MMO’s are Evil!
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The internet is filled with so many wonderful things, from videos, songs, poems, blogs, forums, club med ski holiday offers, to pictures. You can literally throw an entire day away on the internet, and many times (to my own embarrassment) I have. But in my extensive internet time, one article comes to mind as a point of interest, and is something that I think about and talk about quite often. I visit cracked.com fairly frequently to get my fill on all new gadgets and gaming news. One in particular caught my eye, which was entitled “5 Creepy Ways Video Games are Trying to Get you Addicted”.
The article explains how video games, but specifically MMOs, try to get you addicted. Now, we all know that video games are addictive, especially MMO’s (think World of Warcraft). There are now clinics open to help with this newly defined addiction. But not many of us realised that the video game designers actually attempt to make the game addictive, even if it means sacrificing entertainment.
The article pointed out that Blizzard Entertainment (makers of WoW) has hired psychiatrists who specialise in human behaviour, to help design their games. The psychiatrists have tried to make games addictive by using the Skinner Box as a basis. The Skinner Box, designed by BF Skinner, was a behaviour test for rats, in which the rat has a lever to pull. When the lever is pulled, a treat is given. This is the technique that many games (like games by Zynga) use to hook their players. Many times, you must do a repetitive action over and over in order to receive a reward (aka a pellet). Sometimes, these actions are incredibly boring and tedious, yet we continue to do it anyway.
This article has changed the way I play video games. Every time I play a new game, this article jumps to mind. But will this new found knowledge deter me from playing games? Definitely not!