Dungeon Runners is about as fun as a drug addiction.  It’s an unabashedly grindy dungeon crawler that owes its roots to Diablo while desperately trying to ripoff World of Warcraft.  As far as freely available, massively multi-player, online role-playing games without subscriptions go, it’s better than a lot of what I’ve played in the past, but it’s still not great.  It’s meager; it’s mediocre.  It does manage to rise above the average in a few areas, however: the game’s terrific sense of humor can be found nearly everywhere from the naming of weapons to the kind of non-player characters you meet.  But then other areas are rather low: I constantly keep a helmet on my level six warrior — not for the armor points, but because he’s so ugly that I can’t stand to look at his pouting grimace anymore.  So, why do I keep playing?

Truth be told, I can’t really play the game for more than an hour at a time and usually only once every couple of days.  I do a few quests until I get my fix for this type of game and move on.  Sometimes, you’re just in the mood for a little hack ‘n slash dungeon crawling and this game is certainly very rewarding in that area.  In fact, it’s too rewarding.

First of all, the time between logging in and engaging in battle is incredibly short — that’s a good thing.  You don’t want to be wandering around, looking for something to do in a game like this — that leads to boredom, and boredom is poison to a massively multi-player online game.  Second, nearly every creature you slay drops “loot”, and it’s usually something you want:  weapons, armor, gold, potions, etc.  Getting something for nothing — a principal the game was founded on — is pretty hard to argue with, so, most people don’t.  We just keep playing our free game that gives us a free, quick fix of something to do that makes us feel good.  How could that possibly be bad?

When training an animal, positive reinforcement can be a very effective method.  By rewarding the animal immediately following the preferred behavior, you increase the likelihood that the animal will repeat that behavior.  This leads to a lifetime of reward-based behavior where the animal will constantly, eagerly repeat the preferred behavior in order to get that reward.  Of course, we — humans — would like to believe that our brains are far too sophisticated to ever be conditioned in such a way.  The truth is, however, nearly every one of us is just as susceptible.

On June 25, 2007, the American Psychiatric Association released an official statement saying that it “does not consider ‘video game addiction’ to be a mental disorder,” but then went on to say that it didn’t completely rule out the possibility that confirmation of such a diagnosis could come by the year 2012.  So, while the APA is still out to lunch on whether or not video game addiction is a real disorder, video game developers have been banking on it.

Numerous deaths have been attributed to games like EverQuest and World of Warcraft.  Players find themselves hopelessly trapped in a vicious cycle where the satisfaction of leveling up and gaining new items becomes less rewarding as they come to expect it more and more.  Because of this — and especially when they don’t immediately get what they crave — the players feel compelled to continue playing in order to increase their chances of receiving a reward and regaining that satisfaction they once felt.  Notice that I said, “especially when they don’t get it”.  If absence makes the heart grow fonder, than depriving a junkie of his fix can cause him to climb through the roof in search of just one more hit.  They simply cannot resist the urge to continue on until they get what they are looking for — and in some cases, they never do.  Found slumped over in their chair, the game still flashing on the screen; some players simply take it too far and pay a terrible price for a lesson they’ll never learn.

While I don’t condemn it, I certainly don’t condone it, either.  Obviously, a measure of self-control needs to be in place within the player to ensure such tragedies don’t occur.  A parent can easily intervene when he or she senses their child is crossing a line, but what of the adult that should know better?  At some point, shouldn’t the developer be held accountable?  After all, a tremendous amount of work goes into researching and coming up with ways to keep the game compelling for veteran players; surely, the developer understands a concept as simple as positive reinforcement.  Surely, they understand what it takes to make a game addictive in the first place.  Doesn’t that mean they know what’s going on?  Doesn’t that make it their responsibility?  And if so, can there be better restraints in place?  How does a developer ensure that a player isn’t playing to death without ruining the overall experience of playing the game for those who know when it’s time to take a break, give it a rest, go outside and investigate that giant fireball in the sky that we all call “The Sun”?

Although not immediately visible, World of Warcraft features a clock in the interface that shows the current time so that players can get a sense of how long they’ve been playing, but it’s still up to the player to know when to stop and eat or simply take a break.  Also, the game contains a feature that allows parents to set a limit on their child’s playtime — although this feature is somewhat moot in light of an adult playing the game.  Therefore, while a time-lock that ejects the player from the game for a certain period of time may seem excessive, it could save a few lives.  In such a case, how wise would it be for the developer to forcefully stop players from playing their game?  The developer would be facing the very real possibility that such a feature would upset the players and risk losing them to a competitor.  In light of this, shouldn’t the player — in this case, the paying customer — be the one who has the final say over how much or how little they can play the game they paid for?  Would a forced lock-out even be legal?  Furthermore, depending on how secure the lock is, it may be easily hacked out of the game by a particularly industrious player — completely negating the idea of a lock in the first place.  Is there a compromise that can be reached?  It doesn’t seem likely than answer will be easy to come by.

While I don’t pretend to be an expert on the subject, I can certainly say that I’ve gathered a fair share of empirical evidence to support some kind of personal belief that video game addiction is somewhat real.  And even if it isn’t real at all, I can at least say that I understand the mechanism of what would be driving it.  After the third day of my trial subscription to World of Warcraft, I realized the dramatic effect it could have on a person; I realized the dramatic effect it was having on me.

Simply following along with the quests as I found them, eventually I came across two non-player characters who taught me “skinning” and “leather working”.  Suddenly, I was off hunting animals, skinning them, assembling armor, and selling it at auction.  For a week or so, this is what I did.  I continued on, eventually achieving Level 16 as a human rogue while assembling armor and selling it at auction.  It felt really good to see someone buying my armor and watching the gold come pouring in.  I actually looked forward to running around in circles, spending countless hours doing, essentially, nothing.   And then one day, after about 2 weeks of playing 4-6 hours a day, I just stopped.

While wondering what I would do with the gold once I had it, I realized that, more than likely, I’d buy more supplies to make more armor to sell for more gold.  But to what end?  What was the purpose of repeating this madness to infinity?  I had no answer.  I’d found myself at an impasse.  Combined with the major events that were happening in my life — I’m moving very soon and have found myself swept up in the overwhelming task of an ambitious, real-life project — I was simply no longer compelled to play anymore.  I had other things to do.  Whatever appeal there was in what I was doing had faded.  After that, it was simply a matter of closing the game and moving on.

Certainly, the most powerful aspect of World of Warcraft, if anything, is the social aspect of playing with friends.  Yet, despite meeting several interesting people, I just couldn’t see to continue playing when I had so many other games to experience.  It’s been a week since I’ve logged in and I really haven’t felt the need nor desire to return.  Maybe whatever thoughts I’d had about this game being addictive in the first place were never actually there?

Since then, I’ve been dabbling in games like Dungeon Runners, although it hasn’t been the same.  The game overtly relies on positive reinforcement to get players hooked into a lifestyle of grinding and looting without offering much else.  Also, the only way for NCSoft to make money off it is to hope that players are willing to pay real money for access to exclusive servers and in-game items since, again, there’s no subscription required.  As mentioned earlier, the humor is often over the top and has no problem referencing things in the culture as well as other games, but unless you’ve got a hankering for some Diablo-esque looting and leveling up, it’s probably not worth much to you, even for free.  On the other hand, I actually do enjoy playing it, even if it is just for a quick fix of Diablo-esque looting and leveling up.  I’m not addicted, at all.  I swear.