It seems to be stated as a fact in this discussion that you can't play a game such as WoW and do anything other productive on the side, but it's a lot more nuanced.
Anecdotally, I've been playing WoW almost non stop since it launched and have been raiding once to three times a week. During this time I also got married, had a kid, founded Shopify, overtook the CEO role, grew it to be a multi million dollar business. In this community that seems far from being a failure.
I'm engaging in anecdotal junk science here but my theory is that the people who really loose themselves in games like WoW are people with very poor time management skills. I'm convinced those people have always been around before. However, previously almost all activities came with some inherent caps on the time you can productively spend on those. All sports wear you out and force you to stop after some time. TV repeats pretty quickly and there is no original content during the night. Reading works but that's a socially fully acceptable timesink.
WoW is just extremely good game that fulfills a lot Maslow's needs, especially the top ones. There is a great asymmetry in the lure of this game and the established defenses of some people.
I think one of the key parts of parenting for our generation will be to equipt our children with the time management skills and the willpower to handle and enjoy games like WoW properly.
I think one of the key parts of parenting for our generation will be to equipt our children with [...] the willpower to handle and enjoy games like WoW properly.
Fully agreed. I've been playing since launch at a similar level, and I've since gotten married, had a kid, founded and sold a startup, and done a bunch of other stuff. I work from home, so you betcha it takes good time management to not spend time playing when I should be working, but I think I've got a pretty decent handle on it.
(Plus, writing addons is a fantastic way to switch mental gears to recharge sometimes, too. And it's pretty decent residual hobby income, to boot.)
WoW is very easy to spend way too much time in if you're not careful, but it's not inherently evil; like anything which is fun and enjoyable, if you spent an inordinate amount of time on it, that time will eventually have to start coming out of other activities. In moderation, it can be great.
There is a subtle problem with all this, which is that you don't know what your life would have been had you not played WoW, it may be that you would be living in a cardboard box or it may be that you would have ended up even better than where you are today.
The best I can glean from your description is that for some people playing a game like WoW need not be a debilitating thing. I know a person that uses a scary amount of hard drugs and that in spite of that still functions quite well. Of course everybody has been saying 'it won't last long' but they've been saying that for longer than I can remember and he's still at it.
That doesn't mean that in general hard drugs are not a negative and it does not mean that he'll never get the bill. It just hasn't happened yet.
"I'm engaging in anecdotal junk science here but my theory is that the people who really loose themselves in games like WoW are people with very poor time management skills."
I totally concur with this statement. It's just a matter of prioritizing your time correctly. There doesn't need to be all of this WoW is a drug you need to cut it off completely or else you'll be a fat gamer that hasn't gone anywhere in life.
All of this WoW bashing could easily apply to several other things where people don't take in moderation, like alcohol, watching football, etc.
Good point. As a game and as an immersive environment there's a lot of good to be said for WoW. The game mechanics are actually pretty interesting. I don't think it's inherently any worse a use of time than watching TV. It can be dangerous for people without the discipline to limit their game time though.
What WoW needs to do is start hooking in-game rewards to real-life rewards.
For example, a deal with 24 Hour Fitness where you need to attend for 30 days in a row to unlock some kind of sword. The biometric system at 24 Hour is now sophisticated enough to permit this kind of tracking [with your permission of course].
I'm completely serious. This is an inversion of the Zynga model in which real life money is exchanged for worthless virtual goods. It's more like worthless virtual goods are dangled as an incentive for real life improvement.
There's a lot further you can go with this concept (hooking it up to location based apps, for example), but if we're talking about a "game layer on the world", start with converting an unhealthy dependency into a healthy one.
(long time lurker here.. this topic is too close to home to just lurk)
I'm working on a startup that is taking this concept and applying it to social gaming. We're calling ourselves "Zynga for Heath." We're normalizing activity data from public API's from exercise devices like Fitbit, Nike+, Map My Fitness, biometric devices, etc and assigning it an activity score. Basically, rewarding players for working out, parking farther away from the store, and even just walking around the shopping center. A huge goal for us is partnerships with companies like 24 hour fitness to reward their members in-game.
This score is then used in our game that will be running on Facebook/iOS to reward the player with points that they use to continue building up their fitness/sports world. Our normalization platform will give us the ability to create multiple types of games to appeal to more than just the existing social games that are out on Facebook.
We're very early into our development process, but would love to keep the Hacker News community posted, if interested.
Caveat: it's very easy to extend the criticism of WoW to life itself.
Working all these years to be a paramedic, going to school, going to work, for what? To drive some people to the hospital? They're all just going to die anyway. Life is meaningless!
What the author is really saying is: "I find more meaning in the real world than in WoW."
But this isn't necessarily true for everyone.
Having said all that, I think WOW is more dangerous than heroin.
As someone who has played and stopped WoW for significant times over the past years. I think the article has some valid points about the addictiveness of WoW, on the other hand I feel that the choice between "real" work and WoW as presented here is a false dichotomy. "Real" work and WoW are not mutually exclusive.
The writer says he started playing he has spend his time working out. I started swimming for 40 minutes each day while playing WoW, a habit I continue now that I stopped.
He also states what if you spend the time you invest in WoW into achieving your goals. But you can't just work 24/7. I spend 8 hours a day doing research and hacking at the university, when I get home I just don't have the focus left in me to code or study. In the past I spend this time playing WoW, right now I spend this time reading fiction or hanging in front of the TV.
Now probably there are people who lose themselves entirely to the game and can't bring up the discipline to also work on their goals, but as everything in life, its really just about balancing yourself.
PS - I actually found myself being more productive during my WoW playing times then during my non-playing times. Reason? If I needed to do something I would not allow myself to log in until it was done. WoW was more addictive then procrastinating so I'd just knuckle down and do it. Now if I need to do something I find myself reading HN instead of just doing it...
Is playing a social game where you interact with other people any different than going out to a club or bar? Joining a bowling league? A cycling group? A health club where you go to regular group exercise classes?
The meme that video games are inherently evil needs to go away. Why is it socially acceptable to join many clubs and spend time with those people all the time but not "people on the Internet"? Like the Internet is somewhere only people that can't make "real friends" go..
Addiction to anything is bad but playing WoW or any other online game doesn't mean you're automatically "a loser" in the rest of your life -- and I don't mean just casually playing. There are people in all of the top guilds achieving high ranked world kills on new content that are also successful in other areas of their life.
"Is playing a social game where you interact with other people any different than going out to a club or bar? Joining a bowling league? A cycling group? A health clubwhere you go to regular group exercise classes?"
The article makes the difference abundantly clear. This is what the writer learned by meeting the guild leader in real life:
"She was perfectly nice, and an excellent cook. But it was hard not to notice certain things - no matter how bad I felt for noticing them. It was hard not to notice she lived in a crappy apartment in a crappy neighborhood. It was hard not to notice she was fat. It was hard not to notice that despite her dreams of going back to school and becoming a paramedic, she just worked part-time at a local pizza joint."
It is that level of personal, real, gritty, disturbing, eye-opening raw detail that is often hidden behind an avatar.
I'm not of the opinion that video games are inherently evil but to say the social experience you get from playing a video game is some how equivalent to that of meeting people face to face is simply wrong.
The key difference being body language. So much of successful human interaction comes from non verbal cues and if you're someone for whom that doesn't come naturally then socializing in WoW is not going to provide you the same benefit as in person interaction period.
I don't play WoW currently and haven't for over a year now but I did enjoy my time playing. I was accused of being an addict although I don't think I was - I just enjoyed playing and hanging out with people online.
It's funny reading this article and all the comments. IT's not so much about WoW vs being productive as diversions in general. I know people who spend most of their free time reading fiction. Isn't that just as bad? What about watching TV and movies? How about browsing the internet for hours on end? Yeah, maybe you learned something interesting, but unless you're going Jeopardy it probably won't really pay off.
Being productive for productivities sake is also an interesting view point. At what point do you decide to just enjoy your life by doing the things you enjoy rather than trying to "make it better". If you enjoy the journey then great - if not, do you arrive at a point where you are satisfied? Or do you continually struggle to reach some goal that is always just out of reach?
Yes - some people may feel trapped in a game like WoW. I think there are also many people who just enjoy the game and the experience and prioritize their life accordingly. Just because someone doesn't have the same aspirations as you doesn't make them a bad person. I'm sure if you ask most people they would like to be more successful - but few are willing to give up all distractions and diversions to achieve that.
Here's my perspective as the friend of someone who became addicted to WoW:
I lost a potential programming buddy/co-founder. we used to collaborate on projects, but eventually WoW took up all his spare time. We both graduated with CS degrees, but he is now unemployable. He played WoW instead of working (he worked from home), and has never spent any time outside of work maintaining his skills. I say worked because he no longer works. Hasn't for the past 3 years. Right now he's into starcraft. It's frustrating to me that he and others I built relationships with in college have chosen this path.
What enables him? Why can he keep playing and not have to worry about paying rent or having enough money for food?
I play quite a lot of videogames, and I play wow, but I'm a grown-up, I have a job, I have a home, I buy my own food, I pay my mortgage, and if I fail at my job, I'll starve and lose my home and my ability to play videogames. Why hasn't your friend come to the same realization?
I play WoW for five years now. When I started, I used to be an occasional player. But when I hit level 60 (that was the highest level a few years ago) it was impossible to advance further without being in a regular raiding guild. So I started hardcoring: obligatory raids from 19:00 to 23:30, each evening, five evenings per week. Lower attendance was not tolerated. And gathering/grinding materials for potions/powerups afterwards, util 01:00 or so. This took place in a few months around the summer of 2006. The reward was worth it: access to all high-level content, epic items, and being member of the most succesful guild on the server. However, after a few months hardcoring like this, the game felt more and more like a boring job. One day I realized that with this playing style, I would quickly lose all interest in this game, which I didn't want, so I quit the guild (only hardcorers were allowed to stay in) and changed to a casual player, which I still am today.
I didn't want to quit altogether because there was so much more game content to check out (I enjoy the sights & sounds of WoW very much), and so many other classes to try. Up until then I played exclusively Holy Priest.
Blizzard must have somehow realized that players weren't able to get any further without hardcoring. The last years they have created more and more features for the casual player: the Dungeon Finder system, player-vs-player battlegrounds, cross-realm instances, other reward systems; all these have lessened the dependence on a guild.
I now sometimes fire up WoW, not everyday, and play a few hours. I still like it, after all these years (and 3 expansion packs).
Game makers (and some website owners) are discovering what some religious and cult leaders have known for thousands of years: you don't have to give somebody a drug to make them an addict. People are perfectly capable of generating their own addictions without external chemical help.
I _think_ what's going to happen is that we come up with a new moral code -- much like the thing where drinking before a certain time was considered bad, or the idea of doctors prescribing pain pills for themselves anathema.
But really, it beats me. We have a generation of people addicted to a sedentary activity in a way that's never happened in human history. It's very difficult to predict how all this will play out.
eeeeehhh. As a very avid WoW player of some years now, I would say WoW is something that can easily be something that holds your "life progress" or whatever you want to call it back, but it can also just as easily be played at a successful level (define that however you like) without that effect as well.
In the guild I'm in now and a guild I was in in the past I see both: players who are quite literally on welfare or unemployment and just play WoW and other games all day (colloquially "living the dream", mostly tongue-in-cheek), while others have what I would consider successful lives. One of our best priests works as some sort of company programmer or server maintainer/admin. Our best healing druid entered his first bodybuilding contest sometime in September of this year and plans on doing another next August iirc. Our guild/raid leader has an office 9-5 selling toys to retailers or something like that. Lots are in college, myself included. An old guild officer of mine was a Googler. A decent amount have wives/kids/gfs/main squeezes. etc.
I think the best argument of the post is the social obligations point. There are definitely some people who do "no-life" for the guild and such, but again, I think this is a some do some don't thing (as well as being limited to basically people in guild leadership situations). For every guild leader or officer I know who hasn't left a dead-end guild because of a feeling of obligations to the guild, I probably know twice as many officers who did left anyways, and 3-4x as many raiders who did as well. Anecdotally speaking, I left a guild where I was probably next in line to be guild/raid lead for a much better one, and am now debating doing some sort of ESL teach/travel program next year despite having been an officer in my new guild for roughly 6 months now.
i don't play WOW or any other MMOG. But I think that old saying that most things in moderation are good for you, seems to apply here as well. I have no concrete evidence to back this and I haven't defined 'most' or 'moderation' but I have noticed that most people understand this intuitively. Are there exceptions, maybe. Particularly, in this community of people, who spend all their time on one idea trying to make it successful. However, I could make the argument that doing it takes a toll on you and your relationships. Anyways, i can't argue it all that well, but it feels like a good rule of thumb.
The problem for me with games like WoW, EQ and so on is that they aren't based enough on skills so to compensate you need to spend a lot of time in the game.
To contrast. In a game like Quake you are only as good as your Rail-gun aim it's pure skills. Or StarCraft for that matter again skills based.
The advantages from these kind of games in combatting addiction is that they are hard to become good at. you can't just get powerleveled up the latter.
The skills stays with you, the same is not true in WoW.
Having seen a couple of friends dropping out of university for a year because of games like EverQuest and WoW my advice is:
Don't play games where it's the avatar that gains power. Only play games that makes you a better player.
I think you're mainly viewing WoW from the PvE (player-vs-environment) perspective. In PvP (player-vs-player), there is a system much like the one present in Starcraft II (except that there are no leagues, only ratings).
In a game like Quake you are only as good as your Rail-gun aim it's pure skills.
If you spend years playing Quake/Starcraft, you will be good at it.
The advantages from these kind of games in combatting addiction is that they are hard to become good at
I don't see how that combats addiction. I played competitive Counter-Strike Source for some time, and the main thing that kept me going was just that feeling of competition, and wanting to become better.
WoW's addiction factor is different. It's more like "if I don't do X on day Y, I get behind other people" where in games like Quake/Starcraft, that just doesn't exist.
Exactly the point that I was going to make. Not all games are bad.
I played Quake 3 competitively for 7 years and I have seen a lot of players in the scene having success in different fields outside of computer games.
Games based on competitiveness and skills give you a good deal of insight on how to achieve things in real life.
As for most addicted WoW players, these people are just looking for instant gratification for just a little bit more than minimal effort. They want to achieve something and feel good about themselves and WoW pretty much offers the perfect combination of grind/reward, random surprise (items that drop) and a feeling of belonging.
I doubt that any of these people could stick to long term goals as soon as they stop playing WoW. They would just look for their next fix of quick gratification
Not only that, the skills gained in games like Quake (eye-hand coordination, reaction time, etc) transfer over to real-life. I think Quake is to WoW as psychedelics are to narcotics.
I know a guy who's really, really into football. Watches hours of games every other night or so, has a "fantasy" team that he's constantly fretting over and checking online stats for, etc.
As far as I can tell, the only thing that distinguishes this obsession from a WoW habit is that more people like to watch football, so it's accepted.
People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.
>People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.
Do you agree that more people get addicted to playing WoW than tracking railroad schedules? If so, what are some of your hypotheses for what is causing this discrepancy?
How do you avoid this trap? How do you prevent [subject] from hooking you into a shadow of what you really want? The answer is simple: don't [do it] blindly. Consider what it is you get out of [subject] . Nearly everything the [subject] provides can be found better and more real elsewhere.
Fattening foods? Alcohol abuse? Sex Addiction? oh, WoW.
This is written with the assumption that the reader cannot think for themselves and is quite insulting to anyone that reads past half of these subjective assertions.
"at the same time there was something disquieting about the fact that all these people were still around"
Sorry your friends didn't die, change all of their habits entirely, or live up to your random expectations of what constitutes too much and too little involvement in a computer game.
Seriously though, its been out how many years, and using plenty of comics and quotations to express this point, its taken you 18 months to regurgitate this same tired public service announcement? This is just trolling literate people that have thought about playing games in the last decade!
Meh, quit gaming a while back but recently want to try it out again but more just to cool off as a "hobby."
I used to think games were evil and against productivity but no longer. I work a lot. I just want to chill out and relax some times and blow shit up. Maybe do a raid or two, so what?
It's no different then spending 3 hours watching a TV show on Netflix or something similar.
It just depends on how you want to spend your time. If it makes you happy, sure.
I think you need a real job before you can consider gaming a hobby though. Otherwise it can lead to a "full time life gig."
Girlfriend will also help make sure you're not wasting your time.
I'm lucky if I can squeeze out 8 hours a week on games. If that. There's weekends though that I have the whole day to myself and I prefer to play a game for a few hours than go to a club and get drunk.
I just wanted to add my 2 cents relating to gaming addiction. I've never played WoW so I can't comment on that. But I was kicked out of college indirectly due to my addiction to Counter Strike.
I dunno if the same is true for WoW but one of the reasons I believe Counter Strike is so addictive is the time you have to wait after you get killed, before the next round starts.
I believe this is due to the fact that variable reinforcement schedules are more resistant to extinction:
"Skinner also looked at variable schedules. Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time -- first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then 10, then 1, then 7 and so on. Variable interval means you keep changing the time period -- first 20 seconds, then 5, then 35, then 10 and so on.
In both cases, it keeps the rats on their rat toes. With the variable interval schedule, they no longer “pace” themselves, because they can no longer establish a “rhythm” between behavior and reward. Most importantly, these schedules are very resistant to extinction. It makes sense, if you think about it. If you haven’t gotten a reinforcer for a while, well, it could just be that you are at a particularly “bad” ratio or interval! Just one more bar press, maybe this’ll be the one!"
Counter Strike is a variable interval schedule. Once you die you have to wait an unknown amount of time before you can play again. This makes counter strike playing behavior more resistant to extinction and I believe one of the big reasons why people get so addicted to it. If you respawned the second you died in Counter Strike (as you do in deathmatch) I'm fairly positive there would be a much fewer number of people addicted to the game.
I believe this is quite a big factor in addiction. I haven't heard of anyone addicted to any FPS deathmatch multiplayer game. I'm sure there are some, but much less so than games like counter strike where you have to wait.
>Although WoW is a much better game than Farmville, with a substantially different business model, their tactics are fundamentally the same: use your social obligations to keep you clicking. Exploit your friendships, sense of reciprocity, and the joy of being part of a group with shared goals. Turn it all from something commendable to something frivolous that serves mainly to increase the game developer's profits.
This put into words something I've been thinking about for a while, but struggled to articulate. There's something wrong when we start doing this to friendships.
Fantasic write up. I don't know if anyone has seen "Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief" (pretty good - I enjoyed it), but there is a part where the heroes enter a casino. Everything you could wish for was there and so nobody left. And it was a trap -- it's sole reason was to entrap people so they never did anything with their lives. Your description made me think of WoW in that way. I'm sure WoW's intentions aren't evil (they just want your money!) but the outcome is the same.
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."
Long version:
Compared to other kinds of entertainment (books, TV, sports, friends) -- World of Warcraft makes you think about it even when you don't play it. The longer you play the game, the more addicted you are, the more you think about all the things you're gonna do. That's how the game's designed.
You think about the game when you're not playing it. It's hard to really focus on something else if you're thinking about the game.
Does that sound familiar to you? If you're a hacker, if you are excited about computers, then it must. It's same with hacking and programming. It's the same principle. For example I tried a little Node.js magic the other night and the first thing I did in the morning was getting live comments to work. Then I found out there could be another cool feature, and so on. Excitement. That's what drives hackers. Call it addiction, whatever. Unlike, WoW, you're doing work, you're making money.
So please, don't be ever excited about WoW. You don't wanna waste your precious excitement thanks to which you make wonders with programming on WoW.
You can do both, but you can't be addicted to both. Which one will you choose?
I'll add my perspective to this as someone who was addicted to a similar game.
I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server split and I went with them. The new server was fairly desolate and I ended up getting booted from lack of participation. That, combined with how my class had been screwed by the expansion, caused me to quit.
But I ended up selling my stuff on eBay for ~$3500 so it wasn't all bad. But the story doesn't end there.
Atually anoeth factor was that I was moving to the UK for work. That first year the was one of the most productive of my life. I had no Internet access at home (2001), no TV and a fairly active social life. Due to living in a cheap area of London, renting a flat and subletting the rooms and the low rate of effective taxation of contractors I SAVED in excess of $100,000 that year.
After some drama with flatmates (subletting was financially beneficial but a hassle) I moved closer to work. Suddenlyinsread of an our commute each way I had a 5 minute walk. I got cable Internet and bought a PC and a TV.
I started playing EQ again. New server, new class, starting from scratch. I leveled quickly and went through a series of guilds. Raiding can be a huge timesink. This period was the most fun I had in an MMORPG ever.
Later that year I got laid off as in the aftermath of the telco bubble bursting the previous year (it was 2002 by now).
I'd always wanted to learn a foreign language soi moved to Germany and enrolled in intensive learning classes.
But I still kept up with EQ. I transferred servers to a high end guild. The guild was American so I ended up sleeping from 7pm to 1am, playing EQ from 1am to 8am, going to classes til 1pm and then playing til 6pm. I never really adjusted to sleeping at these times.
But I did go to classes. After they ended I stayed and was playing up to 16 hours a day. In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.
Still I view that time now as a wasted opportunity. I did learn the language but not as well as I could have and I certainly take full advantage socially or even to see and do things there.
But not before I'd gone back to my old company (they were hiring again) and my weird schedule had brought me into conflict with a toxic project manager, ending that job only a month after it had started.
2002-03 was a pretty terrible time in the UK contractor market (39% unemployment amongst those who hadn't left the industry). It took months to find a new job. I'd also lost that "social" outlet of EQ so was pretty cut off. It was actually a fairly dark period for me.
I have played MMOGs since then but never to the same intensity and, frankly, I think the magic was gone. I'd seen it all before. Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).
What I learnt about myself is that I'm fairly singleminded. This can be used advantageously as I'll dwel on a problem at work until I solve it. But if I have an unresolved issue personally it can, in a way, consume me--or at least consume my attention.
I do think I'd be better off without a TV or even without a home Internet connection. But I guess balance is my personal cross to bear.
Are these games dangerous? Possibly but I tend to thinkpretty much everything is dangerous to some people. Alcohol. Gambling. Trading. Even working out. It ultimately comes down to personal responsibility.
EDIT: One last thing I'll add: one problem with this kind of game is the longevity (timesink) nature. You see a similar (but much less severe) problem with tabletop RPGs. Because you invest so much time it increases your threshold for putting up with crap, basically.
In RPGs it might be a 7 hour session where nothing happens. In MMOGs it's spending 1-2 hours LFG (looking for group), a week figuring out a raid encounter, spending an our doing a CR (corpse recovery) and so on.
These days my leisure gaming activities are dominated by tabletop board gaming of the Euro variety (Agricola, Age of Steam, Reef Encounter, Le Havre, Dominion and so on). These tend to last 2-3 hours tops and, as such, have very little "downtime". I find it a much more rewarding experience than huge timesink games of any variety. Plus it's actually social.
On a side note, if there is anyone in NYC with interest I playing such games, contact me via my info. :)
EDIT2: fixed some typos (typing on an iPad is error-prone), :)
Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).
Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward.
I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content would be either procedurally generated, created by the users, or evolved through genetic algorithms.
>In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.
Ok, now I'm curious. I'm just thinking with 16h/day you're fairly hardcore, guilds must be after ppl like you, no? Why the kick, if you care to elaborate?
[+] [-] xal|15 years ago|reply
Anecdotally, I've been playing WoW almost non stop since it launched and have been raiding once to three times a week. During this time I also got married, had a kid, founded Shopify, overtook the CEO role, grew it to be a multi million dollar business. In this community that seems far from being a failure.
I'm engaging in anecdotal junk science here but my theory is that the people who really loose themselves in games like WoW are people with very poor time management skills. I'm convinced those people have always been around before. However, previously almost all activities came with some inherent caps on the time you can productively spend on those. All sports wear you out and force you to stop after some time. TV repeats pretty quickly and there is no original content during the night. Reading works but that's a socially fully acceptable timesink.
WoW is just extremely good game that fulfills a lot Maslow's needs, especially the top ones. There is a great asymmetry in the lure of this game and the established defenses of some people.
I think one of the key parts of parenting for our generation will be to equipt our children with the time management skills and the willpower to handle and enjoy games like WoW properly.
[+] [-] ced|15 years ago|reply
How do you do that?
[+] [-] cheald|15 years ago|reply
(Plus, writing addons is a fantastic way to switch mental gears to recharge sometimes, too. And it's pretty decent residual hobby income, to boot.)
WoW is very easy to spend way too much time in if you're not careful, but it's not inherently evil; like anything which is fun and enjoyable, if you spent an inordinate amount of time on it, that time will eventually have to start coming out of other activities. In moderation, it can be great.
[+] [-] jacquesm|15 years ago|reply
The best I can glean from your description is that for some people playing a game like WoW need not be a debilitating thing. I know a person that uses a scary amount of hard drugs and that in spite of that still functions quite well. Of course everybody has been saying 'it won't last long' but they've been saying that for longer than I can remember and he's still at it.
That doesn't mean that in general hard drugs are not a negative and it does not mean that he'll never get the bill. It just hasn't happened yet.
[+] [-] ct|15 years ago|reply
I totally concur with this statement. It's just a matter of prioritizing your time correctly. There doesn't need to be all of this WoW is a drug you need to cut it off completely or else you'll be a fat gamer that hasn't gone anywhere in life.
All of this WoW bashing could easily apply to several other things where people don't take in moderation, like alcohol, watching football, etc.
[+] [-] cageface|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ramanujan|15 years ago|reply
For example, a deal with 24 Hour Fitness where you need to attend for 30 days in a row to unlock some kind of sword. The biometric system at 24 Hour is now sophisticated enough to permit this kind of tracking [with your permission of course].
I'm completely serious. This is an inversion of the Zynga model in which real life money is exchanged for worthless virtual goods. It's more like worthless virtual goods are dangled as an incentive for real life improvement.
There's a lot further you can go with this concept (hooking it up to location based apps, for example), but if we're talking about a "game layer on the world", start with converting an unhealthy dependency into a healthy one.
[+] [-] leinerj|15 years ago|reply
I'm working on a startup that is taking this concept and applying it to social gaming. We're calling ourselves "Zynga for Heath." We're normalizing activity data from public API's from exercise devices like Fitbit, Nike+, Map My Fitness, biometric devices, etc and assigning it an activity score. Basically, rewarding players for working out, parking farther away from the store, and even just walking around the shopping center. A huge goal for us is partnerships with companies like 24 hour fitness to reward their members in-game.
This score is then used in our game that will be running on Facebook/iOS to reward the player with points that they use to continue building up their fitness/sports world. Our normalization platform will give us the ability to create multiple types of games to appeal to more than just the existing social games that are out on Facebook.
We're very early into our development process, but would love to keep the Hacker News community posted, if interested.
Our info site is http://www.neufit.com/
[+] [-] BrandonM|15 years ago|reply
Hmm... I think it could also work well as a Facebook app.
I'm going to mull this over and see what I can come up with. This could really drive society to improve itself in all kinds of ways.
[+] [-] stcredzero|15 years ago|reply
http://xkcd.com/189/
[+] [-] forensic|15 years ago|reply
Working all these years to be a paramedic, going to school, going to work, for what? To drive some people to the hospital? They're all just going to die anyway. Life is meaningless!
What the author is really saying is: "I find more meaning in the real world than in WoW."
But this isn't necessarily true for everyone.
Having said all that, I think WOW is more dangerous than heroin.
[+] [-] merijnv|15 years ago|reply
The writer says he started playing he has spend his time working out. I started swimming for 40 minutes each day while playing WoW, a habit I continue now that I stopped.
He also states what if you spend the time you invest in WoW into achieving your goals. But you can't just work 24/7. I spend 8 hours a day doing research and hacking at the university, when I get home I just don't have the focus left in me to code or study. In the past I spend this time playing WoW, right now I spend this time reading fiction or hanging in front of the TV.
Now probably there are people who lose themselves entirely to the game and can't bring up the discipline to also work on their goals, but as everything in life, its really just about balancing yourself.
PS - I actually found myself being more productive during my WoW playing times then during my non-playing times. Reason? If I needed to do something I would not allow myself to log in until it was done. WoW was more addictive then procrastinating so I'd just knuckle down and do it. Now if I need to do something I find myself reading HN instead of just doing it...
[+] [-] forensic|15 years ago|reply
Waterproof laptop?
[+] [-] bretpiatt|15 years ago|reply
The meme that video games are inherently evil needs to go away. Why is it socially acceptable to join many clubs and spend time with those people all the time but not "people on the Internet"? Like the Internet is somewhere only people that can't make "real friends" go..
Addiction to anything is bad but playing WoW or any other online game doesn't mean you're automatically "a loser" in the rest of your life -- and I don't mean just casually playing. There are people in all of the top guilds achieving high ranked world kills on new content that are also successful in other areas of their life.
[+] [-] hobbes|15 years ago|reply
The article makes the difference abundantly clear. This is what the writer learned by meeting the guild leader in real life:
"She was perfectly nice, and an excellent cook. But it was hard not to notice certain things - no matter how bad I felt for noticing them. It was hard not to notice she lived in a crappy apartment in a crappy neighborhood. It was hard not to notice she was fat. It was hard not to notice that despite her dreams of going back to school and becoming a paramedic, she just worked part-time at a local pizza joint."
It is that level of personal, real, gritty, disturbing, eye-opening raw detail that is often hidden behind an avatar.
[+] [-] pmorici|15 years ago|reply
The key difference being body language. So much of successful human interaction comes from non verbal cues and if you're someone for whom that doesn't come naturally then socializing in WoW is not going to provide you the same benefit as in person interaction period.
[+] [-] ryanelkins|15 years ago|reply
It's funny reading this article and all the comments. IT's not so much about WoW vs being productive as diversions in general. I know people who spend most of their free time reading fiction. Isn't that just as bad? What about watching TV and movies? How about browsing the internet for hours on end? Yeah, maybe you learned something interesting, but unless you're going Jeopardy it probably won't really pay off.
Being productive for productivities sake is also an interesting view point. At what point do you decide to just enjoy your life by doing the things you enjoy rather than trying to "make it better". If you enjoy the journey then great - if not, do you arrive at a point where you are satisfied? Or do you continually struggle to reach some goal that is always just out of reach?
Yes - some people may feel trapped in a game like WoW. I think there are also many people who just enjoy the game and the experience and prioritize their life accordingly. Just because someone doesn't have the same aspirations as you doesn't make them a bad person. I'm sure if you ask most people they would like to be more successful - but few are willing to give up all distractions and diversions to achieve that.
[+] [-] dreeves|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
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[+] [-] awt|15 years ago|reply
I lost a potential programming buddy/co-founder. we used to collaborate on projects, but eventually WoW took up all his spare time. We both graduated with CS degrees, but he is now unemployable. He played WoW instead of working (he worked from home), and has never spent any time outside of work maintaining his skills. I say worked because he no longer works. Hasn't for the past 3 years. Right now he's into starcraft. It's frustrating to me that he and others I built relationships with in college have chosen this path.
[+] [-] henrikschroder|15 years ago|reply
I play quite a lot of videogames, and I play wow, but I'm a grown-up, I have a job, I have a home, I buy my own food, I pay my mortgage, and if I fail at my job, I'll starve and lose my home and my ability to play videogames. Why hasn't your friend come to the same realization?
[+] [-] Luyt|15 years ago|reply
I didn't want to quit altogether because there was so much more game content to check out (I enjoy the sights & sounds of WoW very much), and so many other classes to try. Up until then I played exclusively Holy Priest.
Blizzard must have somehow realized that players weren't able to get any further without hardcoring. The last years they have created more and more features for the casual player: the Dungeon Finder system, player-vs-player battlegrounds, cross-realm instances, other reward systems; all these have lessened the dependence on a guild.
I now sometimes fire up WoW, not everyday, and play a few hours. I still like it, after all these years (and 3 expansion packs).
[+] [-] DanielBMarkham|15 years ago|reply
I _think_ what's going to happen is that we come up with a new moral code -- much like the thing where drinking before a certain time was considered bad, or the idea of doctors prescribing pain pills for themselves anathema.
But really, it beats me. We have a generation of people addicted to a sedentary activity in a way that's never happened in human history. It's very difficult to predict how all this will play out.
[+] [-] slyn|15 years ago|reply
In the guild I'm in now and a guild I was in in the past I see both: players who are quite literally on welfare or unemployment and just play WoW and other games all day (colloquially "living the dream", mostly tongue-in-cheek), while others have what I would consider successful lives. One of our best priests works as some sort of company programmer or server maintainer/admin. Our best healing druid entered his first bodybuilding contest sometime in September of this year and plans on doing another next August iirc. Our guild/raid leader has an office 9-5 selling toys to retailers or something like that. Lots are in college, myself included. An old guild officer of mine was a Googler. A decent amount have wives/kids/gfs/main squeezes. etc.
I think the best argument of the post is the social obligations point. There are definitely some people who do "no-life" for the guild and such, but again, I think this is a some do some don't thing (as well as being limited to basically people in guild leadership situations). For every guild leader or officer I know who hasn't left a dead-end guild because of a feeling of obligations to the guild, I probably know twice as many officers who did left anyways, and 3-4x as many raiders who did as well. Anecdotally speaking, I left a guild where I was probably next in line to be guild/raid lead for a much better one, and am now debating doing some sort of ESL teach/travel program next year despite having been an officer in my new guild for roughly 6 months now.
[+] [-] anukulrm|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] astrofinch|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] semipermeable|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ThomPete|15 years ago|reply
To contrast. In a game like Quake you are only as good as your Rail-gun aim it's pure skills. Or StarCraft for that matter again skills based.
The advantages from these kind of games in combatting addiction is that they are hard to become good at. you can't just get powerleveled up the latter.
The skills stays with you, the same is not true in WoW.
Having seen a couple of friends dropping out of university for a year because of games like EverQuest and WoW my advice is:
Don't play games where it's the avatar that gains power. Only play games that makes you a better player.
[+] [-] alexdias|15 years ago|reply
In a game like Quake you are only as good as your Rail-gun aim it's pure skills.
If you spend years playing Quake/Starcraft, you will be good at it.
The advantages from these kind of games in combatting addiction is that they are hard to become good at
I don't see how that combats addiction. I played competitive Counter-Strike Source for some time, and the main thing that kept me going was just that feeling of competition, and wanting to become better.
WoW's addiction factor is different. It's more like "if I don't do X on day Y, I get behind other people" where in games like Quake/Starcraft, that just doesn't exist.
[+] [-] Bvalmont|15 years ago|reply
I played Quake 3 competitively for 7 years and I have seen a lot of players in the scene having success in different fields outside of computer games.
Games based on competitiveness and skills give you a good deal of insight on how to achieve things in real life.
As for most addicted WoW players, these people are just looking for instant gratification for just a little bit more than minimal effort. They want to achieve something and feel good about themselves and WoW pretty much offers the perfect combination of grind/reward, random surprise (items that drop) and a feeling of belonging.
I doubt that any of these people could stick to long term goals as soon as they stop playing WoW. They would just look for their next fix of quick gratification
[+] [-] mannicken|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|15 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] amh|15 years ago|reply
As far as I can tell, the only thing that distinguishes this obsession from a WoW habit is that more people like to watch football, so it's accepted.
People who get seriously addicted to WoW are usually either looking for any escape from reality, or they have the type of personality which tends to get addicted to something, whether it's online games, math puzzles, tracking railroad schedules, or whatever. There's no question that these people might act in unhealthy ways, but WoW is the symptom of their problems, not the cause.
(disclosure: I used to play WoW regularly)
[+] [-] astrofinch|15 years ago|reply
Do you agree that more people get addicted to playing WoW than tracking railroad schedules? If so, what are some of your hypotheses for what is causing this discrepancy?
:-P
[+] [-] Sharanga|15 years ago|reply
Fattening foods? Alcohol abuse? Sex Addiction? oh, WoW.
This is written with the assumption that the reader cannot think for themselves and is quite insulting to anyone that reads past half of these subjective assertions.
"at the same time there was something disquieting about the fact that all these people were still around"
Sorry your friends didn't die, change all of their habits entirely, or live up to your random expectations of what constitutes too much and too little involvement in a computer game.
Seriously though, its been out how many years, and using plenty of comics and quotations to express this point, its taken you 18 months to regurgitate this same tired public service announcement? This is just trolling literate people that have thought about playing games in the last decade!
[+] [-] dfischer|15 years ago|reply
I used to think games were evil and against productivity but no longer. I work a lot. I just want to chill out and relax some times and blow shit up. Maybe do a raid or two, so what?
It's no different then spending 3 hours watching a TV show on Netflix or something similar.
It just depends on how you want to spend your time. If it makes you happy, sure.
I think you need a real job before you can consider gaming a hobby though. Otherwise it can lead to a "full time life gig."
Girlfriend will also help make sure you're not wasting your time.
I'm lucky if I can squeeze out 8 hours a week on games. If that. There's weekends though that I have the whole day to myself and I prefer to play a game for a few hours than go to a club and get drunk.
[+] [-] dreeves|15 years ago|reply
(And to add a shameless plug, my own article on akrasia: http://messymatters.com/akrasia )
[+] [-] somethingdotcom|15 years ago|reply
I dunno if the same is true for WoW but one of the reasons I believe Counter Strike is so addictive is the time you have to wait after you get killed, before the next round starts.
I believe this is due to the fact that variable reinforcement schedules are more resistant to extinction:
"Skinner also looked at variable schedules. Variable ratio means you change the “x” each time -- first it takes 3 presses to get a goodie, then 10, then 1, then 7 and so on. Variable interval means you keep changing the time period -- first 20 seconds, then 5, then 35, then 10 and so on.
In both cases, it keeps the rats on their rat toes. With the variable interval schedule, they no longer “pace” themselves, because they can no longer establish a “rhythm” between behavior and reward. Most importantly, these schedules are very resistant to extinction. It makes sense, if you think about it. If you haven’t gotten a reinforcer for a while, well, it could just be that you are at a particularly “bad” ratio or interval! Just one more bar press, maybe this’ll be the one!"
Counter Strike is a variable interval schedule. Once you die you have to wait an unknown amount of time before you can play again. This makes counter strike playing behavior more resistant to extinction and I believe one of the big reasons why people get so addicted to it. If you respawned the second you died in Counter Strike (as you do in deathmatch) I'm fairly positive there would be a much fewer number of people addicted to the game. I believe this is quite a big factor in addiction. I haven't heard of anyone addicted to any FPS deathmatch multiplayer game. I'm sure there are some, but much less so than games like counter strike where you have to wait.
[+] [-] brianwillis|15 years ago|reply
This put into words something I've been thinking about for a while, but struggled to articulate. There's something wrong when we start doing this to friendships.
[+] [-] drndown2007|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Void_|15 years ago|reply
"No one can serve two masters. Either he will hate the one and love the other, or he will be devoted to the one and despise the other."
Long version:
Compared to other kinds of entertainment (books, TV, sports, friends) -- World of Warcraft makes you think about it even when you don't play it. The longer you play the game, the more addicted you are, the more you think about all the things you're gonna do. That's how the game's designed.
You think about the game when you're not playing it. It's hard to really focus on something else if you're thinking about the game.
Does that sound familiar to you? If you're a hacker, if you are excited about computers, then it must. It's same with hacking and programming. It's the same principle. For example I tried a little Node.js magic the other night and the first thing I did in the morning was getting live comments to work. Then I found out there could be another cool feature, and so on. Excitement. That's what drives hackers. Call it addiction, whatever. Unlike, WoW, you're doing work, you're making money.
So please, don't be ever excited about WoW. You don't wanna waste your precious excitement thanks to which you make wonders with programming on WoW.
You can do both, but you can't be addicted to both. Which one will you choose?
[+] [-] stuaxo|15 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cletus|15 years ago|reply
I started playing Everquest (EQ) soon after launch in 1999 and leveled pretty quickly hitting the max level cap at the time (50) not long before the first expansion came out. At the time played wi an American guild (I'm Australian) and the time difference stopped me doing things with them most of them time since I had a 9-5 job. My server split and I went with them. The new server was fairly desolate and I ended up getting booted from lack of participation. That, combined with how my class had been screwed by the expansion, caused me to quit.
But I ended up selling my stuff on eBay for ~$3500 so it wasn't all bad. But the story doesn't end there.
Atually anoeth factor was that I was moving to the UK for work. That first year the was one of the most productive of my life. I had no Internet access at home (2001), no TV and a fairly active social life. Due to living in a cheap area of London, renting a flat and subletting the rooms and the low rate of effective taxation of contractors I SAVED in excess of $100,000 that year.
After some drama with flatmates (subletting was financially beneficial but a hassle) I moved closer to work. Suddenlyinsread of an our commute each way I had a 5 minute walk. I got cable Internet and bought a PC and a TV.
I started playing EQ again. New server, new class, starting from scratch. I leveled quickly and went through a series of guilds. Raiding can be a huge timesink. This period was the most fun I had in an MMORPG ever.
Later that year I got laid off as in the aftermath of the telco bubble bursting the previous year (it was 2002 by now).
I'd always wanted to learn a foreign language soi moved to Germany and enrolled in intensive learning classes.
But I still kept up with EQ. I transferred servers to a high end guild. The guild was American so I ended up sleeping from 7pm to 1am, playing EQ from 1am to 8am, going to classes til 1pm and then playing til 6pm. I never really adjusted to sleeping at these times.
But I did go to classes. After they ended I stayed and was playing up to 16 hours a day. In the end I got kicked from the guild for doing something I shouldn't have, which was probably the best thing that could've happened.
Still I view that time now as a wasted opportunity. I did learn the language but not as well as I could have and I certainly take full advantage socially or even to see and do things there.
But not before I'd gone back to my old company (they were hiring again) and my weird schedule had brought me into conflict with a toxic project manager, ending that job only a month after it had started.
2002-03 was a pretty terrible time in the UK contractor market (39% unemployment amongst those who hadn't left the industry). It took months to find a new job. I'd also lost that "social" outlet of EQ so was pretty cut off. It was actually a fairly dark period for me.
I have played MMOGs since then but never to the same intensity and, frankly, I think the magic was gone. I'd seen it all before. Even now I think all these games are fairly formulaic with the same basic mechanics and psychological devices (compulsion loops, etc).
What I learnt about myself is that I'm fairly singleminded. This can be used advantageously as I'll dwel on a problem at work until I solve it. But if I have an unresolved issue personally it can, in a way, consume me--or at least consume my attention.
I do think I'd be better off without a TV or even without a home Internet connection. But I guess balance is my personal cross to bear.
Are these games dangerous? Possibly but I tend to thinkpretty much everything is dangerous to some people. Alcohol. Gambling. Trading. Even working out. It ultimately comes down to personal responsibility.
EDIT: One last thing I'll add: one problem with this kind of game is the longevity (timesink) nature. You see a similar (but much less severe) problem with tabletop RPGs. Because you invest so much time it increases your threshold for putting up with crap, basically.
In RPGs it might be a 7 hour session where nothing happens. In MMOGs it's spending 1-2 hours LFG (looking for group), a week figuring out a raid encounter, spending an our doing a CR (corpse recovery) and so on.
These days my leisure gaming activities are dominated by tabletop board gaming of the Euro variety (Agricola, Age of Steam, Reef Encounter, Le Havre, Dominion and so on). These tend to last 2-3 hours tops and, as such, have very little "downtime". I find it a much more rewarding experience than huge timesink games of any variety. Plus it's actually social.
On a side note, if there is anyone in NYC with interest I playing such games, contact me via my info. :)
EDIT2: fixed some typos (typing on an iPad is error-prone), :)
[+] [-] stcredzero|15 years ago|reply
Basically, MMOGs are all like resort casinos. There's some spectacle and entertainment. The driving mechanic is the addictive variable schedule of reward.
I'd like to make a game where true exploration is the base mechanic. There would be no storyline, just exploration. All content would be either procedurally generated, created by the users, or evolved through genetic algorithms.
[+] [-] MoreMoschops|15 years ago|reply
Not all bad news, then. Was she pretty? :p
[+] [-] c00ki3s|15 years ago|reply
Ok, now I'm curious. I'm just thinking with 16h/day you're fairly hardcore, guilds must be after ppl like you, no? Why the kick, if you care to elaborate?
[+] [-] klipt|15 years ago|reply
Too far from NYC to join you, but I recommend trying meetup.com:
http://board-games.meetup.com/cities/us/ny/new_york/