Some call it “Evercrack”: Psychology of MMORPG
Dave “the hand of ” Munger at Cognitive Daily points to a study on the powerful effects of massive multiplayer online role playing games like World of Warcraft, Everquest, Dark Age of Camelot and others :
One type of game — one of the most popular types, in fact — hasn’t been studied nearly as much as the traditional arcade-style game: massively multiplayer online role-playing games, or MMORPGs. One of the studies of this type of game seemed to find that players weren’t more aggressive because the games foster cooperation between players.
But we’ve also heard — and seen, with Jim’s game-play, that MMORPGs like World of Warcraft can be more engaging and distracting than other games, sucking away hours and hours in seemingly endless online quests. Even if it turns out these games don’t promote violent behavior, is it possible that they have other detrimental effects?
….Sleep quality was significantly worse in the MMORPG group than the other groups, and the participants said the game interfered with their academics (although their actual academic performance didn’t suffer compared to the other groups). Yet the MMORPG group was significantly more likely than the other groups to say they planned to continue playing the game after the study was complete.
So is this behavior addictive? Smyth doesn’t offer an assessment, but the fact that the MMORPG appears to be negatively impacting several areas of these students’ lives — and that they continue to play on despite this — suggest it might be. But once again, we must be careful when generalizing results such as this. Just one MMORPG was tested, so we can’t say whether these results apply to other games. What’s more, the students clearly were getting some benefits from the game, building an online social network that was valuable to them. Despite these caveats, to me it’s surprising that such dramatic results occurred even when groups were randomly assigned to the games. Maybe nearly anyone could get “hooked.” Which is why I’m not especially interested in getting started.
We’ve known that gaming is a powerful behavioral tool since the early RAND wargaming studies, making MMORPGs a potential delivery system for education and occupational training in the 21st century
July 15th, 2008 at 4:18 pm
Yes, a training tool. But not an educational tool.
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Education requires discipline, and discipline requires will. Unfortunately, the addictive qualities of MMORPGs reduce the willpower of the individuals playing.
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If you require mere transmittal of information, like a propagandist, or a showman, then MMORPGs are the way to go. If you require something beyond that, I think the MMORPGs would be the exact opposite of what is required, as they don’t merely overpower Will, but they actually reduce it.
July 16th, 2008 at 1:05 am
Hi SM,
Great comment. You’ve prompted me to further thoughts:
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I used "Education" here pretty broadly but I was thinking primarily of cultivating certain cognitive actions – pattern recognition skills, fast analytical and intuitive processing, decision making under time constraints. education also means inculcation and comprehension of general worldviews, subject/domain/disciplinary mastery "expertise", deep analytical and synthetic reflection that general is a result of a classical, liberal education.
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MMORPG have primarily been developed for entertainment purposes, the platform ( at least in the forms used by the public). has not yet been maximized for generating learning outcomes or even the highly complex simulative decision-making experiences of the 1950’s and 1960’s RAND wargames. Even today, USG wargames have a huge human referee uncertainty factor that skews ( or rigs, if you prefer) outcomes. Shane Deichman can speak from firsthand experience here as can some friends at SWJ Blog. But reasonable and useful simulations could still be modeled with the software that would also be content rich, useful adjuncts to traditional learning and teaching. The key is that they would be adjunctive, to hit particular objectives, not replacements for serious reading, lecture, discussion or practice.
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Your point regarding "discipline" or "will" is interesting. Howard Gardner likes to write of "disciplinary minds" – i.e. SME’s who engage in vertical thinking and analysis primarily within a specialized field or subfield. Concentration or will toward task persistence is usually a byproduct of extended formal study. deep, intense, concentration ( what some zen practitioners term "joriki") can also be cultivated by athletics, meditation, martial arts and other practices. At a high level, it becomes effortless "flow" or absorption rather than a matter of willpower though willpower is definitely required to practice sufficiently to reach that level. Sort of paradox or a means rather than an end in itself.
July 16th, 2008 at 2:51 am
Eh, I think there is a lot of potential in MMORPGs to develop leadership, diplomacy and situational awareness skills. At the top end of games like EQ and WoW are raid encounters that require huge amounts of coordination. Leaders need to make decisions, communicate instructions to multiple teams (damage, support, defense) and react to unexpected events that could wipe out the entire raiding party. I have seen groups of 50-100 players execute amazingly complex tactical plans in Player vs. Environment (PvE) and Player vs. Player (PvP) settings. When I was in university and had a lot of time on my hands, I ran a top-tier Everquest guild because I enjoyed the "organizational" aspect (aligning the interests of many players towards a common goal). Didn’t fail out of school either.
I also think people who become addicted to MMOs are not that different from people who feverishly monitor fantasy basketball pools, election campaigns, or the stock market. Number-crunching and variable-tweaking seems to be extremely gratifying for certain personality types, whether in gameworlds or elsewhere.
July 16th, 2008 at 3:07 am
Eerie, mistress of Aqoul wrote:
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" When I was in university and had a lot of time on my hands, I ran a top-tier Everquest guild because I enjoyed the "organizational" aspect (aligning the interests of many players towards a common goal)"
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Ha! You have surprised me with that one – though perhaps given the demonstrated power of your inner nerd/computer geek abilities, that shouldn’t have. Well said!
July 16th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
Zen-
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On your definition of education, I’m not sure I agree. I think MMORPGs are actually better for demonstrating principles in approximately random environments. A number of years ago in a Principles of War course I took, I demonstrated many of Jomini’s 9 principles, plus other principles (use of interior lines, etc.) by using StarCraft on the Internet.
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Rigging is a problem. Just ask LtGen van Riper.
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In my post on my Personal Reading Program [1], I wrote about the nature of reading programs with regard to discipline: Reading requires discipline. Yet reading should also reinforce your discipline, as discipline reinforces your reading. You are correct in that it is not exactly a linear progression…it’s more of a flywheel [2]: You read a bit, but it’s tough, but you get the flywheel moving ever so slowly. You read a bit more, the flywheel moves a bit faster…and before long the flywheel is moving on its own, without requiring much effort from you, yet your ability to read/absorb information is constantly increasing.
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Yet reading is still a discipline, and nonaddictive. MMORPGs are, and provide little opportunity to build reservoirs of willpower necessary for education and (gasp) wisdom. You may be able to use a MMORPG for a specific teaching task or drill. I suggest that using nonaddictive techniques might yield better results. Being able to refer to a class of games as "crack" should be viewed as a negative thing, not an actual tool of education.
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[1] http://smitteneagle.wordpress.com/2008/07/12/ses-reading-program/
[2] Good to Great, by Jim Collins (a great book on integrating Stoic principles into organizations)
July 16th, 2008 at 12:41 pm
er…last paragraphs should have said "MMORPG are addictive, and provide little opportunity…."
June 30th, 2009 at 9:10 pm
interesting post, will come back here, bookmarked your site