Frem, take a valium before reading this one. by dreamtrove

I play! Well, I did. I mostly play with friends I knew before the game even came out (the same one who got me into Firefly! The rest of my guild is off on their own server playing the new expansion...), and he doesn't always have money, so when he can't play, I usually don't. But I do really like WoW. Going to start up again on February 3rd!

I have to say, that with World of Warcraft, Blizzard has combined their unique artstyle (kind of a cartoony realism blend) with a very immersive world, and their patented simplification and smoothing of gameplay and design.

Sure, it's just point click and grind a lot of times, and most of the actual leveling process (at least for me) has become a glorified in-party (multiplayer group) or guild chat.

But very race and class combination has a slightly different feel, atmosphere-wise, and play just a little different, bring something new each of them to the basic gameplay. And that's worked into a larger story that Blizzard has fleshed out really well with a supporting cast of thousands of NPCs. Now, they don't have some of the story-telling tricks of instances and separate realms to allow for time advancement (they did something like that in the new Expansion though), but for storytelling they still do a good job.

And the world is vivid, busy, and alive. Critters populate the world and actually are animated believably and have realistic (to an extent) behavioural scripts. Even the most unimportant NPC has some personality, which Blizzard shows with the in-game text.

I don't raid much, so I'm more of a casual gamer. People who raid really do lose themselves. They have to be part of schedules and play a LOT to get the loot they do.

And other people might argue other reasons for liking, but those are mine.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 5:52 PM

Because it's a useful and powerful escape from a reality so damn ugly most folk would prefer not to face it.

And the more immersive the escape, the stronger it's call is.

It's not simpler than that.

That's just like when a kid tells it like it is to a shrink and the shrink calls it a distorted worldview and suggests medicating it - for no better reason than the kid hasn't blinded themselves to how fuckin ugly the reality around them is.

This is the same thing, instead of blaming the escape, maybe we should take a good hard look at the reality they're escaping FROM and do something to change it for the better, instead of ignoring the WHY and focusing on preventing their escapes from the hell our society has trapped them in.

Which is, kinda what the end point of what I do is.

-Frem
*Yes, I do actually play it myself when I've the time, which isn't often, still, it's cheaper overall than shelling out for more than one console game a month and is an entertaining way to use budgeted entertainment time...
Friggin Murlocs are the very spawn of hell though.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 6:12 PM

Ok, Admission I been holdin out on - the *primary* reason behind the ex-blowup was Final Fantasy XI.

I truly, passionately hate that game, because it absolutely requires a brutal level of time investment for the simplest of tasks, forces you to work with other people and screw them over to advance, and is all around generally a self-abusive environment...

And the Ex not only liked it, but browbeat ME into playing it despite that I hated it cause I am one of the few folk coolheaded enough to play a healer class effectively - a job in extreme demand, but so pathetically weak on it's own that no one wants to play it, as they're stuck with people who will leave them hanging out to dry for their own advancement.

And that's as simple as I can put it, I could rant for DAYS, given that I got stuck with 2 years worth of play or get bitched out for three hours.

If you really wanna see it ripped to shreds though, for some train-wreck fascination there's this guys blog, and his opinions are 99.995% concurrent with mine on ALL of it.
Best of show is THIS post
http://ffxitruth.blogspot.com/2006/10/we-put-f-u-in-fun.html

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 6:32 PM

FREM

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Because it's a useful and powerful escape from a reality so damn ugly most folk would prefer not to face it.

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And the more immersive the escape, the stronger it's call is. It's not simpler than that.

I get this. I was considering the game dynamic that hooks.

Like, if I sit down to play a game, like Groo, or Chess, play 2 or 3 or 5. People who sit down to play magic sometimes play 60.

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That's just like when a kid tells it like it is to a shrink and the shrink calls it a distorted worldview and suggests medicating it - for no better reason than the kid hasn't blinded themselves to how fuckin ugly the reality around them is.

This was what I meant about Yugoslavia. The young people there have no illusions about humanity. It questions all the rules, even yours, which is why I said before "what's normal?" These people are mentally healthy, after experiencing incredible amounts of trauma. Nothing could faze them. We in the west are weak. We can be wrecked by the slightest wrong turn.

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This is the same thing, instead of blaming the escape, maybe we should take a good hard look at the reality they're escaping FROM and do something to change it for the better, instead of ignoring the WHY and focusing on preventing their escapes from the hell our society has trapped them in.

This wasn't about blame. It was about analysis.

I figure it's addictive, and it attracts moths. These moths weren't headed anywhere but to the next flame.

The point is dynamically. There's something about the game, there's a hook, that make you play a second hour, until you never log off, as some people don't. Most games do not have this facet, regardless of how immersing. I can disappear into the world of Buffy for an hour. People who disappear into soaps do so for hours, and daily.

Buffy is more of a world, and more interesting, but television itself is addictive, as is youtube, chainlinks to infinite content.

In warhammer, I think the slowness of gameplay, the design of sets are draws, but character advancement is the demon engine that leads them into a second game.

Something about World of WarCraft draws people in and keeps them there. I've watched it happen, I've watched the game, but haven't played. If anyone wants to analyze what that dynamic is, I'm just curious.

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Yes, I do actually play it myself when I've the time, which isn't often, still, it's cheaper overall than shelling out for more than one console game a month and is an entertaining way to use budgeted entertainment time...
Friggin Murlocs are the very spawn of hell though.

So not everyone gets sucked in. But some people do, and it's something within the structure that does it, I'm sure. Something subtle, a change here or there, and it wouldn't happen. I'm of course not interested from the point of making such a game, just a point of understanding addiction as a destructive force. (Rarely, but potentially, a therapeutic one, but overwhelmingly destructive on balance.) I'm pretty sure it's not the nature of the content, its some key dynamic that triggers the addictive response.

I don't see addiction as "drugs." For example, I've never met a shroom addict. I've met many shroom users. I've used basically everything, including shrooms. But I've never seen someone curled in a fetal position crying for shrooms or they'll die. It just doesn't seem to have that quality. Not like opiates, and certain alkaloids.

Sure, there are individual personalities to take into account. Most people drink, very few are alcoholics. But those that are, it's probably the most destrucive addiction of all.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 6:47 PM

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Ok, Admission I been holdin out on - the *primary* reason behind the ex-blowup was Final Fantasy XI.

powerful admission. I have two friends who broke up over a game. Don't remember which. They got back together, several years later.

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I truly, passionately hate that game, because it absolutely requires a brutal level of time investment for the simplest of tasks, forces you to work with other people and screw them over to advance, and is all around generally a self-abusive environment...

This is really why I never got into FF. I watched, but played only a couple times. Time investment per story, and the repetition of tasks. I like games like Perfect Dark. Multiplayer, competitive (or cooperative like Gauntlet) But every story has to deliver story per hour. I didn't play it online, so I don't know the self abuse angle.

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And the Ex not only liked it, but browbeat ME into playing it despite that I hated it cause I am one of the few folk coolheaded enough to play a healer class effectively - a job in extreme demand, but so pathetically weak on it's own that no one wants to play it, as they're stuck with people who will leave them hanging out to dry for their own advancement.

I was never a fan of the character class concept.
It's like forced division of labor.

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And that's as simple as I can put it, I could rant for DAYS, given that I got stuck with 2 years worth of play or get bitched out for three hours.

2 hours is lucky. I know players who can do 10.

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If you really wanna see it ripped to shreds though, for some train-wreck fascination there's this guys blog, and his opinions are 99.995% concurrent with mine on ALL of it.
Best of show is THIS post
http://ffxitruth.blogspot.com/2006/10/we-put-f-u-in-fun.html

Still too sick to read, but bookmarking it for later consumption, thanks. I'm really serious about addiction, and understanding this thing. I know the chemistry of drug addiction quite well, but I need to understand the psychology of it, to prevent people from falling off the wagon, and also, to not create on myself, by accident.

This forum, I found, was addictive, but then I realized it was political arguments, they force a response, so you get tied in to that, and then you get angry at yourself and the board, and the other person, for taking your time to defend yourself against aspersions.

This is why, and I mean this quite seriously, the exchanges you and I have had recently have been some of the best on the board. Each post is informative, and targeted at unraveling new mysteries of life, and leading toward a better understanding. It stands in a marked contrast to the thunderdome threads where people battle over opinions on Gaza.

There are a few others, I dont want to make a list, because it would be incomplete, I keep forgetting. But now to answer Bytemite's post, as one of the people I always read. I must admit, there are users on the board I just skip over.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:01 PM

Well, like I said for me the addictive part is the chat. I'm kind of addicted to message boarding, when it comes down to it. Often find myself every half hour or hour in the middle of doing something else wanting to get on and see what people are talking about.

But the addictive gameplay mechanic of an MMORPG isn't that the grinding is particularly fun, but that you start to set goals for yourself. "I'm going to get this level tonight." "I'm going to finish this quest." "I'm going to get this epic item after 40 hours of working at it over about a week's time."

There's always something to reward you at the end of your goal... And a new goal, right after, for you to decide to chase.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:05 PM

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Bytemite wrote:
Wednesday, January 28, 2009 17:52
I play! Well, I did. I mostly play with friends I knew before the game even came out (the same one who got me into Firefly! The rest of my guild is off on their own server playing the new expansion...), and he doesn't always have money, so when he can't play, I usually don't. But I do really like WoW. Going to start up again on February 3rd!

I have watched it. I was impressed. It's not the game though. It's something in the game that creates the addictive hook.

Here's the abstract angle:

Consider Beenie babies. They were cute stuffed animals. I bought one once for a girlfriend, when they first came out. After that, they became an insanity. We all know how that addiction worked. (gotta catch em all, get em now, while they last, they'll be worth a mint some day, don't take off the tags, keep them in a ziplock bag in the icebox, store at 40F.)

But little stuffed animals with beanbags depicting unsual creatures are nothing new. When I was 8 I got a little crab on cape cod. It was the magic trap that made the insanity.

It's like this:

Three cages contain rats. All have a button, and a food dispenser.

Cage 1: push the button, get food. All rats put in this cage pressed it three times a day.

Cage 2: push the button, get an electric shock. All rats put in this cage pressed it three times and never again.

Cage 3: push the button, get randomly either food or an electric shock. All rats put in this cage pressed it all day long.

I think that was a U of C study. Lotto Tickets, Las Vegas. Notice they don't hold the world series of Chess at casinos, in fact, Hold 'em is far from the most interesting poker variation, but it is the most random.

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I have to say, that with World of Warcraft, Blizzard has combined their unique artstyle (kind of a cartoony realism blend) with a very immersive world, and their patented simplification and smoothing of gameplay and design.

I know the game. Not criticizing the design. It's well done.
But Starcraft also, without the addiction level. Also, I've seen other games this good. It's not the content, I'm virtually certain of that. There's a simple mechanism that would make people play something on the level of pong all day long if it contained it. It's a hunch, but my hunches tend to be pretty close to the mark.

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Sure, it's just point click and grind a lot of times, and most of the actual leveling process (at least for me) has become a glorified in-party (multiplayer group) or guild chat.

Care to elaborate? I think this is hitting closer to the mark. I don't have the answer, I'm looking for it.

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But very race and class combination has a slightly different feel, atmosphere-wise, and play just a little different, bring something new each of them to the basic gameplay. And that's worked into a larger story that Blizzard has fleshed out really well with a supporting cast of thousands of NPCs. Now, they don't have some of the story-telling tricks of instances and separate realms to allow for time advancement (they did something like that in the new Expansion though), but for storytelling they still do a good job.

In here there are some elements. Fish them out if you can. There are good games with storylines and character classes all over the place. Nothing that causes people to desert life and exist only in game the way I've seen with WoW.

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And the world is vivid, busy, and alive. Critters populate the world and actually are animated believably and have realistic (to an extent) behavioural scripts. Even the most unimportant NPC has some personality, which Blizzard shows with the in-game text.

Many games have populations of random AI critters. I think the mechanism is more basic. I suspect several elements, but that's just from watching and having played similar games. I want to here from the players where they think the hook(s) might be. Maybe we should make a list of suspects.

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I don't raid much, so I'm more of a casual gamer. People who raid really do lose themselves. They have to be part of schedules and play a LOT to get the loot they do.

Ah, we're getting close to a key element: Raid?

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And other people might argue other reasons for liking, but those are mine.

This isn't about liking or disliking the game. There have been some great games over time, that don't elicit addiction. I submit chess as probably the best game, but a lot of really in depth world created videogames are up there.

My question is about addiction, and the nature of the triggers that are within the nature of the game. Firefly is an awesome immersive world. Do you watch the entire series every day? Okay, so you watched it more than once. But many people invest more time each day in WoW than it would take to watch all of Firefly. (What's that? 8, 10 hours?)

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:08 PM

Oh, and in regards to the character class concept, often it's not implemented very well. Some classes always seems superfluous or weak while another is too strong.

While WoW of course has some of that, and depending on who you ask they'll say a different class is broken and theirs is the most hard up... I'd say WoW is more balanced than any other game out there. Every class is equally viable when it comes to progressing themselves and being including in multiple player efforts if you know your class and aren't a greedy jerk. And everyone in a group has a role to play, and people often choose to play the roles that they enjoy best.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:13 PM

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BYTEMITE

Well, like I said for me the addictive part is the chat. I'm kind of addicted to message boarding, when it comes down to it. Often find myself every half hour or hour in the middle of doing something else wanting to get on and see what people are talking about.

Here to. otoh, it's easier to walk away from.

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But the addictive gameplay mechanic of an MMORPG isn't that the grinding is particularly fun, but that you start to set goals for yourself. "I'm going to get this level tonight." "I'm going to finish this quest." "I'm going to get this epic item after 40 hours of working at it over about a week's time."

Ah, this is far closer to the mark I suspect than anything else. These were going to be my top suspects:

Mission completion, esp. with repetition necessary to overcome hurdles, and more than anything, character advancement. 40 hours for an in game item? that's insane. I think that you're already over the edge if you're even pursuing that goal. :)

Here are some other ones that occur to me: World building in Sim City is addictive. The sims, char. dev. and advancement is addictive. Any challenge that is hard, requires repetitive attempts and perfection to achieve is addictive.

The integrated community is part of it. The slow laborious nature of going through the mechanics to get to the goal...

A lot of these elements appear in drug addiction and gambling. This is starting to get somewhere.

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There's always something to reward you at the end of your goal... And a new goal, right after, for you to decide to chase.

Ah, the lead in, like youtube, recommending related videos you'll never find again, and more than one, so you have to choose, among the infinite content. Like television, pushing myriad viewing options at you, but this is a one time only shot to see this.

Still gnawing...

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:18 PM

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BYTEMITE
Oh, and in regards to the character class concept, often it's not implemented very well. Some classes always seems superfluous or weak while another is too strong.

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While WoW of course has some of that, and depending on who you ask they'll say a different class is broken and there's is the most hard up... I'd say WoW is more balanced than any other game out there.

This is just good game design. I'd say its confusing cause an effect. The good design comes through longevity, and practice makes perfect: WoW has been around a long time, they've had a lot of time to work on these issues. But it was already addictive, that's how it lasted so long.

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Every class is equally viable when it comes to progressing themselves and being including in multiple player efforts if you know your class and aren't a greedy jerk. And everyone in a group has a role to play, and people often choose to play the roles that they enjoy best.

Yes, but this is true of a regular tabletop RPG, which people get together and play on Saturday afternoons.

But here's a possible hook. If you're in a group, are you needed to log on to play the healer for that group? Are you ever in multiple groups? Is anyone else?

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:21 PM

If I were to sum it up, I'd say the addiction is a result of social interaction and an endless goal/reward cycle, wrapped up in an easy to use, visually stimulating package. Because I'm a little addicted to it too, whenever I start playing, but because I don't get as invested in it I can also stop for long periods of time.

As for Raids. You're right, this is what hits closer to the people you're talking about, who get on WoW and haven't left their monitors since.

I called myself a casual gamer earlier, and I said that was because I don't raid. So called "hardcore" gamers in world of wacraft are the serious raiders.

Okay, so a raid in world of warcraft is when you put together a group of 40 people to take on the most difficult challenges in the game. Getting forty people together often takes a LONG time, and a LOT of planning, so the players who raid join a raid guild, which have schedules for raids that people are expected to stay with. Otherwise they'd spend all their time planning.

So you get 40 people together, and you go and you take on what's known as a "boss." They're the toughest enemy opponents in the game. It often takes hours fighting minions just to get to the boss. And both the boss and the minions drop the best items in the game... EXCEPT, they generally only drop those items one at a time. So everyone then has to do the raid multiple times to try to get the item they want, and the items drop randomly.

And, what's more, if you miss out on a raid, the guilds often have punishments for the players who miss it, because they need EVERYONE to raid. Fighting those bosses takes a lot of strategy and micromanagement.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 7:37 PM

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BYTEMITE
If I were to sum it up, I'd say the addiction is a result of social interaction and an endless goal/reward cycle, wrapped up in an easy to use, visually stimulating package.

Ah, we're getting somewhere.
Let me hit on the key phrase:

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goal/reward cycle

Elaborate?

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Because I'm a little addicted to it too, whenever I start playing, but because I don't get as invested in it I can also stop for long periods of time.

cutting yourself off with a time limit is a good anti-addiction technique which I should be using right now on this forum :)

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As for Raids. You're right, this is what hits closer to the people you're talking about, who get on WoW and haven't left their monitors since.

In some cases we're talking about guys who have their dick in an apple juice jar so they don't have to get up to pee.

The dynamic of the raider, if you can, explain.

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I called myself a casual gamer earlier, and I said that was because I don't raid. So called "hardcore" gamers in world of wacraft are the serious raiders.

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Okay, so a raid in world of warcraft is when you put together a group of 40 people to take on the most difficult challenges in the game. Getting forty people together often takes a LONG time, and a LOT of planning, so the players who raid join a raid guild, which have schedules for raids that people are expected to stay with. Otherwise they'd spend all their time planning.

Ah, Scott's law. Any objective takes an amount of time proportional to the number of people involved squared. Specifically, initiation typically takes one minute times the Scott coefficient. Applied here: 1600 min just to get started. 26 hours 40 minutes.

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So you get 40 people together, and you go and you take on what's known as a "boss." They're the toughest enemy opponents in the game. It often takes hours fighting minions just to get to the boss.

I've played video games :) Japanese really brought on the boss. But in this instance, the Boss is a standard AI game element, or another player?

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And both the boss and the minions drop the best items in the game... EXCEPT, they generally only drop those items one at a time. So everyone then has to do the raid multiple times to try to get the item they want, and the items drop randomly.

And we're back to repetition.

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And, what's more, if you miss out on a raid, the guilds often have punishments for the players who miss it, because they need EVERYONE to raid. Fighting those bosses takes a lot of strategy and micromanagement.

I was wondering if raid attendance was mandatory, and if there was a special role in the raid for each person. Also, does a member have to be in the raid for the entire time, and how long might it take?

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 8:12 PM

The goal/reward cycle is just what I mentioned before. Every moment you play, trying to advance your character, is because you have a goal in mind. Every goal tends to be followed by a new goal, either determined by the game in a storyline or "quest chain," or something you decide you want/want to do.

Oh yeah, and often those raid items come in sets, that increase in power the more items of that particular set you have.

Yep, you have to be in a raid the entire time, otherwise you don't get credit for defeating the boss, and you don't have any claim on the items they drop.

Um, well, I've never done one of the high end raids, they just take too long and I think I'd get really stressed out. Even lower level instances with just a 5 person party can take 3-5 hours. The high level raids are like putting four or more of those together, and each one has a boss, with an over-all boss in the final section. So sometimes a guild doesn't even finish in one day. They can take breaks, but as you can imagine, that makes the people who want to beat the other bosses and get the other items impatient.

And sometimes you have to collect something, like a key, to even access the area. And that can take a while too.

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Wednesday, January 28, 2009 11:30 PM

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The goal/reward cycle is just what I mentioned before. Every moment you play, trying to advance your character, is because you have a goal in mind. Every goal tends to be followed by a new goal, either determined by the game in a storyline or "quest chain," or something you decide you want/want to do.

Okay, character advancement in itself is not new though. I admit it may contribute, but is just a piece of the puzzle. There are many pieces here.

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Oh yeah, and often those raid items come in sets, that increase in power the more items of that particular set you have.

Like this one. Collectorism is a sort of OCD that we as a society encourage in children, and is exploited by a lot of games. I fail to see its natural reason for existence, I assume there is one. Maybe not, maybe we just artificially create it.

I get the rat's hoarding instinct. Fear that he won't get food makes him hoard. I can't think of anything in nature you would collect a complete set of.

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Yep, you have to be in a raid the entire time, otherwise you don't get credit for defeating the boss, and you don't have any claim on the items they drop.

That's not quite addiction, it's more of a mandate, like a job. Still, it's a piece of the puzzle. That's awful if it takes a long time.

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Um, well, I've never done one of the high end raids, they just take too long and I think I'd get really stressed out. Even lower level instances with just a 5 person party can take 3-5 hours. The high level raids are like putting four or more of those together, and each one has a boss, with an over-all boss in the final section.

Taking Scott's law to this again, 5 people would take 25 minutes to get together. I'll bet a 40 person raid really does take 28h40m to initiate.

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So sometimes a guild doesn't even finish in one day. They can take breaks, but as you can imagine, that makes the people who want to beat the other bosses and get the other items impatient.

Also, people have different schedules, or they would if they did anything but WoW. Those who live in game are going to get irritated at those who have lives...

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And sometimes you have to collect something, like a key, to even access the area. And that can take a while too.

Ah, yes, another non new but annoying element. These come logically from collosal cave, but they lost that logic in favor of just a gimmick of completion, similar to the set collecting.

Set collecting is a big part of virtual villagers, as is character advancement. And large wastes of time.

We should scan this thread and come up with elements so far, and maybe this puzzle would start to fall into place.

I'm very sick at the moment, and can't sleep, it's 4:30, Im cold and feel like hell. Some sort of head cold that came on strong, starting with a sore throat. Very unpleasant.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:29 AM

Well, one reason I like it, is that it does not *require* you to work with others - you can go your own merry little way if you please, which suits me just fine.

I do have a guild, mostly other old friends who got sick of FFXI and came over before I did, and one of them is a husband/wife pair with fairly busy schedules who actually play together on their mutual day off.

But I am prettymuch a solo operator, and when I log on I don't have definate goal in mind, just to entertain myself with some quests, crafting or exploring - in fact I find other players and their lack of courtesy or etiquitte quite repulsive and actively avoid them to be honest.

And it gives me the CHOICE to do that - I don't care one way or the other for "e-peen" gear or stuff, although my priestess-engineer is just drooling over the new motorcycle mount, but all in good time, folks do get a little nuts about wanting something, a form of visceral gimme-greed which seems socially trained into em, and I am pretty sure I know from where...

It's entertainment on the cheap on MY schedule, that I don't have to go out and achieve, which can be done in between household stuff or even during (You can run the Stockade instance easily in a single dryer cycle) and if you operate alone, if you wanna stop and leave your character standing around to go make a sandwich, no one is gonna upbraid or penalise you for it.

Heaven help if in a FFXI party if you so much as need to pee - you'll wind up kicked and blacklisted, I kid you not.

I think the problem comes from these things being an immersive little world that folks can escape to from the hellhole cesspit our society has become, cause viewed from a humanist external point of view, it's downright dystopic.

I favor changing that reality instead of building better escapes, which is prolly why I don't wind up so sucked in by it - it's just a fantasy, and fantasy doesn't fix problems, action does.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 3:46 AM

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Well, one reason I like it, is that it does not *require* you to work with others - you can go your own merry little way if you please, which suits me just fine.

Does that quell the addictive tendency?
I remember when I used to play freecell and minesweeper, I had to convince myself "there is no 'new game' button." Once I had done that, my time investment in them collapsed. I could play one of each. I played sim city for a while after that, and found it could be an endless trap. I really haven't gotten into MMORPG, or online role playing. I like the idea of online roleplaying, because I like to write, and sometimes certain RPG scenes make great source material. But time efficiency wise, I was reading the script of one, and it was 6 hours of game, and there were long slow periods, I'll probably extract 2 pages worth of material. Sadly, mostly my own. I haven't had good players in a long time. Writing from RPG is a delicate art. You can never transcribe a game, or even follow its storyline, you just have to mine it for useful information, like "that was a great character" or "that was a killer scene."

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I do have a guild, mostly other old friends who got sick of FFXI and came over before I did, and one of them is a husband/wife pair with fairly busy schedules who actually play together on their mutual day off.

I have a friend who is a FF addict, also a MtG addict, and a Hold 'em addict. (Makes him a lot of money) No drugs though. But definitely gets obsessively snared.

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I find other players and their lack of courtesy or etiquitte quite repulsive

Curious...?

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"e-peen" gear or stuff, although my priestess-engineer is just drooling over the new motorcycle mount, but all in good time, folks do get a little nuts about wanting something, a form of visceral gimme-greed which seems socially trained into em, and I am pretty sure I know from where...

This touches on some of the addictive part.
I assume the where is MSM?

Quote:
It's entertainment on the cheap on MY schedule

That's what I like about a regular RPG. I've been reworking my system for years to make it efficient. In a live game, it plays out in real time, no waiting for combat resolutions. It's very different from D&D, like Firefly vs. Next Gen, a world apart. It's good seed material for my writing, I just wish I had a decent group again. I used to have one with this huge black guy who used to come up with the most sinister characters ever. At one point I just took him aside and said "okay, my villains suck compared to your characters, so, you get to be the villain from now on." Which frelled up the quests, but made the game a lot more interesting.

As for videogames, I've played a lot, I like interactive storylines, like Res. Evil, or really simply things like sudoku.

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(You can run the Stockade instance easily in a single dryer cycle)

lol.

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Heaven help if in a FFXI party if you so much as need to pee - you'll wind up kicked and blacklisted, I kid you not.

Apple Juice Bottle. I kid you not. The guy said to me "No, Don't Drink That! It's Not Apple Juice!"

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I think the problem comes from these things being an immersive little world that folks can escape to from the hellhole cesspit our society has become, cause viewed from a humanist external point of view, it's downright dystopic.

I can see that. But here's me, coming at it from the different, anti-addiction angle. I'm a fan of escapism, absolutely. But you don't want to escape to the mousetrap. Everything should be freedom to leave, and not just the choice, but the will power and the system. If you're penalized for leaving, that's a disincentive. I won't even drink caffeine because I won't be able to not do it. I've actually found a tolerance level: I can drink a soda once every four days. Usually I don't, but if I do have some caffeinated beverage, I have to wait four days. Otherwise, the addiction sets in again.

Quote:
I favor changing that reality instead of building better escapes, which is prolly why I don't wind up so sucked in by it - it's just a fantasy, and fantasy doesn't fix problems, action does.

A tall order.. I favor a deprogramming solution so that people can escape their self made prisons, even if that happens for them to be world of warcraft.

Addiction is incredibly destructive. People who play like BYTEMITE was saying, massive mandatory campaigns, they get nothing else done.

Oh, I can see it now, Gamenon, the mmorpg detox center, raided by Frem and his gang of fangirls. Cameras in hand, they try to portray the horrible abuse:

*whimpers* "Man! My elves are dying! They're getting gang banged by the Frostwolf Clan, and I they wont let me online... screw eating man, I need to play.

FREM's angels: We'll save you, just tell us what they've done.

"The disconnected the machine. It's not online. It's no use."

FREM! What do we do... they turn to a speaker on the table... If we reconnect him, we'll never get him out of this, but I can't stand to see a geek in so much pain

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 6:26 AM

Yeah, etiquette... This might be off topic, but since I get the impression you're curious about what Frem means...

I can see where there might be some complaints on that front.

Most people try to set a time limit for themselves, "I'm only going to play X minutes, then log off," and so when they try to accomplish their goals, other people can become an obstacle to this.

The worst gameplay related transgression comes when another player will deliberately sabotage, steal from, or inconvienence another, often through causing or waiting for a distraction.

When what the players are competing over is just a single enemy, that's often remedied easily enough by asking to form a party, but in the cases of resource gathering and PVP, that's not an option. Ninja looters, gankers, and corpse campers are all examples of this, and are hated by the community. Particularly gankers and corpse campers, because the only reason anyone would have to kill a complete stranger over and over again is a form of sadism. Ninja looters just tend to be clueless or insensitive, stealing from people because either they aren't paying attention or don't care.

And there's always the ignoring people you pass when they need help, and the internet anonymity chat problems.

On the whole, though, I don't see any of that very often. I don't play PvP servers, and I've helped and been helped by plenty of people when almost dead. It's easy enough to look in some other zone for resources if someone is taking them all.

The one time I really felt like someone over stepped a boundary is when I gave a decent sum of in-game money to a low-level begger... Who then made five different new characters to continue to ask me for money over a couple of months. And I could tell that's what they were doing, because they didn't hide their logging on and off very well.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 7:51 AM

"Ninja looters, gankers, and corpse campers"

This whole rant is almost meaningless to me, except to say "don't you know that death will set you free?"

Change IP. I think that the rules of the system should change to prevent abuse, but I'm less interested in that then what makes this game such a tar pit.

It it were me, I'd probably do some every man for himself thing, or small groups, and allow free jumping in and out. like have a swap built in, you jump out, and are replaced by another user who teleports in, if there's no other solution. I mean, it works in Bridge ;)

But are there missions? I thought you just interacted with other users.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 1:32 PM

World of Warcraft is one of the MMORPGS that will direct you, in game, towards some goal if you choose to accept that goal. The game then rewards you for completing that goal with experience, sometimes a useful item, and advancing the storyline. A lot of MMORPGs before WoW (and a lot of the free internet ones that exist NOW) just had the grinding mechanism for character advancement (go out and kill things until you level).

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 7:56 PM

HKCAVALIER

Ironically, I'd say WoW was the least addictive of its kind. Or maybe it's more that games like EverQuest and FFXI are Heroin and WoW is Booze. Sure, you can become a big addict but it isn't by any means required in order for you to play. Or maybe WoW has within it both, the gateway, purely recreational party drug and the horrendous sell-everything-you-own-for-a-fix drug for those who would take it that far.

It's like a virtual ponzi scheme where everyone wins. The game sells the feeling of success. The older games were created with the philosophy that in order for people to really appreciate their virtual accomplishments there had to be drudgery and there had to be penalties--if you didn't suffer, you wouldn't appreciate your accomplishments nearly as much and you wouldn't commit the insane hours per day to play. But wily ol' Blizzard knew that in cyberspace you don't need to have the down to appreciate the high (as Frem pointed out, life supplies all the down you need). They could just package higher and higher highs and all you get is a playerbase that gets bored periodically without getting the rabid hatred and resentment that EQ and its ilk still get.

DT, it's too bad you can't just log in and instantly get into a raid. It might just amaze you, the crap people will put up with and still call it a "game."

I've played WoW since launch--I think it's beautiful and the gameplay is delightful. It really can put you in a very childlike place of wonder. For the first few months or so, it was what I did with my spare time, which is pretty much what I do with anything wonderful and new (how many times did I watch all of Firefly in those first months after the DVD came out?),but I've always been heavily committed to my art (it helps that a lot of my involvement is in the theatre--heavy time commitment there in its own right) so WoW has had to "get in line" as it were.

Blizzard understands that what really makes a game fun, particularly PvP (and I have enjoyed PvP more consistently than any other aspect of WoW), is luck--so much of one's success in a given encounter revolves around pure hilarious luck. What this means is that when you kick someone's ass, you totally destroy them. A couple lucky hits and you feel like the master and he/she feels like a li'l mouse without a hole. Of course, if you're on the receiving end of such a drubbing, it's over quickly enough--or, luck may swing your way and you could come back and still be the last one standing--or, he's got you down to nothing and is doing his little /laugh emote in hopes of embarrassing you and then a wave of your own faction come charging up the hill and he's down in under 5 seconds! It's fun, man. And human memory being what it is, you tend to remember the good times and forget the bad. :)

But this raiding crap--see, raiding is as old as the genre and it's awful, it's not fun, not remotely. It's absolutely like a job. You're practically punching a clock and then you're doing a very small set of very specific tasks on cue, without variation for a few hours. And if you do it wrong, you're in trouble. After all, you've just fucked it up for 20 other guys (Blizzard reduced the number from 40 down to 20 as a gesture toward sanity) who've spent the last 4 hours to get there with you. So, it's tense, and yet it's boring as hell--you can spend more time waiting to get people together than actually raiding--and then when you finally get to a boss and kill the boss, the raid leader generally decides who gets the gear. So if you're new, prolly, you're just paying your dues. lol But the gear you win, when you're finally "in," looks very impressive and is very powerful so you get huge bragging rights for having endured the most absurdly unpleasant form of "fun" known to the Internet. I only raided for the first time this summer and I almost dumped the game completely because of it.

Anyway, on topic, I think Blizzard took the already existing addictive nature of MMO's and packaged it in by far its most beautiful package and removed a ton of the off-putting aspects of the genre, so it's by far the most user-friendly MMO ever. So you get 11 million instead of 100,000 players and therefore a lot more addicts numerically, but not necessarily proportionally. Prolly a lot fewer proportionally, because a whole lot of folks can play and enjoy the game without playing more than an hour or two a few nights a week and that's just not possible with those other games.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 9:04 PM

First off, I'd like to say that there isn't any such thing as "gaming addiction." There was exactly ONE clinic in all of Europe that treated this fictitious condition and there conclusion was that it was caused by social issues and wasn't an actual addiction.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/7746471.stm

However, that guy says that this not addicted part comprises about 90% of those that come to his clinic. IMO, the other 10% can arguably be put in the, "the definition of addiction they use is so loose that nearly anything can be addictive" category. This whole notion of "game addiction" is ludicrous.

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Thursday, January 29, 2009 10:48 PM

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

I can't tell you what it is about Warcraft that eats people's souls. All I can tell you is that I vowed I would never date a Warcrafter again. Frem, I completely feel your pain. There is something deeply unsettling and upsetting about having a game put before you pretty much every time. Saying if I got an account and started playing we could spend a lot more time together did not help.
There are people who have recovered. Warcraft rehab or something. My best friend played for awhile, even after she got so upset on my behalf over having my significant other always online. It didn't quite eat her life, but she was shocked at the amount of free time she had when she quit. The reason she quit was the same reason most people leave an online community, I think, she was tired of everyone's bullshit. Clearly there are people hooked so hard on the game they aren't driven away by that kind of thing.
My current significant other is, I found out, a recovered warcafter. He quit when he realized he had no life outside the game and had gained something like fifty pounds. The lack of sleep was also a factor, I think, what with the raids that took eight or ten hours to do (which might be part of why so many people get sucked in, at least time-wise) But he's sworn it's evil and he would never go back. He hates what it did to him, and he's been gaming all his life, so nothing else had this effect. Even so, there were a few twitches when the expansion came out. I'm glad he didn't chose the game over me, because believe me I would have left to keep what sanity remains to me.
I don't know why it is. Much like most drugs, all it took was seeing someone on it to convince me to never touch it. I hate it. I hate what it did to my friends and lovers.
That was a completely unproductive rant, I'm sorry.

[/sig]

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Friday, January 30, 2009 7:06 AM

BYTEMITE,

Interesting, If you can, define the goal structure for me. I've played those old side scrollers where you beat the boss. I remember there were a lot of those in the late 80s, double dragon, and some a great deal more advanced.

At the time I was a killer player, I had the high score on all the machines, and there were thousands of people that played, and i didn't play all that much. I averaged it out once: It cost me $2, or eight plays, to beat a new machine when it came in. I recall I was at a interstate rest stop once, and there was some soldier game, and I put in a quarter, lasted about 2 minutes. There was a kid there who had been playing for hours, so I asked him a few questions about the game that I could figure out were issues in 2 min. Then I put in another quarter and solved it.

This can't be that structure, because has a set number of levels, and then you could beat it. The addictive one for me was gauntlet. My local gamestore owner once challenged me to see how long I could play on one quarter. I said "forever" but he made me do it anyway, and various kids would egg me on saying things like "at level 500 this happens" it was never true, and I knew that. One kid said, give me a buck and I can kill you, so I did, and he nearly succeeded, got me down to from 10,000 down 3 health, (you lose one health per second.) I killed him, exited to some other level, and found a food in under 3 sec. Then the whole thing went on for 12 hours, until 6 am, at which point the store owner fell asleep, and so I just committed suicide and went home.

But social was a big part of gauntlet addiction. People would come in, and play, and so four players, constantly changing. At 25c/day it was cheap entertainment. With some larger mission, it could have been worse...

Anyway, I digress, I'm interested in the goal structure WoW.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 7:14 AM

SIGMANUNKI,

I deal with addiction and chemical dependency. Traditionally, you would be right, an addiction causes a cortical release upon withdrawal.

That's not true of games. You can call it "habit" if you want, but the time-sucking, de-motivating force of the game is destructive.

Technically, gambling is an "addiction" in the clinical sense either, yet it can certainly destroy your health.

This is just semantics. I tend to term a heroin addiction as a chemical dependency, and a marijuana addiction as an addiction. It makes you want to do it again, and can end up consuming your time, energy and money, on a rewardless vicious circle. Is mj going to cause a cortical overload? no. some sort of cortical release? maybe. But it's still an addiction, as much as gambling. It's just not a chemical dependency.

Opiates and alkaloids create chemical dependencies. The withdrawal has a definite cortical release, that contrary to popular belief, actually can kill you, only in extreme cases. But think of this as the "stick" in carrot and stick. If something is all "carrot" then it's still, IMHO, addictive. If it's carrot and stick, and chemical, it's probably a dependency.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 7:43 AM

Quote:
PHOENIXROSE
I can't tell you what it is about Warcraft that eats people's souls. All I can tell you is that I vowed I would never date a Warcrafter again. Frem, I completely feel your pain. There is something deeply unsettling and upsetting about having a game put before you pretty much every time. Saying if I got an account and started playing we could spend a lot more time together did not help.

Damaging and peer pressure behavior. I don't think there's a connection, but I knew a couple that were warcrafters and child abusers. But this was some time ago, earlier versions, but they played a lot of games together, they would fall into a rut. Two people co-operatively diving into a pit is not going to solve the problem

I'm a gamer, I like games. I prefer tabletop games, I'm not a big fan of D&D which got me started, but I would say, we played D&D from 1978-1980, subsequent versions are improvements, but not enough to interest me. But I'm also a fan of computer games. I got my start programming at 13 breaking into games and reprogramming them. Hacking games was a lot of fun, very informative, I started writing my own, I even hacked the arcade gauntlet, but I could beat it without doing so.

I also believe in evolution. I don't want to build my own MMORPG by myself, but I might do it at some point as a team. I would want to create a more entertaining and less addictive alternative.

We didn't have a TV growing up, I got one back in the 90s. Things like Farscape quickly cured me of potential "TV addiction" because 1 hour of really interesting programming made it diminishing returns to watch anything else.

There should exist games for all the reasons there are, but there should also be a means to reform a game addiction. One of my sisters got into Virtual Villagers, which is a lot less complex than WoW, and it sucked a tremendous amount of time and energy she could have spent writing. It also has a reward system. you need to level up your people so they can do certain tasks, etc.

Quote:
There are people who have recovered. Warcraft rehab or something.

This is sort of what I had in mind.

Quote:
My best friend played for awhile, even after she got so upset on my behalf over having my significant other always online. It didn't quite eat her life, but she was shocked at the amount of free time she had when she quit. The reason she quit was the same reason most people leave an online community, I think, she was tired of everyone's bullshit. Clearly there are people hooked so hard on the game they aren't driven away by that kind of thing.

Sort of like this forum

I think that will be my [snark] icon. snarkicon.

Quote:
My current significant other is, I found out, a recovered warcafter. He quit when he realized he had no life outside the game and had gained something like fifty pounds. The lack of sleep was also a factor, I think, what with the raids that took eight or ten hours to do (which might be part of why so many people get sucked in, at least time-wise) But he's sworn it's evil and he would never go back. He hates what it did to him, and he's been gaming all his life, so nothing else had this effect.

Yes, it's certainly not not "games" it's certain games, and something about them. I would say the same for drugs, but everything on the street is addictive, with the possible exception of shrooms. While not advocating shrooms, I'm simply pointing out an evolution of the marketplace: addiction sells. If there was something non-addictive, it would be replaced by something addictive, so I think that some sort of steering is necessary. Not social engineering, but informing the public, and presenting ways out of addiction. I can tell you that the opiate high can be beaten with non addictive legal compounds, and I've tried both, so I'm not guessing. And yes, no way in hell am I about to post how. Everyone knows how quickly you can get something banned by circulating it. Drug empires and Pharma both have huge influence in DC.

Blizzard does not, and Wizards sort of does, but I think that this one can be beaten, but first it needs to be understood.

Banning something is never the solution: the solution is always evolution. make the more innovative game, more entertaining game.

Quote:
Even so, there were a few twitches when the expansion came out. I'm glad he didn't chose the game over me, because believe me I would have left to keep what sanity remains to me.
I don't know why it is. Much like most drugs, all it took was seeing someone on it to convince me to never touch it. I hate it. I hate what it did to my friends and lovers.
That was a completely unproductive rant, I'm sorry.

There is that other element of addiction there, the draw. I had cured a heroin addict, and it was a long painful road. Then another friend of mine, who unbeknownst to me, had started using. Call recovered friend Mr. H, and new addict friend Mr. K. Mr. H. saw Mr. K. shoot up, and was tempted, but held his cool. Then Mr. K. handed Mr. H. a loaded needle and said, here. It's a gift. From then on, Mr. H was a goner. Game Over. Mr. K. is in rehab now. But Mr. K. actually wasn't a dealer, there wasn't nefarious intent, he thought he was doing Mr. H. a favor.

So, there's some lure there, and it's easy to fall back in.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 8:08 AM

HK

Thanks for the insights. I only quibble with one detail: Anecdotally, I'd say more addicts, even proportionally.

One of the things I'm trying to do here is use communication effectively to gain most of the understanding without investing thousands of hours in the game.

I have a friend who fought on the front lines in the ME for 5 years, signed up right after 9-11, went right to BT, Afgh. then Iraq, always being pulled in with the backdoor draft. I'd love to DL his understanding of war without being on the front lines for five years.

Another, I'm gnawing all this over as what an evolution would need. One thing is clearly no raiding, or any ritualistic repetitive or boring stuff, another would be probably more PvP and less reward loop, like char. adv.

I removed char adv from my own tabletop rpg years ago. There's small amounts, but mostly, it's storyline driven. Little rewards, but only just enough to make people feel better.

The most entertaining game of actual D&D I ever played lasted three days, and at the end, we divied up, and we each got 60 silver and 10 experience points (I guess that's the double Iscariot.) But there were a lot of fun games that were a total disaster.

Char. adv. draws in people who seek, or learn to seek, char. adv. as a goal. The goal should be to relax and have fun. When I have some time, if you guys want to join me in designing a better game to compete with WoW, I'm all for it. It's nice to have people so familiar with the game. I wasn't sure that there would be some here.

We would all share in the profits if anyone took me up on this idea... I'm not a big profit-driven person myself. This isn't a right this minute idea, it's a some point, something to gnaw on. Atm, I'm working on a fantasy novel, I need to get my memory back to snuff before I'll be a kickass programmer again, and at the moment, I'm really sick. And this always makes me crave chocolate. A harmless addiction :)

Oh, I made a personal response to everyone so scroll up

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Friday, January 30, 2009 9:12 AM

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I would want to create a more entertaining and less addictive alternative.

Significant Other has been playing Warhammer online. He likes it, he doesn't have to play it every day, and the longest it's taken him to get through a major instance was an hour, and that was with repeated wipes and having to start over. I still have no interest in MMORPG gaming myself, but at least he has one that isn't going to eat his soul.

[/sig]

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:37 AM

Game ideas to get around repetitive tasks and addiction, huh?

I've thought a fully pvp game where your skill with a certain role is based on how often you use an associated item would be interesting. Using the item would subtly over time increases your effectiveness, and that skill would deteriorate all the time that you're not using it, until you're back where you started. If it deteriorates fast enough, you could have it that all skill gains are temporary, and no one would need to spend hours in game to progress anywhere. Most everyone would be equal, with some people for a little while slightly better in some role or another, and you'd also eliminate the need for set character classes. There are going to be people who always want to be trying to heal people, and some people who always want to be attacking, some people who play defensively, some people who like trickery, some people who ambush and hide, so who a person is could influence their character and role more than how often they play.

I'd also recommend having internal calculations in game regarding any character advancement remain hidden from the player.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:46 AM

STORYMARK

I wonder how differently this discussion would be playing out had the Firefly MMORPG ever been finished?

"I thoroughly disapprove of duels. If a man should challenge me, I would take him kindly and forgivingly by the hand and lead him to a quiet place and kill him."

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:53 AM

ByteMite

You're hired. I like how you think.

I'm thinking that technologically, we'll start it simple. The core elements of game design and story flow are far more important than fancy graphics and sexy realism, as nice as they are.

I propose we start with something low tech we can do ourselves, and then gradually build up the tech. A friend of mine and I were talking about this and he was saying "I want 3d i can rotate, and zoom in and out and..." in time, when we have a lot of programmers. But if we can enjoy talking about it on this, we can enjoy playing it on a low tech structure. This also has the advantage that blizzard will not see us as a threat, and won't move to echo our clever storyline and play dynamics.

Thanks. This is the beginning of an idea.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 1:25 PM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by dreamtrove:
I'm thinking that technologically, we'll start it simple. The core elements of game design and story flow are far more important than fancy graphics and sexy realism, as nice as they are.

I propose we start with something low tech we can do ourselves, and then gradually build up the tech. A friend of mine and I were talking about this and he was saying "I want 3d i can rotate, and zoom in and out and..." in time, when we have a lot of programmers. But if we can enjoy talking about it on this, we can enjoy playing it on a low tech structure. This also has the advantage that blizzard will not see us as a threat, and won't move to echo our clever storyline and play dynamics.

Graphics are really the least technologically advanced part of an mmorpg. The hardest part is the MMO part.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 1:29 PM

Quote:

Graphics are really the least technologically advanced part of an mmorpg. The hardest part is the MMO part.

Well that's good news, because I already know how to do that.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 1:36 PM

CITIZEN

do tell.

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 3:19 PM

bump. I'm an interesting thread. I've been displaced by spam bumping, I'm bumping back.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 4:11 PM

Actually, I've never quite found an MMO that really appealed to me for an extended length of time.

I like flying spaceships, especially large ones, but the Freelancer Discovery mod, while glorious in every other aspect, has a problem with larger boats hanging on up dock, requiring one to delete the whole savegame and start from scratch.

Eve had the ships, and hands down the best crafting system (T1 gear) I've ever seen, but unfortunately the game was bought from SSI by the same pack of assholes who wrecked Ultima Online (The Trammel Incident) via non-stop constant griefing - and they're notorious for having personal investment via characters and alliances in game, and cheating like bastards to give them the edge (T20 Incident).

So you can imagine what the "community" is like, being that the game was rebuilt entire by the same kind of giggling shitheads who camp the newbie spawn point and nearest graveyard at level 80 for six straight hours just to be dicks.

Griefing is not only allowed, it's outright encouraged and the game mechanics are deliberately loaded AGAINST people who are not out to ruin someone elses day - so most folk with any sense of ethics or decency at all quit in short order, seeing no sense in paying good money to be some giggling pricks buttmonkey when the game mechanics set you up on a silver plate for them and ensure you have no defense whilst they have every advantage.

Which is a shame, cause the game *engine* minus the deliberate loading, is actually quite good, and the crafting system second to none.

But if you ever wanna see just how bad an MMO gone bad can get, Eve Online is by far the very worst of it's kind.

That said, someone tossed me a freebie key for City of Villains recently, with a few snarky comments related to my personal character, heh heh.

While the game engine is fairly primitive, supervillainry can be a kinda fun release, but sadly GTA: San Andreas does it better, cause even the villains are pretty sanitized, and you can't massacre the civvies (ever) or cause massive property destruction save in one mayhem mission.

GTA: San Andreas is better for that, cause some days I just wanna go downtown, disregarding traffic laws with wild abandon and an SMG out the window to silence any protests, park that beaten, flaming heap right in the center of town and JUST KILL EVERY DAMN BODY.

It's quite theraputic, it is.

-Frem
It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, January 30, 2009 4:40 PM

AQ: The AL Qaeda RPG.
Tagline: No need to hunt down the terrorist training camps: We are the terrorist training camps, and we're everywhere, online.

Massive Multiplayer suicide. Allah will reward you with 72 raisins.

The Verse Online.
Tagline: Play it, or she will kill you

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Friday, January 30, 2009 9:52 PM

@Dreamtrove:

This is *far* more than semantics. It *is* far more than semantics because the treatment will differ depending on what something is actually thought to be. Also, even *if* you are someone who works with addiction, there is a significant portion of others like you that disagree with your *opinion*.

Point of fact, we don't know what addiction really is. There is also the problem what gaming "addiction" behaves radically different than other things that have a general consensus that are addictions e.g. heroin.

Also, gambling is *not* an addiction. It is a compulsion and there *is* a radical difference between the two.

Jesus christ. Next thing you'll be telling me is that addiction is a disease.

Point of fact, every person that has been cited as "addicted" to games has had a personality issue that the gaming this is rather just a symptom. So, in your view, a symptom can be an addiction?!?! Are you serious? That's all bullshit.

(NOTE: Btw, marijuana is *not* addictive. Countless studies have shown this.)

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:11 PM

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Addiction is not a disease. It's not caused by an infection, so it's not a disease. It's a dependency or compulsion, something your body or mind craves. Those are the two forms of addiction; physical and mental. Something like caffeine, cigarettes, or herion cause physical dependency with physical withdrawl symptoms if the drug is out of the system for too long. This makes them very difficult to break.
But there are mental addictions, too. Food, marijuana, and, I think, games, can cause a mental craving that is very powerful. I've experienced it with food and gaming both. It's like a twitch inside your head, and it doesn't stop until it's satisfied. I've actually broken my physical addiction to caffeine much easier than my mental addiction to food, and actually continued to have that craving for caffeine long after symptoms such as headaches and crankiness had passed. Caffeine is a minor drug, but it's the only thing I've ever been physically dependent on, so it's all I have to work with.
Saying addiction is a disease is irresponsible because it gives people the message that there's nothing they can do about it and nothing they could have done to stop it, which is patently untrue. It takes work, but it can be overcome.
Saying a compulsion or mental addiction is not a form of addiction is equally irresponsible, because it gives people the message that they don't need to do anything about it, even though such things can suck time and money and potentially ruin a life. It's hard and it takes work, but it can be overcome and it should be overcome if it poses a problem in someone's life. They're lucky that they don't have to deal with serious physical withdrawl, but they have their own challenges to deal with; they might be feeling those mental twitches for the rest of their lives. I'm not in any position to say that's worse, but it damn well isn't a picnic.

[/sig]

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Friday, January 30, 2009 10:12 PM

HKCAVALIER

Sigma, you come to this thread to debunk the premise of the thread. That is simply rude.

You rabid anti-recovery people really confuse me. What is it to you? That's what I want to know. Why should you care if we're misapplying the term addiction? We all seem to know what we mean. What are you trying to prove? And what kind of success do you really think you'll have proving it here?

You come here all riled up, rhetorical guns blazing and spitting for a fight and sure, if DT doesn't ignore you entirely from now on, you will likely get one. You'll be able to talk big and "call bullshit" and whatever else satisfies your epeen, but in the end all you'll have succeeded in doing is to hijack the thread.

Please don't.

HKCavalier

Hey, hey, hey, don't be mean. We don't have to be mean, because, remember, no matter where you go, there you are.

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Friday, January 30, 2009 11:04 PM

I'd bitch about you two stealin my thunder if y'all didn't do *SO* much better a job of gettin stuff across like that.

Not like it matters what someone calls it, and yes, indeedy, it's always a symptom of deeper issues.

Our whole crackbrained medical and psychological establishment seems based around treating symptoms while ignoring or making up excuses for the root problems that cause them - more so in the psych field than the other cause it's easier to get away with and harder to call out.

Think about it, kids these days exhibit aberrent behavior due to mixed messages from a society inimical to most if not all of the natural instincts that make us human to begin with - and the damn shrinks label it as various disorders and wanna medicate it without a single thought to the fact that they are reacting to a hostile environment - and maybe the ENVIRONMENT is the goddamn problem, or worse, and far more common, is that they know this and rationalise or excuse it away cause it's quicker and more profitable to push the pills.

Like I've said before, that's like an MD "treating" tuberculosis with cough syrup - and the psych docs who knowingly do this shit are naught more than puffed up quacks, whatever excuses they hide behind, nothing more than modern snake oil salesmen.

We've built a crapsack world and dystopian society with a damned lot of unavoidable misery in it, is it any wonder that folks seek escape from it, or that the quality of that escape makes the pull stronger ?

It's basic cause and effect, whatever the hell you wanna call it.

Me, I wanna escape too - but frankly, I want OFF this damn rock, and far, far away outside the reach of anyone who wants to control my life to ease the misery of their own by feeling in control of *something*...

Like Mal said, never under the heel of anybody, ever again.

And that folks, is WHY as long as the kind of folk currently in power continue to be there, that it's not gonna happen - their own studies proved that even with over 70% fanatic ringers, the moment a colony out of range of feasible use of force becomes self-sufficient, it will *instantly* revolt and secede.

Lacking any other escape, some folk choose fantasy, that's been true since before the computer era, hell, before the freakin printing press - no matter how you slice it, this is NOT a new or novel issue.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Friday, January 30, 2009 11:12 PM

You think you know--what's to come, what you are. You haven't even begun.

Quote:
Originally posted by Fremdfirma:
that's like an MD "treating" tuberculosis with cough syrup

That's an excellent way of putting it, I may have to steal that...

[/sig]

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 12:09 AM

You know, I don't know how much of this is tongue-in-cheek, or serious. But, I'll respond to a couple things.

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:

You rabid anti-recovery people really confuse me.

I'm not anti-recovery. In fact, if this is how you really feel, then you haven't read my posts. I'm all for getting people to live in the real world. But, the methods of addiction recovery aren't it. It's a personality thing, not addiction. Please also see comments from the article I linked to. That guy is someone who knows what he's talking about.

Quote:
Originally posted by HKCavalier:

You come here all riled up, rhetorical guns blazing and spitting for a fight and sure, if DT doesn't ignore you entirely from now on, you will likely get one. You'll be able to talk big and "call bullshit" and whatever else satisfies your epeen, but in the end all you'll have succeeded in doing is to hijack the thread.

I didn't come in here 'all riled up'. I came in here with a well established opinion based on clinical results. I also haven't hijacked the thread, nor will that be accomplished if this conversation continues. It is a necessary one given the topic: Is the premise even valid?

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 12:34 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:

Saying a compulsion or mental addiction is not a form of addiction is equally irresponsible, because it gives people the message that they don't need to do anything about it

To me, it is this statement is the most indicative that your logic is really *really* flawed. A compulsion, that is causing problems in ones life, doesn't need to be addressed because people aren't calling it an addiction?!?!? Are you fucking serious?!?!?

Point of fact, things that are behavioural are NOT addictions. They are, at most, personality disorders. Or are you going to say that my OCD is an addiction? After all, if I (e.g.) don't check that my door's locked for some time every night before I go to bed I get that 'itch' and feel discomfort, etc. That does, after all, satisfy the criteria given in your posts about what an addiction is. But, it's not an addiction. It really really isn't. It's a compulsion.

I'll also point out that cigarettes don't just cause a physical addiction. They are habit forming as well. As in, it only takes a couple days to overcome the nicotine addiction. But, it takes far longer to get rid of the habit. The habit is not an addiction in and of itself even though your criteria of addiction would make it seem that way. It is a compulsion. There *is* a difference.

I would say the same about food. It can become a habit to eat at certain times, or if one is in a certain mood, or after certain events (e.g. eating chips after getting home from school), etc. But, that doesn't mean it is an addiction. It is at most a compulsion/habit.

They are behavioural. Abnormal behaviours are *not* addictions.

Quite frankly, I find that calling these things addictions very dishonest and irresponsible. "It's not my fault I'm overweight. I'm addicted to food and haven't beaten my addiction yet." Bullshit.

Seriously, you *really* need to think about this more. Because, there are serious holes in your thinking of what an addiction is. Which is actually one of the problems in defining addiction.

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 12:51 AM

Frem, you really need to actually look into what these people actually do and how they actually work. As in, in every disorder, etc that I've looked into in the DSM-IV, there is always the criteria that the issue is not induced by an general medical condition or have clearly have another cause. There are also criteria that these symptoms need to be, beyond a shadow of a doubt, outside the normal range defined by the local culture.

And it does matter what it's called. Check out the article I linked to above for the reasons why i.e. it's about how it's treated.

Btw, there are those of us that are civil enough not to need to revolt. We do things with far more grace than blood-shed. And secession is included in that. If you don't believe me, just check out how Canada became independent. Or East Germany. Or many of the countries in Eastern Europe that are now independent.

----
I am on The Original List (twice). We are The Forsaken and we aim to burn!
"We don't fear the reaper"

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 2:39 AM

KIRKULES

Quote:
Originally posted by SigmaNunki:
Point of fact, things that are behavioural are NOT addictions. They are, at most, personality disorders.

There is no need to defend a position that is definitionally and scientifically absolutely correct. When people want to ignore definitions and scientific evidence it's pointless to argue with them. What your dealing with here is a pseudoscience idea that permeates society nowadays. The idea that inside everyone is a normal person and that outside forces are responsible for all aberrant behavior. They are unwilling to admit to the possibility that an internal flaw caused by genetics my actually be responsible for the chemical imbalance that results in abnormal behavior. The belief that they are totally normal and outside forces are causing their addiction/disorder makes them believe that they can cure themselves if the can just change their environment. Using this excuse, they stop taking their medication or refuse psychotherapy because they're convinced it can't help because there's really nothing wrong with them. The medical comunity is as responsible as any for the ignorance of society because they perpetuate the lie that these people can be "cured", when in reality addressing symptoms is all that is possible with current understanding of the causes.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 6:13 AM

Quote:
HK
Sigma, you come to this thread to debunk the premise of the thread. That is simply rude.

Thanks HK, I'm following advice and ignoring. It's making me rethink the landmine idea. If warcraft addiction can be a landmine, anything can, so people who aren't me are probably right: it's a matter of how we react to landmines, not avoiding them.

FREM,

For once I'm actually going to disagree:

You have a point, this society is seriously f^&ked up. But assume for a moment that all societies are to some degree, and while treating underlying problems is a good idea, this:

Any society might have a random addiction introduced with radically destructive consequences. I could use alcohol into Ireland or N. America, but I prefer the stark example of the former persian empire: Iran, no opium, stable healthy productive society. Afghanistan, identical social background, plus opium, a total disaster.

The fact is that society can be dismantled by introducing self destructive behavior. The solution to this, I agree, is less rehab and more prevention, but that may just mean education.

Also, we have the issue of a large number of current addicts. Addiction isn't just a serious issue helping the US to lose to east asia economically, it's also one of the causes of our mideast problems.

IMHO, a perfectly stable society might lose massive numbers of productive people to random addictions, and a hell hole society might put itself together if it didn't have problems like this, even if it was horribly poor etc.

But the best society is probably the one that prepares to block the decay, and also repairs those who fall apart.

This isn't about escapism, someone going and playing WoW for an hour a day. This about people playing WoW for 60 hours a week, and I've known some. There are a lot of things that I would put in this category. It's okay to watch TV because there's a program you like, but when the box is always on and you're always watching whatever dumb sh*t is on, then there's a problem. And this is where I think to some extent, I'd disagree on cause and effect: The chronic TV watchers I've known have started out as functioning people, who began watching, and fell for the hooks of the medium. As they watched more and more, they did less and less, and THEN their lives began to suck.

Ditto with alcoholics, of which I've known several. They weren't depressed losers when they started having a beer or two, they were mostly living the high life of partying etc. Then they went to more massive partying where they had 6 or 12, and then they got to the point where they were in their homes, alone, drinking 20 beers a day sleeping in their own piss. Sure, in the meantime, they lost their jobs, their wives left, took the kids, etc. But these things are not unrelated. Still, most people can sit down and have a beer without become the shmuck above.

But it's an issue.

Addiction from devotion, to yield to.
I think this generally applies to reward systems.

Beanie baby addiction. Normal people got caught in the storm, and ended up doing crazy things.

"I realized I had a problem when making my morning rounds of six stores looking for beanie babies I didn't have, I was planning a second pass, later in the day"

It could be anything, it could be religion. You go to church, fine. You go to church 60 times a week, that's probably going to cause your life to self destruct. Go back to the middle ages, you'll probably find people like this. Now you won't, I don't think (maybe in some other part of the country) but there's only church on Sundays.

You can't do that in this case, but still worth recognizing the dangers that cause the spiderweb effect. I'm in favor of escapism and MMORPGs, but not in favor of otherwise potentially productive people peeing in a bottle because they haven't moved from their chair for days.

Everyone I know just about engages in some form of escapism. Everyone I know just about has been involved in some sort of addiction. They're not the same.

I have a lot of experience dealing with addiction and addicts, but as I posted before, one of my sisters is a senior addiction counsellor for the VA. She's dealt with probably around 10,000 cases. I'm not coming out of the blue here.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 8:59 AM

CITIZEN

Quote:
Originally posted by PhoenixRose:
But there are mental addictions, too.

Those are called dependencies, addiction is where your body can't function properly without a certain chemical substance. It's a physical reaction, not so much a mental one (though there's usually a mental one as well, meaning proper addictions are usually harder to break than dependencies without treatment). I think that's what sigma is getting at.

But at any rate, who the fuck cares? In the grand scale of things it doesn't matter enough to throw a fit over. (that's in the general, not aimed in anyway)

More insane ramblings by the people who brought you beeeer milkshakes!
No one can see their reflection in running water. It is only in still water that we can see.

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 9:03 AM

I'm well aware of what the DSM-IV says, and every bit as aware that it's most often used in combination with a biased or unscientific diagnosis as well.

There's a doctor in Maryland, this creep Bacharach for example, he's in good graces with the local public schools mind you - and his idea of "diagnosing" ADD/ADHD is to give the parents a goddamn checklist, which of course is set up to deliver a certain result, and medication follows... and his answer to any problem with it is upping the doseage, he's FAR from the only one, and the only reason he hasn't lost his license* is because he's their go-to-guy for problem kids...

*He's got a damn laundry list of interesting events in his background too, not the least of which is one of his patients murdering another.
http://www.yourlawyer.com/articles/read/11180

If you know enough to start citing the DSM-IV, then you damn well know diagnoses of a behavioral disorder requires AT MINIMUM, 90+ minutes of observation in a controlled environment, not a damn checklist or 10 minute consultation, and these crackbrains are NOT doing their jobs and should be subject to malpractice claims for that alone.

Hell, most of those "disorders" on the DSM-IV could if looked at more realistically, be described as entirely normal responses to an abnormal society...

For example - Antisocial Personality Disorder.
Failure to conform to social norms with respect to lawful behaviors as indicated by repeatedly performing acts that are grounds for arrest
You know, like having a beer on your back porch (public intoxication) or blatantly ignoring the legal prohibition on accessing the net at more than 56,000k - which most of us are ignoring right now, and yes, that stupid law does still exist (See Also: Bernie S), or how about getting a blowjob in a state where Sodomy is illegal, eh ?

Deceitfulness, as indicated by repeatedly lying, use of aliases, or conning others for personal profit or pleasure
Yeah, cause god forbid people have some fucking privacy in this day and age, and that last bit is downright required for any hope of success or advancement in corporate america today.

Impulsivity or failure to plan ahead
This being a natural part of the human condition - everyone has their moments, some more than others.

Irritability and aggressiveness, as indicated by repeated physical fights or assaults
Uh-huh - did *YOU* go to public school ?
How much of that shit did *YOU* start, and how much came of someone else's goddamn ego problems ?
And of *course* the victim in a beatdown gets blamed cause it's easier to pacify one set of parents than four, nobody listens to those less-than-humans that are kids anyway, right ?

Or maybe lived in a bad neighborhood, where mere *survival* includes quite a bit of said aggressiveness, often enough backed up with physical violence ?

Reckless disregard for safety of self or others
Oh golly gee, hope you don't own a skateboard, or a motorcycle, god forbid someone take a risk to entertain or physically challenge themself.

Consistent irresponsibility, as indicated by repeated failure to sustain consistent work behavior or honor financial obligations
Like getting outsourced or downsized and having trouble paying the bills society sticks you with as a *requirement* for survival or advancement, like auto loans, student loans, etc...
As if one could wave a magic wand and make that outsourcing/downsizing not happen, or pull employment out of their ass in a job market which has all but crashed for reasons they had no means of affecting, yeah...

Lack of remorse, as indicated by being indifferent to or rationalizing having hurt, mistreated, or stolen from another.
Uh huh, in a society that *rewards* that behavior, over and over while scorning and penalizing any other, often greviously so ?

And just for kicks, why not explore one of the new "disorders" like Oppositional Defiant Disorder...

Seriously, FIND me a six year old who does NOT meet the criteria for that so-called "disorder" and I'll show you a child something is very, very wrong with.

So no, I don't buy it, initially the DSM series served a useful purpose, but now it's just become a thin veil of excuses to "treat" conditions which are many times a reaction to social and environmental factors directly at odds with natural human instincts, instead of examining that environment and doing something about it.

And most good doctors, who take their word seriously, realize that, and just how critical PROPER and ACCURATE diagnosis is towards treating a problem - but that's not many in this day and age of coming up with a bullshit excuse and band-aid on a bulletwound solution cause it's more profitable, takes less effort, and does not require one to re-examine their own worldviews rationalisations and justifications.

Children are born without those, they have not been trained and conditioned to excuse away harm and hurt, to ignore wickedness and cruelty, or make excuses for it - and thus they react differently to it.

Two people with different sets of those kinds of views will give a radically different description of the same event, one of the strongest cases for that was actually the "Don't tase me bro" thread, where for days on end no one ELSE noticed an officer pull his taser and aim it at the kids face despite repeated viewings of video footage - until I pointed it out.

We train ourselves to NOT look, to NOT see, and when a child sees what we do not because we've conditioned ourselves to where it doesn't exist for us, we call it a disorder ?

Bullshit.

As for any other aspect, particularly obession/compulsion/addiction - what I know would fit in a thimble with room to spare, but I do know if someone has a problem, and someone else offers a solution and it works, whatever terms you use are far less important than those factors.

And as for revolt/secession - that's about what I meant, I wasn't implying violence, cause if they were so far away violent intervention was not feasible, there'd be no need of it, they'd just tell the powers that be to piss off and ignore them.

Which'd work HERE, save for the amount of idiots willing to not only listen to em, but do harm to their fellowman for a pat on the head, cause without those idiots, they got nothin to threaten us with.

-Frem

It cannot be said enough, those who do not learn from history, are doomed to endlessly repeat it

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Saturday, January 31, 2009 11:36 AM