Assignment 9- Warcraft Widows

http://www.plasticbag.org/archives/2006/05/on_wanting_to_stop_wanting_world_of_warcraft/#comment-60870

World of Warcraft is a massively multiplayer online role-playing game, or MMORPG, in which players compete in battles, quests, and raids to advance further in the game and to develop their characters. It is often associated with problematic Internet use and has even been referred to as “Warcrack.” Having known several people who spent hours playing the game every day and talked of little else when they weren’t playing, I wanted to find out what prompted so many to spend so much of their time on this game. Does the online environment that Blizzard Entertainment has created “addict” people, or are people with psychosocial problems drawn to playing games like Warcraft?

In the course of searching for more information about Warcraft, I came across a blog post by a user who desired to cut down his use of the game. He stated that he didn’t even like playing anymore, but he wasn’t sure if he could stop. Following his post were seemingly hundreds of posts from other users of the game and their loved ones describing the havoc Warcraft was wreaking on their lives. The blog post ended up closely resembling an online support community much like the ones examined in class last week. Comments from “Warcraft widows” were particularly striking. Many spoke of how they were getting ready to leave their husbands because of the excessive amount of time they spent playing Warcraft. The fact that there were so many of these “widows” leads me to believe that Caplan’s model may not be the best to explain this particular instance of PIU. In this model, individuals with psychosocial problems perceive that they aren’t socially competent and thus begin preferring online interaction because it is less threatening than ftf. Their preference for online interaction leads their online use to become obsessive and compulsive, exacerbating their social competence problems. While Warcraft undoubtedly attracts some of these people, many players seem to be perfectly well adjusted before starting to play the game. There were multiple comments on the blog I was looking at from various people who loved someone whose Warcraft use was interfering with their relationship.

In order to determine what makes Warcraft different from other online spaces, I went to its website. In the frequently asked questions, the game’s developers said that the game was always changing, writing, “…we also add new content on a regular basis, thus ensuring that there will always be new adventures, new locations, new creatures, and new items to discover.” It seems that gamers can never truly be finished with the game if new content is constantly added. One of the most telling bits of information I found in the FAQ was this one, “… our quest system provides an enormous variety of captivating quests with story elements, dynamic events, and flexible reward systems.” The “flexible reward system” alluded to sounds a lot like the variable ratio reward schedule that has been found to produce behaviors that are extremely difficult to extinguish. Wallace (1999) listed this type of operant conditioning in her book as one general attribute of Internet spaces that leads to PIU. Another of Wallace’s attributes, the maintenance of virtual presence, may also lead to PIU. Once a Warcraft player joins a guild, they might feel obligated to be online as much as possible to play the game with their guild. In addition, a guild fulfills a player’s need for human interaction, furthering their attachment to the game. When examining various aspects of Warcraft, it seems that the “Warcrack” characterization might be accurate.