One in Nine MMOG Players Addicted?

Gamespot is running a piece looking at a UK study which may indicate serious addiction problems among a large number of Massively Multiplayer gamers. The study, conducted at Nottingham Trent, showed that almost 12% of a 7,000 person study group showed symptoms of serious addiction, as laid down by the World Health Organization. From the article: "The survey was filled in by a self-selected sample comprising mainly of males with an average age of 21, and was concerned principally with the potential for addiction to online gaming. [Director of the International Gaming Research Unit Mark] Griffiths said, 'I'm sure if we'd done this survey looking at non-online players, looking at gamers that play on stand-alone systems, my guess is that the prevalence of addiction-like symptoms would have been much less prevalent.' According to Griffiths, the problem with online games is there will never be a point where the player has battled the final boss, tied up the story, and can turn the computer off with a feeling of satisfaction."

Sensationalist!

[tbannist]

While I can't read the article probably because it was slashdotted, the quote above looks like typical media exageration. If you want a study on "addiction" to MMO's to be taken seriously, you might want to classify it on several different levels:

1) Destructiveness of the addiction
2) Severity of Withdrawal
3) Prevalence of addiction in general

Saying 11% of player are addicted to MMOs means nothing without quantifying what you consider "addiction". It's also meaningless without considering the side effects of addiction. 100% of people are "addicted" to oxygen, but that's not a very useful claim since there's no quantifyable affect of that "addiction". The severity of the withdrawal is important to consider, because a destructive addiction that is very hard to drop is more dangerous than one that is easily quit, like MMOs. Lastly, before you go all hog wild about how 11% of MMO players are addicted, I'd like to some useful background material like how many bingo players are addicted to bingo, how many musicians are addicted to music, how many quilters are addicted to quilting, and how many hockey players are addicted to hockey. After all are they amateur atheletes or are they just addicts waiting for their next exercise fix?

Many people have a tendency to invest a lot of time in individual pursuits for a while, whether it be atheletics, school, work, sex, or TV. The question with these studies is always going to be are the people addicted, or just enjoying themselves and socializing with friends online?

Article

[Daemonstar]

Seems like the host is hosed; however, I did find an interesting article on WebMD about gaming addiction found here [webmd.com].

An interesting note FTA:

According to the Center for On-Line Addiction, warning signs for video game addiction include:

* Playing for increasing amounts of time
* Thinking about gaming during other activities
* Gaming to escape from real-life problems, anxiety, or depression
* Lying to friends and family to conceal gaming
* Feeling irritable when trying to cut down on gaming

Re:I was

[Jurrasic]

Agree. I know a certain opiate addict who has not only maintained his addiction at a (relatively) steady level for several years, but has in that time moved up from an entry level job into operations management and successfully raised two children and kept his wife completely oblivious to his habit. Addiction is not nearly as cut and dry as some would think.