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MMO: A Minor’s Massive Obsession

Originally written as a composition assignment, 8 April 2008.

Cyberspace must be running in its own time zone. What starts as “just a few more minutes to finish this level” soon becomes an hour. When Olivia and Kurt Bruner kept hearing this from their son while he was playing games, they set out to discover the problem. They concluded that video games are like “the digital drug” (Bruner and Bruner xxi).

Massive Multiplayer Online (MMO) games are especially similar to drugs; not in their chemical makeup, but in the way they affect the young brain. MMO may as well stand for a Minor’s Massive Obsession because of the addiction it can become for many minors who find virtual reality more fulfilling than modern reality. In a way gaming also resembles alcohol. It isn’t evil, and actually can be beneficial, but can easily be overdone.

Contents

Definitions:
• Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question
• A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side

The Problem of Addiction:

• Pixels… or People?
• Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?
• Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?
• Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?

Why Games are Addictive:

• The Digital Drug?
• Fast Food Fulfillment
• Risky Playtime

References

Addictive or Not Addictive… That is the Question

The pillar upon which the case for gaming addiction rests is the definition of addiction. Addiction is an overused word in modern language. Its meaning has become ambiguous at best.

The modern mind immediately thinks of some homeless looser who can’t hold a job because he is hooked on drugs. This mind is certain that a person who plays video games fourteen hours per day is addicted but isn’t sure where to draw the line in cases that aren’t as severe. At the same time, gamers often use “addictive” as a synonym of fun.”

Nicholas Yee, one of the foremost psychological experts on online games, provides a more objective, though not perfect, definition: “a recurring behavior that is unhealthy or selfdestructive which the individual has difficulty ending” (Yee 1). The only problem is that it lacks any definition of what is “destructive” and contains no specific median through which addiction may be measured.

For the purposes of this paper, addiction will be defined in terms of time. If an individual habitually spends time on an activity such that it interferes with time that is necessary for other more important activities, it’s safe to say that this individual is addicted. Therefore, the test for online video game addiction becomes whether time spent playing MMOs or MMORPGs interferes with other more important activities such as schoolwork or sleep.

A Nasty Acronym with a Nasty Side

MMORPG (how’s that for a nasty acronym?) spells out Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game. Some examples of these games are Dungeons and Dragons, EverQuest, which is sometimes jokingly called “NeverRest” because of its addictive nature, and Second Life. These games literally give players a “second life” and another role. They become problematic when the fantasy role becomes the player’s main role.

Even though only about one in ten gamers play an MMORPG, they’re the most likely to become addicted (Khan 4). A survey performed by Yee found that 65% of these gamers (ages 12-17) would label themselves as addicted to the game (Yee 3). The next question would be whether they truly are addicted by this paper’s definition.

Pixels… or People?

The first stop in testing for adolescent addiction was the subject of a 2004 editorial by Brent Staples, who holds a doctorate in behavioral sciences. Does online play interfere with the interactions players have with other people?

Yee’s study on the subject, which relied on the participant’s honesty, showed that the majority of MMORPG players don’t think their habits interfere with their social lives, academic performance, or health (Yee 6). There is quite a bit of reason to doubt their word. According to Staples, studies have shown that the amount of time spent with family was halved for every hour spent online (Staples 71).

Not everyone is negatively affected by online gaming, just like not everyone is affected by alcohol. Most of the scientific literature, however, has concluded that quite a significant number of adolescents not only grow anti-social, but also neglect school and even their health to play the game.

Tossing Schoolwork for the Game?

Many studies have negatively correlated performance in school to time spent gaming (Gentile 17-19). There is no wonder because when students spend time gaming, they can’t spend that time on homework. The recent study from Hope Cummings and Elizabeth Vandewater found that male gamers spent 30% less time reading than their non-gaming counterparts and that female gamers spent 34% less time doing homework (Cummings and Vandewater 688).

This is not to say that school and technology should never be mixed. According to Douglas Gentile’s literature review, studies have found that students who use computers actually have greater academic success, but those who use the computer for gaming purposes lost that success (Gentile 18).

These studies specifically dealt with younger students, but it’s clear that gaming habits also translate into problems in college. A survey from the Pew Research Center questioned students of higher education regarding gaming and schoolwork. The results were startling. Ten percent of the survey’s respondents admitted to playing specifically to avoid schoolwork. Even more disturbing were the unintended consequences. Almost half of the respondents to this study said that playing games kept them from studying (Jones et al. 1).

Why Work Out when I can be a Digital Athlete in Seconds?

By the definition in this paper, gaming could be called an addiction if it significantly interferes with an adolescent’s health. This is because health takes time, time many obsessed gamers don’t have. Sleep is a great example. About half of young MMORPG players (ages 12-22) admit to loosing sleep in order to play the game (Yee 2).

The American Medical Association has also expressed concern regarding the overuse of video games in general and its effects on health. According to the twelfth report at their 2007 meeting, excessive gaming has been linked to epileptic seizures, obesity, and musculoskeletal diseases (Khan 3). “Indeed, there is even a form of tendinitis named ‘Nintendinitis,’ caused by repeatedly pressing game-controller buttons with one’s thumb” (Gentile 20). All of these health problems are directly related to the time spent playing video games. Addicted MMO gamers will invariably game even at the cost of their health.

Am I Ruining Reality for Virtual Reality?

Ignoring one’s social life, schoolwork, and health in order to play with a flashing screen clearly isn’t logical. Digital games certainly have their place, but they have stepped out of it in the lives of many modern adolescents. That would actually include mine. I wasn’t a “hard-core” gamer, but I certainly have let games get in the way of more important jobs. This experience left me with a question: what is so addictive about moving lights? I found two answers. Gaming, especially online, is both chemically stimulating and emotionally fulfilling.

The Digital Drug?

Most adults have no idea what is going on when they see their adolescents being lost in the online game. Often puzzled parents simply dismiss it as “just a game.” Yet, for many addicted teens, it’s more than just a game. It’s “life” in the same chemical way that cocaine is “life” to a drug addict.

Video games actually release many of the same chemicals in the brain that drug addicts thrive on. The first study to track a neurological chemical known as dopamine in the human brain using a PET scan was conducted in 1998 by British scientists who used video games as their experimental variable. The results they found indicated that the amount of surplus dopamine, the same chemical stimulated by cocaine, doubled when their subjects played a video game (Koepp et al. 267). This evidence led Dan Costa, an editor at the pro-gaming publication PC Magazine, to conclude:

“Video games are not like cocaine, your brain thinks they are cocaine. And if you doubt that, try to take the controller out of [my son’s] hands before he reaches a save point.” (Costa)

Fast Food Fulfillment

Addiction to online video games is not only a chemical phenomenon; it can also be an emotional attraction. In a very real sense, MMOs artificially fulfill the basic goal of adolescents: to grow up.

Take, for example, the situation of the Bruners provided at the beginning of this paper. The Bruners finally wrote a book for parents on the gaming experience. They state that the “role playing elements of video games tend to draw a child back repeatedly, in part because the child has adopted a temporary replacement identity” (Bruner and Bruner 51). For adolescents specifically, the identities they play in many MMOs give them a thrill of adulthood without the risks of adulthood.

Risky Playtime

While playing an MMO certainly isn’t evil, this seemingly innocent pass time can put reality at risk. Role playing games are super-sized versions of what we think reality should be. Compared to the glittering world of Second Life, “real life” is rather dull. Compared to the dopamine rush of EverQuest, schoolwork is boring. MMO addiction often throws adolescent lives by the wayside, promising to replace them with the lives of digital heroes. It certainly can be like a digital drug.

References

Bruner, Olivia, and Kurt Bruner. Playstation Nation. New York: Center Street, 2006.

Costa, Dan. “Turn It Off, Kids!” Editorial. PCMag.com 4 April 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.pcmag.com/article2/0,2817,2109568,00.asp.

Cummings, Hope M., and Elizabeth A. Vandewater. “Relation of Adolescent Video Game Play to Time Spent in Other Activities.” Archives of Pediatrics and Adolescent Medicine 161.7 (2007): 684-689. 8 Mar. 2008 http://archpedi.ama-assn.org/cgi/reprint/161/7/684.

Gentile, Douglas A. “Examining the Effects of Video Games from a Psychological Perspective.” National Institute on Media and the Family Nov. 2005. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.mediafamily.org/research/Gentile_NIMF_Review_2005.pdf.

Jones, Steve, et al. “Let the Games Begin.” Pew Internet and American Life Project 6 Jul. 2003. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.pewinternet.org/pdfs/PIP_College_Gaming_Reporta.pdf.

Khan, Mohamed K. “Emotional and Behavioral Effects of Video Games and Internet Overuse.” 2007 AMA Annual Meeting. Council on Science and Public Health, June 2007. 8 Mar. 2008 http://www.ama-assn.org/ama1/pub/upload/mm/467/csaph12a07.doc.

Koepp, M. J., et al. “Evidence for Striatal Dopamine Release During a Video Game.” Nature 393.6682 (1998): 266-268.

Staples, Brent. “What Adolescents Miss When we Let Them Grow up in Cyberspace.” The McGraw-Hill Reader. Ed. Gilbert H. Muller. 9th Ed. New York: McGraw-Hill, 2006. 70-71.

Yee, Nicholas. “Ariadne.” Oct. 2002. NickYee.com. 7 Mar. 2008 http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/addiction.pdf.

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