Reseachers Call For Less Addictive MMOs

The problem with MMORPG’s is that like alcohol and drugs, they are a fun outlet for people with addictive personalities to latch unto. The way to avoid getting hooked online is to keep ambition out of your gameplay 100%. Let me elaborate on this premise a bit, while there are realistic goals and ridiculous goals, the fact that you place goals on a game that you play daily with real people, you will risk obsession in attaining them. If your goal is to make level 80 and that’s it then wonderful, but if your goal is to become the most elite warrior on your server at level 80 then you have opened up a new can of worms.

Goals Lead to Addiction (Full Set of Armor)
When you have lofty goals that take grinding to attain ie: a full set of matching armor, pvp prowess or badges, then you will be addicted before long. When you become hooked it will not be immediately apparent to you because you will make excuses for yourself when confronted. You will make statements such as “oh I really don’t play that much” or “I just want to get the last piece to my set of armor”. While this makes sense to you, for the outsiders living regular lives, you will appear to have a problem.

Friday Night – Social or Online
Many MMORPG players are people who have regular happy lives and couples even log in together on an Everquest to run a campaign together but you also have a few single people who have made the game their social outlet. Yes the stereotype of the pale loser nerd in his mom’s basement is played out but the reality is there are many people like this.   >>more<<

Online game firms need to do

more to prevent addiction say

researchers

Researchers say that if MMO makers don’t do something to curb the addictiveness of their games, Western governments may be forced to impose limits upon them similar to those in place in Asia.

We all know that conventional videogames have a definite beginning and end, while MMOs can effectively go on forever. It’s this “inexhaustible” nature that researchers from universities in Cardiff, Derby and Nottingham Trent in the U.K. say makes them particularly problematic for the estimated seven to 11 percent of “pathological” gamers, some of whom play as many as 90 hours in a single session.

Some games carry messages warning against overuse, which Dr. Shumalia Yousafzai of the Cardiff Business School said indicates that MMO makers are aware of the addictive nature of their games (and thus at least indirectly complicit in process of addicting gamers), but “cyber psychologist” Dr. Zaheer Hussain said those warning messages are inadequate protection for players who are prone to becoming hooked.

“As a first step online game developers and publishers need to look into the structural features of the game design, for example the character development, rapid absorption rate, and multi-player features which could make them addictive and or problematic for some gamers,” he said. “One idea could be to shorten long quests to minimize the time spent in the game obtaining a certain prized item.”

Nottingham Trent University Professor Mark Griffiths said that while the proportion of gamers who develop problems will likely remain constant, “As online games get better and better and increasing numbers of people discover them, the number of addicts is most probably going to rise.”Read more at

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