neils clark

This post is going to speak primarily to researchers who work with games.

Before research is ever conducted, there’s a lot of planning. If the chosen plan calls for the use of human beings, then university research generally has to get the approval of an institutional review board (IRB), or human subjects committee. These guys are trained to make sure that researchers don’t cause harm.

In a nutshell, very few people really understand games, be they these IRB committees, regular folks, professors or researchers. That’s why, in my experience of games research, the researcher is the one responsible for the safety of the people involved. Researchers are also accountable for the research that they publish. I’ll admit that I’ve made mistakes in my research. What’s important with a new area, like games, is that we take a critical eye, and separate the wheat (the useful and representative data) from the chaff (the unrepresentative and potentially harmful data). I want to talk about wheat and chaff in published research as well as the process of conducting research.

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Neils Clark :: Feb.07.2007 :: Game Addiction, Research :: No Comments »

Fresh off the harddrives at the New York Times: patients with a very specific type of brain damage were found to have a far easier time at quitting smoking.

 http://www.nytimes.com/2007/01/26/science/26brain.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1

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Neils Clark :: Jan.28.2007 :: Game Addiction, Research :: No Comments »

If you or your kid(s), friend(s), and/or partner(s) play WoW, and you think it’s time to change a little something, then you might try playing around with “parental” controls. These allow for a password-protected account that can effectively block an account from being played at certain times. Today I played with the parental controls on my Warcraft account. As always, it caused me to ponder deep philosophical questions.

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Neils Clark :: Jan.11.2007 :: Game Addiction :: 2 Comments »

This picture comes from my new article here, and quite honestly I’m regretting not mentioning mushrooms and snakes. But seriously, the picture selection and graphic design - it really pulls these articles together. Both times I’ve written for Gamasutra I’ve been suprised by the pictures and graphics selected. I don’t pick these out, and they add a very specific (and awesome) perspective on what it is that I’m writing about.

In this article, I warn against being critical of games without truly understanding them. I discuss some of the major oversights in the information, research and journalism surrounding game addiction. I then got the chance to do something really exciting, which was to talk about theoretical areas that might actually have the potential to move the research forward. Give it a read, and if you have any specific comments then they are more than welcome here.

Read the exclusive article on Gamasutra’s website.

Neils Clark :: Jan.05.2007 :: Game Addiction, Games, General :: 1 Comment »

This post is meant to give you very preliminary surveys of research done to date and varied approaches to treatment. It should be noted that we understand very little about excessive gaming. Most of the research is preliminary, and some completely lacks face validity (which basically means that it doesn’t make sense on a practical level). At this time most treatment centers focus heavily on pre-existing or co-morbid conditions existing alongside excessive gaming. Many treatment centers consider these conditions to be the root cause of excessive gaming, although there is little data exploring whether that is accurate. My research and data has led me to believe that the key to understanding excessive play lies in three major areas, but that is the subject for another post. =P

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Neils Clark :: Jan.02.2007 :: Game Addiction :: 3 Comments »

What’s that Lassie? Timmy is stuck in a game? As a parent you have a lot to worry about, and games shouldn’t have to be added to that list. For some parents, games are now a suspicious piece of technology, worse yet something that appears to have sucked in little Timmy. This apprehension could have something to do with hearing that games are violent and addictive (from the news as well as from advertisements run by game publishers). It could be some other things as well. This article isn’t about getting into why parents are apprehensive. This article is going to give you a quick rundown, with a few of the links that I’ve found most helpful. While problems certainly can develop with your kids’ play, understanding game addiction allows you to distinguish between problems and play. Games can be a great deal of fun, but certain types of games might not be for every family.

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Neils Clark :: Jan.01.2007 :: Game Addiction :: 2 Comments »

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.

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Neils Clark :: Dec.31.2006 :: Game Addiction :: 1 Comment »

This from an article in the San Fransisco Chronicle on Dec 18, 2006:

Korea, which now sports over 100 game addiction treatment centers, has reported massive declines in addiction.

The percentage of addicts has declined from 3.3 to 2.4 percent of the population, from 2004 to 2005, after a government public education campaign and the expansion of its treatment centers, which are administered under the government’s Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity & Promotion.

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Neils Clark :: Dec.21.2006 :: Game Addiction, Games :: 1 Comment »

I’m thrilled to be able to report: Gamasutra will be running a follow-up article to my, “Are Games Addictive? The State of the Science.” The upcoming article, slated for release in early January of 2007, will be titled, “Games and Addiction. Are we there yet?”

January’s article will cover an enormous amount of ground. From the need for organized and sustained research to misrepresentations of gamers in the media and society, this article is an attempt to weave the seemingly disparate facts into a comprehensible whole. It also calls people funny names. My sincere thanks to gamasutra for considering and running this piece.

Neils Clark :: Dec.19.2006 :: Game Addiction, General :: No Comments »

As usual, Bill O’Reilly is the proverbial bull in the china shop when it comes to bringing sophistication and thoughtfulness to a discussion. This time he’s bucking up games.

In an interview with Robin Raskin, O’Reilly asks what, “effect is tech having on America.” For those of you in Canada, O’Reilly is a fairly recognizeable personality on the 24 hour Fox news station. Fox and the show, “The O’Reilly Factor,” are fairly well known for providing a right-wing approach to a number of issues. O’Reilly raised some interesting points, but he also furthered some negative biases against gamers - biases that exist only because people in general don’t understand games.

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Neils Clark :: Dec.19.2006 :: Game Addiction :: 2 Comments »