To Behavioral Sciences Prof. Noshir Contractor, there is a major distinction between the “offline” and “online” worlds. But the line between those worlds blur when massively multiplayer online games come into play.
According to a study conducted by Contractor on virtual world players, such games can help people who are depressed or lonely in the offline world cope with their anxieties because the games are often equipped with a role-playing component where players are able to take on another persona.
“When they start playing the game, they take on the role of someone in the 12th century and talk like them and behave like them, and everything they say and do is not who they are, but within the character,” Contractor said.
Contractor acknowledged that this finding could be viewed as unhealthy, but he did not study whether people involved in these virtual worlds were already depressed before playing.
“One could potentially make the argument that this is what leads to their depression, but we don’t have evidence of that,” he said. “And based on ethnographic interviews, (the MMOs) seem like a therapeutic approach.”
He also specified that these games are widely used by people who are “marginalized by society.”
“A disproportionate amount tend to be non-whites, lesbians, people who are depressed, disabled, non-heterosexual and non-Christian and non-Jewish,” he said, adding that the average age of those who play the games is 31.
Weinberg junior Kevin Ryan, who used to be a World of Warcraft player, said similar games have an addictive quality.
“You usually play a game, sit down and beat it, but with World of Warcraft you’re immersed entirely in a dynamic world,” he said. “The fact that you’re able to develop a character of something that slices dragons is kind of intense.”
Ryan understands, though, that games like EverQuest require a deeper involvement for some because of the role-playing aspect.
“You kind of get addicted to that leveling up which is unique to MMOs because you start to identify with the character you create,” he said. “You take it through the long grueling process of moving up instead of just shooting things in the head for a half hour on Xbox.”
Though the test subjects were all anonymous, Contractor was able to obtain accurate data through Sony’s computer system, through which people join virtual worlds like EverQuest. This approach appealed to the National Science Foundation, which gave Contractor and his researchers a grant to complete his study.
William Bainbridge, 67, program director of the NSF, has spent 3,000 hours in virtual worlds. A devoted Second Life player, he said he was impressed with how Contractor combined research on computer science with behavioral science in a presentation he gave in Washington, D.C. And while there would usually be confidentiality impediments to this kind of research, this wasn’t a problem in Contractor’s study.
“In the last couple of years, many government organizations have the facilities to support lots of researchers with online knowledge-based communities or virtual worlds,” he said. “Their presentation at the conference focused on early results such as information on who was involved in these virtual worlds. We expect years of sophisticated results to come out of this project.”
The major appeal of these MMOs is the bonding aspect between people, whether they play with friends or strangers in another country.
“It’s being used as a way for adults to socialize, in fact there is one famous thinker in this area who said that, in some ways, MMOs are becoming like the 21st-century version of golf,” he said. “People go out to play golf but also to build bonds and build trust, and the same thing could be said for MMOs.”
