World of Warcraft: stick or quit?
In the player below is the piece I produced about World of Warcraft for PM, a mix of some of the voices of passionate fans who queued up for the game, as well as one World of Warcraft player who commented on our blog that he gave up the game just before the new expansion came out.
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There's been much intelligent debate about the positive and negative aspects of massively multiplayer online gaming on the blog. Dozens of thoughtful, sometimes moving comments for which we're extremely grateful. Do take a look.
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Comments
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Why is it so hard for old-media journalists (apparently trying to embrace new-media) to challenge the stereotype that gaming is intrinsically bad for you?
If I didn’t know any better I’d have come away from listening to your report thinking every person who played World of Warcraft was some hopeless gaming junkie. The game has over ten million subscribers world-wide, are you trying to suggest they’re all hopeless ‘addicts’?
Perhaps if you’d stopped to ask some of the people in that crowd what they gained from the game rather then focusing on what it took from them, you could pretend to have produced a balanced report.
I don’t play the game but I know plenty of people who do, all of whom somehow manage to balance their escapism with the real world.
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The problem of the young using games, as an escape, is that they will never really learn facial and unconscious gesture expressions essential for spontaneous human interaction.
All the technology systems for interaction, even this environment, are short on the ability to assess others reactions in real time.
I do not have a clue if anyone has read this far?
You can see it in the young. They have no idea how to read a situation. If they never learn how facial expressions determine someone's mood then we need to keep them locked in this world for life.
You can see it happening in the entertainment world. There was the recent recorded, so called, comedy. Since there was no real time reaction to their antics they become divorced from reality and the behaviour drifted to the extreme. Comedy with out an audience is just acting.
A subtle backward lean, wide eyed look or even the eyes drifting over your shoulder, is enough normally to halt a conversation or actions.
This is not new. Cartoons started the demise, but since the introduction of the computer generated characters in children's entertainment, emotions are only expressed with over sized physical actions. The humans dressed as fur balls with fixed painted faces have the same effect.
It is no wonder children only express their emotions with gross physical acts involving their whole body. That is all they have been taught.
But maybe that is all they will need. Who says they will ever need to work in a real time human environment? Maybe I am just clinging to the past ways.
(PS. I am not a technophobe. The technology behind the games was my work. )
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The unconsious signals are indeed very important as you suggest, but research shows that the previously mentioned signals are learned in the first few years of chlidhood. As a baby's vision clears, facial expressions are one of the first things noted by the child.
I have seen no actual evidence to support the claim that use, and even exessive use, of mmo games hinders physical communication.
I myself am an mmo game player and I think that the comment linking the playing of mmo games and "gross physical acts" (I assume that this refers to antisocial acts such as vandalism and general "griefing") is totally unfounded. The youth of today (I am one) are harshly devided into social groups based on fasion, hobbies, music ect. mmo players are one of these groups, as are the "gross actors" you refer to. Assuming that they are one and the same solely based on age is a gross generalisation, is offensive and, no affront intended, is a very misguided view of the youth of today.
I know hundreds of mmo players (only half would be considered youth).
I don't know any mmo players that have developed any communication problems since playing mmo games.
Most mmo's are very social games and are build around people helping each other in order to gain. People have had to learn to express emotions through their voice and through writing only. In a world where it is becoming more and more important to communicate with people who you may not know personally or be able to see in person, such a skill is very constructive and valuable.
It is not rare to hear about cooperations holding training sessions and teambuilding exersises for their employees using a mmo based medium.
I don't pretend to be ignorant to the people who become "addicted" to the game. To do so would be discarding one of the main accusations against mmo games. But these are rare cases and are because the people involved suffer from an addictive personality. These are the same people who would be watching TV all day if not playing a game.
Why is playing considered worse than reading a book? Games require input to work where as books don't. The feeling of being able to effect your experience directly is why games have become the new "addictive content". In my opinion, it is not the game that is the game at fault but the people who experience the associated problems.
Congratulations if you made it this far and sorry for the wall of text above.
I don't this it is ever valuable to shout the opinions of people who have no experience. (I do not refer to the comments of justfloating. the point raised is an interesting one and valid for consideration)
This is what alot of media constantly do in order to sell papers of create social steriotypes.
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