monday, april 12, 2004
news
the university daily kansan 5A
AME: Sometimes gamers get more than they bargain for
CONTINUED FROM PAGE 1A
Gamers battled in a LAN party at AdrenaLAN this fall. LAN parties bring players together at one location to compete on a single server, optimizing the speed of game play.
Adventures of Zelda, Super Mario Bros., RBI Baseball and Tecmo Superbowl.
Kary said he had met lots of friends playing games on the Internet over the years, and they talk about more than just gaming.
Like Kary, Josh Mayhle, Seattle senior, also enjoys playing Counter-Strike and other games online. He said he had made friends from New York and Pennsylvania.
"I've actually met some people that go to KU in person," Mayhle said. "Also, I've met people in class that I realized I have played Counter-Strike with."
He said the team atmosphere of Counter-Strike made it a popular pick with gamers.
"It's just more dynamic. You never really play the same game twice. It's more fun to interact with people than it is a machine," he said.
Playing video games can have rewards besides making friends. In March, Ben Thompson, Wichita senior, competed in a nationwide online tournament for the Sony PlayStation 2 game NCAA Final Four 2004 sponsored by Mr. Youth LLC, a marketing company in New York.
As a result of making it to the championship game, Thompson won an all expense paid trip to Panama City, Fla., where the gaming championship was being held. He won the championship and a year's supply of games and hardware from Sony.
Level 2—Places
"I was joking with my dad that all the years I played as a kid are paying off." Thompson said.
AdrenaLAN is the only Local Area Network gaming center in Lawrence, but there are others in Kansas including Game Cube, 20110 W. 151st St. in Olathe and CyberLANd of Goodland, 210 E. 17th St. in Goodland.
Local Area Network gaming centers allow gamers to compete against each other in the confines of one building, hooked up to the same network. Gamers can communicate easily and because they are all on the same network,the games can run smoothly.
Tim Newman, a graduate student at the University of Kansas in computer engineering, started AdrenaLAN last June.
"I knew there was a load of gamers around here," Newman said. "I've seen pictures from other ones and they looked cool, so I started it."
He said the crowd that came in was usually about 60 percent high school students and 40 percent KU students. Weekends are the most popular — Friday and Saturday nights usually draw about 30 people each.
"We definitely have a lot of regulars who constantly come in the same days of the week," he said. There are about eight to 10 of them who come in about 20 hours each week. Kary plays video games about 10 to 15 per week, but not always at AdrenaLAN.
Newman works about 35 to 40 hours a week at AdrenaLAN and plays games about three hours a day.
He said the only game he ever played was Counter-Strike.
Playing a lot of video games annoyed his parents when he was younger, and now it annoys his wife.
"What can I say? My husband is a gamer. I have to live with him everyday," said Rebecca Newman.
But for Newman and many other gamers, playing is a necessity.
"I definitely think they are adicting. I'm hoping they are," he said, referring to his business. Newman charges $3.50 per hour or $20 for an all-day pass to use AdrenaLAN's gaming systems.
Dylan Brooks, Topeka senior,
agreed with Newman.
"If you get too involved with it, it can be all you do," Brooks said. "You can't necessarily blame video games though, because it could be that way with any other hobby. If you get really involved with something, the rest of your life could suffer because of it."
Level 3 — Addiction
The main problem for video game addicts is not that they are playing games, but rather they are missing out on other activities because they are playing games so much, said Maresa Hecht Orzack, clinical psychologist and director of the Computer Addiction Study Center at McLean Hospital in Belmont, Mass.
Sne said people who got addicted to video games often missed out on social activities and physical interaction.
Most people who play games can start and stop whenever they want, but about 10 to 15 percent became addicted, Orzack said. About two people a day go to her seeking help for video game addiction.
Most of the time people who get addicted to a game have something stressful going on in their life, so they play to avoid dealing with it, she said. Orzack discovered this from personal
experience. She said she started playing Solitaire on her computer to avoid dealing with a stressful Listserv at work and she eventually became addicted.
Because she had treated other types of addictions before, she knew how to remedy it. She forced herself to play for a set amount of time rather than play to win. Setting a time interval is one of the suggestions Orzack gives to video game addicts when they come to her for treatment.
"I found myself playing it more and more when I got frustrated with other stuff I was doing," she said.
Another treatment method she uses is cognitive behavior therapy, which teaches the patient to identify the problem, to solve the problem and learn coping skills to prevent relapse.
Orzack runs a 16-week support group for addicted gamers in which she tries to teach them to do other things, but said it was difficult because video game addictions didn't have the same social stigmas that other types of addictions had.
"People think it's cool to play games and they don't want to admit they have problems," she said.
Instead, it's common for students addicted to video games to blame it on other things such as difficult classes at school, she said.
Boredom is a big reason people become addicted to video games, but it is also common for people to get hooked while coming off of another addiction. People often start playing video games in place of addictions, such as smoking or drinking, and then get addicted to the games themselves, she said.
"I've heard people call it 'Counter-Crack,'" he said. "I've heard of people quitting the game because it interfered with their schooling and social life.
One of the games most notorious for forming addictions was Counter-Strike, Kary said.
But they usually come back "
Another game whose name is often linked to addictions is EverQuest, or "EverCrack," as some people call it, an online role-playing game.
One person who has seen an extreme case of video game addiction is Elizabeth Woolley.
Woolley, Hudson, Wis., resident, blames EverQuest for the suicide of her 21-year-old son, Shawn. According to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, she said Shawn, who killed himself in 2001, became so engrossed with the game that he quit his job and ignored his family. He was playing for up to 12 hours every day, and the game was causing him to have seizures because he was epileptic, she said.
"When I was going through his addiction with him, there was no one to help me," she said. "I thought we were the only ones this happened to."
But as Woolley explored the topic further, she realized there were many others who shared her same complaints.
"It was an underground epidemic and nobody was talking about it." she said.
Inr EverQuest, players go on quests where they gather treasure, kill monsters and engage with other people's characters.
One of the reasons EverQuest and other fantasy role-playing games are so addicting is because the game never ends, Orzack said. The percentage of people who become addicted is higher than 10 to 15 percent in never-ending games, she said.
Woolley started an online gamers anonymous support group, www.olganon.org, in May 2002, which has a 12-step process patterned after Alcoholics Anonymous for addicted gamers. The group has over 1,200 members.
Newman, AdrenaLAN owner,
doesn't play EverQuest himself,
but said he knew that a lot of people
were addicted to it. He said
the game could get quite costly
because there was a $9.99
monthly fee to play it.
Online games such as Counter-Strike, EverQuest and Unreal Tournament put great demands on computer hardware AdrenaLAN, 833 Ohio St. stocks its computers with 2.4-gigahertz Pentium 4 processors and 128-megabyte GeForce4 MX440 video cards.
"People definitely burn a lot of money playing that," he said.
Playing long hours into the night often can affect gamers physically and mentally.
Level4—Effects
"I think I've had Counter-Strike dreams before," Mayhle said. "I used to see terrorists around corners, but I'd say that's more mental than physical."
Newman said his hand suffered the most from his playing
"I've got a big callous on my hand from using the mouse so much," he said.
There can be good effects from playing video games, Mayhle said.
"Different types of games exercise different skills," he said. "Role-playing games like the Final Fantasy series help develop critical thinking skills."
He said that games such as *Tetris* and *Snood* helped to build
SYMPTOMS OF COMPUTER GAME ADDICTIONS
Psychological Symptoms
Psychological Symptoms
Having a sense of well-being or euphoria while at the computer
Inability to stop the activity
Craving more and more time at the computer
Neglect of family and friends
Feeling empty, depressed, irritable when not at the computer
Lying to employers and family about activities
Problems with school or job
Problems with school or job
Physical Symptoms
Carpal tunnel syndrome
Migraine headaches
Back aches
Eating irregularities, such as skipping meals
- Eating irregularities, such as shopping
- Failure to attend to personal hygiene
Sleep disturbances, change in sleep pattern
Source: Maressa Hecht Orzack, Ph.D.
The video game industry is a multibillion dollar industry.
VIDEO GAME STATISTICS
The video game industry is a multinational dollar industry.
The video game console industry had sales figures of $10 billion in
2003.
The PC game software industry had sales figures of more than $1.2 billion in 2003.
billion in 2003 The average American child spends nine hours a week playing video games.
- There are 100 million gaming consoles in U.S. households.
- The average age of people who play video games is 29 years old, and it is going up every year.
People over the age of 50 make up 17 percent of all gamers
Sources: Business Wire, Inc., CanWest Interactive, Entertainment Software Association, The Post and Courier, Crain Communications Inc.
pattern recognition and spatial skills.
Orzack is more skeptical. She said that although some video games may help develop hand/eye coordination, there were usually few good effects from constant playing.
As much as gamers spend time playing the games they love, it is still possible to have a life outside of the game world, Newman said.
"I play a lot and I still go out all the time," he said.
Newman, who said he enjoyed reading and spending time with his wife, said video games couldn't be blamed for causing someone to have no social life.
"It's the person. Even if they weren't playing games they would find something else to do, like reading." he said.
Mayhle agreed that the games shouldn't be the ones blamed.
"I can see how any sort of offline gaming would inhibit social skills because some people certainly do become obsessed with them," he said. "But it depends more on the person than the game."
Orzack said many games were set up to be addicting, but there was controversy over whether the games could be the only ones blamed.
Level 5 Education
Johnson County Community College in Overland Park is capitalizing on students' interest in
video games. This January, the college began to offer a video game course, Game 101, which teaches students the skills to create their own video game.
The course uses a variety of game development software to give students the feel of creating real games without programming, said Phil Wallack, associate professor of computer information systems at JCCC.
"The games created can be quite complex and enjoyable with sound effects, background music and player lives." Wallack said.
The course is popular. The college is offering five sections this spring and all have been filled to capacity. About 90 students are enrolled.
About 30 universities around the country offer video game courses, but JCCC is the first school in the Kansas City area to offer one.
Kary, a film major, said that he had other hobbies besides playing games, such as watching movies.
"Movies and video games usually go hand in hand. I think they are both an escape from the real world."
That escape is the reason Kary said he would play video games long into the future.
"My kids are definitely going to have a type of video game system," he said. "I'll probably be a gamer for life."
- Edited by Collin LaJoie