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15 Minutes of Fame: Counseling people who happen to play games
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. Do your friends, family or coworkers still cling to old-fashioned notions of video games as the provenance of social misfits and those who can't stay focused on the demands and rewards of real life? Take heart -- there are professionals out there who understand the gaming perspective and are working to help normalize gaming as mainstream pastime it has actually become. One of the many leading the charge is WoW player and master's-level psychology student Erinia of Cenarion Circle, whose track toward becoming a licensed mental health counselor includes helping both players and other mental health professionals understand the pulls, demands, and concerns of players who enjoy games like WoW. Erinia has discovered that magic sweet spot where work, play, and a passion for all of it come together. "Am I an exceptional player?" Erinia asks. "Probably not, but WoW has opened up a lot of doors for me in the real world." We would accuse the lady of understatement here; click past the break for more on counseling, World of Warcraft, and new perspectives on how to help troubled people -- who happen to enjoy playing games -- understand themselves.
The Game Archaeologist and the What Ifs: Middle-earth Online
I had so much fun walking down the halls of "What if?" last week that I thought I'd keep the streak going for the rest of the month (if you'll allow for some summertime indulgence). It's not that I necessarily wanted MMO history to turn out differently than it did, but it's always tantalizing to wonder what the field would look like with different games out there. Would they have proven more popular than our current crops? Would they have pushed the envelope of innovation? Of course, it's easy to project greatness onto never-released titles, bemoaning that "if only MMO X had launched, we would've had the perfect game!" What ifs are interesting but should never be taken as absolute fact. This week I wanted to look at a project that's related to an MMO near and dear to my heart. As most of you know, I'm somewhat of a Lord of the Rings Online nut here at Massively. Sure, the rest of the staff is upset that I smoke pipeweed inside and never wear shoes, but that's just how far I go to understand the game. But even my LotRO isn't immune to a massive what if. Known to some but not to all, Turbine wasn't the first MMO studio to take a crack at Tolkien's license -- no, for that we have to travel back to 1998 and revisit Sierra On-Line. It was this company that had a brief but memorable run designing Middle-earth Online, aka "What if LotRO had permadeath?" It's a fascinating glimpse into an entirely different approach to the IP, and even though it died a fairly early death, it's important to be remembered. Frodo lives!
Shocker! Gamer behavior is actually quite predictable
Isn't it curious how you always crack open a beer before settling in for some GTA? Or how you tend to put an anxious hand over your wallet when logging onto PSN? No soldier, it is not curious. Not at all. But this is: Researchers at North Carolina State University claim they've found a way to predict your in-game behavior with "up to 80 percent accuracy." After analyzing the decision-making of 14,000 World of Warcraft players, they noticed that different players prefer different types of achievements. These preferred achievements clump together into statistically significant groups, known as "cliques", even if they have nothing obvious in common. So a WoW player who likes to improve their unarmed combat skills also, for some psychological reason, tends to want points for world travel. What's more, the researchers believe that clique-spotting can be exploited outside the rather specific world of WoW, in which case their method could prove lucrative to game designers, online retailers and pretty much anyone with an interest in predicting your next move. Want to know more? Then we predict you'll click the PR after the break.
15 Minutes of Fame: Anthropologist Bonnie Nardi on WoW culture and art
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. We've written before at WoW.com and even here in 15 Minutes of Fame about attempts to study World of Warcraft culture from a sociological, psychological or anthropological point of view. In all of these cases, the researchers in question have logged time playing WoW as part of their research, albeit some with greater degrees of immersive success than others. So I was very pleasantly surprised to learn that Bonnie Nardi, a University of California-Irvine expert in the social implications of digital technologies and author of the rather blithely titled My Life as a Night Elf Priest, not only rolled the token raiding character in order to observe the curious behavior of the raiding animal -- she actually enjoys WoW in its own right. Rather than cautiously sniffing WoW culture only to generate another wide-eyed, ZOMG-look-at-this-funny-lingo report from the digital field, Nardi dove deep enough to play in four different guilds: a casual raiding guild; a raiding guild composed of fellow academics; a small, casual guild; and her own friends-and-family guild. Our two-part interview with Nardi, packed with opinion and cultural analysis, reveals a witty approach to WoW culture that successfully combines academic insight with the familiarity of a seasoned player.
15 Minutes of Fame: Psychologist and games researcher John Hopson
From Hollywood celebrities to the guy next door, millions of people have made World of Warcraft a part of their lives. How do you play WoW? We're giving each approach its own 15 Minutes of Fame. What keeps gamers hooked on their game of choice? Chances are, it's an element of the gameplay that was teased out with the help of games researcher John Hopson. The experimental psychologist and beta program head for Microsoft Game Studios examines what makes gamers do the things they do and then designs ways to keep them happily doing just that -- most recently, in titles such as Shadow Complex, Halo 3: ODST and Halo: Reach. All that, and he's a WoW player to the core. "I mostly play in the two semi-official Microsoft WoW guilds, and lately I've been a hardcore player in a casual's body," he notes. "My wife and I had our first child a few months ago, so we've both dropped raiding and have been levelling alts instead since that doesn't require a fixed schedule. So far, we're both up to 5 level 80s apiece. :)" We thought it was time to turn the tables on Hopson, a loyal reader and occasional commenter at WoW.com, and ask him for his perspectives on WoW from the inside out.
Study explores link between gamers and lucid dreams
So, you know that recurring dream you've been having for the past three weeks? You know, the one where you're riding cross-country in a hot air balloon in the shape of Ed Asner's head? And then the balloon-face looks down upon you, frowns with disappointment, detaches the basket, and you fall into a volcano made of knives? According to a study conducted by Grant MacEwan University researcher Jayne Gackenbach, you might be able to take the fate of dream-you into your own hands. Gackenbach's survey concluded that gamers are more prone to reporting "lucid dreams" or "control dreams," in which they view themselves in a third-person perspective with complete control of their actions and the world around them. When faced with a nightmare, participants of the study claimed to have a proclivity to "turn and fight back," according to Gackenbach. So, next time you're falling, remember: There's been a jetpack under your sweater the entire time. [Via Fidgit]
[1. Local]: Psychology
Reader comments -- ahh, yes, the juicy goodness following a meaty post. [1.Local] ducks past the swinging doors to see what readers have been chatting about in the back room over the past week. It's an interesting coincidence that so many quotables this week had something to do with our mental processes. For example, when Brian Wood pretended to interview Ghostcrawler for Scattered Shots, the faux-Ghostcrawler said the following: Anyway, so the chimp has a lever, and when it pulls the lever it gets a piece of lettuce. Chimps like lettuce; it's tasty. So the chimp loves the experiment to death. Pull the lever, get more lettuce, eat the lettuce and pull the lever. Then after a while, the researchers change things up. One time, the chimp pulls the lever and gets a grape. Chimps love grapes; they're way better than lettuce. But then the chimp pulls the lever again and it goes back to getting lettuce. Now the chimp gets pissed off and throws the lettuce at the researchers. So just a minute ago the chimp was loving the lettuce, and now it's insulted to be given that garbage. The lettuce didn't get any worse or any less tasty, but the chimp's perception of the value of the lettuce changed. MMO players are even more extreme -- in an MMO if the players even hear that we considered giving grapes, they'll suddenly be insulted with the lettuce that they loved until that point. So while we can't avoid every nerf, we really try to avoid as many as we possibly can. Brian's favorite response was from Undra: Ghostcrawler promised me a grape! Promises, promises. I promise we have more psychology related comments and some that only slightly have to do with what's in our noggin. And I also promise no mention of sparkle ponies. Well, except that one. I broke my promise while making my promise. Wrap your noggin around that.
Study: Playing puzzle games will make you better at puzzle solving
[flickr: Stephen Hampshire] Wheaton College psychology professor Rolf Nelson has come to a startling conclusion based on the outcome of a recently conducted study: Playing games makes people better at playing ... games. According to GamePolitics, the study results -- published in the journal Perception (subscription required) -- showed that its 20 participants performed more accurately on two spatial relations tests after spending time playing a puzzle game, but were faster at completing the tests after sitting down with an action game. In one test, participants were tasked with clicking on a spot where a target had briefly flashed on-screen; the second required them to choose from four shapes the one that most closely matched a target shape -- so, essentially, they were playing puzzle games after playing ... puzzle games. We're puzzled by the fact that Professor Nelson hadn't himself realized much sooner that, hey, this Professor Layton game tape is making me better at these here tests. [Via GamePolitics]
The psychology of a gamer's search for phat loot
Have you ever wondered what keeps gamers forever in search of the next great piece of loot, why WoW players have to find the last piece of that epic armor set, why Borderlands fiends constantly quest for a better gun? The answer, according to website pscychologyofgames.com, is all in the brain's neurotransmitters, specifically dopamine neurons. Put simply, dopamine neurons monitor dopamine, a chemical that accompanies good or pleasurable things -- like, say, finding some rare loot in Diablo. Dopamine neurons subsequently try to predict when good things will happen in the future. The site further notes that dopamine neurons "really go nuts when an unexpected, unpredicted gush of dopamine shows up, giving you an even bigger rush." In other words, unexpectedly stumbling on that rare item brings even more pleasure and causes the brain to want to repeat the process. To put it even more simply, the site states that the reaction is similar to the one many people get when playing a slot machine. Winning is entirely random, but that doesn't stop the brain from trying to figure out a pattern. Just be glad you're not popping a quarter into the disc drive every time there's a loot drop. Not yet, at least. [Via GamePolitics]
Anti-Aliased: The Quest of Vindication
Happy Holidays everybody! Hope you're all having an exciting time that's full of epic loot drops from purple gift packages sent by the jolly NPC in the red suit. This week's column is a holiday-tacular rant fest as I feel like tackling one of the major sticking points of an MMO player's behavior: the need to pursue vindication. This isn't something unique to MMO culture or even video game culture at large. We all feel this rather odd need to defend our decisions or opinions to others, even if they will never ever agree with us.However, when it comes to MMOs, vindication can be a bad thing. When communities become polarized in thought and begin to shut out others it can hurt the game's growth and the game's sense of community.
How we learn the jargon
We get a lot of requests here on the site from researchers trying to study you World of Warcraft players. Everybody with a research grant, apparently, wants to study you -- your psychology, your interaction, and the relationship you have with your avatar. We get so many requests, actually, that we usually have to pass -- we're not smart enough to choose which ones are legit and which ones aren't, and if we posted them all, we'd do nothing but post requests for survey answers all day. But I like the way alckly has done her research over on WoW Ladies LJ: she posted a question about WoW jargon, and you can see everyone's answers right away. We definitely have lots of jargon to go around, from LFG to twinks to PuGs and a lot more. But what's most interesting about all of these answers, to me, is the way it spreads. There's a little bit of Googling and research going on, but really it's a very social thing -- you see "wtb" in the trade channel, and then you ask someone you know what it means (rather than looking it up somewhere else). Thus, definitions of the terms are very organic: "pst" could mean "pssst, here's a whisper" or "please send tell," and yet because they both mean the same thing, both meanings propagate. Likewise, usage tends to be a very social thing -- the person who types "LFG strat need heals" won't type "would u like 2 go to strat?"
WoW.com interview: Dr. Hilarie Cash of reSTART Internet Addiction Recovery Program
We've talked about Internet addiction before a few times here on the site, but it's always been through the lens of the media. Certainly there are players of WoW and other games out there who play the game so much it's affecting their lives, but most of the cases we've heard about have been a little over the top -- parents crying that their children are lost, kids playing nonstop and picking up bad health and social habits from this horrible game.And so, when we heard that there was a new center opening for Internet and gaming addiction in Washington State, we decided, instead of just listening to the media reports, to sit down with the co-founder herself and have a more thoughtful conversation about gaming addiction: how and why it happens, how they're trying to fight it, and how it's portrayed, from both a media and a gamers' perspective. Dr. Hilarie Cash has been working with Internet addicts for 15 years -- she's the cofounder of two different addiction clinics, including the new reSTART Center, and the co-author of "Videogames & Your Kids: How Parents Stay in Control." You can read our exclusive interview with her by hitting the "Read more" link below.
The importance of good audio in an MMO
In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the development budgets of new MMOs. To stay ahead of the technological curve, a large portion of the budget invariably goes toward the graphics department. Studios produce impressive graphics engines and mountains of art assets in an effort to make their game one of the most visually impressive out there. Amidst all the fuss over graphics and gameplay, audio is often overlooked and underfunded. It's been shown that good music and sound effects can have a significant impact on the perceived quality of a game. This is something that some development studios recognise and support but many continue to neglect this vital part of the gaming experience.In this article, I examine the importance of good audio in an MMO and explain the underlying psychology involved.
Studying WoWcology, where psychology and WoW meet
I've been meaning to write about this WoWcology blog for a few days now, but there's just so much there -- reader Skeuk is guilded up with a PhD in Psychology, who's writing not only about the guild's day to day battles, but also about how the deeper tenets of psychology can be seen in our Azerothian gameplay. This post about group dynamics is extremely interesting -- if you've ever suffered through some bad PuGs in your time, you can see the different stages of group development, and you can probably even figure out where your PuG fizzled out in the "storming" stage or made it all the way through to the "performing" part of the cycle. Fascinating stuff, for sure.Unfortunately, posts aren't coming too often, and it seems like Dr. Amalea -- who for some reason refers to himself in the third person at times -- understandably has other things to do besides keeping a blog about World of Warcraft and psychology. But maybe if we send them a little traffic, we can convince him to keep it up regularly, as what's there now makes for some really interesting reading. It's really interesting that a lot of the stuff we're dealing with the game now -- forming PuGs, guild drama, even loot distribution, has all been studied by psychologists for years and years before World of Warcraft ever existed.
8.5 percent of U.S. youth addicted to video games, study finds
Douglas Gentile, a research psychologist from Iowa State University (and director of research for the National Institute of Media and the Family), recently conducted a study that found 8.5 percent of Americans between the ages of 8 and 18 (that's roughly 3 million people) are addicted to video games. During his research, Gentile polled 1,178 youths to see whether they possessed symptoms of pathological gaming -- symptoms which include spending increasing time behind a controller, irritability when playtime is reduced, "escaping problems through play," skipping homework in favor of gaming, and stealing money with which to purchase additional games.Using these criteria, we've been addicted to the following at some point in our lives: Pokémon cards, Pogs, Skittles, Spelling Bees, laser tag, gardening, dating, Lego bricks, Frisbee golf and blogging. Yet somehow, despite our multitude of unshakable, soul-crushing dependencies, we turned out just fine. You can check out the Entertainment Software Association's response to the study after the jump. [Via Edge] [Image]
Nick Yee puts the Daedalus Project into hibernation
The Daedalus Project, for those who aren't familiar with this fantastic project by Nick Yee, is an in-depth look at the psychology of MMO gamers. As someone who plays MMOs, Nick has always taken a very fair and balanced look at the intricate worlds spanning the MMO genre, with results that were sometimes surprising. During the course of ten years of research, he's looked into everything from basic gender alignment questions to in-depth looks at genre, how emerging changes in game mechanics affect social interaction, and so very much more. To say it's been important, enlightening work is an understatement. In a recent blog posting, Nick has announced that he's going to be placing the Daedalus Project into 'hibernation' due to time constraints, the rigors of his everyday work, and his need to publish as a PhD. As anyone can imagine, running an enormous project like Daedalus has to take a great deal of time and effort. It would appear that rather than letting the quality of the work for this project of love suffer, he's opted to place it on hold for now. While it's definitely a loss for the MMO - and indeed educational - community, we can totally understand. All of us here at Massively would like to thank Nick for his unwavering dedication to bringing so many important things to light over the last ten years, and hope that all of his future challenges are equally as rewarding.
Chinese game addicts seek help in progressive Internet addiction centers
As the Chinese race ahead to catch up with the West, they do so with the intent of creating better lives for themselves. The past several years have been characterized by rapid progression, but all those perks of modernization come with a price, which some of China's citizens are beginning to pay. As incomes rise, so does the prevalence of the various maladies of modernization we've come to know well -- not limited to obesity, substance abuse, and addiction. While an addiction to a substance has a physiological aspect to it and is rarely disputed as a true addiction, non-material addictions to work, sex, and even shopping are on the rise in China. Such issues have been difficult to officially label as actual mental illnesses in the country. Others, like Internet addiction, have only recently been classified as such in China.
Compulsive gaming a social problem, not an addiction
Slowly but surely, people are finally starting to gain an actual understanding of gaming, and it's a nice thing to see. The BBC recently reported on gaming addiction with some insight from Keith Bakker, the head of a clinic in Europe targeted at helping gamers. 90% of gamers who spend long hours gaming, he says, aren't addicts at all and addiction counseling isn't the right treatment. Compulsive gaming is a social problem, not a psychological problem.This is a sentiment many gamers (the non-compulsive kind, mind you) have held for a really long time. Games aren't the problem for young gamers. Poor parental care is a problem, environment is a problem. Communication is important. Healthy environments are important. Games for teenagers tend to be an escape, a place to go where you don't necessarily need to deal with real problems at that age, like social issues, personal troubles, stress and anxiety.
Psychologist says Wii users have 'truth bias'
A psychology expert from the University of Memphis, Dr Rick Dale, has been using the Wii in his latest experiments. No, not to help senior citizens stay active or to help those in physical therapy, but to study the relationship between the mind and the body. "We often begin to act before we think, even when making relatively simple decisions," Dale said. "Some might say that we even think through our actions." Using the Wii in a variety of different experiments helps him to map how our brains handle thinking and action, and that the two are apparently intertwined.In another experiment, Dale found that participants had a 'bias toward truth,' meaning that those involved had a natural tendency to think what they were presented with was truth. In this experiment, those involved would use the Wiimote to determine if a statement was true or false. Before making up their mind, those involved in the experiment tended to float towards each statement being true, before making up their mind and choosing their answer. This proved that the body of the participant was in motion before the cognitive process was finished, as well as showing that each individual wanted to believe each statement was true, even if they later decided that the statement was not.Might not be the most exciting stuff to us without years and years of education, but it's good to see that folks in the medical field are taking the console seriously and understanding that it can do some good beyond letting you and Mario run around some globes in space for a few hours.
Generation raised with black and white TV dreams in monochrome
This one's pretty wild -- recent research in the UK finds that people who grew up in the era of black and white media dream in monochrome about a quarter of the time, while those of us raised with color TV almost always dream in full-on Technicolor. The research suggests that exposure to media between the ages of three and 10 is when the switch is set, since that's when the ability to dream kicks in -- which means we're suddenly terrified our kids are going to wind up dreaming in heavily-compressed SD stretched to the wrong aspect ratio, buffering endlessly before failing out due to a missing plugin. Here's to the future.[Via Switched]
