Over at Scott 'Lum' Jennings' blog Broken Toys, he has a new post named 'Today’s Clueless Mass Media MMO Story Brought To You By The Washington Post', which does... exactly what it says on the tin.

Scott notes a particularly odd WaPo claim: "Several of the MMO researchers interviewed for this story pointed out that many game companies employ psychologists who analyze the games and suggest ways to make them easier to play over long stretches of time", commenting: "Um, OK. I don’t know of any psychologists employed by an MMO company for that purpose (or at all, actually). Maybe they’re kept in dungeons. When the topic comes up around me, I keep trying to explain that we’re not nearly that bright, and simply try to write up our D&D campaign from high school, over and over again. No one ever believes me."

There's some very interesting discussion in the comments by 'Pander', who wrote a university paper on Internet/MMO addiction, and extracts the key points from his paper, very worth reprinting: "For a myriad of reasons, including empowerment, anonymity, and escapism, there are some people who turn to the Internet to fulfill their lives instead of real world activities, such as spending time with friends or family, or working at school or a job. These people develop a compulsion to use the Internet, and find themselves suffering from the same symptoms and engaging in the same patterns as those who are addicted to other items, such as drugs or alcohol."

It does us no good to pretend that addiction isn't a problem with MMOs, or the Internet, or any pleasurable and potentially escapist task. But at the same time, most MMO companies aren't hiring psychologists to help them hook youngsters ever more clinically. And, to be fair, the WaPo article does have a number of counter-arguments: "According to tvturnoff.org, Americans spend an average of 28 hours a week watching television, a fact that has yet to spawn a bevy of dependence clinics." So it's not all demonizing here.

But as a final point on this - I was highly disappointed to note that the Online Gamers Anonymous site, whose spokesperson Elizabeth Woolley, quoted in the article, has certainly had a heartbreaking experience with MMOs, has an almost entirely Christian twelve-step program for kicking online games, including: "Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out." Let's go with sensible secular discussion, and not muscle God into this, shall we?