Video Game Addiction and Social Interaction in Online

Games: To what extent is the idea of ‘video game

addiction’ a fallacy and how can it be disproven by

social interaction in online games?

Alec McIlwraith-Black

Candidate Number: 000179-039

McNally High School

International Baccalaureate

Extended Essay

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Subject: Information Technology in a Global Society

Word Count: 4000

Table of Contents

1. Title Page

2. Table of Contents

3. Abstract

4. Introduction

5. What is a Video Game?

6. Video Game Addiction

7. Problematic Usage

8. World of Warcaft

10. Addiction to MMORPGs

11. Is Playing an MMORPG Fulfilling?

12. Playing an MMORPG with Others

14. Refuting the Idea of Addiction

15. Conclusion

17. Citations

19. Bibliography

2

Abstract

The modern world has, day by day, a larger and larger percentage

of people opting out of reality. We are experiencing what has been

described as a mass exodus to the virtual world. More and more people

are choosing to disregard reality and turn their attention to video

games. With such prevalence of video games in modern society, many

have begun to question the extent to which video games are a

fulfilling activity, and the idea of “addiction” has surfaced. The

idea of “video game addiction” shifts the blame for problematic use

from the users to the technology itself, and is a fundamentally flawed

and fallacious concept. This essay attempts to prove that “video game

addiction” is a fabricated disorder that stigmatizes games and their

users, and that multiplayer online games retain players through a

series of logical compulsions, foremost of which is the desire for and

subsequent fulfilment of social interaction. This essay draws from

academic sources regarding social interaction within multiplayer video

games, and psychological studies concerning human interaction. The

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essay uses a primary source of a popular multiplayer online video

game, and research of players of said game, to arrive at its

conclusions. It was determined that the idea of an addictive

multiplayer video game is fundamentally a fallacy, and players are

retained by their desire to interact socially with the other players

of the game. While some players do play video games too much, that

falls under a classification of “problematic use” and the video game

itself is not inherently addictive. Social interaction is the greatest

motivation that drives players to continue to play online video games.

This leads to the idea that multiplayer online video games are, in

fact, constructive social experiences, and not addictive, and their

players are most definitely not playing alone.

Introduction

The twenty-first century has witnessed a remarkable revolution in

the pastimes of its people. With increasing frequency in recent years,

as described by economist Edward Castronova in his 2007 book Exodus to

the Virtual World1, gamers are opting out of reality for larger and larger

chunks of time. In the United States alone, there are more than 183

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million ‘active gamers’ who play games for an average of thirteen

hours a week2. With so much time being spent by so many people inside

these virtual realities, it is easy to suggest that these people are

‘addicted’ to their video games. If indeed addiction to a video game

is possible, there would be wide-ranging implications for all fields

of technology in society. The potential for video game addiction would

lay the groundwork for many societal arguments against video games,

and many other immersive technologies. If it can be proven that video

games are not inherently addictive, and that a multiplayer video game

is a constructive social experience, the idea of “video game

addiction” would have to be entirely redefined.

The social component of multiplayer video games, particularly

those in the Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game (MMORPG)

genre, has been an area of interest and academic study to the

scientific community in recent years. Researchers have argued that

social interaction in online games is the driving force responsible

for keeping players coming back to MMORPGs. Such social interaction,

as important and prevalent as it is, still seems invisible to the non-

gamer population, who seem endowed with the idea that anyone who plays

an MMORPG for an extended length of time is a hopeless addict

completely devoid of basic social skills. Dispelling this common

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misconception is an important part of the case against addiction in

MMORPGs. Part of the confusion over whether or not players socialize

much while playing MMORPGs may be due to the lack of a conceptual

framework that adequately articulates what is meant by “social

interaction” to understand how users experience interactions within

the game.

The idea of an addictive video game often finds itself pinned

specifically to the MMORPG genre, because that’s where players spend

the most relative time. With single-player games, the game has a

definite ending, where the player has completed the story. Though

there is often additional content available, the player has beaten the

majority of the game. MMORPGs retain players for much longer, and for

greater periods of time. While many of the critics of video games have

not done enough research themselves to be able to differentiate

between single- and multi-player games, the overwhelming majority of

research against the idea of addiction is focused on MMORPGs.

The idea of a multiplayer video game being “addictive” is

fundamentally a fallacy, and this can be proven through the results of

research of social interaction in MMORPGs. In this essay, many studies

of social interaction in MMORPGs will be examined, and their

relationship to the addiction theory will be discussed. Case studies

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will be used to argue that video game addiction is a fallacy, and

MMORPGs retain players through a series of logical compulsions,

foremost of which is the players’ desire for and the subsequent

fulfilment of social interaction.

What is a Video Game?

To understand social interaction in video games and potentially

addiction, we must define what a ‘game’, particularly an MMORPG, is.

Jane McGonigal, video game developer and researcher, and author of the

2011 book Reality is Broken, gives us a basic definition that can apply to

any video game, or any game at all. “When you strip away the genre

differences and the technological complexities, all games share four

defining traits: a goal, rules, a feedback system, and voluntary participation.”3 The

goal is what the player will work to achieve, providing a sense of

purpose. The rules place limitations on how players can achieve the

goal. The feedback system tells players how close they are to achieving

the goal. It can take the form of points, levels, a score, or a

progress bar. The most important of the four defining traits is the

voluntary participation element of a game. Every player must knowingly and

willingly accept the goal, the rules, and the feedback. This

establishes a common ground for players to play together. These four

traits make up the framework of every game.

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Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Games add several

additional points to these fundamentals. Firstly, the game must be, as

the name suggests, massively multiplayer. A game by this description is

capable of supporting hundreds or thousands of players simultaneously

on large online servers. A role-playing game is a game in which the player

takes on the role of a character in a fictional setting. The role-

playing element of MMORPGs is vital, as is the use of a player’s

customised character as a conduit for social interaction. This idea

will be discussed later in the essay. These are the basic elements

that compose a Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game.

Video Game Addiction

Can video games be considered genuinely addictive? Consider one

of the commonly accepted definitions of “addiction”. The following

definition was published in the Annual Review of Psychology, February 20034.

“A repetitive habit pattern that increases the risk of disease

and/or associated personal and social problems. Addictive

behaviors are often experienced subjectively as ‘loss of

control’— the behavior continues to occur despite volitional

attempts to abstain or moderate use. These habit patterns are

typically characterised by immediate gratification (short term

reward), often coupled with delayed deleterious effects (long8

term costs). Attempts to change an addictive behavior (via

treatment or self-initiation) are typically marked with high

relapse rates.”

Mark Griffiths, Ph.D., Director of the International Gaming

Research Unit at Nottingham Trent University in the UK, defines an

addiction with six criteria that a behavior must satisfy to be

considered “addictive”. He presents each criterion with reference to

online video games in the foreword to the 2010 book Unplugged: My Journey

into the Dark World of Video Game Addiction5. First, the game must achieve

salience, meaning that it dominates the thinking processes of the

“addict”. Mood modification is achieved when subjects experience a

consequence of online gaming and can be seen as a coping strategy

(such as an arousing “buzz” or “high”). Tolerance means that increased

amounts of gaming are required each session to reach the former mood-

modifying effects. If the subject discontinues or reduces their levels

of gaming, they will suffer unpleasant withdrawal symptoms such as

moodiness or irritability. The addiction to a game will cause conflict

with the subject’s real life, where the subject is more concerned with

the game than they are with reality. Finally, any attempts of the

subject to control their addiction will be met with relapse, reversions

to patterns typical of the height of excessive online gaming.

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It is true that excessive use of video games exists. There have

been cases of players undergoing unreasonably long stretches of play.

One of the challenges in disproving video game addiction rests in

refuting those cases, and isolating the individual causes of their

overuse. The label of “addiction” in use today is a poor descriptor of

those cases.

Problematic Usage

Dr. Nick Yee, a research scientist at the Palo Alto Research

Centre in California and a leading researcher of MMOs, proposes that

there is no such thing as ‘video game addiction’. He argues that the

idea of video game addiction is too broad, and not only does the word

‘addiction’ have incredibly negative connotations, a video game being

addictive would surely mean that a larger amount of player would

exhibit signs of ‘addiction’6. Yee argues that a greater amount of the

fault rests on the individual using the technology in a problematic

manner. “In other words, people constantly debate whether someone can

be addicted to video games, but in the same way that no one will argue

that some people eat unhealthy, no one will argue that some people

spend too much time playing video games,” Yee writes in one report7.

“It’s about how your time spent playing video games impacts the rest

of your life.” Instead of video games being inherently addictive, Yee

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suggests that individuals that exhibit addictive tendencies to an

MMOPRPG do so because of one of two major reasons: they are using the

game as a form of escapism, playing to avoid thinking about their real

life concerns, or they are driven to advance and achieve within the

game, and held by the lure of virtual achievement. In both cases, the

data suggested models of problematic usage needed to consider both

internal and external factors. In short, “there is no single thing

about MMORPGs that causes problematic usage.”8 This essay will propose

and prove the idea that ‘problematic usage’ can also be caused by the

desire for social interaction.

World of Warcraft

The subscription-based MMORPG World of Warcraft (WoW), developed

by Blizzard Entertainment, will be the primary case study of this

essay. WoW was released in 2004, and has dominated the market since,

peaking at 12 million subscribers several years ago, and now holding

steady at 10 million9. By far the most popular MMORPG ever, World of

Warcraft has been played by the human race for a combined total of

almost 6 million years10, or approximately the same length of time

we’ve spent evolving as a species11. What have so many people spent so

much time doing? They’ve been playing a video game that has no end,

which has a progressive world, and a consistent set of goals, rules,

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and feedback. World of Warcraft is, like most MMORPGs, exceptional in

the area of consistent feedback. Your primary job as a player is self-

improvement, a kind of work everyone can find naturally compelling.

The idea to be “the very best” has saturated humanity’s playing of

games since the idea of consistent character progression. You begin

the game by creating a character that will represent you, your conduit

to the wide World of Warcraft and the adventures that lie within. You

will make friends based on not who you are in real life, but who you

are and how you act on your character. It is, in essence, a new ‘you’.

One of the first things you notice upon entering the game as a

new character is the large, empty bar at the bottom of your screen.

This is your experience bar, and killing monsters, exploring the

world, and completing quests for the NPCs (non-player characters) in

the world will fill up the bar. Each time the bar is full, you gain a

new level, progressing towards the game’s current cap of 90. The bar

with 12 empty slots at the bottom of the screen can be filled with

skills as the player levels up: consistent character progression.

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Social interaction is most prevalent in WoW’s “end-game” content,

large zones called raids that require the cooperation of many people12.

Raids are where maximum-level players spend most of their time, and

therefore they spend most of their time interacting with other people.

In World of Warcraft, the entire game is based on social

interaction. To progress to the ‘end-game’ content, the 10- or 25-

player raids, you must interact with other people. Often, this is done

as part of a guild. A guild is best defined as an in-game association

of player characters. The official WoW site says about guilds, “…

guilds are persistent groups of characters who regularly play together

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The basic user interface of a level 1 character in World of Warcraft.

and who generally prefer a similar gaming style.”13 There are many

reasons to be part of a guild, from in-game perks and access to

cosmetic rewards, to being able to find groups for raids and other

dungeon content, to being around a group of players whom you enjoy

playing with. All studies indicate that gaming socially is more

fulfilling and rewarding for everyone involved14.

Addiction to MMORPGs

When video game addiction is mentioned, it is almost always an MMORPG

under the spotlight. EverQuest, the most successful MMO on the market

until the release of WoW, was often referred to as “EverCrack” by both

players and critics. Definitions of addiction emphasise that the focus

of a person’s addiction will have harmful effects on their mental and

physical health, and in the case of video game addiction, most

definitely on their social life. An ‘addict’ to a video game would

have their addiction characterised by an apparent obsession with the

game in question, an eagerness to be in the game, and an unwillingness

to ever ‘log out’. MMORPGs have a consistently advancing world where

there is always something interesting to do, and most players are part

of a group of people who are very similar to them: that is the essence

of a guild in any MMO. As noted under ‘problematic usage’, many people

whom society would label ‘addicts’ are playing online games out of a

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desire for escapism, to get away from real life. Yet it is entirely

possible that what they are taking part in behind that computer screen

is a more powerful social experience than critics are even willing to

consider.

Is Playing an MMORPG Fulfilling?

Having defined a game, and presented with an example of a game to

which the ‘mass exodus’ is happening, it is now necessary to determine

whether or not World of Warcraft, along with other MMORPGs, can be

considered fulfilling activity. The Self-Determination Theory of Human

Behavior is a basic test of whether or not any activity can be

considered fulfilling. It tests any activity against the three basic

needs: autonomy, competence, relatedness15. To prove it is a fulfilling

activity, each of these needs can be identified to be present in World

of Warcraft. Autonomy is feeling like we’re in charge of what we’re

doing. This is present in real life as we make our own choices every

day. In WoW, you control your own character, and you make all

decisions for it: where to quest, what spells to use, whether or not

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you wish to interact with other players, thus fulfilling autonomy. The

second need, Competence, is the desire to feel that we are good at

things. Everyone is good at something in life, and they maintain

relative feelings of competence in some particular areas. World of

Warcraft allows players to demonstrate competence in numerous ways.

The consistent character progression the game allows players is

competence: players become more capable in particular areas of the

game. The third and most important need is Relatedness: the desire to

feel connected to others. In real life, you interact with other people

on a daily basis, whether you like it or not. In MMORPGs such as WoW,

the entire structure of the game is based around relatedness.

Jane McGonigal has suggested, based on numerous psychological

studies from the last decade, that there exist particular intrinsic

rewards, psychological triggers that will cause the ‘happiness

centres’ of the brain to work in overdrive16. The most prominent of

these is social connection. Humans are extremely social creatures, and even

the most introverted among us derive a large percentage of our

happiness from spending time with the people we care about. We want to

share experiences and build bonds, and we most often accomplish that

by doing things that matter together17. Maximum-level raiding requires

that the players who wish to engage in it form a social connection with

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other players. As discussed above, this is most often done as part of

a guild. The social connections between WoW players are strengthened

by doing activities together, especially difficult raid experiences.

The largest percentage of anyone’s happiness stems from spending time

with, and accomplishing things with, the people they feel most

comfortable with. For many WoW players, those people are their

guildmates and in-game friends.

Playing an MMORPG with Others

In addition to the points of Relatedness from the Self-

Determination Theory and McGonigal’s intrinsic social connection, it

is necessary to devote a section to the idea that the more social a

game is, the more fulfilling it will be. Dr. Nick Yee, the first

person to receive a Ph.D. for studying WoW, ran a massive online

gaming survey project until 2009, called the Daedalus Project18. Yee

surveyed over 70000 gamers worldwide19, and the project’s archives are

a veritable wealth of information about the sociability of gamers. One

of Dr. Yee’s most common topics in surveys was the social interaction

players experienced in their games. From his research, we can see that

most players of MMORPGs place a very high intrinsic value in the

relationships they form online. Based on one survey, an average of

52.9% of female gamers and 38.6% of male gamers said that they felt

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their online friends were comparable to or better than their real life

friends20. People who felt their online friends were comparable to

their real life friends were also very open to discussing personal

issues with those online friends. When masked by an ingame character

and name, it becomes much easier to talk personally. While that may

seem counterintuitive, studies by clinical psychologists have

indicated that people are more comfortable talking to computers, even

if they know a real person will be reading what they’re saying21. “In

general,” Yee notes, “people are more likely to disclose personal

information online than in real life,”22 because their friends online

won’t judge them in the same way people in real life would. It’s much

easier to talk about a problem with a completely removed party.

Another idea which has risen to prominence in online games, based

on a survey of WoW players, is the concept of “playing alone

together”23. An eight-month study of over 150000 WoW players

discovered that the players were spending on average 70 percent of

their time playing alone, doing individual quests and not interacting

with other players24. Following up on the survey, the researchers

discovered that players enjoyed sharing the virtual world, even if

they were not necessarily directly interacting with another player.

They were experiencing a high degree of “social presence”, a theory

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term for the idea of sharing the same space with other people25.

Players in separate parts of the world still considered each other

virtual company. This method of social interaction is very supportive

to introverts, who require less social interaction to feel engaged

with the world. Introverts are also more sensitive to the rewards of

mental activity, which gaming provides. A common assertion is that

online gaming for an introverted person opens up settings which can

create new, positive associations for introverts about social

experience. As Jane McGonigal puts it, “…games like WoW may make

introverts feel more comfortable with social interaction in general.”26

All human beings, even the most introverted, crave and require some

extent of social interaction. Introverts simply aren’t as motivated to

actually seek out that interaction on their own; with games like WoW,

even the most socially unwilling can form long-lasting social

relationships.

“The ironic thing about World of Warcraft, where you sit in your

room in total darkness for 16 hours a day,” remarked lecturer John

Bain at a talk at the University of Advancing Technology in Phoenix,

Arizona, in 2006, “is that it actually develops people skills.”27 In

his lecture, Bain talked about the idea that players were retained by

World of Warcraft not by ‘addiction’, but by the compulsion of social

19

interaction. One of his key points was that there is no experience

quite the same as walking into a raid dungeon with 39 of your best

friends.28 Players return to WoW not because the game is addictive, but

because they want to be there for their online friends.

Refuting the Idea of Addiction

Earlier in this essay, the idea of MMORPG addiction was presented

with six key points that were said to define an addiction to a video

game. Each of those points can be refuted with the idea of social

interaction as a logical compulsion. Looking forward to an event with

real life friends is entirely reasonable; a subject may experience

salience because they are looking forward to their next event with their

online friends. Mood modifications will almost certainly result from

accomplishing something big with friends, and online games offer

fantastic opportunities to accomplish things with those friends. After

spending a long time with anything or anyone, it’s inevitable that a

tolerance will arise. One will require more time around their friends in

the game to achieve effects that were easier to achieve before.

Spending more time around these friends will also be more appealing,

as the person will have built up another kind of tolerance entirely.

Being separated from the game, their conduit to interactions with

these friends, would likely give rise to some withdrawal symptoms,

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especially for more introverted people. Spending time around these

friends could cause conflict with other activities in a person’s life,

but being able to reasonably schedule one’s life is also very

important. And finally, changes in the social experiences one has

could cause relapse, the subject reverting to earlier patterns of

behavior. If the subject had been separated from the game and their

friends for an extended length of time, being reunited would likely

provoke powerful emotions.

The six characteristics of addiction can also be addressed with

Nick Yee’s theory of problematic usage. While video game overuse does

indeed exist, it cannot be attributed to the addictiveness of the

video game. Between the desire for social interaction and personal

issues which could cause problematic usage, it is unreasonable to

claim that an online video game is inherently addictive.

Conclusion

In many cases, people feel that online worlds such as the World

of Warcraft are better places to be. In the games, people are always

together, even when they’re seemingly alone. They’re together with a

legion of people who may be just like them, just as unwilling to go

outside and be scorned by the world. They are people who would be much

21

happier with just a circle of friends in an online game, whom they can

trust and confide in, and form powerful lasting relationships with.

The data discussed in this essay has shown that there is an

incredible value to be found in relationships formed in online games.

It has been shown that playing a video game such as World of Warcraft

is definitely a fulfilling use of time. The examination of

relationships formed through WoW has been remarkably successful. The

label of ‘addiction’ used by the world at large is entirely

fallacious. The sociability of an online game is not to be

underestimated; even the most introverted of people can find

companionship in an online game, and form many valuable friendships,

as Nick Yee’s numbers indicate.

To put the data presented in perspective, consider that the

average American spends 25-30 hours a week watching TV29. However, no

one lambasts the act of watching television as dangerous to the mental

health of those who do it. Watching TV for 30 hours in a state of

complete lethargy next to family members who barely communicate with

each other is considered socially acceptable. Ironically, playing an

interactive and socially stimulating video game for the same length of

time is considered harmful and addictive. As demonstrated, video games

are certainly more intellectually stimulating that television.

22

In conclusion, online games like World of Warcraft are not

addictive. They retain players through a series of logical

compulsions, the foremost of which is the players’ desire for social

interaction. World of Warcraft exists as a rich social environment,

where anyone can make and keep many friends over the course of their

gameplay. Even alone, the players are still “playing together”. The

world of online games is one of the most social experiences currently

known to man. While the media regards this desire as addiction, the

evidence presented in this essay clearly refutes the idea of addictive

games, and instead solidifies the idea that online video games are

conduits to social interaction, and, in the end, players are not

addicts, and they are most definitely not playing alone.

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Citations

1. Castronova, Edward. Exodus to the Virtual World (New York: Palgrave Macmillan,2007)

2. “Newzoo Games Marketing Report: Consumer Spending in US, UK, GER, FR, NL, & BE.” Newzoo, Amsterdam, May 2010. http://corporate.newzoo.com/press/GamesMarketReport_FREE_030510.pdf; “Games Segmentation 2008 Market Research Report.” The NPD Group, May 2010. http://www.npd.com/press/releases/press_100527b.html

3. McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken (New York: Penguin Group, 2011), 21.4. Robinson, Terry E., and Berridge, Kent C. Addiction. Annual Review of

Psychology. (University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan: February 2003)5. G. Van Cleave, Ryan. Unplugged: My Journey into the Dark World of Video Game

Addiction. (Deerfield Beach, Florida: Health Communications Inc., 2010); This excerpt paraphrased from the Foreword by Mark Griffiths, Ph.D., Director, International Gaming Research Unit, Nottingham Trent University, United Kingdom.

6. Yee, Nick. “A New Disorder is Born”. The Daedalus Project, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001494.php.

7. Yee, Nick. “Problematic Usage”. The Daedalus Project, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001336.php.

24

8. Ibid.9. http://www.ign.com/articles/2012/10/04/mists-of-pandaria-pushes-

warcraft-subs-over-10-million10. “That’s a back-of-the-envelope calculation – derived from adding

up the average number of subscribers each year since 2004, ranging from 2 million to 11.5 million, times the average hours per player according to Blizzard statistics and Stanford University research, added up through early 2010. This isn’t a precise way to measure gameplay, but even with a margin of error of as much as 50 percent, we’re still talking about gameplay on the magnitude of millions of years.” McGonigall, Jane. Reality Is Broken, 52.

11. In 2008, scientists discovered fossils suggesting man’s earliest upright ancestors date to 6 million years ago. Richmond, Brian G., and Jungers, William L. “Orrorin tuegenesis Femoral Morphology and the Evolutionof Hominin Bipedalism.” Science, March 21, 2008, 319(5870): 1662. DOI: 10.1126/ science.1154197; McGonigal, Jane. Reality Is Broken, 52.

12. For a community-generated introductory description of a raid, refer to the community World of Warcraft Wikipedia, WoWpedia. http://www.wowpedia.org/Raiding_for_Newbies

13. Official World of Warcraft website, new player guide, “Playing Together”. http://us.battle.net/wow/en/game/guide/playing-together

14. Oxford, Jonathan, Davidé Ponzi, David C. Geary. “Hormonal Responses Differ When Playing Violent Video Games Against an Ingroup andan Outgroup.” Evolution and Human Behavior 31 (3):201-9 (May 2010) doi:10.1016/j.evolhumbehav.2009.07.002. Available online: http://www.ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(09)00067-1/abstract.

15. For a more in-depth exploration of the Self-Determination Theory of Human Behavior, refer to the official website of the theory, http://www.selfdeterminationtheory.org/

16. McGonigal, Reality is Broken, 49. “Many of the studies whose results I’ve based this set of intrinsic rewards on are reviewed in the following books: Martin Seligman’s Authentic Happiness and Learned Optimism; Seligman and Christopher Peterson’s Character Strengths and Virtues; Sonja Lyubomirsky’s The How of Happiness; Tal Ben-Shahar’s Happier; Jean M. Twenge’s Generation Me; Mihály Csíkszentmihályi’s Beyond Boredom and Anxiety; and Eric Wiener’s The Geography of Bliss.”

17. Ibid.18. Dr. Nick Yee’s home page can be found at http://www.nickyee.com/;

The Daedalus Project can be found at http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/.19. Yee, Nick. “Hibernation”. The Daedalus Project,

http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001647.php.

25

20. Yee, Nick. “Inside Out”. The Daedalus Project, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/000523.php.

21. Ibid.22. Ibid.23. Morrill, Calvin, David A. Snow, and Cindy H. White. Together Alone:

Personal Relationships in Public Spaces. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2005); “The term “alone together” in the gaming context is inspired by this social theory text, which describes “social ties that paradoxically blend aspects of durability and brevity, of emotional closeness and distance, of being together and alone.”” McGonigal, Reality is Broken, 89.

24. Ducheneaut, Nicholas, Nicholas Yee, Eric Nickell, and Robert J. Moore. “Alone Together? Exploring the Dynamics of Massively Multiplayer Online Games.” In Conference Proceedings on Human Factors in Computing Systems, CHI 2006, Montreal, Canada, April 22-27, 2006, 407-16. http://www.nickyee.com/pubs/Ducheneaut,%20Yee,%20Nickell,%20Moore%20-%20Alone%20Together%20(2006).pdf

25. Short, J., E. Williams, and B. Christie. The Social Psychology of Telecommunications (London: Wiley, 1976)

26. McGonigal, Reality is Broken, 91.27. Bain, John. Addicted to [EPIX], lecture at Techforum 2006 at the

University of Advancing Technology in Phoenix, Arizona, United States. Full lecture at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kNRWvabBRDc.

28. At the time this lecture was recorded, the maximum raid size was 40 players. Later expansions reduced that limit to the two available sizes today, 10 and 25.

29. Yee, Nick. “A New Disorder is Born”. The Daedalus Project, http://www.nickyee.com/daedalus/archives/001494.php.

26

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