Exploring Enthusiastic vs. Excessive Gaming!

After 60% or so, the questions get a little... Odd.
 
Just wanted to check back in. Thanks again to everyone for welcoming the post and to those of you who have taken the survey. I'll probably leave the survey up through Tuesday and then I'll be closing.

To those of you who are feeling like the survey didn't apply to you, as I've tried to explain I hope you can appreciate it is impractical and nearly impossible to capture every possible demographic or life experience in one survey or study. My dissertation is looking at specific gamers and for the sake of actually finishing the damn thing (and for my own sanity) I made choices about narrowing the scope. If you are interested in the topic - you should do some of your own research!

I appreciate the feedback and comments, it seems like this has caught at least some of your interests. Thanks again for being a part of it!

-Nate
 
I thought the survey was fair to what the OP was looking for. Good luck w/ ur studies. It appears that a lot of the negativity comes from the "me" generation!
 
Took the survey, will check back later for the results.

I understand why the questions were so specific, I tried to write a 15 page paper on video games and how people interact with virtual worlds several years back and it turned into 22 pages, but I could have written 30. Very interesting stuff.
 
i answered... but found that some questions were asked like 2-3 times...
 
Console, MMO, and browser gamers are your chosen gamer types? Someone may as well move this to the fucking console forum :rolleyes:
 
Filled it out, I consider myself a former addict. When I played EQ I was an addict, nowdays I do not allow myself to even start an MMO.
 
I want to do a poll of excessive clinical labeling. I work in outpatient behavioral health and find it a very broken, inflated, self-perpetuating field (not to mention a broken government mental health system) with a common denominator; no clinical substance providing scientific proof of any mental illness, fleecing of either tax payer or insurance monies, and the dispensing of psychiatric drugs.

I do wish you luck on your analysis though.
 
Still getting some good responses from this (and other sources) so I am going to leave up the survey until Friday. Thanks for some of the enthusiastic discussion as well.

Banyan - While a small portion of your brief and horrendously oversimplified argument may be valid, statements like that run the risk of throwing babies out with bathwater. Attitudes like that can also sway people from seeking help. I will actually agree with excessive clinical labeling, but my agreement stops there. I don't understand why you work in behavioral health (in what capacity, might I ask?) if you have such disdain for it. I thoroughly disagree with your assertion that there are "no clinicial substance providing scientific proof of any mental illness" and if you truly believe that, you need to expand your reading collection to include a wider variety of scholarly journals. Some medications are over-prescribed and we're still not sure why they work in many cases (and in many cases work no better than talk therapy or placebo), but for some people - they report finding relief. As brain scan equipment continues to evolve, we are finding out more each day, but it's a long and complicated process. The argument that mental health treatment somehow exists to fleece taxpayers rather than treating people who are suffering is absurd - I'm sure anyone that has lived with untreated depression, anxiety, or bipolar (or any other disorder) would strongly disagree with you. I have yet to meet a clinician in my field that got into this line of work to try screw insurance companies.

I do wish you luck on finding a field that better suits you and leaves you less cynical, though.

On a brighter note - hopefully this research will be step toward reshaping some of those overused labels!
 
I Took it, and answered all of the questions honestly. I seriously question the validity and reliability of some of the questions in the survey though...
 
Negative Decibel - Thanks for checking out the survey. Curious what your specific psychometric concerns are? Just so you know, each of the quantitative measures used in the survey have demonstrated strong validity and reliability detailed in more than 1 article per measure published in peer-reviewed, scholarly medical and psychological journals.
 
I completed the survey as fairly as I could.
It was odd though, I felt kind of strong armed into admitting that my gaming patterns may be indicative of an addiction (at least in my own mind), though it has yet to really interfere with other aspects of my life.
Thanks for this. It was a pretty eye opening experience.
 
Wanted to do the survey, but halfway through i realized my data would only be "noise" in your survey. I travel extensively, so my gaming tends to be very "bursty." So when i got to questions like "in the last 30 days, how many hours/%/whatever have you played, i had to answer 0, as i am not at home, and without a decent internet connection.

I am an avid gamer (both computer and other), but i do not exclusively play online games. Hell, i still play old DOS games (single player only). Even worse, the most hardcore gamers i know are miniature wargamers, and the survey ignores that completely. Not to mention the old school paper and pencil roleplayers out there (like i would like to be again).

I know you are probably looking exclusively for computer gaming, but real gamers do not need any type of computing device but what's between the ears. ;) You put two real gamers on a deserted island in the middle of the ocean, and they will be playing something game related with nothing more than a hollow coconut and a few oyster shells within days. :D
 
Spugnor - I hear you, I'm sure that someone will probably look at those genres as some point for some reason, just not me this time around. Thanks for checking it out anyway. I actually just fired up teh DOS version of Dune (I actually prefer it to Dune 2 even though I doubt most would agree) and went spice hunting the other day and I'm looking at part of my painted high elf army right now (what a pompous army, I know), so I get that too.

There are a ton of gamers and a ton of gaming lifestyle data out there begging to be mined. All good things to think about for future directions of potential research threads.

-Nate
 
Negative Decibel - Thanks for checking out the survey. Curious what your specific psychometric concerns are? Just so you know, each of the quantitative measures used in the survey have demonstrated strong validity and reliability detailed in more than 1 article per measure published in peer-reviewed, scholarly medical and psychological journals.

Ok, now say that in English.

BTW, completed the survey.
 
Ok, now say that in English.

BTW, completed the survey.

He means that in response to Negative Decibel's concerns that the questions may be unreliable or not valid, the questions he's using to get numbers have been talked about/shown to be valid in articles in (supposedly) reputable journals.

To be honest I too question the reliability and validity of the questions and I also question the reliability and validity of what passes for "peer-reviewed, scholarly medical and psychological journals" in the field of psychology :p
 
Filled out the survey but like others in this thread I felt it had a very narrow scope of what the OP thinks of PC gamers. I understand the reason for this survey and I believe I understand what you are trying to achieve but I think it kinda stereotypes PC gamers into 2 groups when in fact there are many sub groups that make up the true size.

Some real flaws in the survey overall , I hope it isn't being taken into a serious context and its purely an academic experiment.
 
OP: I started to fill out your survey, but realized that most of my answers are of no use to you with your given questions in your survey anymore. You say that you are "exploring enthusiastic versus excessive gaming" and I think you are doing yourself a disservice by limiting the questions only to the online crowd. Also, it seemed like you asked more questions about consoles than the pc, though MMORPGs (for the most part) are pc based.

Like you, I started gaming in the 80's when i was not yet a teenager. I also remember playing Dragon Quest and being in love with RPGs from an early age. Over the years, I have been "addicted" to MMORPGs like Everquest and FFXI. Though I choose not to play MMOs anymore, I think that you're losing lots of potential survey results like mine when you simply ask questions like how much of a certain game we have played in the last 30 days.

Although I choose not to play MMOs anymore, I still game quite a bit (10-30 hours a week). I choose games where I can pause now. Hard to do that in an online competitive game. The main reason that I stay away from online games now is that I have a child now. With a second on the way, I think it would be pretty irresponsible for me to choose a game over my child, even for a moment. With offline games, I can hit pause and do what I need to do. With online games, my avatar simply lingers and I either let myself down (KDR down the drain) or let others down (guild members during a raid).

If you revise your survey, like many others here have suggested, I think you will find a wealth of information for your survey that you will not find otherwise.
 
Hi everyone, thought I'd stop by to try to answer a few questions and let you know that the survey will be closed at the end of the night on Friday.

Appreciate a lot of the interest - but wow - some of ya'll are a tough crowd! Not to say that's unreasonable, healthy skepticism is a good thing. I do hope you can appreciate that without knowing the full spectrum of the actual dissertation, some of you are making a lot of assumptions about my knowledge/opinions/goals without having the full set of facts in regard to the purpose of a survey. I've tried to share as much as I can without compromising responses. I am fully aware of the broad spectrum of gaming on the PC. I purposefully limited the scope of the study and there are methods to the madness.

Everyone certainly is within their right to ask questions or state concerns. I realize that for some this is potentially a hot button topic and I welcome a healthy discussion. I've tried to be active in responding to everyone, but I guess there's not a lot to comment on in response to the folks stating vague criticisms without any specific evidence or support for those critiques. I'm making no claims to trying to study every possible gamer or genre. Nowhere am I defining what constitutes "PC Gamers" - there are a number of questions on the survey and, again, the meaning you may be attaching to what the sum of the answers to those questions equal is most likely inaccurate without sitting on the other side of a study. Without context, a survey is just a series of questions.

I'm trying not to be overly defensive and have encountered an expected amount of snarky internet responders during the course of this dissertation, but it is something I've spent a few years researching and exploring and have great passion for, so cut me a little slack if that sounded curt, it's not intended to be.

Anyhow, all things considered the response rate/thread views/replies from this forum has been one of the best I've encountered throughout this whole process. I genuinely appreciate the enthusiastic responses from such passionate gamers - it's been a good trip.

Thanks again,
Nate
 
Yeah, I filled out the survey but I do agree that a few of the questions were pretty odd. Anyways good luck with whatever your trying to accomplish. :p
 
Took the survey, gave an explanation at the end. I've played MMOs in the past, so I was able to answer some of the questions.

The survey is reasonable if you're trying to look for people who are typically categorized as having gaming addictions: MMO gamers, online Console gamers, and social/browser MMOs like Farmville. But not if you're looking for a general cross-section of gamers (just to keep in mind).

The structure of the survey may dissuade some PC gamers who have addictive tendencies from answering well after deciding it's not for them by not fitting into any of the three categories. Starcraft:Broodwar and Starcraft2 are great examples of games that people have been hospitalized over that don't fit into any of the categories. Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike and other PC FPS games also don't fit in well.

It's not necessary, but in the future, a category for 'online PC' games that aren't an MMO or browser game may help you get some more responses.
 
Hi everyone, thought I'd stop by to try to answer a few questions and let you know that the survey will be closed at the end of the night on Friday.

Appreciate a lot of the interest - but wow - some of ya'll are a tough crowd! Not to say that's unreasonable, healthy skepticism is a good thing. I do hope you can appreciate that without knowing the full spectrum of the actual dissertation, some of you are making a lot of assumptions about my knowledge/opinions/goals without having the full set of facts in regard to the purpose of a survey. I've tried to share as much as I can without compromising responses. I am fully aware of the broad spectrum of gaming on the PC. I purposefully limited the scope of the study and there are methods to the madness.

Everyone certainly is within their right to ask questions or state concerns. I realize that for some this is potentially a hot button topic and I welcome a healthy discussion. I've tried to be active in responding to everyone, but I guess there's not a lot to comment on in response to the folks stating vague criticisms without any specific evidence or support for those critiques. I'm making no claims to trying to study every possible gamer or genre. Nowhere am I defining what constitutes "PC Gamers" - there are a number of questions on the survey and, again, the meaning you may be attaching to what the sum of the answers to those questions equal is most likely inaccurate without sitting on the other side of a study. Without context, a survey is just a series of questions.

I'm trying not to be overly defensive and have encountered an expected amount of snarky internet responders during the course of this dissertation, but it is something I've spent a few years researching and exploring and have great passion for, so cut me a little slack if that sounded curt, it's not intended to be.

Anyhow, all things considered the response rate/thread views/replies from this forum has been one of the best I've encountered throughout this whole process. I genuinely appreciate the enthusiastic responses from such passionate gamers - it's been a good trip.

Thanks again,
Nate

This is the [H]ardForum, man! We have a strong passionate opinion about each and every item on here.
 
Ok took the survey. Couple of observations. I don't pretend to be an expert in any medical field nor do I know "the full spectrum of the dissertation" but your survey left me wanting to explain more. Many of the questions could or could not have anything to do with gaming. Secondly, there were some questions that were simply N/A and that choice would have been welcome. All in all, not terrible. I appreciate the fact that you have a gaming background and hopefully your results depict an accurate picture.
 
Took the survey, gave an explanation at the end. I've played MMOs in the past, so I was able to answer some of the questions.

The survey is reasonable if you're trying to look for people who are typically categorized as having gaming addictions: MMO gamers, online Console gamers, and social/browser MMOs like Farmville. But not if you're looking for a general cross-section of gamers (just to keep in mind).

The structure of the survey may dissuade some PC gamers who have addictive tendencies from answering well after deciding it's not for them by not fitting into any of the three categories. Starcraft:Broodwar and Starcraft2 are great examples of games that people have been hospitalized over that don't fit into any of the categories. Team Fortress 2 and Counterstrike and other PC FPS games also don't fit in well.

It's not necessary, but in the future, a category for 'online PC' games that aren't an MMO or browser game may help you get some more responses.

Couldnt have said it better myself
 
Took the survey, but like a lot of the others I don't fit in the majority of categories you have. Seems geared towards console / social network gamers than PC gamers.

Gaming for me is therapeutic as I am disabled...gaming helps me keep my mind and coordination skills sharp. Plus being limited in getting out for other activities helps to pass the time.
 
Did the survey. Hope it helped with your dissertation. The best of luck to you!

Wish I had the ability to put in Autism/Asperger's, but that's fine.
 
Went to fill the survey out but it is apparently closed now. Hope this survey result doesn't end up on Fauxnews or ZZZnn.
 
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