I've been playing a lot of World of Warcraft lately, so much so that I'm beginning to think I might have an addiction. Like any good addict I've asked my friends to come along, dealing out 10 day trials and EB Games coupons to buy the game for $29.99 instead of $49.99.
Kottke recently pointed out the number of games with "cleaning" type themes: eat all the dots, kill all the enemies, wash away all the dirt.
For someone like myself, who has slight obsessive compulsive tendencies, this struck a chord with my WoW addiction. Common tasks include collecting a certain number of items, exploring and discovering all the regions on a zone map, talking to every person with a yellow exclamation point over their head, filling your XP bar in order to gain a level, and finding sets of things (i.e. armor). Personally, I find it challenging to log out with only four of eight murloc eyes. I'll get one, then another, might as well get half of them, I'll just get one more, why quit now? Only two left!
The bottom line is that WoW emphasizes and reinforces a repetitive cleaning/sorting/straightening pattern of behavior, one that I find very satisfying to complete over and over and over. Does that mean I have a problem?
As an aside, I'm curious if this type of behavior repetition could burn in other patterns at the same time. We always hear about Pavlov's dogs: ring the bell and give them food enough times and they'll salivate merely at the ringing of the bell. If collecting 12 Thresher eyes requires killing them, and I repeat that pattern over and over, can I unknowingly train myself into preparing for battle when I gather my dirty laundry? I've really stretched that example, but it's a serious question.
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