Final+paper

First there was Evercrack, oh wait, never mind, that came later. In truth, that does not matter. Everquest, or Evercrack as it has affectionately been labeled, has brought to bear some of the nastier aspects of videogaming as it has become today. Call it addiction, call it a plague, the fact remains that today’s youth is highly susceptible to the effects of videogames. Adolescents are spending more and more time glued to computer screens, sometimes foregoing hunger and sleep to level their characters and complete quests. China has initiated addiction-breaking ex-gamers camps built to purge the desire to play videogames from participants in a boot-camp like environment. But the question remains, what effects do these videogames actually have on those that play them? How will theses students’ lives be affected? The answer, __MMORPGs affect the study habits of adolescents__, __yet marginally affect academic achievement seen through student grades__. When any true gamer tries to identify with their roots, they have to go back to square one. Videogames like most modern commodities, can trace their origin back to the military. A device, called the //Cathode-Ray Tube Amusement Device// was patented in 1947, and is perhaps the first recreation device that could be considered a videogame. The ‘game’ was a missile launch simulator, and the player could adjust any of the eight knobs to affect the curve or speed of the missile. Since then, multiple advancements with interactivity. Several times, advancements in gaming had to wait for hardware technology to catch up. Because of the limited computer abilities and the lack of access to computers, these games were largely forgotten. Gaming from the 50’s and 60’s had little impact upon the future gaming market other than setting a foundation for the next few decades. The 1970’s saw the golden age of arcade gaming. This is where games like Space Invaders, PacMan, and Asteroids came to the forefront and could be seen in drug stores, restaurants, and malls. The 1980’s saw the induction of home computers and floppy disks, which allowed for the easy transportation and distribution of video games. Also in the 1980’s genre definition of games was taking place, action and fighting games, racing and platform games all started to appear. It is in the 1980s that we see the first adventure games, such as //Wizardry// or //Akalabeth: World of Doom//, both inspired by Dungeons & Dragons and the work of J.R.R. Tolkien, which leads into the next topic of discussion, role-playing games. Make believe and fantasy have been occurring since the dawn of man. With the unexplainable comes explanations of wonder, and with wonder comes a yearning envy to be like the wonderful. People have always wanted to reenact their versions of myth and legend, and eventually these reenactments became games. Not just games, but games where the participants engaged in the game by assuming the role of a character, whether factual or fictitious. Over the years, make believe eventually got relegated to the realm of children’s play. But within the past 40 years, Role Playing Games have come back into the worlds of whoever so chooses, and also into the realm of computer gaming. These games over the years have filed into their own genres of sci-fi or fantasy (even though this all constitutes fantasy, fantasy has come to mean environments with magic or mythical beings, often elves or a like species). Many of these games try to balance action-oriented game play with the randomness often associated with d20 games (games that operate off of a system of dice, ranging from 4-sided to 20-sided to determine probability, damage, stats, and the like. The most notable success story for Role-Playing Games is the Dungeons and Dragons series created by Gary Gygax. This game has become the basis for most Role-Playing Games today, with what have become generic classes (a fighter, a wizard, a healer, and a rogue), to the archetypal enemies of role-players across the world today (zombies, orcs, dragons). Role-Playing Games often require multiple people to play, and a substantial amount of time to play in order for the experience to be enjoyable. Many games require a substantial amount time to complete combat, or continue the storyline, to achieve the PCs’ (player character) goal(s). This gets into the first aspect of this past time, the effects on study habits of adolescents. While many adolescents are in school, it is often impossible to play games such Dungeons and Dragons during the school week due to school and other commitments, this leaves weekends. Now, while every teen does not want to accept that weekends are the best time for them to study, such is the case. This means that teen students and adolescents are interfering with their studies through their playing of Role-Playing Games (Cunningham). These games are not like pick-up games on a basketball court after school or a quick lunch break, they require planning and time to even get together, let alone play. While today’s children are all too familiar with the dreaded word, homework, such has not always been the case. During the Cold War, the need to outperform the Soviet’s became a must and suddenly large amounts of resources were poured into mathematics and sciences. School curriculums were revamped, and school work increased tremendously. Colleges put more pressure on students to be proficient in mathematics and sciences to help develop new ways to defeat the Soviets or other Communist powers. Not only did school work increase, but so did the amount of activities available to distract students after school. Sports and clubs became more prevalent. The old notion of “eight hours of work, eight hours of rest, eight hours of leisure” now was conflicting with itself. Work and leisure overlapped and rest wound up with the short end of the stick. With more time needed for work and leisure (which is perceived as necessary by some) sleep debt increases and it becomes increasingly harder to complete work or leisure activities. This inevitably leads to the effects of sleep debt and sleep deprivation. Sleep debt builds up, and makes it harder and harder for one to complete even simple tasks. If someone were to fall into sleep debt, and still wanted to keep with their routine, then they would inevitably fall further and further behind (Sleep Deprivation). Losing one hour of sleep one night in order to go to soccer practice, complete some homework, and relax with some videogames or a movie, could turn into two hours in a short matter of days if the individual continued with the same tasks (Sleep Deprivation). Because of this extra hour lost for work, suddenly the individual takes longer and longer to complete tasks and gets less and less time for sleep. This is a positive feedback loop which will eventually end up with an individual devoid of sleep (Sleep Deprivation). How to combat the loop? How to cut out the influence of games on the individual and their study and rest? China has its own particular method. Boot camp for gamers. People who have a noticed addiction to videogames are sent to a boot camp-like institution where they are sent through rigorous exercises and forced through incredibly physically strenuous ordeals until they lose the addiction and no longer have any desire to play videogames. This method has mixed results but definitely diminishes the participants’ desire to play videogames. If people no longer wish to play videogames, they will be able to spend more time completing more “vital” tasks and eventually fight the loop that keeps them awake for hours on end. The question of “how do MMORPGs create a larger problem than regular videogames?” remains. The answer lies in the nature of MMORPGs. MMORPGs are notorious for being the most time consuming of videogames in existence. Shooter games are often pick-up and play games that require no great time investment or can often be played by one’s self and stopped when desired. Other varieties of action games fall under the same characteristics. Games that are played alone do not need to ensure that other people are online or that your friends are not at work at 7:00 on a Tuesday night. Single Player RPG’s such as Morrowind, Oblivion, and Dragon Age: Origins boast having thirty, forty, or even fifty hours of game play included in their retail versions not even including downloadable mods or expansions. Because these games are single player however, one does not need to compete against thousands of other players online, or worry about what happens to their character while they are not playing. This is how MMORPGs differ from other videogames, and it is also how they are such a problem. MMORPGs have different ways of keeping their players glued to their computer screens and playing their game. Many MMORPGs have a monthly subscription fee, which entices gamers to play as much as possible to get the most out of their money. Other games, such as World of Warcraft create a ridiculously high level cap, causing players to fall into what is known as a “grind.” A grind is when a player repeats a task over and over again simply to advance their character without any real care for what their character is doing. World of Warcraft’s high level cap (originally at 60, then 70 after one expansion, and currently 80 after a second) creates a requirement for players that want to keep up with competition. Players have a natural competitive nature with other players in the game, so if they want to keep up with other players, they have to spend more time than them playing to advance their characters, skills, or equipment to stay on top. One game in particular requires players to pay particular attention to and have a large degree of care for their character, Eve: Online. This space-faring MMORPG has one of the harshest “death-penalties” out of all MMORPGs. If a character dies, it may take the player hours, if not days, maybe even months to regain all lost equipment or skill points. Another issue with Eve: Online is that almost the entirety of the game is player-run. If someone attacks your character in a supposed safe zone and gets away with it, you cannot go running to in-game administrators to fix your problem. You have to deal with players in player-run governments or player-run corporations that run the player-run economy. Because of this, players have to take extreme care to make sure that their character is as strong as possible, has as much helpful equipment as possible, and is as safe as possible upon logging off. Another question appears on the horizon, how long to players play for before logging off, and when they do, what do they do? This was the problem with Everquest. Unlike most MMORPGs, where after the course of about twenty seconds of logging off a character disappears until the player logs back on again, a character in Everquest remained in the game, vulnerable without a person to control it. This was the case in the suicide of Shawn Woolly, who killed himself after his addiction to the game caused him to kill himself after his character was killed as he was away, or so some sources say (Inktomi). Woolly’s suicide cannot be directly linked to the game, and he had been diagnosed with some psychological disorders such as depression and mild schizophrenia, but it is clear that some games are just plain addictive (Inktomi). World of Warcraft is the current target of this accusation, with eleven million players currently subscribed across the world, and new players joining every day. Blizzard has also announced a third expansion that may or may not draw in a new crowd of players to the game. These games draw gamers in, and hook them with continual expansions or updates, to ensure that there is always something new for the player to do. These gimmicks keep players glued to their screens into the later hours of the night, competing for time with homework. With today’s school work donning an increasing reliance on electronically completing assignment, it becomes easier and easier for students to become distractions with whatever is on their computer. Facebook and internet browser games are excellent time consumers, but they pale in comparison to an MMORPG that has a “play in windowed mode” feature and a minimize button. We can be fighting orcs along the plains of Gôrgoroth one second and be “writing our eight-page senior seminar paper” the next. If we have parents who like to ensure we get our school work done in a timely fashion, every moment they are not checking up on us could be spent raiding a keep with your friends from school or fighting a troll in a dungeon with some people half way across the world. As it is clear that videogames impact the study habits and abilities of students, the actual school ability and grades of these students is in question. Studying and spending more time on school work clearly has a positive impact on the grades of students, but what if it were the smarter kids who were playing videogames anyway? The typical stereotype of a nerd or a geek typically involves some type of technical prowess and often an interest in videogames (Lohr). On the nerdier end of the nerd-spectrum fall those who spend their time online in fantasy universes, avoiding as much of the real world as possible. Sometimes even “more normal” nerds avoid these socially-awkward individuals, because people with lives in alternate realities probably do not even know how to interact with real people (Lohr). But what if those people were our best and brightest, who have graduated from their high school or college classes in the top 10%, and happen to enjoy partaking in the pastime that is video gaming? These gamers might enjoy taking breaks from studying or simply forgo studying altogether to play videogames, and sometimes even MMORPGs (Lohr). Some of them feel like they do not need to study or practice, and can afford to spend every minute until the late hours of the night gaming, raiding dungeons or exploring fantasy realms. Is this really how a portion of our intellectuals spend their time? Well, when put in such a negative light, having our youth playing games almost seems like a negative thing. Another question, what do gamers get out of playing MMORPGs? This can be answered with a myriad of responses, not the least of which is and increased ability of people skills. While there are immature 12 years olds screaming “N00B” and obscenities all over the internet, including the social communities of MMORPGs, players have a bit of socializing to do to get anything done. Most MMORPGs are engineered to be social environments, where one can only get so far on one’s own, and working with other people becomes a necessity (Hicks). There are a few exceptions, such as Guild Wars, which give players computer-controlled henchmen and heroes to adventure with if not in the mood to find a player-party. But after a certain point in the game, henchmen become more of a hassle than an asset, resulting in party deaths and restarts more than was originally necessary. Finding a party of human players becomes less of a desirable goal and more of a necessity as quests, dungeons and explorable areas become more difficult. In other games, such as World of Warcraft, playing solo is virtually impossible after level 10 (out of 80), and forming groups or joining a guild becomes necessary (Hicks). In one game in particular, human interaction is a necessary part of the game. The game, which I mentioned earlier, is Eve: Online, the space-faring MMORPG of epic proportions. The developers set up the canvas that the players each throw their own brand of paint on. Players make governments, corporations, alliances, guilds, space stations, mining parties, gangs, crime syndicates, bounties, whatever they want, as long as it fits within the parameters set down by CPP Games. In order to make it at all, one has to learn to negotiate and play well with others, not necessarily to join a corporation or government, but to keep either from declaring you an enemy and sending players to hunt you down (Hicks). If a player were able to navigate the in-game political and economic environment to the extent that they become the leader of their corporation, political party, or racial faction, suddenly they have an entire empire to manage. Not only do they have to worry about their own character and its status, but they also have to worry about territory, ‘employees,’ rivals, income, taxes, salaries, a fleet of ships, space station upkeep, alliances with other corporations or factions, quite a bit for one person to handle (Inktomi). While this may seem like just many more distractions for one person to bear, they are not without their benefits. What is affectionately referred to as “micromanagement” or “micro-ing” in videogames, or managing and manipulating multiple facets of the character or faction at once can help an individual with multitasking and quick decision making. When an opposing faction appears to be massing up a small fleet of ships a few small warp-jumps from your territory, like real politics, you must decide, and quickly, how to handle the situation (Inktomi). While diplomacy is still an option, you can attempt to barter or trade or negotiate a peaceful settlement. Without rational thinking and good people skills, a peaceful standoff could quickly turn sour, and put you, and your social or political empire at risk of falling. While this is undoubtedly a tragedy in itself, it also results in countless hours of many players becoming simply thrown away and wasted. Not that characters cannot die in any games, but some are much less forgiving than others, and require more thought and careful planning before acting. This does not mean however, that MMORPGs aide student’s ability to perform in school. It should simply be noted that they are not the hindrance to ability that some people would claim that they are. They keep students’ minds active so that they are able to figure out solutions to problems, which some say is more important than being able to spew back out facts and information acquired through lecture. To sum it up, MMORPGs may be the bane of today’s nerdy population’s free time, but that does not mean that they will ultimately be the end of today’s nerdy population’s academic career. Our videogamers have their academic ability set out before them before they sign into World of Warcraft or Eve and can actually help themselves out by playing them. That said, gamers certainly are putting a lot of time into these games, and many signs of addictions hold true for gamers. Gaming is a helpful tool, which when used in moderation can help the individual participating.