Every once in a while the scientific community feels obliged to enter the taboo gaming territory and run studies demonstrating the absolute obvious for the sake of scientific argumentation. Today’s piece comes via Associated Press and tells us just how time consuming online role playing games can be, changing the user’s life patterns into less sleep, work and social activities in favor of more game time. At least we’re one step closer to unveiling the truth as out academic researcher states that games have great “enthrallment” potential instead of the overused term of addictive qualities. The study was published in the October issue of the journal Cyberpsychology & Behavior.

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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