Wednesday, August 09, 2006

Online Game Addiction Syndrom - No, Really

As Reported on Ars Technica

Dr. Maressa Hecht Orzack, a clinical psychologist at McLean Hospital in Massachusetts, has come forward to claim that up to 40 percent of World of Warcraft players are addicted to the game. Dr. Orzack, who is the founder and coordinator of the Computer Addition Service, says that the 40 percent figure came from "a forum that Nick Yee runs" but did not reveal any additional methodology for arriving at this number.
She obviously has a vested interest in promoting this. It makes her more money.

Also, the mechanism that she claims causes this is the unpredicted or unexpected reward, i.e. sometimes you don't know when you'll luck out.

This is something that could just as easily apply to the common workplace environment. Yet we do not treat industrious workers for Work Addiction Disorder. Watch someone come up with this.

What a WAD of ........

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