Deep Jive Interests

Interesting article from the BBC today on the changing attitudes of a clinic in Europe which treats “gaming addictions”.  The gist of things is that they’re changing the model with which they’re helping their clients, as they no longer view the majority of gamers who come to them as “addicts”; in fact, they claim that 10% of their clients truly have addiction-like problems.  The rest seem to be socially and / or emotionally “disabled”, for a lack of a better term, and find interacting in online gaming communities to be the main driver of their high usage.

Out of sheer geeky (and yes, personal) interest, and not merely wanting to parrot the “they’re not addicted they just need to get a life” post, I decided to do the most cursory of checks to see what the latest in literature said about gaming and addictive behaviours (noting that it was a pity Mr. Bakker hasn’t opted — to my knowledge — to write up a case study on his observations)

I did find one fairly recently published article in the peer-reviewed journal of Cyberpsychology and Behaviour, published on November 4, 2008 called “Problematic Usage Among Highly-Engaged Players of Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games“, by CHRISTOPHER S. PETERS, M.A. and L. ALVIN MALESKY, Jr., Ph.D.  While their efforts were targeted at individuals playing MMO’s, there were a number of interesting observations in this observational study of around 200 gamers who were playing World of Warcraft, who played on average 30 hours per week.

[emphasis mine; some paragraphs were broken up for readability]

 

These results suggest that the greater amount of time individuals spend playing World of Warcraft, the more likely they are to experience problems in their lives. The relationship is only moderate; therefore, it is reasonable to suggest that not everyone who spends a great deal of time playing experiences numerous or severe problems in their lives. 

This mimics common sense (for most gamers) I imagine, as there are highly functional gamers, and not all of them have problematic gaming behaviours — for example, gaming to the point of causing screw ups with their personal, financial, or family situations.

 

A number of different factors, such as personality, could contribute to this correlation. With regard to the personality characteristics, two trait correlations are of particular interest: neuroticism and agreeableness.

Based on these results, it is logical to suggest that one reason some individuals spend more time playing the game is to avoid face-to-face social situations in which they may lack the proper skills to foster good relationships. Furthermore, if the individual were rejected in these situations, it would likely cause them distress due to their difficulty in dealing with stressful events.

However, because extraversion is only weakly negatively correlated, it is probable that the individuals desire at least some amount of social contact. Therefore, the individuals may seek social connections in a safer environment: the environment of MMORPG guilds. This is evident when players become better friends with their online guild mates than with their “real-life” friends.

I had to look up the “formal” definitions of neuroticism and agreeableness, not having a background in psychology (and I use formal in quotes, because I found these definitions in Wikipedia).  At any rate the data suggests that gamers who tended to have more problematic behaviours tended to have a negative correlation with being agreeable — that is to say, they were “compassionate and cooperative” — and a positive one with being neurotic, which apparently means “emotionally reactive and vulnerable to stress.”

These traits correlated highly with gamers who were thought to have problems with gaming in their lives.  And it goes on to the same conclusion that Mr. Bakker suggests in the article: that the core issue with gamers is not with what, perhaps, is recognized as a the formal issue of “addiction”, but perhaps, the real way that some personality types cope.  They may find it easiest to interact in digital environments than “real” ones, and therefore they choose to spend their time in places where they feel the most comfortable.

Interesting conclusion to their article: 

 

One significant limitation of this research is the possible defensiveness of the participants. Defensiveness is a possibility with all research that includes the use of self-report in that participants may attempt to appear socially desirable. As a result, participants may have acknowledged fewer problems or negative attributes than they really have. There is also a more global defensiveness with regard to online gaming in general, as exhibited by one guild leader who declined to allow his guild to participate:

“I don’t want any of you _expletive_ researchers creating problems with things where here is nothing wrong. Gaming does not need any more restrictions than there already are.” Thus, based on this and similar statements, it appears there may be concern among some gamers that research in the area could result in restrictions being made to online games.

Wow.  Defensiveness in online gaming?  Man, I have never heard of that before in online gaming, forums, or comments anywhere! :D  Actually, it seems like being defensive is part of the same ball park as “emotionally reactive”, so perhaps it makes complete sense.  Interestingly the survey above excluded everyone under the age of 18 — I do wonder how much more neurotic the sample would have been if it did include teenagers?