1

William Wood

J3070 - Dr. Carrie Packwood Freeman

12/2/09

Videogame Dependency in Modern Media Culture

In the modern era, we are seeing mass human migrations that are taking place all over the

world. People are moving out of their distraught homelands and into “lands of opportunity” in

order to find a better life; but little does the public know there is also a mass migration taking

place in the digital community as well. Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games or

MMORPG’s are drawing in people not by the thousands, but by the millions with games such as

“World of Warcraft (WoW)”, “Lineage II”, “Everquest II”, and “Second Life”. According to

Lisa Nakamura (2009), the online gaming community has created “immensely profitable,

skillfully designed, immersive and beautiful detailed virtual worlds that enable both exciting

game play and the creation of real time digitally embodied communities” (p. 130). By creating a

comprehensive understanding of not only the world’s themselves, but also attempting to shed

some light on the allure of these worlds, I will focus primarily on the “World of Warcraft” using

both the media dependency theory and the uses and gratifications theory, coupled with other

supporting theories, to not only analyze the lighter sides of these burgeoning digital worlds, but

also the darker repercussions that some people are experiencing from playing.

In technical terms, there have been “MMO’s” around since the late 70’s, running on

obscure servers with high hourly costs, but it was not until in the late 1990’s that the original
 2

“big three” of the online community arose, which are “Ultima Online”, “EverQuest”, and

“Asheron's Call”. With a few hundred thousand subscribers between the three of them, these

games were not much to speak of in terms of a real “cultural identity” and were limited mostly to

early gamers who had not only the time, but also the money to play these extensive and

immersive games. Although limited in the number of subscribers, these games provided the

platform for which most fantasy MMORPG’s were subsequently based off of, and it wasn’t until

the “World of Warcraft” was created that we saw the first truly exponential online migration

begin. The “World of Warcraft” has over fifteen million users world-wide and according to

mcvuk.com is the highest grossing entertainment franchise of all time, with a current intake of

over three billion dollars and growing exponentially. The next two franchises on the list are

“Titanic” the late 1990’s romance film, with an estimated gross of 1.9 billion dollars, and

Michael Jackson’s album from the 1980’s “Thriller”. The primary difference between the

“World of Warcraft” and the rest of the other franchises on the list is that the “World of

Warcraft” continues to grow and expand and earn at a rate of (15 million x $14.95/month)+(15

million x $60 (for every expansion to the world released as a “new game” at a rate of about one

every year and a half))+(all of the extra weapons, armor, etc. you can buy from Blizzard

Interactive’s online stores), and this is only looking at the world without the predicted

exponential and continual growth in population that it experiences every year.

The uses-and-gratifications theory, according to Stanley J. Baran (2009) of the “Mass

Communication Theory” textbook states that the theory focuses, “on the uses to which people

put media and the gratifications they seek from those uses” (p. 232). Relaxation, entertainment,

escapism to pass time, social-interaction, and control, are all methods of previous, source
 3

dominated medium outlets, which translate in different ways into the MMO universe. In this

new medium, not only is the audience a part of the communication process, the audience has

direct control and influence of not only how they experience the medium, but also direct

influence on what actually appears in the world itself. The “World of Warcraft” website

describes the game as a chance to,

“Join the fifteen million players (and counting) currently adventuring in Azeroth

as well as beyond the Dark Portal, and see what journeys await for those who

would plumb the many secrets of this ancient realm. As a massively multiplayer

online game, World of Warcraft enables thousands of players from across the

globe to come together online - undertaking grand quests and heroic exploits in a

land of fantastic adventure.”

The previous definition for what was broadcast on television, radio, print, and other mass

communication mediums was the amount of viewers, readers, and listeners. Based off of those

numbers, the source is able to manipulate the content to appeal to the largest audience possible.

Now, in this world, with the ability to change the game environment so quickly, the

programmers are able to listen to the people and give them what they want. By reading their

complaints, comments, and criticisms on blogs, in news articles, and on comment boards, if

enough people desire change, they make it so, which in turn creates a “truly active” audience.

The uses-and-gratifications theory, according to our text book focuses on the, “utility:

media [has] uses for people, people can put that media to use, intentionality: media consumption

4
can be directed by prior motivations, selectivity: [people’s use of media might reflect their

existing interests and preferences, and imperviousness to influence: audience members are often

obstinate, [and] actively avoid certain types of media influence” (Baran & Davis, p. 239). In her

article “Don’t Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of Labor in World of

Warcraft”, Lisa Nakamura states that,

‘‘avatars [which is the name of the digital representation of one’s self in a virtual world] ‘are

much more than a few bytes of computer data they are cyborgs, a manifestation of the self

beyond the realms of the physical, existing in a space where identity is self-defined rather than

pre-ordained’’ (p. 141). We also see that “Millions of people participate in multiplayer online

role-playing games, inhabiting these simulated environments not to escape but to experience the

complexities of organized society” (Balkan and Noveck 2006), giving a new found meaning to

the social construction of reality in this virtual environment. You are not only able to interact

with other people in the “World of Warcraft”, but you are rewarded for interacting with others.

In season 10 of the popular comedy show, “Southpark”, the show explores the obsession with

“World of Warcraft” revealing this point when one of the characters, in reference to his father

requesting him to go outside and “play with his friends”, the child replies, “I am socializing r-

tard, I’m logged on to an MMORPG with people from all over the world and getting xp from my

party using team speak”. This ideology not only promotes social interaction, but at the same

time it promotes a lack of “real” social interaction by gratifying the interaction you have online

with actual character experience, versus just the common social experience you gain from

interacting with others in reality.

5
 On a psychologically satisfying level, the online society is not controlled “by small elites,

power is earned one action, quest, or experience at a time” (Baran & Davis, p. 298). Creating

not-only a gratifying experience, it also creates a pseudo-dependency among the players, by

giving them the idea that since they can not affect the real world, they leave the “real-world” in

order to affect a world in which progress is measured. In a 2007 article titled “Even Better Than

the Real Thing”, Dave Gilson outlined some of the statistics about these virtual worlds finding

that, “1/3 of EverQuest players spend more time inside the game than at their real jobs. 2 in 5 say

that if they could make enough money inside the game they would quit their jobs, [and that] 20%

of MMORPG gamers say that the virtual world is their primary place of residence. The real

world, a.k.a. "meatspace”, is just a place to get food and sleep” (Gilson 2007). With these facts,

we as consumers are able to understand that the people who play these games must form

meaningful relationships from which they are able to “derive social support from online sources

and this social support has been associated with greater wellbeing” (Longman

p.2), which they could not, or do not, receive form the real societies that they exist in wherever

they are around the world.

The media system dependency theory, which is the idea that, “the more a person depends

on having needs gratified by media use, the more important the media’s role will be in the

person’s life” (Baran & Davis, p. 273). According to an article on media dependence involving a

study done on college students, it was found that “video game dependence [in particular] was

more strongly related to relational maintenance” (Banfield and Chory p.49) versus television

maintenance. Banfield and Chory also found in their research that, “media dependence may

indirectly harm interpersonal relationships” (p.51), by dissociating one partner from the

6
relationship, if they both do not involve themselves with the same medium. In their study on

gaming dependency, Zaheer Hussain & Mark D. Griffiths (2009) found that “42.9% of

‘dependent’ gamers said they would rather spend time with friends online than offline”(p.563).

As an indirect result of this dependency come both psychological and sometimes physical

damage to the user. It is shown that on average, since its inception, seventy people a year in

China have died playing “World of Warcraft”, deaths have also been reported in Korea, Taiwan,

and the United States as well. Some have committed suicide from some sort of psychological

trauma caused by an in-game incident, but primarily the deaths occur from people playing till

they simply die. People are playing for fifty to seventy hours straight, regularly, without

intervals for sleeping, eating or hydration. This constant pressure on the brain without any sort

of natural system facilitation causes cardiac arrest and sometimes brain trauma. It is the

perpetuity of MMORPG’s, or the fact that, “MMORPGs do not have a definite end goal or

finishing point. The in-game decision-making and gamers’ actions will affect the ongoing

storyline of the game. Therefore, the game continues on as there will always be new goals to

achieve in the endless virtual worlds” (Griffiths and Hussain p.564). The “endless game” allows

the user to derive an endless amount of ‘entertainment and leisure’, ’emotional coping’,

‘excitement and challenge seeking’, and ‘escaping from reality’ in order to satiate their

individual needs under each of these categories. Is this world so engrossing, are these

relationships so “real”, that the desire to maintain your “status” in this world to the point of death

in anyway gratifying?

When it began it was just a computer game, now it is seen as a cultural force that sparks

love affairs, breaks marriages, and ends lives. The latent “use” of this game, to the point of both

7
physical and mental dependency has revealed the true nature of obsession within the individuals

who are not satisfied with the “real-world” and have begun to define for themselves a new

reality. Instead of being “Average Jane or Joe” in this world, a world that has been created to

curtail their specific needs of freedom and association with others, the “World of Warcraft”, has

become not only a cultural force to reckon with, but a focal point for psychological analysis. As

I have shown, there are very specific entertainment needs, as well as deep-seeded psychological

needs that can, in some cases, only be gratified through the consistent and unending play of this

game. On that same spectrum, there are the gamers who maintain their online identities, or

avatars, for entertainment purposes, which can be harmless and social in nature, but there are

those out there who have developed such an attachment to this artificial world, that they remove

themselves completely from society and “become” who they think they were meant to be.
 8
Works Cited

1. Balkin, Jack M., Noveck, Beth Simone. The State of Play: Law, Games, and Virtual
Worlds. (2007). Harvard Law Review,120(6), 1736.

2. Chory, R. , Banfield, S. , & Banfield, S. (2009). Media Dependence and Relational

Maintenance in Interpersonal Relationships. Communication Reports,22(1), 41-53.

3. Hussain, Z. , Griffiths, M. , & Griffiths, M. (2009). Excessive Use of Massively Multi-

Player Online Role-Playing Games: A Pilot Study. International Journal of Mental
Health & Addiction, 7(4), 563-571.

4. Lee, J. , & Lee, M. (2008). Motivations of Watching On-line Video Advertising: From
a Perspective of Uses and Gratifications. American Academy of Advertising
Conference Proceedings, 234.

5. Longman, H. , O'Connor, E. , Obst, P. , O'Connor, E. , & Obst, P. (2009). The Effect

of Social Support Derived from World of Warcraft on Negative Psychological
Symptoms. CyberPsychology & Behavior, 12(5), 563-566.

6. Moltenbrey, K. (2002). Gaming for the Masses. Computer Graphics World, 25(3), 12-
16.
7. Nakamura, L. (2009). Don't Hate the Player, Hate the Game: The Racialization of
Labor in World of Warcraft. Critical Studies in Media Communication, 26(2), 128-
144.

8. http://www.mcvuk.com/features/583/Modern-Mravel

9. http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2007/05/even-better-real-thing

10. http://technology.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/tech and web/gadgets and gaming/artic

le6927526.ece

11. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mmorpg

12. http://www.wow.com/tag/wow-population/

13. Southpark: Season 10 ep. 08

http://www.southparkstudios.com/guide/1008/