In response to a bit of a media firestorm that erupted around Dr. John Charlton’s research and its purported observations on MMO addictinon and Asperger’s, GameSpot contacted the good doctor to find out more about his study.
There were a number of points that Charlton wished to clarify about his research. He seemed particularly perturbed that the observation about autism had been the focus of the media coverage given the relatively innocuous conclusions of the study:
“The point about Asperger’s was just that the relationships between addiction and the personality characteristics that we examined suggested that [massively multiplayer online role-playing games] might be addictive to people with Asperger’s–and I tried to emphasize the ‘might’ to reporters–since the relationships between the addiction indices we used and the personality traits that we looked at suggested such a possibility,” Charlton said.
The primary focus of Charlton’s research was on whether or not gamers could be considered addicted to video games. After setting out the criteria that differentiated a gamer who was highly engaged with games from a gamer who was truly addicted to games, Charlton examined the presence of the criteria in the studied group of Asheron’s Call players. GameSpot helpfully elaborates on the differences between highly engaged players and addicted players:
Highly engaged gamers will increasingly think about a game, spend more and more time playing it, and get a buzz or sense of excitement from it. Actually addicted gamers would have their lives dominated by a need to play, exhibit unpleasant physical or emotional withdrawal effects if they don’t play, increasingly find themselves in conflict with others (or themselves) due to gaming, and be prone to relapsing into old play patterns despite attempts to stop.
Two further points of clarification about Asperger’s that Charlton wanted to make explicit were that “In no way can it be said that Asperger’s can be caused by game playing (Asperger’s is thought to have a biological basis)” and “We are not saying that all people who might be classifiable as addicts have Asperger’s.”
It just goes to show that research studies are always much more alarming (and news worthy) when you only have a few blurbs to judge it by.
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