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Missed part one?  View it here! www.ensidia.com/Sichas/blog/3990/

Ready for the final installment?  View it here! www.ensidia.com/Sichas/blog/4009/

3600 views on Part 1! Thank you so much everyone.  This is the first time I've ever published something like this and it's truly humbling to have so much support for all of the work I did on this essay.  Here's part two! The epic conclusion will be this Saturday, which is the 23rd.  One note on this installment is that at the end, there is a long description of World of Warcraft.  Since this paper was written for a professor (even though she played Warcraft at one time...coolest professor EVER) I wanted to make sure it was very specific in regards to what I was talking about in the essay, as well as allowing non-gamers to understand the lure of WoW. While I know that a good 90-99% of this site plays Warcraft, some folks may not have a solid understanding, so I left it in. Enjoy part two of Video Game Addiction!

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Case Study: Daniel Folmer

            In an article on Dallas Morning News’s website, Daniel Folmer is examined in a story about risks involved in excessive video game play. According to the article written by Laura Schreier, a reporter for Dallas Morning News, “Folmer would sometimes play video games for 12 hours straight.” (Schreier) When we look at our definition of addiction, this doesn’t exactly fit.  Sometimes is the key word, that Folmer would sometimes play for 12 hours straight. So far this case is on the love of the game side of the spectrum. Let’s continue, here’s Schreier again with more on Folmer: “He stopped going out with friends. He sank onto academic probation. When his girlfriend came over, he stayed in his virtual world. Then she told him something that jolted him back into reality. ‘She just waited for me to look at her, or acknowledge her, or hug her or whatever, and she said she fell asleep waiting.” (Schreier) We can now classify this as addiction, and therefore fulfills my thesis argument based on my research.

Daniel Folmer’s quality of life had depreciated. Spending 12 hours playing video games isn’t healthy no matter how you look at it. You’re not exercising, there’s a good chance you’re not eating healthy, and you’re putting severe strain on your eyesight. Folmer’s relationships were struggling. Duh. He wouldn’t even acknowledge his girlfriend when she came to visit him.  Finally, Folmer slipped onto academic probation. His personal responsibilities were left unmet. I know from my own addiction that slipping so far in you grades that you’re on probation is a sure sign it’s more than just a crush on the game. Folmer was in way over his head, and he had damaged more than just a few areas of his life. His choices were damaging enough to qualify as addiction.

Case Study: Zach Elliot

            In an online article from CNN, author Steve Mollman tells the story of Zach Elliot, a mid-40s gamer that participates in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game (MMORPG) called Final Fantasy XI. Elliot spends three hours a day playing Final Fantasy in his basement, completely absorbed in his virtual world. Mollman says, “While parts of the game require intense focus, less hectic periods allow him to text-chat with other players from around the world about politics, religion and other topics. Some friendships form, as do some animosities.” (Mollman) This is a great time to talk about why the ideas and concepts of MMORPGs are so appealing. First off, it’s a game first and foremost. It is a tool for personal entertainment. But secondly, it is an escape from reality, as entertainment often is. Players indulge in these games so frequently, prior to addiction, because there is another life waiting in the game files.

In the story of Zach Elliot, Mollman continues to say, “[Elliot] uses a blacklist …to block out anyone who gets on his nerves too much…on the other hand, some of the better relationships have crossed over into real life. Chief among them [for Elliot] is a couple in Canada with whom he exchanges Christmas presents, though he’s never met them face to face.” (Mollman) For Elliot, there is another life for him after he enters his username and password to log onto the PlayOnline servers (the company that hosts Final Fantasy XI and takes care of day-to-day operations.) Let’s take a brief look at my thesis for addiction quickly before continuing with this thought. Quality of life hasn’t depreciated (3 hours isn’t going to hurt you much, and most Americans watch more than 3 hours of TV a night anyway), relationships aren’t struggling in real life so far that we know of, and he hasn’t shirked any of his personal responsibilities.  Zach Elliot is not addicted to Final Fantasy XI according to the thesis that has proved correct so far. Mollman continues to say, “Elliot is a stay-at-home father with kids in school and a successful spouse generating income. That leaves him with enough spare time for not only Final Fantasy, but other activities as well, like participating in a local writing club that meets regularly at a café.” (Mollman)  This is the end of the case study, and I’m pleased to declare Zach Elliot, a Wisconsin resident, as a non-addict. Elliot shows exceptional resilience to one of the more addicting MMORPGs on the market today.  Elliot still does not meet any of the requirements for addiction. This is a case of love of the game, and a healthy lifestyle to match.

My Gaming Experiences

I started playing video games when I was three, playing simple kid’s games on my mom’s computer that you’d have to be completely brain dead to lose. When I was in third grade, after saving checks from my paper route for about a year, I was able to purchase a GameBoy Color with my own money.  At the same time, my mom bought a Sega Genesis.  The Genesis was a console similar to the Super Nintendo, being one that you hooked up to your home television and played the games off of cartridges. I played both systems a fair amount, but I didn’t really spend a lot of time playing video games until my mom bought me a Nintendo 64 for my birthday. There’s maybe about 10 years worth of console progression left to get to where I am now, but I’ll skip it and jump to when I started playing online games, because that’s where my problems started.  I think I picked up Final Fantasy XI when I was in 8^th grade. I really enjoyed the game a lot but I ended up getting too frustrated with it and quit.  This game marked the first noticeable change in my offline life (I’ll refer to my “real life” as my offline life…meaning time spent not gaming.) for the negative. I was trying to take my character to the next level and would forsake homework, friends, and social activities to play longer. I wasn’t addicted, but I was past just loving the game.

To replace Final Fantasy I started playing Jagex’s Runescape. Runescape is also an MMORPG, but it’s completely free to play.  It’s an online Java game meaning you play it within Internet Explorer or Firefox or whatever your browser happens to be.  There was an option to pay $5 a month for the full benefits of the game, but I didn’t take that option until playing for about 6 months and ran out of content to clear.   Runescape was my first addiction.  It was not uncommon for me to come home from school at 3:30 and do nothing but play Runescape until midnight.

When I was 16 I began playing World of Warcraft with my good friend Ryan.  We picked up the free trial discs at Best Buy and played for the 10-day trial, then renewed our subscriptions and became full members. Warcraft became my escape from what was going on in my offline life. When I had relationship problems, I could log into the game and play. That “security” formed a sort of bond between the game and myself. This is where my story begins, with this bond between the game and myself.  At the beginning of 2009, my personal life was a nuclear battleground. It was in pieces, and Warcraft was an easy escape.  I began to live inside of the game.  My identity was tied to my character, named Sichas, and I lived to take him to the next level.  I would wake up at 8am and log onto the game.  Around lunch time I would grab some food from the kitchen or order pizza, all while still being connected to the game.  Around 10pm I went to bed and usually watched a movie until midnight.

Anyone can plainly see that this was very unhealthy.  My mom did everything she could to get me out of the house, while most of my friends gave it up as a lost cause.  It wasn’t until I reached the maximum level with Sichas that I was able to try and play less and get outside more. The keyword here is try, because I was very unsuccessful.  It wasn’t until I got to college and new opportunities came up that I was able to come up with a way to kick my addiction to WoW.

World of Warcraft

            I want to take some time to talk about World of Warcraft (WoW) in depth, since I’ve referenced it so much. WoW is the biggest MMORPG currently on the market, and nothing has even come close to taking its crown as reigning champion.  Many have tried, such as EA Games’s Lord of the Rings Online and NCsoft’s AION. The game comes from Blizzard Entertainment, and it is actually a sequel to 3 other games the company had put out.  There is a specific genre of video games called RTS, or real-time strategy.  The easiest way to think of these games is Chess. Your goal is to build up your armies and strategically place your forces in order to complete some sort of objective, such as conquering an enemy base.  Blizzard made three of these games all in the same series, and they called it Warcraft.  All three games took place in a world called Azeroth, and after the third game, the company decided to enter the online market in a pay-to-play format, and to take the Warcraft series in a role-playing direction rather than RTS. WoW debuted on November 23^rd, 2004 and has since had two expansion packs.  Expansion packs are used in many games, such as The Sims. They include new content that the game developers thought of after the original game’s release.  The basic idea behind WoW is that you create a character/avatar that represents you in the virtual world of Azeroth.  You pick a class, either wanting to be a damage dealer, a protector, or a healer, or sometimes a mixture of them, and you level your character through quests and dungeons.  The game currently sits on an expansion called Wrath of the Lich King and the highest level you can go with a character is 80. The typical amount of total playtime (this is counting only hours spent logged into and playing the game) required to level a character from 1 (the starting level) to 80 is 6 days.  Spread out over average playtime, that’s about 4 months of solid game play just to reach the maximum level, which is required to participate in what is called “end-game content” and is really what the game is all about.  This content includes things like raids, battlegrounds, and top of the line gear.  Understanding what these features mean is not important to understanding addiction, so I won’t spend a lot of time defining them for you.  However, that, in a nutshell, is WoW.  A player makes a character, levels it to the maximum level, and then completes end game content. (worldofwarcraft.com)

            The addiction occurs when players take the game as more than a game, and it is very easy to do so.  Without much thought, a player is enthralled in everything that is going on during their game play.  They are trying to level a character, defeat enemies, and also network with other players in a social environment.  Brett Harrison, an 18 year old WoW player that has been playing for 2 years, talks about why he still plays the same game after 2 years and says, “I keep playing because for one thing it keeps having more added onto it and secondly because [my guild] is kind of progressing and working on all this [content] and I want to get to that point with them.” When asked about what entertains him about the game, Harrison says,   “When I actually sit down and think about it, a lot of the time it just ends up being not that enjoyable for a number of reasons. It’s always a bad experience trying to get through [content] with people who don’t know what they’re doing, and [players killing players] followed by more killing is upsetting.  A lot of times I log in and don’t really do anything. I don’t like to admit it, but I would say I’m addicted to it.” (Harrison) In Harrison’s case, he didn’t even know he was slipping into addiction until he reflected upon his game play and realized what the game was doing to him. “I know that I have work to do and WoW is kind of my procrastination.” (Harrison)  In that sense, Harrison’s personal responsibilities are left unmet.  When read the definition that I put forth at the beginning of this paper, Harrison thought more on his statement that he was addicted to the game, and agreed wholeheartedly that he was indeed addicted.

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Finding that you're addicted to video games? Part 3 explains your way out! Stop back Saturday, January 23rd for the epic conclusion to "Video Game Addiction," at which time I will reveal plans for my continuous columns exclusively for Ensidia.com!

Happy (healthy!) gaming,

   Matthew

   (Sichas)