The BBC is gearing up to show off a documentary later this evening aimed at identifying addiction to games. Panorama: Addicted to Games? specifically discusses MMOs such as World of Warcraft, and Blizzard is letting it be known that games have more than enough controls to help prevent game addiction.
"Our games do offer parental control options and things like that," Blizzard’s lead designer Greg Street told CVG. "A lot of our players are non-traditional gamers who are able to have fun by playing casually - you can get far if you only play once or twice a week."
"I think there are certain features that players or parents expect right now," he pointed out. "I'm not sure I'm qualified to talk about what's responsible or not but parental controls and time management tools are part of the feature set that I think triple A games offer these days."
Blizzard offers a myriad of parental controls aimed at disabling younger audiences from playing games past certain constraints.
Though the documentary has not been viewed at this point, gaming industry professionals from around the world are already skeptical of Panorama: Addicted to Games?, which is set to air tonight on the BBC.
4 Comments
December 7, 2010
Of course, they don't mention how many *hours* are spent those one to two times a week. Honestly, at the level cap, you can spend 5, 6, 7 or more hours in one sitting just trying to down a few bosses. WoW is a heavy time investment, even for the "casual gamer". PvPers can get by with shorter sessions, but it's still a very long time in front of that screen to earn enough "honor points" to buy the best PvP gear. Eventually, the urge to keep up with your friends engulfs you, and you have a WoW schedule that your life works around. I doubt their "casual players" are a majority or remain casual for long.
December 7, 2010
The current design of the game encourages shorter session on a daily basis. Heroic instance runs that used to take hours now take less then 30 minutes. All BG's are designed to last less than half an hour also. Activity is driven by daily and weekly quests such that the most efficient way to use your time is to play every day for 30-60 minutes (or longer if you want to achieve a wider range of stuff).
10 man and 25 man raids are more accessible than they've ever been, but if you do step up to that part of the game your sessions will be longer and "keeping up with the Jones's" mentality is a real risk.
I was a leader of a hardcore 40 man server first raiding guild back in the original WoW. Fulltime job stuff. Now days I log on for an hour or two 4-5 days a week and couldn't be happier with the quality and value of entertainment I get from the game. Is there potential for addiction? Sure, but the type of addiction is less extreme than it was with oldschool style MMOs and even original WoW.
December 7, 2010
WoW has been and always will be a hard care grinding type MMO. That grinding takes time invested. If they change the basic core game play to move away from that grinding style they will nerf millions of devoted fans. I do not see that happening just to try and gain a million casual gamers.
December 11, 2010
I quit WoW a year ago, you could say my mage was one of the best on the server when I dropped the game....the grind for gear gets tiring, the disappointments when someone wipes the raid gets old, and so doesn't planning your days and your life around raiding....you don't call that addiction??....I stopped to look at Cataclysm and walked by it the other day, i'm not giving in....