Playing MMORPGs: connections between addiction and identifying with a character.

Full Abstract

Addiction to online role-playing games is one of the most discussed aspects of recent cyberpsychology, mainly for its potentially negative impact on the social lives of young people. In our study, we focus on some aspects of youth and adolescent addiction to MMORPGs. We investigated connections between players and their game characters and examined if, and in what ways, player relationship to their character affected potential addiction. Players attitude to their characters seems to play a specific role, since players who tend to be addicted view their characters as being superior and more often wish to be like their characters in their real lives. Our research also confirmed that younger players are generally more prone to addiction.

Author information

Author/s: Smahel, David (D); Blinka, Lukas (L); Ledabyl, Ondrej (O);

Affiliation: Faculty of Social Studies, Masaryk University, Brno, Czech Republic. smahel(-atsign-)fss.muni.cz

Journal and publication information

Publication Type: Journal Article; Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't

Journal: Cyberpsychology & behavior : the impact of the Internet, multimedia and virtual reality on behavior and society (Cyberpsychol Behav), published in United States. (Language: eng)

Reference: 2008-Dec; vol 11 (issue 6) : pp 715-8

Dates: Created 2008/12/16; Completed 2009/03/31;

PMID: 18954271, status: MEDLINE (last retrieval date: 3/31/2009, IMS Date: 31 Mar 2009 00:00:00)

Sourced from the National Library of Medicine. Abstract text and other information may be subject to copyright.

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