Metaverse Health

Archive for January, 2009

This 9-minute piece is well worth a watch for any World of Warcraft player. It’s very humourous in places whilst still being respectful (somewhat) to the real issues of addiction that occur for a very small cohort of people.

Enjoy:

Thanks to WoW Insider for the heads-up.

As reported on Ars Technica, China are taking some interesting steps to battle MMO addiction. Ignoring the hyperbole around the issue, it poses some interesting discussion points around the role of governance in regards to virtual worlds.

In the tightly controlled society of China, compulsory registration is rightly or wrongly more achievable than most other countries. Even then, once widespread registration is achieved, what happens next? Who determines what level of MMO use constitutes addiction? How much money needs to be expended on monitoring registered users that could be spent on treatment and prevention services to stop the issue occurring in the first place and to support the small percentage of MMO players who are truly addicted?

Ars Technica in their article make a pretty uninformed call by stating “the problem has gotten so severe” – there’s no way of knowing how large the Chinese problem is, or whether the main issue is the Chinese Government’s perception that there’s a problem. That perception could be based on some non-health issues like needing to maintain control and a lack of insight of what MMOs offer.

Like any addiction, there’s an enormous number of idiosyncrasies and challenges that aren’t resolved effectively by top-down, generic approaches. Registration per se may not be inherently undesirable, but basing policy on stereotypes and fear isn’t likely to achieve a lot of good.

What do you think? Is registration likely to bring some benefits or is it just another blunt mechanism of control?

Over the past few days, there’s been quite a bit of buzz around the latest piece created by the talented Draxtor Despres. It reports on discussions held on US Healthcare reform in Second Life that will be looked at by the incoming Obama administration as part of much wider community consultations going on at present.

Watch the report for yourself:

Although not directly health-related, I was struck by the power of the machinima below ( thanks to Mal Burns for the heads-up). It’s produced by Lainy Voom and you can read more about it here.

Have a look for yourself then read on below for some further thoughts:

Fall (Mini Project 3) from Lainy Voom on Vimeo.

There’s no doubting to power of music in therapy and imagery certainly plays its role as well. It’s not hard to foresee a growing interest in the creation of machinima as a therapeutic device. The ability to create content relatively cheaply opens up a range of new possibilities. Imagine family therapists, gestalt counsellors and those with a cognitive behavioural approach (to name three I’m very familiar with professionally) utilising virtual worlds as platforms for intervention and exploration with clients. Here’s one very basic example: systematic desensitisation.

Let’s say I’m terrified of spiders. I contact a psychologist who utilises a virtual world like Second Life. She does an initial session with me viewing virtual spiders from a distance. Then my avatar interacts with the spiders directly. The next step may be something like viewing real-life spiders on a virtual screen and so the process continues. It’s then filmed for playback by the as therapeutically indicated.

The applications for broader mental health, relationships counselling, addictions counselling, domestic violence and sexuality issues are a long way from being fully explored. What’s apparent however, is that there’s a significant opportunity that needs to be empirically investigated.

As always, I’d be interested in hearing from anyone doing research or currently working in the area – do you think this is likely to be a viable approach in the near-future?

For many, the Christmas / New Year period is a time when there’s more regular social contact with people. It’s certainly been the case for me and it’s emphasised a well known virtual world conundrum – personal boundaries. Over the past month I’ve had the occasion to discuss virtual worlds with a handful of people who have no experience with them at all. In each case, the issue of virtual sex would arise – no surprise there. What did surprise me in its regularity in being raised, was the belief that real-world personal boundaries shouldn’t apply in virtual worlds.

One friend, who’s got a postgraduate education, said to me “if you can’t get immediate and free sex in Second Life, why would you bother?”

It’s not an uncommon opinion by any means. It actually sits on the opposite end of the continuum from “virtual sex is wrong / funny / worthy of ridicule”. In the middle is a limited amount of work being done by health professionals and educators on promoting sexual health, particularly in Second Life. Until there’s further work done in the area of establishing the ‘normalcy’ of sexual expression online (with the usual caveats around unacceptable behaviour / child pornography / extreme sexual violence etc), opinions like my friend’s will continue to hold sway. Some would argue that’s not necessarily a bad thing, and there’s still not enough evidence to determine whether acceptable online sexual expression if harmful, beneficial or both.

There’s obviously some appeal in a different set of personal boundaries, it’s just defining the groundwork for alternate approaches that’s challenging.