Request for participants in a psychological study.Follow

Hi its Des here again.

Thanks for all the input into my post.

This single post has generated more constructive debate than I had anticipated and thanks to everyone who has e-mailed me with offers of help. I'll probably get back to ye at some point.

I've taken "Kelti's" advice and created an identity to make any posts more recognisable.

The reason I became interested in this topic was the shockingly poor level of research that had gone into the entire phenomenon of gaming and the wider related area of human computer interaction. (Most of this has focussed on single player games and aggression in children.)

Most of the previous research into anything like this was done by someone who has never actually played a computer game, let alone stayed up into the wee hours for just one more go :)
I'm hoping to avoid some of the pitfalls of older research by learning about the area from people who play the game. This draws upon a qualitative style of research where the findings are supposed to emerge from the data rather than applying a rigid hypothesis to an area.

In answer to those who think I’m going to bring pre-conceived notions to my research project, I’d like to say that I feel that gaming has many positive aspects to it and that gamers on average tend to be more intelligent and better educated than the general public. Other positive aspects to online gaming include the potential to create a wider social network than one could maintain in face-to-face interaction.

For example the funny post from tarv where he says he spends a lot of time trying to stop a thirteen-year-old girl from being mangled because she will not run from a fight even though she should know better.
There are few places outside the realms of gaming where such a relationship between adult and teenager could exist and still be deemed appropriate.

I’m thinking about putting posts on other everquest websites, ones that hopefully don’t “reek of ************ Is there any point in doing this or do gamers regularly check a couple of different sites before/after playing or while at work etc. I presume seeing the same post on a half dozen websites would **** many people off???

Cheers again for the input

Des

As somone who had 5 years of education in the field of psychology myself I personally would prefer to research something more useful than EQ-related themes.



No offense meant, Des - but speaking of "shocking"....the motivation of us players means a F**K to society compared to that of serial-killers, child-abusers or drug-takers. Got the picture?

Edited, Mon Jan 19 10:36:39 2004 by Leiany

In answer to Leianys post I'd like to say that research of this nature has potentially wider implications than it first appears.

For instance, at the moment a great many behaviours are held by the wider psychological literature and by the media to be addictive in nature. They are all lumped under the same category as behavioural addictions. No-one really knows if the motivations behind using the internet for gaming for instance are similar enough to those who use it for sexual gratification. Behaviours such as these are all spoken of in the same breath. People are already becoming medicated for behaviours such as compulsive buying and compulsive gambling even though there is much theoretical confusion over exactly what compulsive buying etc really means. These behaviours have been directly linked to net use and gaming through extension of older research often in an innapropriate manner.

An attempt to test out the dominant models of problematic internet use (And by extension problematic gaming) in a critical manner should be seen as necessary especially as these models are so new and relatively untested so far.

Would you want a doctor prescribing you drugs that would curb your appetite for gaming even if the diagnosis of a problem was completely innacurate? This looks like a possibility if models of proposed disorders go unchallenged.

The computer games industry now rakes in more money than Hollywood. That will make it important to industry and to governments.

Gaming has been partially blamed for creating murderers e.g. the Columbine school shootings and some others caused a fuss over first person shooter games, that they were teaching the basics of marksmanship. (Were they right seeing as the U.S. Army released its own FPS game as a recruitment tool???)

Gaming in social environments like mmorpgs creates a potential risk to children e.g paedophiles have used chatrooms to "groom" children for sex. Whats to stop them from using in game text to do the same in the game?

I look forward to hearing from you again.

Des

Edited, Mon Jan 19 19:51:19 2004 by desomahony

I came to EQ at age 46 after a particularly rough and chaotic time in my career. It filled time, provided a challenge, and allowed limited and controlled social contacts, at a time when, frankly, I wanted to hide away.

I had spent some time in IRQ and was initally taken by the fact that each EQ zone can function like a chat room, and that there are folks who use them that way. One of the things I found lacking in IRQ was a common focus, a shared activity. It seemed that conversations tended to degenerate after a time, frequently becoming mundane in a variety of ways. EQ provides a shared diversion and is designed so that small groups have shared experiences that create something to address. The conversations can be just as mundane, but when grouped with players sharing a common goal, they don't seem to spindle down to small talk as quickly. In this context I find the role-playing aspect interesting. In the culture of my particular guild, while pop culture references are common, there's a resistance to discussing anything contempory that invokes both abstraction and stress: politics, for instance, or economic issues. Music, weather, spouses, children, pets, school, sex: all are fair game; but rarely anything contemporary that is heavier or more focused. People seem to enjoy the company without delving very deep.

But that certainly doesn't explain the lure of EQ. It's not the gameplay itself. I think a great many folks would agree that the mechanics of whacking beast after beast is not compelling. There are a few strategic challenges, but they have to be sought out. (For instance, killing the level 60 caller in PoG is more of challenge in many ways than killing level 70 Tunare herself.) Still, there are moments when people talk about having had an "EQ dream" or, more frequently, daydreams.

They'll be involved in other activities or having a quiet moment and, blam, up pops a scheme to achieve a goal in the game -- to earn some plat or pull a troublesome mob -- classic subconsious problem-solving. That alone satisfies in some interesting ways. Personally, I think it has to do with short-term goal setting. The game has thousands of little ways to "improve" your 'toon, to feel like you're getting somewhere. It engages the mind at several levels and provides a kind of false satisfaction: You spend a lot of time and cleverness to hone a "skill" or aquire an "item." Yet, it's a cyber-item and a cartoon facsimile of a skill. Still, achieving a goal creates a sense of accomplishment and control. This, I think is an important aspect of what keeps people engaged and coming back. There's always one more thing they want to do, one more place to visit and conquer, one more uber loot to get, one more way to feel like they've accomplished something. It would be interesting to delve into the impact of this game on the players' self-esteem.

From Leianys last message:
"And to state it clearly - you probably choose Online-RPGs just because research is easy and there are more than enough gamers willing to exhibit themselves."


Emm exactly... I am a student, I have no credentials as of yet. I do not get any sort of grant to do research. Therefore an electronic medium is an obvious choice as a cheap method of gaining access to a larger population than those in my immediate environs.

I thought I might aswell explore something I was interested in rather than a dull topic that I would find a chore. Judging by the responses a lot of other people find this interesting too.

(How do you use those nifty quote thingies that are in the messages)

the easier way is you reply directly to the chosen post and use the markup "quote original" in the post menu.

if somethings still unclear - trial and error worked fine for me :)

Actually, that's exactly how I figured it out. When you quote someone, it puts the [ quote].... [ /quote] stuff in there for ya. From there, you just use the same syntax with trial and error until you figure it out. I'll also quote folks when they use some feature that I can't remember how to use (like /link stuff and /url stuff). I get to see the syntax of the ubb commands that way, and can just replace their stuff with my own if I want.

Ok. Back on topic. Des. I guess the biggest problem is that for probably the last 3 years, we regularly get someone who's doing a psych study on EQ (for one stated reason or another). Virtually every single one makes the same statement (almost verbatim, which is kinda scary if you think about it). They all say something about the "shocking lack of research" on the topic.


Um... There's been an absolutely huge amount of research on EQ and online gaming in the past 5 years. Not "a little", or "a fair amount". Huge amounts. Judging just by the number of studies, polls, and surveys we've seen posted on this forum alone, there must be thousands of researchers, just like you, doing and saying the exact same things.


Maybe it's more correct to say that there's a "shocking lack of rational conclusions" in your field with regard to online games. But then, that's not because of lack of research or data. There's gobs of that running around. The biggest problem is that most researchers have a second agenda (which lots of folks have hinted at). They start with an assumption ("show/measure the addictive effects of EQ") and proceed from there. Many more are marketing research in the quise of psych research.

If you want to talk about a "shocking lack", how about following a simple rule of thumb like: "If it aint broke, don't fix it"? It just seems like the whole approach by most psych students (and professionals) is backwards. Why not start by looking at things that are actual problems in the world and then figuring out why they are bad? It just really looks like you're picking an area and analyzing it to see if you can find something that might be bad and then seeing if you can figure out how to make it less bad. Of course, the whole subject is built up on itself like a house of cards and has about as much foundation in reality.


How about starting with actual data first? Oh, like maybe the rate of suicides by people who play online games versus those who dont? Or average salaries for online gamers compared to a non-gaming group of similar age range? Heck. I can think of a hundred different wayt to gather really relevant information that doesn't require asking tons of people for opinions first. Start by identifying whether there is in fact an actual problem here first. Then look at identifying sources and solutions.


But hey. I'm an engineer. My profession actually tries to make things work rather then figure out first why something might not. You do things however you want I guess...

ok listen up because its very simple.

This game has the same effect as gambleing, sex, drugs,ext.....
A persons response to to the game is very simular and the extent of addiction veries with the individual.

Look into Pavlovs responce.





I hope this is helpful but then you should know this already. :)

Edited, Thu Jan 22 09:17:43 2004 by jacques

Edited, Thu Jan 22 09:22:47 2004 by jacques

Why don't you read my posts instead of telling me something I allreadystated myself and proving your status as the nr.1 wise-*** around

sounds like you just want to argue...

[quote=desomahony]Would you want a doctor prescribing you drugs that would curb your appetite for gaming even if the diagnosis of a problem was completely innacurate? This looks like a possibility if models of proposed disorders go unchallenged.

OK, major problem here. Why would you go to see the doctor if you did not think you needed (or wanted) the medications to help you curb your "addiction"? I know I wouldn't.

Gaming has been partially blamed for creating murderers e.g. the Columbine school shootings and some others caused a fuss over first person shooter games, that they were teaching the basics of marksmanship. (Were they right seeing as the U.S. Army released its own FPS game as a recruitment tool???)

Another problem. This is ********* It is the government not allowing the childrens parents to discipline the children, as well as the parents giving up their right to punish the children for wrong doing, that is causing these problems. 20 years ago, when a child did something that was considered socially unacceptable, the parent was EXPECTED to correct the child by either sending them to their room, or spanking them. (No, I do not mean abusing them, I mean a spank on the butt...) Now, the government is going so far as telling children to run away from home if they are punished! (My niece in Middle school showed me the paper handed out in home room!)

Gaming in social environments like mmorpgs creates a potential risk to children e.g paedophiles have used chatrooms to "groom" children for sex. Whats to stop them from using in game text to do the same in the game?

Ummm, have you actually READ the EULA? It flat out states that only ADULTS are to play this game, and if you let your children play, anything that happens is YOUR fault. In other words, ADULT SUPERVISION!!!!!! <GASP!!!!!!!> Imagine! They want the PARENTS to SUPERVISE their CHILDREN!

(Sorry, but this ******** pisses me off!)

Woops a problem with unpaid phone bills meant that I was off the net for a couple of weeks. There are some more interesting ideas here.

gbaji and Leiany have shown a considered critical evaluation of the usual problems that are endemic in psychological research. Some of these problems I would like to avoid.

I have thought about the idea of looking at a population of gamers and non gamers and looking at things like relationship break-ups, academic and occupational successes/failures etc. I'm guessing that there would not be a difference between the groups. That kind of project is a little out of my current scope though.

I'm currently hoping to use gaming as an illustrative example of the problems of a self selected sample. This should work by looking at two self selected populations. One group would class themselves as not addicted, the other as addicted. (responding to a post similar to this one) The results of a short battery of tests should show that not only is most of the "addicted" group not addicted at all, but the "addicted" group should be very similar to the non addicted group. From what I've seen in the research so far, self selected samples have not worked well.

Then I want to interview some of the people of each group and see how they formed the opinion of whether or not they are addicted, criteria used etc.

I think that the current terminology of addiction is not helpful when talking about gaming. For instance I've been playing the game Medieval Total War for the last two weeks solidly for 3 or 4 hour stretches at a time.

Has my course work suffered? Yes.
Am I addicted? No.

Any educational impairment I am suffering I can trace to other things going on in my life, not just to gaming. This echoes the sentiment displayed in many of the posts in this thread and I'd like to explore this concept in more detail but I'm pretty limited by zero resources as to what I can do.

Thanks for the feedback so far I'd like to hear ideas on the description above.

Des

Ya. Leianey is our resident "Proof" EXPERT. She is always PROVING stuff.