Study: “Games fill psychological need.” Question: “How?”
I’m sorry for jumping on this a couple of days late, but I just picked up WoW again. I had to spend 2 days getting my HWL dagger before doing anything else. =P
And that was time well spent, because I can use it as a jumping off point for talking about the recently slashdotted MMO study by University at Rochester Reserachers, covered here by the CBC.
Richard Ryan, indicated as the head of four studies from the U. of Rochester, noted “We think there’s a deeper theory than the fun of playing.” He’s right. According to these studies there were a few psychological needs that were filled, noted in the article were: achieving in scenarios related to the real world, autonomy, competence, freedom and social connectedness.
If you’ve played a game, these elements should be pretty obvious. You save the world, crack jokes with friends, or get your ridiculously pwn HWL dagger, you feel pretty good about that. The opposite is true. You spend 8 hours failing to save the world, get hassled by jerks or get awesome gear stolen from you, that’s a downer. Both of these things happen. So while this study focuses on asking “What?” perhaps the more interesting question is “How?” These games don’t just fulfill psychological needs, they are organic spaces that fully engage the psyche, the full brain of any who enter.
Let’s talk about the how.
On a purely physical level, there are scholars that insist that our brain hasn’t evolved far enough to be able to distinguish media images (from a TV or computer screen) from the real world. When we’re slaying dragons, eating gnomes, podkilling in the depths of 0.1 space, or engaging in mortal combat with dark jedi, the pathways to the emotional structures of our physical brain work in such a way that we interpret games, to some degree, as real.
I call it media experience. We aren’t experiencing digital worlds with the same vision, sounds, touch, smells, tastes, latency et al. that we get when we walk through the local grocery store. In this theory, we have the primary world, that grocery store, and the secondary world, an online game or virtual world, sometimes (yet rarely) an multiplayer (Halo) or single-player game (Star Wars Knights of the Old Republic). But what the secondary world lacks in texture it makes up in experience available. Compare the neccessity of a grocery store to the exhiliration of flying on the back of a dragon through an enchanted forest.
While it seems obvious that people could get “addicted,” by just prefering the enchanted forest and dragon, addiction is nowhere near that simple. Media experience is piece of the puzzle, of that I’m sure. A separate idea, yet connected to media experience, is that these games are “Experience Lite.” In an MMO game, carrying 200$ in groceries to the car unaided is no big deal. You click twice and hit F7. In these games you can carry 5 tonnes of Gold Ore thousands of miles - on your own back - and it’s no logistical hassle. 200$ in groceries can cause marital distress if not handled with the proper logistics in the primary world. 5 tonnes of Gold Ore can cause martial distress whether or not it’s handled with good logistics. =P
And that’s the point. The primary and secondary operate together. Most of the people in my current guild know each other in real life. On Halloween groups of them got drunk with each other IRL. These games don’t just “fulfill needs,” in an isolated and sanitary way, isolated from the primary world. For many they are an integral part of the primary. As they grow, they will become a telecommunication technology rivaling the Internet, telephones, or television, and every bit as unique. These games have their own unique cultures, language patterns, weather patterns, biology, social systems, and consequences for death. Many are games now, but still others are breaking with that and seeking to find new ways to “approach the texture of everyday life,” to use Dr. Thomas Malaby’s words.
So why did I drop everything and “grind honor,” for my HWL (High Warlord) dagger in Warcraft for 2 days? BECAUSE IT WAS A SWEET DAGGER, MAN! It’s like the equivalent of some company saying, “Ok, Neils. We’re going to fly you to Boulder. You’ll work 20 hours every day for one week. We’ll pay you 20,000$. There is very tangible reward in each situation, enough to make you forget about the difficulty involved. Gamers feel the thrill of combat, the pride in accomplishment, the heartbreak of defeat. These worlds aren’t the primary, the one that we all must return to, but there are many different secondary worlds. Worlds that, whether you know it or not, have permeated the very foundations of our everyday life.
Neils Clark :: Dec.31.2006 :: Game Addiction ::
[...] For years I’ve held up the hope that Young would aggressively revise her criteria for gaming addiction. Since introducing the idea of internet addiction in 1996, she’s really just emphasized three anecdotes: Internet affairs, unauthorized employee Internet use, and Internet-induced lapses in student productivity. Young has a vested interest in selling books, online therapy (@ 95$/hour it’s not the most expensive therapy ever, but there are certain therapy procedures that can’t happen over the internet). Most importantly, she sells herself as a credible expert. At best, she backs the claims up by citing market research. At worst, there are dozens of critical claims that she backs up by citing her own past research. While a number of experts have written this research off as schlocky and misleading, it’s still used to build studies at highly respected schools. Stanford most recently used it as a backbone for an expensive study that polled thousands over telephone. The more that her criteria is used as a panacea, the harder it is to stop and really analyze whether or not it’s accurate. You can read more about Young’s study and the Stanford surveys here. [...]