Study: Gamers Losing Sleep Role-playing
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Smyth divided 100 student volunteers randomly into four groups. One got tokens to play at a local arcade, a second played the adventure game "Gauntlet: Dark Legacy" on a Sony Corp. PlayStation 2 console and the third played role-playing game "Diablo II" on computers.
Only the fourth group, which played MMORPG "Dark Age of Camelot," also on computers, had online interaction.
After a month, the MMORPG players -- the fourth group -- reported playing on average 14.4 hours in the previous week, more than twice as much as the next most avid players, the "Diablo II" group.
The "Dark Age of Camelot" players also reported significantly lower overall health and poorer sleep and were more likely to find the games interfered with their studies and social lives.
If you're going to do a study like this, at least make the options on par with one another. I guarantee Halo 3 and other games designed for long-term entertainment are causing just as many problems as Dark Age of Camelot and Diablo II are.
