http://player.omroep.nl/?aflID=6405146
Problem #1: It's in Dutch.
Problem #2: It's about WoW, predominantly.
Problem #3: You might flame me for this but... I firmly believe that the Zembla journalist crew doesn't have the balls to adress Muslim Extremism in the Netherlands in a Zembla episode with the same tenacity as they delivered this one (you're welcome to link an episode in which they do).
Shows a young gaming couple, pink-neon head girl from the UK with a gamer friend from the NL.
And several others who seem to be quite casual players that get sucked into it all.
The introduction is some Dutch fella explaining how attunement to Black Temple works (eep).
It's about how addictive gaming in general is, how games are made -by the industry- to be as addictive as they can be.
Can anyone dig up info on this "Hike van der Heijden", that is supposed to be this game developer that left the industry because of all these "how can we make our games more addictive" industry trends?
And they drum up an expert in psychology who has written books and held seminars about this phenomenon.
This expert has one thing that rings true though; getting improvement in personal power on your game character gives a sense of accomplishment, even grants you social recogition because you tend to get chatted up on - so once that gives a sense of satisfaction, or euphoria that's bigger then what you get out of real life you tend to focus on your virtual fun rather then real concrete fun that you get in life itself.
And that's the core of the gaming addiction.
I'm just thinking that RPG games in general hook into the very basic instinct of Humanity and that is hunter-gathering and then farming.
Both of them are basically the same.
The scary part of this is that the journalists who are essentially delivering an editorial/news item/documentary are quite misinformed on the product(s) itself.
They claim WoW does not have proper time limiting tools and it does everything in it's power to make people play more and more...
Account management offers hard timelimits that are server-granted; go over it and you cannot play, period. And you can lock this part of the account management with a seperate password that you don't need to hand to your children.
They touch on a private clinic in the Netherlands built and owned (quite successfully) by a Half-American Half-Dutchman with quite some charisma who isn't too shy of docking nearly thirtythousand euros for a treatment.
They also threat drug and alcohol addicts - and they dump gamer addicts in the same public sessions.
He also puts two semi-expensive looking sports cars in front of the clinic so he shows gamers what they can do if they're not shooting heroin but instead offer addiction-removal services for very high service fees.
Offtopic: I heard through TV newsmedia that there is an even shittier looking MMORPG out there, Runescape, that could be even more popular then WoW with the 10-20 age bracket in the Netherlands.
Offtopic: If you want to ditch your WoW additiction, raiding seems to work for a lot of people.
Thanks to Blahran for bringing this episode of Zembla to my attention.
Zembla: Gaming Addiction
http://www.gamer.nl/doc/44215/Zwijgzaam ... hijn-tegen
Dutch info about Zembla contacting Blizzard about the matter.
Dutch info about Zembla contacting Blizzard about the matter.
The giste of Dosan's link is very simple, it's the curiosity of Blizzard's silence on this matter since Zembla did try to get into contact with them (directly to the USA I think, not the Paris office and trying to chat up Vivendi NL).
Of course, the Netherlands' a shitty little country and Zembla is a shitty little (and biased, as mentioned in Dosan's link) documentary show on an obscure liberal television channel - so all that explains why noone would care.
Blizzard doesn't earn money off people who play so much that they qualify for gaming addicted.
You pay 15 euros a month (less if you pay up 6 months in advance).
There is no way in hell they can earn money off a person that raids; bandwidth costs alone as well as alotting server capacity to accomodate it costs more then that.
Let alone someone like that actually using GM support.
A nice cable television channels package costs more per month then this game.
In the Zembla documentary there's a player that talks about raiding and how you need to sign up for raids; he's also mentioning that if you do that and you want to go golfing or go to the gym instead, then too bad, since you committed yourself to the raid and you'd better show.
Well duh? I don't think your local amateur football team would appreciate you commiting to practice matches and then not show because you'd rather go see John Rambo with a friend in a spur of the moment.
Of course, the Netherlands' a shitty little country and Zembla is a shitty little (and biased, as mentioned in Dosan's link) documentary show on an obscure liberal television channel - so all that explains why noone would care.
Blizzard doesn't earn money off people who play so much that they qualify for gaming addicted.
You pay 15 euros a month (less if you pay up 6 months in advance).
There is no way in hell they can earn money off a person that raids; bandwidth costs alone as well as alotting server capacity to accomodate it costs more then that.
Let alone someone like that actually using GM support.
A nice cable television channels package costs more per month then this game.
In the Zembla documentary there's a player that talks about raiding and how you need to sign up for raids; he's also mentioning that if you do that and you want to go golfing or go to the gym instead, then too bad, since you committed yourself to the raid and you'd better show.
Well duh? I don't think your local amateur football team would appreciate you commiting to practice matches and then not show because you'd rather go see John Rambo with a friend in a spur of the moment.
Thanks Sneek for your translation about the subject. I wasn't able to do that yet. Have been very busy with finishing some school related stuff.
Anyway after seeing that show I was releaved seing that I am not addicted at all
I just think it is a cool and social game and I rather play wow in the evening then watch some stupid TV show like idols and other shitty programs they broadcast these days.
Anyway after seeing that show I was releaved seing that I am not addicted at all
I just think it is a cool and social game and I rather play wow in the evening then watch some stupid TV show like idols and other shitty programs they broadcast these days.
The thing that bugs me the most about these programs is that they exclusively pick on games. You dont hear them talking about people who sit in front of their television for 5 hours straight every night and watch these kind of programs.
Sure gaming can be addictive and some of us cant handle the timesink it can be and rather enjoy the game than RL. But this has nothing to do with the game but more with the gamer. Some have a more addictive mind than others.
Sure you can ruin your RL with a game think we all are aware of that. But i rather play a game and interact with other gamers than to sit in front of the TV and watch these kind of shit programs. Just be aware that RL is more importend that the escapism a game should be. And dont let the game get you in trouble.
The question they should ask is why do people wanne escape RL.
Sure gaming can be addictive and some of us cant handle the timesink it can be and rather enjoy the game than RL. But this has nothing to do with the game but more with the gamer. Some have a more addictive mind than others.
Sure you can ruin your RL with a game think we all are aware of that. But i rather play a game and interact with other gamers than to sit in front of the TV and watch these kind of shit programs. Just be aware that RL is more importend that the escapism a game should be. And dont let the game get you in trouble.
The question they should ask is why do people wanne escape RL.
Oke no more beer for me
