| BWMN Time |
| 04/16/2024 |
| 08:32 |
| News |
| new account |
| list users |
| Login: |
| Replays |
| Map DB |
| ICCup |
| Map Access |
| New map |
| Edit map |
 |
Forum - main
Addicting? page: 1 | ||
| Wedding Woes: The Dark Side of Warcraft Popular online PC game is causing marital discord. By Mike Smith Posted Feb 13, Yahoo games Although best-selling online role-playing game World of Warcraft boasts over ten million subscribers, it's also leaving in its wake an increasing list of casualties. Even though she's never played the game, 28 year-old Jocelyn is one of the fallen. A well-spoken California resident, she divorced her husband of six years after he developed a crippling addiction to the smash online RPG. "He would get home from work at 6:00, start playing at 6:30, and he'd play until three a.m. Weekends were worse -- it was from morning straight through until the middle of the night," she told Yahoo! Games in an interview. "It took away all of our time that we spent together. I ceased to exist in his life." Jocelyn had been friends with her ex-husband Peter since the age of 13, but it took only nine months for her marriage to collapse. "I bought the game for him for Christmas 2004, when it first came out. By May we had our first serious discussion about where our marriage was going, and by September I had moved out," she said. Jocelyn recalled one particular incident that was typical of Peter's habits. "I had set aside 30 minutes for us to watch a television show together, and he couldn't. He was stuck on a raid, and completely failed to understand why I was upset," she said. Peter's domestic duties also suffered. He stopped paying bills, she says, and refused to do his share of the housework. Jocelyn doesn't hesitate to cite Warcraft as the main reason for her divorce and remains emotional about its impact on her marriage. "I'm real, and you're giving me up for a fantasy land. You're destroying your life, your six-year marriage, and you're giving it up for something that isn't even real." Despite their differences, the couple remains friends, and although Peter still plays World of Warcraft, Jocelyn says he made an effort to cut down after their split. A gamer herself, Jocelyn briefly worked for World of Warcraft developer Blizzard Entertainment, although not on the title that proved so damaging to her relationship. "I recognized that this was a game that would never end, and that's why I chose not to play it," she said. "They build it in such a way that you have to keep putting more and more time into it to maintain your status. I remember thinking when I was married that it was downright exploitative to people who couldn't control themselves in that way. It's set up like a drug." Asked if she would consider marrying another Warcraft player, Jocelyn laughed. "That's actually one of my primary criteria now -- I don't want to marry someone who is a gamer." ------------------------------------------------ I wonder if Starcraft has broken up any marriages? | ||
| 2008, 02, 16 04:03 | ||
| Also this For Males, Video Game Rewards Are All in the Mind Researchers lend insight into why males feel a greater sense of reward from gaming. By Amanda Gardner, HealthDay If you're a video game "widow," science might now be able to tell you why. New research from Stanford scientists shows that the part of the brain associated with reward and addiction was more activated in males than in females when both genders played a game whose object was to acquire more territory. In other words, the game was more rewarding for males, who were therefore more motivated to succeed. The findings could have implications beyond the video screen and console, offering insights into what motivates human behavior. "It's my sense that the results really do open a fascinating realm of future investigations," said Dr. Kathryn J. Kotrla, chairwoman of psychiatry and behavioral science at Texas A&M Health Science Center College of Medicine in Round Rock. "These investigations allow one to visualize literally the reward that different individuals experience." "It would be fascinating either to determine what motivates women more than men or, within a specific gender, to look at the range of motivations and rewards for different variables," she added. "The study itself is looking at gaining territory but one could imagine studies that dealt with attachment or caring for others, so it really opens the door to a wide range of extremely interesting questions about human motivation." According to background information in the study, which was recently published online in the Journal of Psychiatric Research, more than 230 million video and computer games were sold in 2005. "Forty percent of Americans play video games, and men are two to three times more likely to feel addicted," said study author Dr. Fumiko Hoeft, senior research scientist at Stanford University School of Medicine. "It seems like an international phenomenon, but no one has looked at how the brain responds." For the study, 22 Stanford undergraduates (half of them men and half women) were recruited to play a video game designed by the study authors. The game purposely dealt with territoriality, as men are known to be more territorial than women, Hoeft said. Half the space on the screen "belonged" to the player; the other half showed balls coming toward the player's space. Clicking on the balls before they hit the dividing wall resulted in a space gain. But if the balls hit the wall, the player lost space. Participants were not told that the object of the game was to gain more space but all quickly caught on. Although both genders clicked on the same number of balls, men quickly acquired more space than women, apparently because men were better at identifying which balls (those closest to the wall) would give them the most space if clicked. While playing the game, the participants were hooked up to functional MRI, which shows which parts of the brain are activated at different times. All participants showed activation in the mesocorticolimbic center of the brain, which is typically associated with reward and addiction. But the male brains showed much more activation in this area. "Women and men showed activity in the reward circuitry, which overlaps with addiction circuitry," Hoeft explained. "Men activated those regions more than women, and the brain regions moved together more than women." When participants played a video game that had no territorial aspect, there was no difference in men's and women's brain activation. "It's linked to the reward of more space," Hoeft said. According to the study authors, most computer games that males like to play involve territory and aggression, explaining why men seem more likely to get hooked. | ||
| 2008, 02, 16 04:06 | ||
| lol | ||
| 2008, 02, 16 06:22 | ||
| never played WoW ;o | ||
| 2008, 02, 16 08:43 | ||
| epic nerds | ||
| 2008, 02, 17 08:56 | ||
| been there done that | ||
| 2008, 02, 17 16:52 | ||
| cant read that long text, i would only lose precious WOW time. sorry | ||
| 2008, 02, 18 16:44 | ||
| That's why I never touch MMORPGs anymore :P | ||
| 2008, 02, 18 17:44 | ||
cant read that long text, i would only lose precious WOW time. sorry ROFL Never played WoW either, nor any other MMORPG. I didnt even touch Diablo. I wasted enough time trying to become a decent BW player though -_- | ||
| 2008, 02, 19 13:19 | ||
| Sad news... We've lost flothefreak too... :( I also never played WoW, only because i know that if i start i might lose my life. I've been playing such games before and thats why i don't want to upgrade my PC, so i won't be able to install and play them :P . But there is only one problem... I want to upgrade my PC! STAR CRAFT II IS COMING! FUCK! | ||
| 2008, 02, 19 14:50 | ||
| never play WoW coz i don't like MMORPGs, "But there is only one problem... I want to upgrade my PC! STAR CRAFT II IS COMING! FUCK!" agree, i want to do it too | ||
| 2008, 02, 19 16:55 | ||
| I am trying to wait with buying a new laptop for the SC2 release. But I don't know if I will manage to wait that long, there are lot of keys that dont work anymore (water in laptop keyboard=bad) and each time I install something, some other app has to go (35GB hard drive) I'm not even sure WoW would run on it, so I'm probably safe from this disease :D | ||
| 2008, 02, 22 20:19 | ||
| You've been lucky that only your keyboard suffered from the water... Oo But speaking of new hardware: I've got a new comp now. 8800GT, Q6600, 4GB DDR2 in a Coolermaster Stacker STC1 (so right now my CPU is at 24°C ^^). I got a defective HDD at first, so it took me a while to get it all up and running. | ||
| 2008, 02, 23 18:29 | ||
| WoW is for nerdy NOOBS. why go to one of the deepest games in the world to a NOOBY life-wasting rpg? | ||
| 2008, 02, 24 09:09 | ||
| Could you please rephrase that last sentence? | ||
| 2008, 02, 24 16:28 | ||
| why would you go from starcraft to WoW? | ||
| 2008, 02, 24 17:51 | ||
| coz he is noob | ||
| 2008, 02, 24 20:50 | ||
| Ahh, that's what you meant with oneof the deepest games... Just the first "to" should be a "from" - guess that's what made me not understand that sentence^^ | ||
| 2008, 02, 25 17:47 | ||
| It's one of the requirements for WoW. Upon installation, the CD is ejected; "Please insert soul." | ||
| 2008, 02, 25 18:55 | ||
| Oh, you can get cheap souls on Ebay. | ||
| 2008, 02, 25 19:38 | ||
| page: 1 | ||
Reply:
You have to be logged in to post
 |