How MMOs Like WoW Are Addictive

[Rushster]

<h5>Wednesday 23 August 2006</h5>
<p><b>How MMOs Like WoW Are Addictive</b> -- <small>Posted by
<a href="mailto:rush@worldofwar.net">Rushster</a>
at 2:07 AM [<a href="/cgi-bin/news/viewnews.cgi?id=EEVykAEyFpgKNqJebr">Link News</a>]

</small>
<br><br><p>Gamasutra have posted another WoW related article entitled <a href="http://gamasutra.com/features/20060822/clark_01.shtml">How MMOs like WoW are addictive</a>. The article shows new research on MMOs*surveying people playing all the major MMOs such as World Of Warcraft and Final Fantasy XI. Here's a snip: </p><blockquote dir="ltr" style="MARGIN-RIGHT: 0px"><div>'The study, which examined in-game behaviors on a number of levels, found that playing with real life friends, side activities like exploration or taking pictures, and membership to social guilds may be related to less harmful play. On the other hand, stealing from or otherwise manipulating players, along with membership to more goal-oriented “hardcore” raid guilds may be related to addiction. Player versus player activity was related to both less damaging and addictive behaviors on different levels of data analysis. While these relationships are present, it is not known whether games are actually the cause of this behavior, or if these are simply behaviors that already addicted players seek out.'</div></blockquote>

[kcma]

MMO like WOW are addictive because of lovely sites like WWN and the lovely mods <3

[sasja]

15.8% of men and 59.8% of women play MMOs with a romantic partner, while 25.5% of men and 39.5% of women play with a family member, suggesting that women are primarily being introduced to MMO games by a spouse or family member.This annoys the hell out of me - how does it follow from the fact that women enjoy playing with family members that they've been introduced to gaming by them? Speaking as a female playing with several family members all of whom I've introduced to the damn game! Supposedly academic study colored by stereotypes if I ever saw it!

[Piemaster]

This annoys the hell out of me - how does it follow from the fact that women enjoy playing with family members that they've been introduced to gaming by them? Speaking as a female playing with several family members all of whom I've introduced to the damn game! Supposedly academic study colored by stereotypes if I ever saw it!

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/primarily

[UndeadRogue]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/primarily

to respond in such a subtle way... you HAVE to be married
or involved for a long time... I recognize the modus operandi :grin:

[kcma]

This annoys the hell out of me - how does it follow from the fact that women enjoy playing with family members that they've been introduced to gaming by them? Speaking as a female playing with several family members all of whom I've introduced to the damn game! Supposedly academic study colored by stereotypes if I ever saw it!

you just happened to be a minority of active female gamers sasja ;)

[sasja]

http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/primarily
Well thank you for that reference - but how can anyone tell from the fact that women more often play games with family members that they are primarily introduced to games by them?? How does that follow in any kind of logic or empirical law?
you just happened to be a minority of active female gamers sasja ;)Maybe I am, maybe I'm not - what I don't see is any evidence presented that the majority of female gamers are any different.

[Piemaster]

Well thank you for that reference - but how can anyone tell from the fact that women more often play games with family members that they are primarily introduced to games by them?? How does that follow in any kind of logic or empirical law?


The point I was making was that you can't use one person not fitting with the pattern as an excuse to totally debunk the stereotype.

However, if you want to discuss logic and empirical law then that could be fun too... :)

60% of women play with their spouse. Let's assume that half were introduced to the game by their boyfriend and the other half introduced their boyfriend to the game. Okay there will be a few that fall into neither category (maybe they met at a LAN party) but we'll run with it for now. So 30% of female players were introduced to the game by their spouse.

In the same way you could say that 20% (half of 40%) we introduced by a family member, which brings us to a neat 50% of women. There may be some double counting here, but there are some big factors that will swing this actual number significantly over 50% and into the 'primarily' range.

1. Guys just like computer games more than girls on average, especially RPGs. Not a lot of point speculating as to the reason for this but it's definitely true. I worked in tech support for 5 years, I know that guys are more in love with their PCs than girls. They get more exposure to computer games and are more likely to try them out. Hence if a boyfriend and girlfriend both play WoW, then chance that the guy introduced the girl to it and not the other way around is going to be significantly over 50%

2. A lot of the girls I know who play WoW origianally started playing partly as a way to do something fun with their boyfriends. Guys on the other hand more often see computer games as 'quality self time'. I think it's more likely that a girl would start playing because their boyfriend/husband did than the other way around.

3. If you play with family members then it is quite possible that 1 person introduced more than one to the game, hence more than 50% were the student not the teacher.

4. It follows real life observation. You hear so many stories of people introducing their girlfriends to WoW (usually followed by 'now I never get to use the computer') and less stories about how girls introduced their boyfriends.


So there's my argument, discuss away :)

[DeValiant]

I concur

Dev

[Ebgreen]

Or as the famous quote goes, "The plural of anecdote is not data."

[sasja]

The point I was making was that you can't use one person not fitting with the pattern as an excuse to totally debunk the stereotype.

However, if you want to discuss logic and empirical law then that could be fun too... :)

60% of women play with their spouse. Let's assume that half were introduced to the game by their boyfriend and the other half introduced their boyfriend to the game. Okay there will be a few that fall into neither category (maybe they met at a LAN party) but we'll run with it for now. So 30% of female players were introduced to the game by their spouse.

In the same way you could say that 20% (half of 40%) we introduced by a family member, which brings us to a neat 50% of women. There may be some double counting here, but there are some big factors that will swing this actual number significantly over 50% and into the 'primarily' range.

1. Guys just like computer games more than girls on average, especially RPGs. Not a lot of point speculating as to the reason for this but it's definitely true. I worked in tech support for 5 years, I know that guys are more in love with their PCs than girls. They get more exposure to computer games and are more likely to try them out. Hence if a boyfriend and girlfriend both play WoW, then chance that the guy introduced the girl to it and not the other way around is going to be significantly over 50%

2. A lot of the girls I know who play WoW origianally started playing partly as a way to do something fun with their boyfriends. Guys on the other hand more often see computer games as 'quality self time'. I think it's more likely that a girl would start playing because their boyfriend/husband did than the other way around.

3. If you play with family members then it is quite possible that 1 person introduced more than one to the game, hence more than 50% were the student not the teacher.

4. It follows real life observation. You hear so many stories of people introducing their girlfriends to WoW (usually followed by 'now I never get to use the computer') and less stories about how girls introduced their boyfriends.


So there's my argument, discuss away :)See this is exactly what I'm talking about - you use your preconceived view of the world to make the numbers tell you something they're not: you build your case with hear say, with anecdotes and stereotypes. You're on a message board where that's fine. But if you do want to publish a 'study' on this subject, you better have something more solid. There's nothing in the numbers published that can give you any reason to assume that most of the female players are introduced to gaming by males.

Your attempt at fixing the numbers doesn't hold water (as I presume you realise), since it relies on the assumption that the 60% playing with their spouse and the 40% playing with their family have no overlap - that would mean that all females play with family members (counting spouses). But even if your number trick did play out, you still don't get more than 50% of the female gamers being introduced to the game by males, which cannot justify saying that females are primarily introduced to gaming by males.

Or as the famous quote goes, "The plural of anecdote is not data."Thank you - I knew I could have put it shorter :smiley:

[Piemaster]

On the contrary, I think you are using your own preconceived notions about how the world should be to cloud your judgement on how things actually are.

The article offers up a stereotype, one that you are not comfortable with because (I assume) you don't like to think of women as 'only playing games because their boyfriends showed them how'. Because you don't conform to that stereotype, you try to rebutt it. You are thinking with your emotions rather than your head (hey that's another female stereotype, waddayaknow).

The fact is that lots (and lots and lots) of women play WoW because their partner or brother or whatever introduced them to the game. I know a number of women that play the game and in more than 50% of cases (albeit over a small sample) this is the case. Also from anecdotal evidence this appears to be the case. Sure anecdotal evidence isnt worth a great deal, but it's better than what you're offering (nothing).

Nobody is saying that all women players were introduced to the game this way. Some are hardcore gamers, some come from paper RPG backgrounds, some are tomboys and some were probably just walking through PC World with their friends and said "hey that game looks cool, let's take that to Stehpanie's party tonight and we can play it while having pillow fights and eating ice cream in our pyjamas and if it's rubish we can just watch Dirty Dancing instead" (hey another stereotype, I never said all of them were correct). Just respect that demographically a huge contributor to women playing computer games, especially those like WoW, is a partner of family member playing.

[rgirty]

These addiction studies are absurd.

Every major city has a library, a LOT of americans (many many more than play wow) read books before bed, or in their spare time. Yet you don't see a study on reading addiction and how it is taking time from their everyday life... I'm not going to get started again on sports and tv..

[kevagron]

One thing that makes me laugh about this is their definiton of addicted, I probably play 36 hours a week (5 nights @ 5 hours and 10/11 on weekends). By their definition I probably am "addicted" to WoW.

One of my friends could be considered addicted to golf as he plays (or practices) for 25+ hours every week. Most of my opposite numbers at work, and virtually every other person I know that doesn't play computer games or has another time consuming hobby like golf or fishing etc:

Gets home from work
Has dinner
Switches on TV
Watches TV (or videos or movies) for 5-6 hours (every night)
Watches TV 18+ hours on the weekend

Probably spending 50 hours/week watching TV, are they then considered to be "addicted" to TV?

Why is it considered an addiction to play computer games and yet not to watch TV :)

[rgirty]

Why is it considered an addiction to play computer games and yet not to watch TV :)

Tv watchin' is accepted and considered fine.

Computer gaming is for nerds and freaks!

[Wasabee]

Think about it, any studies or reports that are done will NEVER be able to address EVERY person in the world. These studies are based on sample data and an attempt to be clear and objective.

It's like the blind men describing an elephant:
http://www.noogenesis.com/pineapple/blind_men_elephant.html

Each has a valid point, but it is with understanding that you can get a whole picture, and just because a person has part of a picture does not "make them wrong".

Bringing your own presuppositions and reading "into" the report, then protesting the results, claiming yourself as proof to the contrary (which in fact you supported the stats, because they mentioned percentages of women that were introduced by "others" not totaling 100%) is completely naive.

If I were to make the same assumption as you did, I could say that (before reading your post) that 100% of the women that played WoW or tried it was at the bequest of their MALE significant other. However after reading your post it would then be 80%.

I guess I'm saying take the report with a grain of salt.

[sasja]

The article offers up a stereotype, one that you are not comfortable with because (I assume) you don't like to think of women as 'only playing games because their boyfriends showed them how'. Because you don't conform to that stereotype, you try to rebutt it. You are thinking with your emotions rather than your head (hey that's another female stereotype, waddayaknow).

The fact is that lots (and lots and lots) of women play WoW because their partner or brother or whatever introduced them to the game. I know a number of women that play the game and in more than 50% of cases (albeit over a small sample) this is the case. Also from anecdotal evidence this appears to be the case. Sure anecdotal evidence isnt worth a great deal, but it's better than what you're offering (nothing).
Talking about thinking in stereotypes indeed!

No, I'm not offering any evidence, because - as you'd realise if you weren't too busy reading in your own view on my emotions and feminism into my arguments - I'm not trying to give my view on how things are with female gamers as opposed to male! It may very well be that they're very often introduced to gaming by their male family members, what do I know (exactly the same as you, namely squat). What I am doing is criticizing a speculative step in an empirical analysis: They effectively say "a, hence b" (a="Females primarily play with their familiy", b="Females are primarily introduced to gaming by males"). Implicitly they rely on the supposition that females who play with their families are introduced to the game by males. What I'm attacking is this step in the argument, and as support I'm offering a counter example (a&~b). One counter example is enough to debunk a logical argument.

So what can they say against this? They should of course claim that it's not be a logical law, but rather an empirical one (it's often - or at least statistically significantly - the case, but not always that females who play with their family is introduced to gaming by males). But where is the empirical evidence that this law is true? Nowhere (or they don't care enough to present anything, at least). For a different theory equally supported by the data, take "Females more often want to play with family and friends, so they're more likely to introduce their families to the games they play". Same data, opposite conclusion: Females are more likely to introduce family members to games.

They rely on their feelings and prejudices about female gamers to make the empirical data tell them something it's not.

[Piemaster]

I do appreciate what you are saying, and I agree that they are making a large logical jump without having any real evidence to back it up. Did it 'annoy the hell out of you' because of the way the article arrived at the conclusion or the conclusion itself?

[sasja]

I do appreciate what you are saying, and I agree that they are making a large logical jump without having any real evidence to back it up. Did it 'annoy the hell out of you' because of the way the article arrived at the conclusion or the conclusion itself?
Heh, nice rejoinder :) But what annoys the hell out of me is the tacit assumptions about females that pervade these discussions and even make their way into ostensibly scientific studies of the gender difference. So, yeah, if the study had included the question: "Who introduced you to the game you're playing and what gender was that person?", and it turned out that females were indeed primarily introduced to games by males, that would be fine with me - I don't mind being an exception :smiley:

[yavvy]

These addiction studies are absurd.

Every major city has a library, a LOT of americans (many many more than play wow) read books before bed, or in their spare time. Yet you don't see a study on reading addiction and how it is taking time from their everyday life... I'm not going to get started again on sports and tv..
Addiction might not be the correct word, but it simply doesn't matter if you're addicited to something if it doesn't interfere with school, work, sleep etc. I'd guess theres alot more people that dump something that should be more important for WoW than for books.

[Piemaster]

Heh, nice rejoinder :) But what annoys the hell out of me is the tacit assumptions about females that pervade these discussions and even make their way into ostensibly scientific studies of the gender difference. So, yeah, if the study had included the question: "Who introduced you to the game you're playing and what gender was that person?", and it turned out that females were indeed primarily introduced to games by males, that would be fine with me - I don't mind being an exception :smiley:

But the article never said anything about the sex of the person doing the introducing, you seem to have made up that bit somewhere along the line. It could be talking about female family members or for that matter female spouses.

[sasja]

Ok, substitute family members for males if you want - but saying that females are introduced to gaming by family members, seems to imply that males figure at least at some point in the introduction chain on pain of circularity :smiley:

[infy]

does this mean i need to be taking drugs for 25% of my free time to be an addict ? i hope so :ponder:

[degnar]

Sasja is right. Correlation =/= causation. Many people make this mistake. (Including politicians, which is why so many things are messed up, but I digress.)

If they want to do it right, they need to interview female players and ask if they were introduced to the game by a male partner/friend. That is the only data that can prove their assertion.

P.S. Agree about the absurdity of how it would be "evil" to be addicted to computers, but not TV, sports, reading, etc. The clearest sign that someone is a non-gamer is when they say computers/gaming is "bad".

[cyradis2003]

As one of the non-ovarianly challenged players of WOW I started playing not because a male-type-person introduced me to the game but because I was a D2 player ... again non male-induced ... and to be quite honest I was bored with the outfits. I mean why can't barbarians be female? What about Necromancers? I wanted pretty clothes, new scenes and hair styles all neatly packaged up in mycomfortable and preferred Blizzard Glossy Style.

Now, I play WOW and my fiance plays WOW but neither one of us introduced the other to WOW ... in fact WOW introduced us to each other. Where does that fit in your number soup Mister/Missus Statistician-Person?

[Piemaster]

Sasja is right. Correlation =/= causation. Many people make this mistake. (Including politicians, which is why so many things are messed up, but I digress.)



But if you read the article, it doesn't claim to have proved anything. It just says that the fact that a large proportion of women play with their spouse or family suggests that they were introduced to the game by spouse/family. Suggests not proves.

[degnar]

But if you read the article, it doesn't claim to have proved anything. It just says that the fact that a large proportion of women play with their spouse or family suggests that they were introduced to the game by spouse/family. Suggests not proves.

It is still the same mistake. They are taking one piece of data and inferring something else from it. They know that a large proportion of women play with a spouse. They know nothing about how they were introduced to the game. The suggestion is based on sterotypes (which may or may not be true). Why did they make that suggestion? There are a *lot* of things that fact could suggest.

What they are really doing is hypothesizing. Which is fine. They just need to call it what it is (and ask the direct question if they want to discuss it).

[Wasabee]

I think we all need to take these things with a grain of salt. Social studies is nothing like math. 2 + 2 = 4, Some women get moody during the month, Some men bald. The latter 2 not applying to all, and not excluding that men could get moody during times of the month, or some women could be bald.

Stop running with scissors...

[Piemaster]

What they are really doing is hypothesizing. Which is fine. They just need to call it what it is (and ask the direct question if they want to discuss it).

I'm no expert in scientific lingo, so I figured a suggestion and a hypothesis were approximately the same thing.

[sasja]

I'm no expert in scientific lingo, so I figured a suggestion and a hypothesis were approximately the same thing.
They say the data suggests something that it doesn't. Agree?

[kcma]

They say the data suggests something that it doesn't. Agree?

sasja :p should i be offended if a person take a look at me and automatically assumed that i probably don't goto the mall on my day off to test and try out the newest seaonal lotions?

[Piemaster]

They say the data suggests something that it doesn't. Agree?

Not really. Looking at the data I would say it does suggest what they say. If that had said 'this shows...' or 'this proves...' then I would agree with you, but as it is I'm still on the side of the article.

[kcma]

it's ok sasja <3 this is what make u so unique and cool :p

[sasja]

Not really. Looking at the data I would say it does suggest what they say. If that had said 'this shows...' or 'this proves...' then I would agree with you, but as it is I'm still on the side of the article.
So how do you respond to my suggestion that a just as likely explanation entails the exact opposite conclusion:For a different theory equally supported by the data, take "Females more often want to play with family and friends, so they're more likely to introduce their families to the games they play". Same data, opposite conclusion: Females are more likely to introduce family members to games.There's nothing in the data to support either theory over the other.

sasja :p should i be offended if a person take a look at me and automatically assumed that i probably don't goto the mall on my day off to test and try out the newest seaonal lotions?I have no idea :wave:
it's ok sasja <3 this is what make u so unique and cool :pI know :flowers:

[Piemaster]

So how do you respond to my suggestion that a just as likely explanation entails the exact opposite conclusion:There's nothing in the data to support either theory over the other.


I would have objected if they'd said that either, it would just be a different interpretation of the data. If pushed, I would argue that this is a little bit less likely than they interpretation they actually gave, based on my personal experience, but it certainly wouldn't offend me.

[kcma]

I know :flowers:

so we can agree that girls dont like MMOs, and you're cooler than majority of the girls ;)

me? i used to goto the mall and smell every lotion on the premise, and no offense but it's silly... then again, most girls find logging into MMO to kill stuff is just as silly.

[sasja]

I would have objected if they'd said that either, it would just be a different interpretation of the data. If pushed, I would argue that this is a little bit less likely than they interpretation they actually gave, based on my personal experience, but it certainly wouldn't offend me.
When the evidence doesn't make p more likely than ~p (non-p), it's wrong to state that the evidence suggests p. You judge p more likely based on anecdotal evidence and prejudice, just like they do - fine in your case, publishing on a game message board, not so fine for them publishing a scientific study.

[kcma]

to p or not to p? =D

sasja, i think there are more important scientific reportings than this. such as, the amazingly intelligent ones done by americans to support that games make ppl kill other ppl!

and therefore, to sell a M rated game to minor deserves a harsher punishment than selling liquore to a minor :p damn! i'm so proud to be an american =D

[Piemaster]

You judge p more likely based on anecdotal evidence and prejudice

I'm trying to keep this conversation civil, so why do you keep trying to do the opposite by saying things like this?

[kcma]

to p or not to p is very civil <3