Yesterday GamePolitics reported on concerns by University of Minnesota Duluth officials that compulsive World of Warcraft play was causing some students to flunk out.
Those concerns have been echoed by Federal Communications Commissioner Deborah Taylor Tate (left).
The FCC commissioner commented on WoW during a speech on telecom policy and regulation delivered to the Practicing Law Institute on December 5th:
With the explosion of educational resources available online, one might think parents would be 100% pleased with the internet’s role in their children’s lives. But surveys show just the opposite: a late 2006 survey that showed 59% of parents think the internet has been a totally positive influence in their children’s lives-- down from 67% in 2004.
You might find it alarming that one of the top reasons for college drop-outs in the U.S. is online gaming addiction - such as World of Warcraft - which is played by 11 million individuals worldwide.
Document Dump: Read Tate's (mostly non-game-related) speech here.
GP: Big thanks to Steve Augustino for the heads-up!
Comments
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
They've probably had 11million different accounts since it was created. But to be fair, how many people had multiple accounts? How many people played for a bit and then got bored?
What would be really indicative of how popular it is would be seeing how many different IPs were logged in the last 2 weeks.
Or maybe how many different email accounts had been used to creat an account.
I don't really know how you create a WoW account, it didn't appeal to me.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
According to http://www.blizzard.com/us/press/080122.html (old press release of Blizzards, back when they only had 10 million world wide), they only include active accounts. So if you had an account, but let the subscription payment lapse or simply canceled, they wouldn't have counted your account.
However, there are also quite a few people who multibox, as well as people who share their account with a spouse, child, or whatever. Ultimately, the final and correct numbers of how many people actually play would be ridiculously hard to get ahold of, so we can just go by the accounts currently active(which is around 11 million world wide).
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
they claim they only count active accounts, but they don't show evidence of it.
and with the way game company PR has been lately its hardly worth its word :p i mean, do we all actually believe those commericals with the famous people actually PLAY the game?
if they did i would think Blizzard would've given access to custom content for those people, and they'd be found and hounded on whatever servers they played upon. not to mention Starcraft 2... its not down to 3 games for money... nooo, its like that for.... story? yeeahhh
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
This just in: For profit company trying to make money!
Geeze, would people please stop saying that a company trying to make money is a bad thing? I mean, seriously. That's what they do. That's their job.
Furthermore, I don't know about you, but I've been following Blizzard games for over 10 years. At no point in the past have they said anything false or given me the impression of falsehood. Why in the world would they start lying now?
If I'm not mistaken, they're a publicly traded company. They are legally bound to tell the truth or they can have some serious problems on their hands.
Ridiculous...
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
if its anything like EQ2 you can have multiple accounts on one e-mail.
i've admittedly got 2, since soloing is a bore, but i'm no botting machine that sells my spare account :p like i said, my max chars 72.. well 73 as of 5 min ago but yeah.
but it also helps the second one is also a shared for my GF's chars :p so i dunno if that counts as 1 player with 2 accounts or 1.5 players with 2 accounts...
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
This was just what I was looking for, great resource. Bookmarked. Norton 360 3.0 Coupon | Vistaprint Coupon | Paddy Power Bingo Coupon
Re: FacePalm
FACEPALM - When words can't describe just how stupid that was.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
"Game on, brothers and sisters." -Leet Gamer Jargon
"A Chrono Trigger is anything that unleashes its will or desire to change history!" -Gaspar
Re: FacePalm
Yeah, lets not say anything thought provoking or unique, lets just play the same fucking on repeat until we no long FIND IT FUNNY.
Now GTFO my internet.
Re: FacePalm
...you do realize the total irony of this post, don't you?
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
Is there something I'm missing here? College is not mandatory, and usually, people going to college are adults. Therefore, it is their own responsibility to make sure that they pass the class, not the government's.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
WOAH! Lets seem some data to back that little claim up, mr Commissioner.
Had she said the dropout rate was caused by lack of attention to studies, because of online gaming, then i wouldn't be mad. If we cant blame herbalism for drug addiction, then we cant blame games for dropouts.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
"WOAH! Lets seem some data to back that little claim up, mr Commissioner."
Yeah, you'd think that if WoW addicted college dropouts were a huge problem those of us in college who play WoW would have heard something about it.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
But wouldn't that just skirt around the issue?
Trust me, I know it's in our nature to immediately go into "Videogame Defence Mode" but she kinda has a point. WoW caused 3 of my buddies to drop out, and several more to royally screw their studies. It's why i refuse to even try the game. If this is simply my experience, then how likely is it that WoW has caused so many?
Sure her figures may be produced from thin air, but Id take any bet that WoW has caused a serious amount of educational failure at every level.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
WoW didn't cause your friends to drop out. Your friends' addictive personalities and/or lack of self-discipline to schedule in study/work time caused them to drop out. If not WoW, it probably would have been some other product or time-sink.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
True, but that could be a condition of any "time-sink" hobby.
I just started playing WoW during my first freshmen semester of college (admittedly probably not the best time) and am going to pull away with at least a 3.2, most likely a 3.5 (higher if i get a little lucky in my WRA class). I've taken time to study and do other things.
Amazingly this is actualy an improvement, as in high school i had homework issues and NEVER studied (yet i still managed a respectable 3.4)
While wow has more chance to addict people due to it's interactive nature, i've seen people self destruct on many other things.
As long as you keep a leveled head, i doubt simply touching the game for an hour or so a day would cause your friends sitations, though i understand the apprehension of playing it.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
I just started playing WoW during my first freshmen semester of college (admittedly probably not the best time) and am going to pull away with at least a 3.2, most likely a 3.5 (higher if i get a little lucky in my WRA class). I've taken time to study and do other things. custom dissertation | admission essay writing
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
I agree with you. People tend to treat games differently, but the truth is anything other than studying in college has to capacity to affect you negatively. When my sister went to UF to study her and her friends went out almost every night to the swamp or the purple porpoise and other bars and such. Often came home drunk, studied very little, smoked an aweful lot and generally did very poorly. I once went to visit and being the geek of the family she had some friend that had PC problems so i went to go fix up their PCs and they tried to pay me in weed, WEED... wtf? I don't even smoke, not interested in weed at all and they were so non-chalant about it as if everyone pays each other in bags of weed around there. These kids had rich parents tho their place was packed with TVs and comptuers and crap and there was literally weed on everything from the kitchen counter to their computer's keyboard, it was a freakin mess.
My friend at work recently sent his oldest to tallahassee to study and he's doing fine and he is an avid gamer but he actively balances his study and social life. He told me that everyone is constantly trying to get him to go out to bars and such and party all the time and he mostly refuses that and studies instead. He's acing all his classes, still plays on his xbox occasionally while the rest of his classmates are failing miserably. Apparently the college sells themselves off as being fun and full of social events though, so I think the failure is in the schools trying to entice students to study there by promising all kinds of activities and events (aka parties) and its just sending the wrong message out.
No doubt unregulated time spent playing WoW is not a good thing for a college student but I think the real problem is too often young adults have this view that college is basically about parties and having a good time and somehow you learn by osmosis. At least thats the problem my buddies kid sees where he is.
but hey, its easier to just blame video games...
------------------------------------
I am a signature virus, please copy and paste me into your signature to help me propagate.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
He told me that everyone is constantly trying to get him to go out to bars and such and party all the time and he mostly refuses that and studies instead. He's acing all his classes, still plays on his xbox occasionally while the rest of his classmates are failing miserably. Apparently the college sells themselves off as being fun and full of social events though, so I think the failure is in the schools trying to entice students to study there by promising all kinds of activities and events (aka parties) and its just sending the wrong message out.custom dissertation | Write admission essay
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
"WOAH! Lets seem some data to back that little claim up, mr Commissioner."
No can do. The study was compiled by a college dropout.
I haven't read the entire thing, but it sounds like the conclusion was derived from additional questions in the survey. Maybe such as "what do you consider to be the biggest cause of low grades?" And parents might guess "well my son plays a lot of video games so that could be a reason." And then those guesses are collected as "solid" conclusions connecting them to dropout rates.
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
well written article"ike the conclusion was derived from additional questions in the survey. Maybe such as "what do you consider to be the biggest cause of low grades?" And parents might guess "well my son plays" custom dissertation | admission essays
Re: FCC Commissioner Terms WoW a Leading Cause of College
Only stupid people, politicians, lawyers, psychologist and other nut jobs could come to the conclusion stated here, saying that games cause the drop out.
Lets do some real research, what was the drop out rate before games? Okay, still it was a big lower, but what else has changed since then? Well the requirements to get INTO college are a HELL of a lot easier than they used to be. There is a girl from Kentucky that I know that wouldn't pass a GED test who made it into college, and shortly later dropped out.
Some of these colleges will accept anyone willing to pay them money, and if they don't pass a class, GREAT more money as long as they still plan to finish their degree. Oh, you failed the course, well, if you know how to talk your way out of a paper bag, you can still get a business or general studies degree with a C average. You don't have to be book smart, you can be street smart and make it through college. Hell, you are prolly more likely to get a job in the business world if you are street smart instead anyways, especially with those greedy idiots... they have proven any dumbass can run a company like EA, AIG, Ford, GMC, and so on.
I love that someone can justify asking how something happened to a person with no expertise and take that answer without further research or proof for something like this. Amen said she was addicted to Mario. Does that mean she believed she was? Yeah. Does that mean that a psychologist would say that about her? Most likely, any licensed psychologist worth the $100 or whatever an hour would never say she was addicted to Mario. Of course some professionals say the 12 step program is a great program as well, so who knows what people will say if enough money is in front of them.
Nido Web Flash Tutorials AS2 and AS3 Tutorials for anyone interested.
How to set Xbox 360 Parental Controls
How to set Xbox 360 Parental Controls