This one apparently came out back in May sometime, just got linked today from Neil Clark's website. The comments are interesting.
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"Small service is true service while it lasts. Of humblest friends, bright creature! scorn not one
The daisy, by the shadow that it casts,
Protects the lingering dewdrop from the sun." -------William Wordsworth
I read through the article as well as all of the comments by readers afterwards. The article does attempt to be fairly well balanced although I got the impression that it was tilted somewhat towards those who believe that gaming addiction does not exist and that excessive game playing is not a major problem plus that it is usually fairly easy to treat. Of course, it could just be my personal biases that makes me think that way. However, if my impression is correct, that would not be overly surprising considering that the article originally appeared in PC Gamer and that the PC Gamer's editor and deputy editor were both significantly involved. Nonetheless, I did enjoy reading the article so thanks, Gamersmom, for posting the link to it. One other thing, though, is that the article mentions Project Massive, which the article says "has followed nearly five thousand gamers over a five years". That sounds very impressive, with those numbers of people and length of time being large enough to start being able to get some useful and statistically significant results. However, when I clicked on the provided link for this project, in the abstract, it says at the very beginning that "A longitudinal design was employed to collect three waves of survey data over a 14 month period from 2790 online gamers." Now, 2,790 is quite a bit less than 5,000 and 14 months is even less (fraction wise) than 5 years. I cannot read the entire study since I don't have an ACM account, nor will I likely get one anytime very soon, so I cannot get the details to see if this discrepancy is explained somewhere in there. My best guess is that they did study, to some extent, the additional people for the longer period of time but did not include it in the final study results for some reasons (for the people, perhaps the information was not complete for them and for the length of time perhaps they did not feel that the information was comprehensive enough). However, if that is the case, what they said was misleading in the article and they should have stated the stats given in the study itself instead. I know that it is not that big of a deal, but to me it does raise some questions about the accuracy of the other information that is presented there.
- John O.
[em]Carpe Diem![/em] (Seize the Day!)
Everyone here should read this article. It is very long, but not borng. It presents an even-handed presentation and has some very relevant information about the "problematic" use of gaming.
"There is little difference in people, but that little difference makes a big difference. The little difference is attitude. The big difference is whether it is positive or negative." --W. Clement Stone
Problem is that itA's an online gaming survey where people do self-diagnosis. Now even with the addicted gamer taking time to fill in a survey instead of gaming, how big do you think is the chance of him doing a correct self-diagnosis...
Great read, Anna. Thanks for providing it. I'm going to make sure a certain member of our household sees it!