasp of the games involved. Addiction isn't a result of game mechanics or playstyles or subscription formats or anything else. It's a result of people.
Eskil Steenberg talks LOVE, progression, and making indie MMOs
Eskil Steenberg's LOVE has been flying well under the radar of late, even more so than is usual for an indie MMORPG. A little phenomenon called Minecraft happened over the past year since LOVE's launch, and while both games hail from Sweden, that's about where the similarities end. In fact, comparing LOVE to any other game is rather challenging (but also instructive), as evidenced by a new Eurogamer interview. Steenberg is literally a one-man development show, and the piece covers a lot of fascinating ground including everything from how you measure the title against more traditional fare to how players react when confronted with LOVE's open-ended paradigm shift. Gamers will "play a game like mine... and they'll go back and play something scripted and say 'oh my God this is so archaic.' It's like if you play Dragon's Lair today. I'm not controlling it, it's all fake," Steenberg says. The interview also touches on why Steenberg opted for a non-traditional approach to massive development, or put another way, why he didn't fall into lockstep behind World of Warcraft (and EverQuest before it) as the vast majority of the industry has done. "I'm trying to do something completely different," Steenberg says. "What they're doing is limiting what you do. You follow, you grind upwards. [Progression] is something you should do if you want to make money because you get that hook. But I was never interested in making my players addicts."
Study claims internet addicted teens more likely to suffer depression (sigh)
1,041 Chinese teenagers got a clean bill of health; nine months later, 84 were diagnosed with depression. The cause? Why, internet addiction, of course. Dr. Lawrence Lam of the Sydney School of Medicine points the finger at "pathological use of the internet" as a major risk factor for depression, stating that those teens whose eyeballs were most glued to the screen were 2.5 times more likely to suffer from mental health problems. While Lam did guess the actual injuries were sustained from a lack of sleep due to late-night surfing and the ever-popular scapegoat online gaming rather than the direct effect of Hypnotoad, the good doctor reportedly didn't hesitate to call for school screenings and subsequent treatment for internet overuse as a result. It's perhaps worth noting this study comes from the same man who claimed (in 2009) that internet addicts were twice as likely to maim themselves.
China bans corporal punishment in internet rehab, UK and USA open up their own clinics
China's, how to say this, unorthodox rehabilitation methods, which involve "beating and confinement" of internet addicts, have finally been fully outlawed. Following the death of one teenager due to the treatment he received at an addiction camp, the Chinese Health Ministry has come out with a statement to say corporal punishment and methods restricting personal freedom "are strictly forbidden." In the meantime, the UK and USA are playing catch-up by opening up their own computer addiction camps, which have been described as residential internet detox clinics. Their genius ploy to get you off the web juice has been to go cold turkey and teach people to do chores as a distraction (really, chores and boredom are the cure and not the disease?). The British version even has a 12-step program, but we advise doing what we all did -- if you find yourself spending most of your time on the internet, just become a full-time blogger. Read - China bans tough treatment of young Web addicts Read - Britain's first computer rehab clinic opens Read - Clinic for internet addicts opens in US
FOX news covers WoW's Zombie Invasion
FOX news picked up the story of the big zombie invasion, citing that the plague came to an end on Tuesday. They covered the event as a deliberate contagion that, if left "untreated," would turn you into one of the "flesh-eating zombies." Like our own Mike Schramm, FOX parallels this purposeful in-game disease with the previous accidental "Corrupted Blood" plague. I love it when WoW is in the news. I love it even more when the media's not talking about us being game-addicted fiends smashing the buttons for our Pavlovian treat. While FOX's story isn't exactly ground-breaking info for those of us toiling against the continuing Scourge invasion, it might reach a few of our friends and coworkers and convince them to give WoW a try. Or, this coverage could just be another sign of the impact Blizzard's game is having on the mainstream, while that 11 million subscriber base just keeps growing. And, yup, FOX's article does mention the upcoming Wrath release, so it's certainly possible Blizzard will see a few more players from the coverage. Every time WoW has an event like this which has mainstream interest, there'll be a few more people logging for the first time to see what the buzz is about. And, hey, it certainly lines up with the Holiday theme.
Phonogram to brainwash addiction out of Korean gamers?
Young gamers in Korea have turned from national phenomena to national concern -- some have actually managed to "game" themselves to death, while blank stares and friendlessness are more common occurrences among the obsessed. Attempting to flip the switch on this unfortunate outcome of pwning, Venture start-up Xtive proposes to subliminally convince these kids to kick the habit by exposing them to an inaudible repetitive message. "We incorporated messages into an acoustic sound wave telling gamers to stop playing. The messages are told 10,000 to 20,000 times per second," explains Yun Yun-hae, president of Xtive. (Isn't that a little, um, fast?) The company has applied for a domestic patent and plans to commercialize the phonogram in cahoots with the government and game companies, which he hopes will incorporate triggers for the phonograms after games are played for a certain amount of time. Xtive also hopes to move beyond this application, applying their technology to other areas; Yun creepily tops it all off by adding, "We can easily change the messages. In this sense, the potential for this technology is exponential." You want to talk about video game zombies? Here we go.[Via Joystiq]
China opens first Internet gaming halfway house
You know, it strikes us that China, of all countries, doesn't have a long tradition of therapy and open discussions of feelings. But it does have a growing pattern of kids losing themselves in online video games (as we've seen time and time again). And as was predicted in the Engadget comments' section back in July, China is indeed the next location for a halfway house for Chinese video game addicts in Shanghai. Reuters reports that this house offers therapy, books to read (and even computers!) to help these kids stem their addiction and regain channels of communication with their families. We sense a growth industry of electronics-related therapy coming on -- remember the reports just a few months ago of Blackberry detox at the Sheraton Chicago -- any VCs paying attention? Just please, nobody start Engadget Anonymous, ok? We think you're fine just the way you are.
Does depression lead to cellphone addiction, or vice versa?
In another classic "chicken-or-the-egg" type of conundrum, a newly released study is claiming that instead of a so-called "cellphone addiction" causing people depression and lower self-esteem, as we'd previously heard, the supposed addiction may actually be triggered by those very same negative feelings. In a study of school-aged South Korean children, Dr. Jee Hyan Ha found that those students who used their phones the most (90 or more times a day, including SMS) also tended to score higher on a psychological test intended to measure a person's level of depression. Although none of the students' scores reached the level of clinical depression, the heaviest users were observed to have significantly more self-identity issues than average, suggesting to researchers that communicating via cellphone made the "addicts" feel popular. So which is it: does heavy cellphone use lead to depression, or does depression lead to heavy cellphone use -- or is it just a vicious cycle with no end and no beginning?[Via textually]
