November 19, 2002
Johnson County Community College
Overland Park, KS
This paper was written for the purposes of exploring the phenomenon of Online Video Game Addiction. Various aspects of Internet addiction were explored in hopes of better understanding the nature of addiction. Some background investigation was done into online video games to raise an awareness of the potential threat they pose. The studies that were explored came from both psychological and sociological perspectives. In the future, I hope to conduct a study of my own utilizing some of the concepts and methodology gathered herein. The results of my investigation have left me with little doubt that Online Video Game Addiction exists and that there must be a systematic and empirical approach identified to analyze this problem.
Internet Addiction is a growing social problem that has increased with our dependency upon the Internet. Over-use of the Internet has been cited as having a negative impact on the following: social relationships, marriages, school achievement, work performance, health, and other vital life functions (Young 1998). From (Bellamy and Hanewicz 2001). With a growing number of people playing online games, due to the addition of online gaming capabilities from game consoles, this paper will attempt to conceptually measure the aspects of online gaming as they pertain to addiction. I would like to point out online gambling is outside the scope of this project and should not be confused with online video gaming, although there may be some underlying root causes that both addictions may share. Al Bellamy and Cheryl Hanewicz, who approached the so-called Internet Addiction phenomena from a sociological perspective in order to understand and determine the underlying dynamics, have done an excellent study. Their study, “An Exploratory Analyses Of The Social Nature Of Internet Addiction” (Bellamy and Hanewicz 2001) has led me to do my own research into the phenomenon of Online Video Game Addiction.
According to Datamonitor, a company that does business
research, the current online gaming market USD670 million is expected to grow
to USD2.9 billion by the year 2005.
They attribute the growth of this market to console online gaming (Datamonitor
2002). With the increasing revenues
in this market, corporations will be investing their vast resources into
developing more compelling online games to appeal to this growing market. Dr. Sam Vaknin, a senior business
correspondent for United Press International, writes about online gaming in his
article “Games People play”. Massively
Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) have attracted an astounding
number of players. These MMORPG are 3-D
games where the player is represented as a versatile avatar which can walk,
talk, and do just about anything the game developers want them too. The worlds in these games are immense and
have great detail. Currently, Sony
Online Entertainment boasts the second largest online gaming community with
over half a million subscribers to the game “Everquest”. However, the largest MMORPG is in fact the
Korean game “Lineage” which possesses an astounding 2.5 million subscribers. Ultima Online has about 250,000 subscribers
to its game “Britannia” where the average user spends about 13 hours a week
submerged in a virtual world. These
MMORPG all have some sort of economy.
Everquest’s virtual economy is in fact the 77th largest
economy in the real world with a GNP per capita of $2,266. For many of these “gamers”, These MMORPG
represent their main social interaction.
The addictive qualities of these games have psychologists worried (Vaknin 2002). Vaknin writes, “Others regard these
diversions as colossal -- though inadvertent -- social experiments. If so, they
bode ill -- they are all infested with virtual crime, counterfeiting, hoarding,
xenophobia, racism, and all manner of perversions.” (2002). It is apparent with such large communities
of people growing by the day; there is cause for alarm.
The purpose of this
paper is to exam the current phenomenon of online video games as it relates to
addiction, and explores the potential methods of research into such
phenomena. In order to better
understand Online Video Game Addiction, it is important to explore Internet
addiction.
Why has the Internet
become so attractive? According to
David Moore, it is because of the social aspect. People from all over the world with different backgrounds are
allowed to communicate with each other and share their opinions and ideas. The Internet has allowed a new form of
social interaction. Because of the
anonymous nature of the Internet, it allows people to escape from the aspects
of real life and venture into a world where they are in complete control. Moore warns that like any other escape, it
can become detrimental to the mental health of the user. However, he contends that Internet Addiction
Disorder is still too new to truly be recognized and suggests that it is more a
media term rather then a medical one.
Moore writes, “The term Internet Addiction was first used by New York
psychiatrist Ivan Goldberg in a spoof on societies morbid fascination with
addictive behaviors, and has since become taken seriously by many in the
psychiatric community.” He concludes
that the Internet itself has been molded after society and that Internet
addiction my well be a symptom of an increasingly fragmenting society (Moore 2000).
Internet Addiction
Disorder (IAD) was a term coined by Dr. Ivan Goldberg. Goldberg says that IAD exists when an
individual experiences a decrease occupational,
academic, social, work-related, family-related, financial, psychological, or
physiological functioning. He says that
IAD could be compared to pathological gambling. (1996). From (Bellamy and Hanewicz
2001).
Because Internet addiction is a
new concept many studies have been conducted to evaluate its effects on its
users. Online surveys have indicated
that anywhere from 80% to 17% of its participants-the numbers ranged from 496
to 185 participants-were categorized as being addicted. In one survey almost half of the
participants experienced negative effects to their work because of Internet
utilization. A commonality was found in
most of the studies, which was that Internet addiction is affected by social
interactions. However, as pointed out
by Bellamy and Hanewicz, none of these studies provided empirical data that
correlated IAD with social factors (Bellamy and Hanewicz
2001).
A study was done at
Carnegie Mellon University to measure the social and psychological impact the
Internet had on 169 people in 73 households within the first 2 years of usage. The purpose of the study was to gather
longitudinal data to explore the effects of the Internet on social interaction
and psychological healthiness. The
results of the study showed that greater Internet usage was associated with
less communication within the family, declines in the size of their social
circle, and an increase in depression and loneliness (Kraut et al. 1998).
There has not been
much exploration to date into the phenomenon of Online Video Game Addiction and
none from a sociological perspective.
Although the following studies were conducted within a psychological
framework, they help to validate the fact that there are people addicted to online
video games.
An in-depth study by
Nicholas Yee “The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of Everquest” does a fantastic
job of exploring addiction to the game Everquest. Yee conducted a survey that included about 4000 participants (Yee 2001). The
study was done over the Internet in 5 phases that took about 8 months to
complete. Each phase gathered both
quantitative and qualitative data that was related to questions in the previous
phase. The questions gathered
information about the participant’s personality traits and usage of the
game. This allowed Yee to relate
individual qualitative responses to overall statistics about the game. Yee utilized a personality scale developed
by Costa and McCrae that measured five factors about personality: Neuroticism,
Extraversion, Openness, Agreeableness, and Conscientiousness. The average hours spent per week by an EQ
player was 22.4 hours. Players that
showed a high level of neuroticism played significantly more hours per week
then players that showed a low level.
The study also showed that people who scored on the lower end of the
Openness scale played more hours then people who showed a high degree of Openness. Yee’s study also asked the question, “Would you
consider yourself addicted to EQ?” Yee
includes a response where the respondent clearly recognizes that their
game-play was adversely affecting their life:
Yes, I am now officially a hermit. I had problems
keeping in touch with old friends to begin with. Now its rare I see anyone
other than the two people I live with. Both of which also play EQ, constantly.
My girlfriend, and my roommate. Neither of them have jobs, and both of them
play EQ 95% of their time awake. When I come home from work in the morning, my
girl logs, and sits in my lap and watches me play. I dont have a phone plugged
in anymore, I just check messages now and then. I dont answer my door. I barely
talk to any friends or family. We have fun, I love EQ... but it -IS- without a
doubt, an addiction. When your sitting there, knowing you have important things
to do, but keep playing anyway... when your two closest loved ones cant pry
themselves from "the game" to get themselves lives... when there is
no food or clean clothes... etc... etc... [m, 22] (Yee 2001)
After the conclusion
of Yee’s study, he broadened his survey and narrowed his scope to do a study on
MMORPG addiction. Nicholas Yee’s latest
essay, “Ariadne - Understanding MMORPG Addiction” is a descriptive essay on the
“very real phenomenon” of MMROPG addiction (Yee 2002). He attempts to explain the phenomenon in
terms of internal game factors and external personality or situational
factors. In order to demonstrate that
MMROPG addiction is real, Yee has gathered statistical data to support
that such a phenomenon does in fact exist.
Yee explains that part of the addiction could be “Attraction Addiction.”
(2002). One of the main attractions to
MMORPG is the network of relationships that a player accumulates. Often times it is necessary to band together
with a group of players to achieve a difficult task. The particular games he studied all provided social structures
known as “guilds” which have rules and norms of behavior. Yee concludes that having a network of
friends increases the likelihood of personal attachment and time investment (Yee 2002). While Yee’s approach to explain the
phenomenon of MMORPG addiction is from a psychological perspective, part of
this addiction is social by nature.
From
a sociological perspective, identity emerges from the recursive interplay
between taking the role of others in a given situation (where the process of
taking-the-role of the other is influenced by the symbols present within a
given social situation) and the social interactions that occur from a
situational context that has been symbolically defined by the individual. (Mead, 1934). From (Bellamy and Hanewicz
2001).
Within
sociology, identity is considered a subset of “self”. That is, self consists of
several identities, wherein the manifestation of a specific identity is
contingent upon the exigencies of a social situation. Stryker, (1980) suggests
that identities are arranged according to a “salience hierarchy”, whereas the
dynamics of a social situation determine the identity or identities that will
be evoked. From (Bellamy
and Hanewicz 2001).
The Internet allows for
interpersonal communication where conventional information symbols are
absent. This allows for an individual
to participate more freely in reciprocal communication compared to traditional
face-to-face environments. Given this
new situational platform to project ones self, it may very well be an influence
on identity. This allows the individual
to present as many identities as he/she likes, empowering the individual to
present and control the identities rather then the social context (Bellamy and Hanewicz
2001). To illustrate this point,
here is a direct quote from one of Yee’s respondents to his study “Ariadne”.
I think anyone that plays more than 20 hours a week
is addicted though most would deny it. The sad truth is that in many ways EQ is
better than RL. It is easier to succeed in EQ, I can be beautiful, fit and healthy
in EQ - in real life I am chronically ill and there isn't much fun or
achievement to be had. EQ is more than just an opiate, and much more than just
a game. In a very real sense EQ gives me an opportunity to feel free. [f, 36] From (Yee 2002).
However, these identities being
projected by an individual are presented within a social context because they
are still attached and cultivated by the expectations of others in the
electronic communication environment (Bellamy and Hanewicz
2001).
There has been a lot of debate whether Internet Addiction Disorder is in fact real or merely a misconstrued notion by psychologists to label what is a new (and threatening) form of human interaction. As our society becomes more fragmented and conventional forms of social interaction give way to a less symbolic form of communication, the attributes of IAD may be seen as conventional behavior as these new technologies develop and society begins to better understand the Internet and the part it plays in our lives. As with anything, there will always be people that become obsessed with objects that they derive pleasure from, but what can be done to help those people? It is apparent that there are people who are becoming addicted to these online video games in the conventional sense of the word. They are suffering consequences for their actions in real life yet they are compelled to continue on with their negative behavior. Perhaps there is cause for alarm. Just as these people may be trying to fill a void, so to are the people that would try to define the unknown and label it a pathological disorder. It is very important that we identify a more systematic and empirical approach to analyze the underlying factors of Online Video Game Addiction. Perhaps as Bellamy and Hanewicz suggest, Stryker’s concept of saliency hierarchy of identity is adequate to provide a proper framework for analysis of these electronic situations.
References
Bellamy, Al and Cheryl Hanewicz. 2001. “An Exploratory
Analyses Of The Social Nature Of Internet Addiction: A Research Paper Submitted
To The Electronic Journal Of Sociology.” Electronic Journal of Sociology. 2001. Retrieved November 18, 2002 (http://www.sociology.org/content/vol005.003/ia.html).
Datamonitor. 2002. Online Gaming Revenues Set to
Rise. August 29, 2002. Retrieved November 18, 2002. (http://www.nua.ie/surveys/index.cgi?f=VS&art_id=905358321&rel=true).
Kraut, Robert, Vicki Lundmark, Michael Patterson, Sara
Kiesler, Tridas Mukupadhyay, and William Scherlis. 1998. “Internet Paradox: A
Social Technology that Reduces Social Involvement and Psychological
Well-Being?” American Psychological Association. September
1998. Retrieved November 18, 2002 (http://www.apa.org/journals/amp/amp5391017.html).
Moore, David. 2000. “The Individual and the Internet.” Web
page, October, 2000. Retrieved November 18, 2002 (http://multimedia.design.curtin.edu/cache/i/0011/).
Vaknin, Sam. 2002. “Games People Play.” United Press
International. June 14, 2002. Retrieved November 18, 2002 (http://www.upi.com/view.cfm?StoryID=14062002-095032-6717r).
Yee, Nicholas. 2002. “Ariadne – Understanding MMORPG
Addiction.” Web page, October 2002. Retrieved November 18, 2002 (http://www.nickyee.com/hub/addiction/home.html).
Yee, Nicholas. 2001. “The Norrathian Scrolls: A Study of
EverQuest.” Web page, May 2001. Retrieved November 18, 2002 (http://www.nickyee.com/eqt/report.html).
All information contained herein is the intellectual property of Edwin Hart unless otherwise cited and cannot be used without acknowledgement of the author