Kidding. Going in there and having them confront the addiction in any way may just help some folks. However, a group of avatars as a means of intervention…I dunno.
Some of you addicts ;), please respond as to whether this could work on you or you would just treat them as another NPC that has uninteresting dialog.
EDIT:
He also notes that since most therapists probably aren’t Warcraft experts, the project could potentially recruit gamers to act as “peer mentors” and help identify troubled players.
Is it a safe bet that the “troubled” players outnumber the rest? :)
“Graham hopes to launch the project “by the end of the year,” and has called on Warcraft maker Blizzard to possibly give therapists free access to the game.” I think that’s the key thing, he just wants a free account. What he’s proposing is just stupid.
Because I care so much, I’m willing to play this game and try to identify people who need help.* Especially if I get my subscription paid for for my altruistic actions.
As long as they are reasonably well geared. I mean, I’m not going to group with someone wearing mostly greens at level 80. I don’t care if he is addicted; you might as well be good at what you’re addicted to, you know? And no shaman, because they have a stupid plural form.
This could be an incredible TV show if David Cross took a gnome named Tobias Fuenke around in-game to perform analrapy on noobs, gold farmers and/or Hordies.
I’m too tired to even attempt the funny (a neighbours car got broken into outside my place last night, so had to deal with the alarm, the police, the alarm again…). I’ll just say that this is doomed to failure.
I’ve known people that were absolute messes in real life, but in WoW they had it all together. Some were Guild leaders and officers, unfailingly knowledgeable in their class type, skilled in play, and socially adept in-game. The game world was an avenue of escape, and they mastered it completely; there were no signs whatsoever that they were hooked (or had another issue), unless one considers ultimate mastery of a MMORPG a sign. That’s the problem with some of the people addicted to WoW, or using WoW as a way of avoiding other psychological problems. Some of the people with the real problem-playing show no signs of it in game. The only real way to tell would be their /played time and the hours/day or hours/week they spend in-game. Blizzard certainly doesn’t need to allow therapists in game to share this information.
If Blizzard wanted to help (which I highly doubt), they’d institute a simple monitoring program on play time, and once someone started to pass a threshold, they’d pop-up a voluntary screening questionnaire (or two) and provide links to online resources for local mental health support.
To increase my understanding and to supply immediate counseling I also want free access to all the worlds:
Bothels for the sex addicts.
Breweries and wineyards for the alcoholics.
Drugs for the drug addicts.
Zoos and terrariums for arachnophobics.
etc
I’d also like to be incarcerated. Antisocial personality disorder is highly represented within prisons.
A healthy dose of traumatization would really help me get through to my PTSD patients.
Oh, and I’d also like a few really bad acid-trips. How else am I to really understand the anxiety the altered perception of reality that psychotic patients experience?
Otherwise I’m stuck with empathy, imagination, training and experience, which obviously are inadequate.
Back when I played WoW, a bunch of people tried to force our pHd educated guild leader to resign in favor of a semi-employed grocery bagger, because the bagger had just reduced his work hours, and could therefore lead more than two raid nights per week.
I guess you could say he was “super competent at WoW,” but the truth had more to do with the fact that WoW is a relatively simple game, even in the 40 person raids. Results are largely dependent on how much time you put in, so of course the people who spend too much time will rise to the top.
Ha! That is a great story. I wish there was a repository for such stories. Not for the purposes of belittling the game or lambasting the millions of fans, but just examples of how the hardcore folks sometimes get things kinda upside down.
I am actually suppressing my urge to re-enlist even as we speak…I just don’t have the time.
