Christian, K & Wolter, P. 2017. Game mechanics and technological mediation: an ethical perspective on the effects of MMORPG’s. Ethics and Information Technology. 19(2), pp. 81-93.

This extract I have chosen is from the journal article “Game mechanics and technological mediation an ethical perspective on the effects of MMORPG’s”by Christian Klemm, a graduate student from TH Köln, and Wolter Pieters from Delft University of Technology, Netherlands, who has published many articles associated with technological mediation and information ethics. The original article is published in the Ethics and Information Technology journal as referenced above.

 

The author suggests in this extract, that MMORPG have many negative effects on players, the most obvious and straightforward is the game addiction. Once a person is addicted to the games, it will cause personal physical (hygiene, diet) and psychological health problems (social connection, isolation).  They suggested that the main reason for causing MMORPG addiction is the motivation & rewarding system of the game.

Although in the chosen extract it has listed a few pieces of evidence and study of research, the resources are out of date, the most recent one they use is from 2013, and is a newspaper resource with less academic reliability. Which means the majority of the examples given in the extract to support the author’s idea will not be relevant for now. As the game industry is one of the fastest evolving fields, the game & gaming system people played 10 years ago might be very different from now in comparison. Also in the past 10 years, the industry has gradually developed their game industrial ethical awareness, to make sure the present game is attractive but at the same time helps to avoid addiction. For example, almost all games in China have “anti-addiction system”, the system will detect if the player is online for more than a period of time, once the player has reached the maximum playing time per day, the players in-game income (e.g. money, XP) will automatically be halved, therefore the player knows that is time to stop playing.

 

The author suggests that MMORPG addiction can even cause death, the author found this information in a newspaper report, the report uses aggressive language to convince the reader, makes it less impartial, and it provides no evidence to show the direct link between game addiction and player’s death. Continue to the physical health discussion, we all agree that being inactive long-term is bad for your health, but currently some VR games ( e.g. lightsaber) and Wii game (e.g. Wii sports club) allow you to play & stay active at the same time. MMORPG is not the only or the main cause of SHS (suboptimal health status) as diagnosis can be complicated. In the modern world, people are getting less active than before, even if they are not playing games (MMORPG in particular) they will set in the sofa and watching TV, ending up with the same result.

 

In another hand, neuroscientist Marc Palaus (2017) has recently published a systematic review for 116 published articles associated with effects of video/online gaming on the brain. In fact, their findings show gaming not only stimulating different brain area transiently but also can develop & cause long-term growth in a certain area of the brain. For example, extensive gaming increases the entorhinal cortex and the right hippocampus’ volume, which improves the spatial memory and navigation performance, even have a positive impact on problem-solving ability as well. Also, the research done by Stockdale & Coyne in 2018 suggest that simply spending lots of time playing games/doing other hobbies is not evidence of an addiction.

 

On the mental health side, the author wants to convince us that game addiction is associative with higher anxiety & depression rate, which could be considered inappropriate to use this research result to show that game addiction leads to the mental health problem, because the extract does not provide evidence that game addiction can cause mental health problems, nor does it consider that the people who have mental illness are more likely to become addicted to games. Hence is very difficult to identify that game addiction I the cause of academic, health, relationship problems, or people became addicted to the game after they hit a rock in their lives.

Other research conducted by Daniel Loton in 2016 discovered that game addiction is more likely to occur when people are depressed and stressed by something else; people are trying to avoid their negative emotion rather than coping with it – apparently, if gaming is not an option, they will become addicted to something else. This reflects the idea that game addiction is caused by the pre-existing anxiety and depression, not the other way around as the extract suggests.

As the example given by the extracted author, the motivation method can let a shy person in real life became a guild leader in the game. Is it a cause of addiction or is it a positive way to encourage people to be confident? From my own experience, MMORPG really turns me into a more confident person than before, as I look at the MMORPG as a“rehearsal” of real life.

 

In conclusion, I would like to see more proof evidence and more in-depth research to clarify the relationship between game addiction with the health problem, also I think the author needs to make the term“ game addiction clearer rather than quote Yee’s definition of drug addiction. I partly agreed with the author’s idea that spends a long period of time in one single activity, which has a certain negative effect on health and by reading through the whole article, I found that the motivation system design and social behaviour studies are very useful for me to develop my MMORPG in the future, and I partly agree with the author’s idea of the rewarding system can causing immersion in games (but not addicted).

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Ref:

Loton, D. et al. (2016). ‘Video game addiction, engagement and symptoms of stress, depression and anxiety: The mediating role of coping.’ International Journal of Mental Health and Addiction, [online] 14, 565-578.Available from: url [accessed: 19 Nov 2018]

 

Palaus, M., et al (2017). Neural basis of video gaming: A systematic review. Frontiers of Human Neuroscience, 11, article 248.

 

Stockdale, L., & Coyne, S. M. (2018).  Video game addiction in emerging adulthood:  Cross-sectional evidence of pathology in video game addicts as compared to matched healthy controls.  Journal of Affective Disorders, 225, 265-272.