As of this quarter, Blizzards reports about 9 million World of Warcraft players, roughly equivalent to the population of Sweden. Players have known to quit jobs, school, and even relationships to obtain their +10 Magic Sword of Killing Things. These mmorpg addicts lose friends, family, their future, and in extremely rare cases, the ability to breath. Modern psychologists and psychiatrists quickly noticed the rise in such issues, and many believe that mmorpg addiction is a solid case of Problematic Internet Use (PIU).
How does an online video game capture the time, energy, and indeed the souls of millions of people? World of Warcraft, as the pinnacle of such soul-draining cyber machination, demonstrates several aspects of online psychological space that lead to addiction. First, the anonymity and security of hiding behind a virtual avatar (the player’s “character” in the game) greatly boasts people’s willingness to interact and helps to tear down traditional gates of communication such as gender, appearance, and age types of discrimination. A typical World of Warcraft player, depicted below realistically -
- may present himself as a beautiful enchantress capable of all kinds of wonderful things. This virtual esteem boost is often desired by those who are less socially-apt in real life, thus they seek out an online world to avoid unwanted Face-to-Face confrontations. This fits neatly with Wallace’s Locust of Control and Maintenance of Virtual Presence: the players have absolute control over the appearance and “fate” or back-story of their characters, and their avatars are their sole representation in the game.
Secondly, the game itself offers continuous rewards to “hardcore” players. A game such as World of Warcraft may easily take years to reach the “final” quest, yet even then the players still have tremendous amount of incentive to keep playing. A longer sword, a bigger fireball, a virtual dragon as pet, and many other perks are constantly added into the game to keep the addicts addicted. In addition, the best (known as “Epic”) items are only awarded to the most dedicated players. As a good old saying from Warcraft goes, “girlfriends come and go, but Epics are Soulbound.” – Soulbound is the game term/mechanic that makes the item permanent to the player who obtains it. This aspect correspond to Wallace’s Operant Conditioning, that is, the players receive consistent positive reinforcements to the act of playing, thus making the act itself very difficult to extinguish.
Caplan’s model of PIU applies quite well to World of Warcraft addicts. The players are largely from the male teenager demographic, and many have expressed personal psychosocial reasons for staying online. These individuals are unconfident in real life interactions, and thus resort to the anonymous WoW universe to seek social comfort. This easy, affordable, and unthreatening world helps the hapless players to fall into compulsive and excessive use, ultimately resulting in the sacrifice of many significant real life factors just to maintain a consistent gaming habit. As the real life social interaction of those addicts decline, they are even more motivated to hide in World of Warcraft.
But why World of Warcraft? Many other modern MMORPGs offer similar experiences, yet only WoW reached universally-known status. The game is unique in that it is very fluid, with constant minor and major rewards, innumerable customization options, and a very “safe” atmosphere where players’ possessions are well-protected. It is also has various integrated channels to ease interaction between players, with many missions/quests that encourage or even require group work over extended period of time to achieve challenging but rewarding goals. However, as law of exchange dictates, you must lose some to gain some – as they progress through the in-game quests, the addicted players gradually slip from their real life goals and missions and may finally lose their self-identity as an individual of the physical world.
2 comments:
Zeyu, I agree that online games, especially MMORPGs such as World of Warcraft, are a big cause of problematic Internet use. As I type this, three of my suite mates are each playing a different online game, this is how it generally goes unless someone has a prelim or problem set due (and sometimes even when that is the case). I think that Caplan’s vicious cycle of problematic Internet use applies to my three suite mates. It seems that as they game more, their social interactions offline decrease and as a result, they spend more time online in the downtime that they have. Even when they are away from the games, like at meals, their conversation will often revolve around gaming or some other Internet related topic.
Zeyu! Excellent analysis of World of Warcraft and the features that tend to cause Problematic Internet Use. I liked how you applied Wallace's locus of control theory to the WOW players having control over the appearance and strengths of their avatars within the game, and how this meticulous control requires many hours' worth of game play. Good job mentioning Caplan's theory about the affordances of WOW and how it leads to PIU. To expand on this post, I would further examine both individual aspects of PIU and the features of the MMORPG that could lead to PIU.
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