Video games fill psychological need: study

If you're having a hard time convincing kids of all ages to pull themselves away from their video games, there's a deep-rooted psychological reason, a study by U.S. researchers suggests.

The survey by psychologists at the University of Rochester in Rochester, N.Y., and virtual worlds researchers at Immersyve Inc. indicates that people enjoy video games because they are satisfying at a fundamental psychological level.

Gamers enjoy experiences they can relate to the real world. Full Auto 2 by Toronto's Pseudo Interactive puts players to the test.

(Pseudo Interactive)

The research published Tuesday in the journal Motivation and Emotion found that the driving force that draws people to games was not fun — which doesn't keep players interested — but instead a sense of achievement, freedom and even social connectedness.

"We think there's a deeper theory than the fun of playing," University of Rochester motivational psychologist Richard Ryan said in a written statement.

Gamers said they felt the best about their experience when the games they played produced positive outcomes in scenarios related to the real world.

"It's our contention that the psychological 'pull' of games is largely due to their capacity to engender feelings of autonomy, competence and relatedness," said Ryan, the lead investigator in four new studies about gaming.

The draw of video games "also can be experienced as enhancing psychological wellness, at least short-term," Ryan said.

The researchers asked 1,000 gamers what drives them to keep playing video games, examining what drew and maintained their interest, based on an area of the psychology of motivation known as self-determination theory.

Previous studies have examined the game mechanics rather than looking at the players.

The researchers evaluated players' motivations in virtual worlds by asking four groups of people to play different games, including a genre known as massively multiplayer online (MMO) games, which some industry watchers regard as the future of video games.

MMOs let hundreds or even thousands of players interact simultaneously in a persistent world where events continue even when a gamer is not online.

The researchers found that for MMO gamers in particular, interrelations among players provided "an important satisfaction that promotes a sense of presence, game enjoyment and an intention for future play."

The study was co-authored by Andrew Przybylski, a graduate student at the University of Rochester, and Scott Rigby, president of Immersyve who earned a doctorate in psychology at the school.

Archaeology in the Balkans

Looting history
Nov 23rd 2006 MARVINCI AND BUTRINT
From The Economist print edition

A Balkan battle is on to save the past

THE crime scene is a hole in the ground at Marvinci, in a remote corner of south-western Macedonia. Last month looters dug up a bronze figurine of Apollo and sold it for €20,000 ($26,000) to a Greek dealer. “I know everything, but even the police and customs are involved, so there is nothing I can do,” says Goran Karapetkov, a local archaeologist. “It rips my heart in two.”
Since the break-up of Yugoslavia in 1991, Macedonia's rich archaeological sites have been plundered wholesale. A burly dealer-digger in Marvinci says that poverty has turned looting, chiefly of jewellery, from ancient Greek and Roman tombs into a “fight for survival”. Aided by fake certificates of origin, his finds go to collectors in America, Germany, Greece and Japan. Ill-paid local archaeologists are involved
too, he says. A police source in Skopje readily lists the names of some ardent but untouchable collectors, including that of a former senior ambassador.
Ilce Bojcevski, an official trying to stop the looting, hopes that a new law will help. Another good sign was a recent conference in Macedonia that brought officials from ex-Yugoslav countries and Albania together with experts from UNESCO and Interpol. A haul of looted ancient Macedonian treasures was recently seized on the Slovene-Croatian border. Yet, although political will is vital, hard cash is also needed.
Some 300km (190 miles) from Marvinci, at the southern tip of Albania, lies Butrint (Bouthroton in ancient times), which has a theatre and the remains of an early Christian basilica. It used to be a wretched place, submerged by undergrowth and with a looted, derelict museum. Now local schoolchildren, Austrian holidaymakers, Dutch bikers and day-trippers from Corfu all mingle happily in the cleaned-up site.

Butrint's revival owes much to two British lords, Jacob Rothschild and John Sainsbury.
Their foundation has raised millions of dollars, mainly from America, to restore the site and pay for new digging. Some locals find its style a bit colonial. But topping up the salaries of Albanian archaeologists means they are paid three times as much as their Macedonian counterparts—and so are keener to protect their country's heritage.
Many looted items have been returned, including a sculpture found in the possession of Robert Hecht, a dealer now on trial in Rome for allegedly dealing in stolen antiquities. Butrint's good fortune is that Lord Rothschild's holiday home is on Corfu. Sadly, landlocked Macedonia is less likely to attract such a benevolent patron.