October 23rd, 2007
Scientists agree - Online games are time consuming
Syracuse University psychology professor Joshua Smith tested the gaming habits of 100 student volunteers, as they were presented with different role playing games to try while randomly divided into four test groups. While the laws of psychological experiments are clearly stated in the deontology books, I believe a gamer’s perspective on the matter could have improved the accuracy of the final result. At the moment there are no hard cover books to explain what 12 year old gamers have known for a long time from experience. Do you agree that games spread over significantly different release dates, platforms and popularity pools have the same impact on perfect test subjects? Then let’s take a look at the contenders.
One group played on token machines at a local arcade, having to taint their gaming sessions with the social pressures of an open real life environment. The second group played “Gauntlet: Dark Legacy”, a 1999 hack and slash console RPG for Playstation 2, having access to personalized time frames while playing the game in the comfort of their own homes. The third group got down and dirty playing Diablo 2 on computers (first released in 2000), with access to multiplayer online features. The last group played the “Dark Age of Camelot” MMORPG, exclusively online role playing game which was released in 2001.
The way I see it arcade games have a greater appeal casual gamers, due to the low amount of time involved in playing the game from start to end. Things turn hardcore more often in the role playing computer world. While the Playstation 2 title was a good one, its success was nowhere close to the incredible hype that drove Diablo 2 players to keep gaming years after the release. Professor Smith also disregards the fact that the MMORPG scene was in its infancy in the 2000’s and games didn’t fully have the addictive stimuli of recent day titles. Dark Age of Camelot had and still has a good number of fans, yet it’s nothing compared to the millions of users locked in similar modern MMORPGs.
One month of testing showed revealed the fourth group having the highest amount of time spent inside the game, more than twice as much as the Diablo 2 group. The first two categories weren’t even close, proving once more the poor choice in selecting similarly effective gaming incentives. Joshua Smith concluded that Dark Age of Camelot players reported significantly lower health and poorer sleep patterns. Gaming also interfered more with their studies and social lives. Looking on the bright side, group four had a lot of fun playing the game and even said they made many new friends within the virtual realms. So there you have it, online gaming is better than any other type, a hard truth many non-academic devotees have experienced for years.
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Published by: Kampfaren in News
12 Comments on Scientists agree - Online games are time consuming
Posted by creiss 10/24/2007 5:43 pm
Also breaking news - a new study proves that water is wet.
More as the story develops.
Posted by Alex H. 10/24/2007 5:45 pm
I haven't read the article, but your writeup falls into a common trap: presuming that the scientists studying games are not gamers themselves. In practice, they often are, and try to leverage the casual understanding of gaming with a rigorous, evidence-based reliable measurement of those hypotheses.
Posted by Alex H. 10/24/2007 6:00 pm
Oh, and it makes it easier to *find* the article, if you spell the author's name correctly: it is Joshua Smyth ;).
Posted by JS 10/24/2007 6:04 pm
I wish I could get cash grants from universities and put out research like this! Oh yeah, cash and prizes!
Posted by Sean 10/24/2007 6:24 pm
While I find the results quite obvious, your statement of online games being better is a little off base. Just because a player is playing it longer doesn't necessarily mean that the player is getting the same amount of satisfaction out of a game that isn't played as much.
Posted by Kevin 10/24/2007 6:46 pm
There are so many misconceptions about method in this article that I don't even know where to begin. I'll just mention the biggest one: "The first two categories weren’t even close, proving once more the poor choice in selecting similarly effective gaming incentives." But that was part of the point of the experiment, wasn't it? To determine which gaming incentives are more effective and absorb more of a gamer's time. So, in fact, the four options were well chosen. This experiment attempted to mimic a longitudinal study (look it up or you'll embarrass yourself again) by using games and gaming concepts from different years, without having data from earlier years already in place.
Posted by GTA 4 wallpapers 10/24/2007 7:12 pm
That evil MMORPGs... x)
Posted by Ix 10/24/2007 9:10 pm
Really though Kevin, if they wanted to test which incentives are more effective, they'd have to have one company release 4 versions of the same game, at the same time, set up to use the same hardware. Obviously an arcade game made to be beaten under an hour isn't going to be as engaging as an MMO where it can easily take over a month to reach the end game content. Sure you could keep playing the arcade game to keep the time up, but when's the last time you went to an arcade every day to play the same game for a few hours each day, maybe with a new character or to try to beat it using less coins.
If the study was looking at gaming incentives then they have to account for the fact that different games take different amounts of time to beat, and once a game is beaten the player is not likely to spend much time beating it repeatedly. I can go dig up some old SNES game that takes 3 hours to beat and compare it to a modern RPG that boasts over 100 hours of playtime, the incentive is the same (play at home on a game system), but due to differences in technology and the games there's going to be roughly 90-some hours difference in my results. That sort of difference is very real in the study they set up and is very invalidating to their results.
Posted by Kampfaren 10/24/2007 11:38 pm
As far as I know, researchers need to choose test conditions transparently in relation to the final goal. This means distinctions between said test conditions must be minimal. In terms of content quantity and quantity, arcade games are so inferior to MMORPGs that it hurts. I find it disturbing that a senior researcher as Mr. Smith would run the test between the Gauntlet and Diablo 2, games that saw imensely different sales figures. You can't ignore the fact that the Diablo franchise sold 17 million copies up to now (according to Wiki). Did anyone take into account the metacritic score for these?
The Gaultlet: Dark Legacy - 73
Diablo 2 - 88
Dark Age of Camelot - 88
Posted by EstelleG 10/25/2007 2:41 pm
Why does these studies always focus on students and bored kids?
The real work force actually looses hours of work in front much more low-tech stuff, like the impossible quiz, yetisports.org or www.triviaonnet.com.
That's the real tragedy here!
So the clever university researchers (beside the Syracuse U. ones, of course) aren't stucked all day in front of some MMORPG.
They just use online chess games. Good for them. That's why it takes them so long to finish their obscure doctorate papers.
Posted by Kampfaren 10/25/2007 3:50 pm
EstelleG you have a point. All modern bussiness include heavy use of personal computers, so casual gaming by people considered non-gamers is a real issue during office hours. If you're in high school or in college, chances are you're going to be far more receptive to playing videogames without social pressure, or otherwise feeling out of line.
Psychological studies require great numbers of test subjects willing to go through standardized procedures. Prof. Smith took advantage of the resources at hand, namely students. It would be significantly harder to reproduce the same results on an adult - 8 hour working - test pool.
Posted by Michael Morillo 05/19/2008 11:46 pm
I am very grateful for the fact that there are several online games to play on the internet. However, they also can be very time consuming and what not because it takes a good amount of time and concentration to setup all online games to make sure that there aren't any bugs involved and so that playing on the web can be an exciting and pleasant experience. My first online game that I played was checkers in which I found it to be a very interesting and exciting experience to be able to play one of my favorite games with other people around the world remotely.
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Michael Morillo
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