Interview Questions

1. How often do you play MMORPGs? How many hours a week? How many days a week?
2. Why do you play the game? What got you started?
3. How often do you decline social activities away from the computer for online gaming?
4. Do you play online games to forget about any current life problems or issues?
5. When do you stop playing the game?
6. What is the longest session you have played continuously?
7. How important is gaming to you on a scale of 1 to 10 (1 being not at all important and 10 being essential like food and water) ?
8. How often do you think about gaming?

Interview Transcripts: One.Two.Three.

Summary

Interview One: Interviewee One, age 19 played MMORPGs in high school, sometimes for more than 15 hours a day. The most surprising thing about this interview was, even though he played a lot of games, he played them with friends. Unlike the research papers I read about addiction, which claims that social awkwardness drove people to escape to the fantasy world of games. He claims to only play during his spare time and believed it was a good break from reality because he had no worries while playing the game. He constantly thought about gaming and the first thing he would do after school was play the game. " I played during my spare time, I had a lot of spare time. I was just a high school student." Since then, he has stopped playing, but once in a while he will "get back into withdrawal state and want to play again."

Interview Two: Interviewee Two, age 22 plays World of Warcraft on his free time when he is not at work. He claims that he simply gets bored from his new routine entry-level job. Therefore, he constantly thinks about gaming at work. This individual also has a social life; he only declines social activities about once a week. He says half the time he's the one, who asks people to go out. Online gaming seems to interfere with his work life. He has been procrastinating in finding a full-time job and is often late to work because he stays up too late the night before playing World of Warcraft. He also takes a "sick" day off about once a week because he feels his job is very monotonous. During his "sick" day he plays World of Warcraft and runs errands.

Interview Three: Interviewee Three, age 20 also plays World of Warcraft. He is currently an electrical engineer and computer sciences major at the Unviersity of California, Berkeley. Different from the other two subjects, Interviewee Three spends a lot of time building up his character. He seems very attached to his character. He said the driving force that keeps him playing is the game is indefinite. Though he procrastinates school work by playing World of Warcraft, he still has a lively social life. He does not use online gaming as a channel away from reality and problems, rather he turns to his spiritual side. He seems to be addicted to the game more because of the attraction factors than the motivation factors.

Analysis

From the interviews I conducted on the three individuals ages 19-22, I started understanding more about their individual gaming behaviors. The interviewees know that they have greater obligations other than gaming, but sometimes they cannot help but play. One interviewee, aged 22 claims that the addicting characteristic of these MMORPGs is " you have all these quests to do that sends you all over the place to keep you busy. You always feel like there's more to be done. " Different from most games, MMORPGs are indefinite, which may cause people to spend massive amounts of time playing. Most of the people play only because they have free time. However, free time runs into responsibility. "I can live without it, but if there's nothing better to do, I'll log on and play. But once I log on and start, it's kind of hard to get me to stop. " The 22-year-old, a recent graduate from UCSD, now that he is no longer in school, only plays because he gets bored with his routine job. The other interviewee claimed that he had nothing better to do because at the time, high school was easy. The 20-year-old's reason for playing was that because he was always programming on the computer, it was very tempting to take a break and play World of Warcraft.

Though studies suggest that people who become addicted to MMORPGs are lacking social interaction, these interviewee's transcripts suggest otherwise. The majority of the people who seem to play these games a lot are not socially unavailable. Other than playing online games, they also have social lives outside of school, work, and games. However, when I interviewed them, they sensed that it was for a project on MMORPG addiction. Therefore, they constantly felt ashamed about how much they played. Interviewee Two was playing while I interviewed him, and when I asked him how much he played a day, he suddenly admitted that he had just stopped playing-aware of his bad habits. Though these subjects were once addicted or are still addicted, they are not hooked to a point where they need help. These addictions are simply caused by free time and the intrigue of the game itself, which proves Yee's study about "motivation" and "attraction" factors to MMORPG addiction. More serious addicts probably have the portray more of the "motivation" factors such as psychological disorders. The Flow Theory seems to prevail over the Use and Gratification Theory of online gaming addictions.