neils clark

While not strictly related to addiction, this article gives a quick rundown of the most popular games, and how they’re played in Korea.

The State of Korea: PC Games

Addiction can shift, based on the culture that we’re talking about. That is to say, what our culture quickly considers an ‘addiction,’ might be approached with more depth and understanding in (among other areas) Korea. I know that I’ve linked it before, but if you want more on this - check out Florence Chee’s analysis of the Korean concept Wang-tta.

The Games We Play Online and Offline: Making Wang-tta in Korea

Neils Clark :: Jul.31.2007 :: Games :: No Comments »

Here’s my latest “Gaming Journal” entry:

So just now, I woke up out of a dead sleep so that I could listen to “Earthquake and Fire,” by Hepcat. For those of you in the dark, Hepcat is only one of the greatest ska/reggae bands in the history of the world.

And despite the fact that I haven’t touched WoW in about a couple of weeks, I’ve had a couple of consecutive nights of WoW-themed dreams. They have not yet forced a similar midnight media indulgence/account reactivation.

Let’s hear it for dreams.

It’s strange to be having them, because WoW hasn’t been on my mind, really. I stop in now and again to talk with some of the communities still on (via Ventrilo I jumped around while I took a little writing break earlier today), but I don’t see why that should call forth an abundance of imagery and gameplay mechanics during sleepy time. It’s interesting to keep coming back to the dream thing, though, since due to the airy origins and role of dreams they are often touted as a criteria for being in the “throes of addiction.”

More than anything, I think it highlights the insufficiency of how we’re looking at gaming problems. There are people out there who would say, “Hepcat! Hell yeah, I’d get out of bed to listen to some of their tunes!” There are also people in the real world who wouldn’t think twice about staying up until midnight so that they can buy the latest and last Harry Potter book, fresh off the stands. Then they’ll probably be up until at least 2am reading. Gaming isn’t exactly like these things, but just imagine: these are entire worlds - with financial markets that run 24-7, powerful items that could be won at any time, and real people with real lives. Sometimes there’s story and entertainment value, too. Very few non-gamer professionals can see it, but these worlds give many different reasons to wake up in the dead of the night.

And actually, as I recall (in the way that dreams sneak up on you) I did have one dream tonight which involved the actual people who I was playing with most recently, and not game imagery or mechanics. At least one of the scenes that I remember involve being in a college campus type area, and letting one of my online friends into their dorm. Bear in mind that this is a person whom I have never seen before in the real world, and yet my dream brain had actually conjured a fully-developed face and body for this person, who smiled and thanked me before I had to run off in order to keep my chimichanga from burning down the Student Union Building. This mental image had no resemblance whatsoever to this character’s in-game avatar or mine. I honestly don’t know the Jungian archetypal rundown indicative of meaning there, but it’s kind of interesting.

Google Images: Helping me to find disturbing Jungian-ish images since 1974.

Still, Hepcat’s ‘Out of Nowhere’ CD comes highly recommended for those of you looking to spark a wholesome reggae addiction. The kind that wakes you up in the dead of night.

Neils Clark :: Jul.28.2007 :: Neils' Gaming Journal :: 6 Comments »

Sure, sure, by now we all know that Lindsay Lohan was busted for driving under the influence (with a suspended license, but that’s fashionable right now) and for felony cocaine possession, all less than two weeks after completing her second trip to rehab. What really caught my eye wasn’t the scandalousiness of it all, it was how the morning news people all seemed supremely accepting and understanding of Lohan’s heartbreaking tribulations. They even got on Leno for cracking jokes about the thing (though to be fair they were coming from another network).

Ultimately, I think it all comes down to the ankle bracelet. Lohan was wearing an ankle bracelet which detected through her skin whether or not she had been drinking. And she had been drinking. We see that and think, “ok, well maybe she does have a serious problem.” I feel so bad for her awe!

We’re accepting of it because it seems obvious that she’s drinking against her will, and there’s at least some science to back that up. Game addiction research isn’t about “discovering the science,” or understanding a game. Most people don’t want to understand. The researchers just take games, and compare them against a simple scale for addiction. The results: 8.5% of your children are addicted! That doesn’t tell us how we can help.

This can be incredibly illuminating for people who want to look at (what we call) game addictions. There are no ankle bracelets. There are no researchers or research quite so deeply identifying the chemicals or processes at work with game addiction. Most of the researchers don’t care to. They don’t have to. The public wants to know how afraid they should be (rather than what might actually help), and so certain researchers fill a demand. There’s little to no sympathy, and rarely any respect. In the absence of ankle-bracelet-level-understanding (or at least some consensus that it can be beyond one’s control), most of the people are using grossly reductionist criteria for “game addiction,” which doesn’t reflect what’s happening with people whom we call game addicts. Continually using that criteria, rather than understand what’s going on, just means that detailed understanding is getting further out of reach.

What’s really frightening is what might happen if big pharm suggests using anti-addiction treatments — when there’s obviously more than just addiction here.

To end on a silly note, I don’t think that there’d be any shortage of “game addict” volunteers for longitudinal experiments…

But good luck convincing grantors that it’s serious data collection…

I have a lot of thoughts on Lohan’s loutishness. I’ll just say that I’ve been “off the sauce” about as long as her (prior to her most recent heartbreaking incident anyway), and that the book has been wrapping itself up very nicely. We’re on schedule to start shopping for publishers by mid-August.

Neils Clark :: Jul.25.2007 :: Game Addiction, General :: 2 Comments »

And not always all three at the same time. This entry is going to return to a common theme on this blog: that what we call “game addiction” is complicated. While there are elements that we can take from things like alcoholism and gambling/behavioral problems, these online (especially MMO) games are their own unique beasts. Some of the things which keep players coming back cannot must be understood in their own right.

Magic Swords

Of all the things that keep people playing World of Warcraft (WoW), currently the world’s most popular MMO game (8.5+ million players strong), magical swords might just be the most potent. More specifically, something called “character progression,” is built into the game. As has been brought up on this blog more than once, there’s undoubtedly this sense of a need to “keep up with the Joneses.” We need to keep up with our neighbors in this game, to the best of our abilities. That means putting in the time, money, and effort required to obtain comparable stuff. Not all players are raging pack-rats, but in order to enjoy many of WoW’s key features, you do need to make a certain level of commitment.

A red-haired elf with a katana. Why does that sound so familiar?

Lately, for me, this has meant building a new character. If you try to enter into Warcraft with established players, so that you can play with maximum-level characters, then you’re probably looking at two or three months of playing — before you can join them in dungeons, player vs. player (PvP) battlegrounds, or raids. As leveling starts to become more difficult, and for Warcraft I would pin this at about level 25 for new players – level 45 for experienced players – you’re going to need to invest more time in order to get your character “up to snuff.” For a lot of people, that’s not addiction so much as a structural characteristic of the game that promotes them to play a lot. Some of these people are going to be able to jump right off, have no withdrawal, and wouldn’t neccessarily qualify for the designation of “addict.” Should we give them heavy pharmaceutical reigmens? No way.

But back to the story, sometimes magical swords come out of nowhere. Something that kept me inside of Warcraft’s dungeons this weekend was a magical sword. One of my good friends inside of WoW (I’ve played games online with him for over 5 years now), came to a low-level dungeon so that he could help me get some experience – and so that I could complete a few quests. After tackling the hardest boss inside this dungeon, I got a magical sword. I don’t usually use swords, so I wasn’t too excited. My friend, however, was a mixture of livid and thrilled.

“I can’t believe that sword dropped for you on the first run. Oh my God you have no idea how lucky you are. People do this dungeon dozens of times and never get that sword.”

I had never heard of this sword before.

But hell, my friend seemed to think that it was worth it. Apparently this was the hard sword to get, and that it combined with another sword that could be found in this dungeon in order to create one “all-powerful weapon of destiny.” Neat. So I spent the next couple of days trying to get the “easy to get” sword. In all honesty, it really only took a couple, maybe three hours, and it’s a nice-looking sword. Since I’m holding onto a lot of swords and outfits for this character, it was a nifty find. Still, it was interesting to see how magical swords can pull people in. I wasn’t one of the people who was going to spend days trying to get a sword – until I found out that other people were doing it. And there are much harder swords to make, swords which can take months of dedication.

Or one lucky night.

Drinking with Friends

And it was all more fun, because I was doing it with cool people. For four nights in a row, at least four of the people in my guild (including me) got drunk “together” over a voice chat program called Ventrilo. One of them is a longtime friend of mine (the one who was quoted in the sword story) who lives about 700 miles away, and the others are new friends who live at similar distances. We crack jokes, crack open beers, talk about what’s happening in the game, and sometimes we’d talk about specialty cheeses. I think one of the main draws back has been that I’ve met interesting people. While the experience is different from hanging out face to face, Ventrilo and Warcraft, taken together work a little bit differently than just a telephone conversation. First of all, you can have a number of people talking – making it a bit like a conference call. People connect to a server, can come and go as they please, and sometimes they’ll organize themselves into different rooms. These rooms, or entire servers, can be password protected. Meanwhile, you’re having a visual experience of these people inside of the game. At times you can engage in extreme combat situations, where you heavily rely at them to “have your back.” Other times you might be dorking around, trying to find super duper magic swords. So you see and hear these people, and sometimes you drink beers with ‘em.

And sometimes you raid Dwarven strongholds with them.

Philosophical Conversations

And sometimes you have deep, involved, philosophical conversations with them! This can really fall under the last heading – drinking with friends. I just wanted to note that I had one of my first really stimulating philosophical conversations in months, maybe years – with someone who I had never really talked to prior. It was all in Ventrilo, the online voice chat, while me and him went to PvP battlegrounds, did random things in the game, or played with kittens in real life.

Hamburglar

I just wanted to also note – last night I suffered from what the book is calling the stomach confusion effect. The game stole my hunger. I hadn’t eaten a rounded meal in probably 9 hours, but after playing – I just wasn’t hungry at all. And since it’s such hard work, defining my 300 abs, I decided to have some Gatorade and conk out.

And just this morning I realized that I had used up my pre-paid time for this month. Now taking bets on how long it’ll take me to reactivate.

Neils Clark :: Jul.16.2007 :: Neils' Gaming Journal :: 2 Comments »

Once again, I was excited to see Dr. Jerald Block’s publication in the American Journal of Forensic Psychiatry for his article Letters from Columbine: Virtual and Real Rage. As I said earlier, it is a must read for anyone who wishes to speak with any kind of authority on issues of games and violence. I had the chance to look it over again, and some of Block’s insights really hit home for me.

Before I start talking about this, I want to mention my personal reaction to this article. Besides the crazily scribbled journals, the bomb-making, and the school-detonation-plans, these guys struck me as me. When I say that, I mean that I identified with many of their feelings and experiences - I was roughly the same age as them, I liked and still enjoy many of the same movies (The 5th Element, Aliens, The Rock, Predator, Event Horizon), and many of the same games (Warcraft, X-Com, Command and Conquer, Quake, Diablo). I can’t be sure from the scribbling whether they love it or hate it - but they even talk about Mystery Science Theatre 3000 and WWF’s Mick Foley (known as Mankind in 1999). In talking with Block about the article, we agreed that the normalcy of these killers was perhaps one of the most compelling aspects of this story.

X-Com: One of my Personal All-Time Favorite Games

Block goes over some of our most common explanations for these kinds of acts -

He looks at them all with a fair eye - but ultimately concludes that they don’t seem to fully explain what happened. They each make their contributions, but none are quite so pertinent as the relationship that each of the killers developed with virtual worlds. They were deeply immersed in modding Doom, creating their own custom levels, and they prided themselves on their gaming abilities. Nobody, not even the therapists working with them, seemed to fully grasp the relevance. As a result, two people who seemed to want to be caught - never were. This relationship in and of itself with the gaming, the internet, and their real lives (which became increasingly tumultuous as time passed), worked in ways that therapists simply must learn to understand. As Block rightly points out, we’ll never truly know exactly what was going through the minds of the killers. Even if they were alive today - how much would really be extractable?

While this topic strictly, or on the face, may not seem to relate to what we call “game addiction,” the two are connected by a unique and growing disparity and separation of the real and the virtual, and the individual’s ability (or lack thereof) to keep pace. Whether we use Turkle, Castronova, or my own media experience theory in order to understand the new ways in which we live our lives, what’s important is that we continue to explore the new texture of our increasingly digital world.

In English, we need to understand that calling something “virtual” doesn’t mean that it’s any less real.

With Dr. Block’s kind permission, I’m hosting the full-length PDF here [Download PDF]

You can also find it on his personal website here [Jerald Block, MD]

Neils Clark :: Jul.09.2007 :: Games, Research :: 3 Comments »

Ok, ok, so there are less dramatic ways to say that I’ve stopped playing World of Warcraft.

Uhh, unless like me you’re not particularly creative. So we’re sticking with frantic gasping for air, alright? Alright.

It’s been a busy week and weekend, and not just because I averaged about 5+ hours of gaming per day since starting up that Blood Elf Paladin. For one, I just wrapped up an article that entailed interviewing a spattering if great minds in game studies. In particular, Ted Castronova, Henry Jenkins, Jeff McNeill, Florence Chee and Aaron Delwiche. My editors at Gamasutra have the article, and I should have some more info soon on when that’s likely to get posted. Today I also saw a show at the Sacramento Public Library, put on by Wizard megaband Harry and the Potters. These guys know how to rock the heck out, and I’d recommend them to rockers of any age, whether magical or muggle. On the research side - it’s so fascinating to see a fan culture blend with musical, book and movie genres. I wouldn’t presume to study such highly concentrated rock, but I would go so far as to once again recommend the band to any and all with a taste for such things. This weekend I also began making plans to attend the State of Play Conference in Singapore. This is a major committment for me, as I generally live on a very deliberate budget. It is, however, a choice highly driven by the ideology of the conference’s location, as I strongly support cooperation and collaboration across venues that are often thought to be ‘too foreign.’

Back to WoW for a second. Without really getting into or bemoaning the journals that I kept while gaming, I will say that the emotional gain that I got from playing was quickly dwarfed by many of the time constraint problems introduced by “keeping up with the Joneses.” Thanks to Villainelle for introducing me to that time-honored expression. For those of you who might be looking for a finished and professionally made game that lasts 30 seconds (or thereabouts), then check these out:

List of all dis or dats

“This Blood Elf Has a Great Resume”

“Will the Real Dark Lord Please Stand Up?”

On another note, I was completely thrilled to see that Dr. Jerald Block was published with his article on the Columbine Shooters, Harris and Klebold. The meat of this pdf is 25ish pages long, but it is a must read for anyone who wishes to speak with any kind of authority on issues of games and violence. I have hosted it at this link here, and expect it to be on his site here shortly.

All in all, a lot is happening. Expect more pointed posts with regard to Dr. Block’s publication and my attendance at the State of Play Conference.

Neils Clark :: Jul.02.2007 :: Games :: No Comments »