Seduced by the Game

Don Mulvihill could find only one way to curb an addiction that was driving him out of business and threatening a three-year relationship with his girlfriend: deleting all games from his PC.

“Playing is so addictive these days because you’re playing online against other humans,” Mulvihill said. “It’s not the same as it used to be where you’d buy a game, play through the levels, and after a few hours it would be over. Online, the game never ends.”

With fast Internet connections and better networking software, online gaming has grown more intense--featuring ultra-realistic 3-D graphics, real-time duels and team play. And that, in turn, has made today’s games so compelling that many players have trouble breaking away--even at work.

No one knows how many game addicts jeopardize their jobs or severely erode their productivity, but playing games at work is experiencing an explosion of popularity. And as a result, companies are taking action--from written policies on usage to outright bans on games ranging from ultra-violent “Quake” to the seductive “Tomb Raider” series to the passive “Solitaire.”

Mulvihill’s game of choice was Quake, a popular “first-person shooter” based on a computer game from Id Software that involves blasting virtual enemies lurking behind every corner of a maze. That game was thrust into the spotlight recently as the favorite of the two teens linked to the killings at a Littleton, Colo., high school.

For Mulvihill, 28, who runs a small technology consulting business in Lewiston, Pa., a pleasant pastime gradually became a 6- to 8-hour daily compulsion that caused him to miss work deadlines and fail to pay bills. His girlfriend said games were destroying their relationship.

The breaking point came about two months ago. After unsuccessful efforts to cut back, Mulvihill quit cold turkey--removing all games from his PC to keep temptation at arm’s length.

Game play may be rampant, but do extreme cases such as Mulvihill’s represent a problem that significantly retards the output of American businesses?

Economists have always had a tough time measuring productivity gains attributable to computers. So it may not seem surprising that there are no rigorous estimates of productivity lost specifically to games at work.

Part of the reason is that game advocates and even some employers view PC game playing--in moderation--as a stress reliever that can enhance productivity.

But the predominant trend in employers’ thinking runs in the opposite direction, said John C. Fox, who directs the employment-law practice of Fenwick & West, a technology-oriented law firm based in Palo Alto.

Fox says he sees 10 times the concern about workplace games compared with a year ago and a sharp rise in the number of companies that have policies that restrict gaming, normally as an adjunct to general Internet policies.

“Certain games are so mesmerizing in their beauty and graphics that time passes very quickly and that eats up productivity,” said Claude Stern, another Fenwick & West partner. “There are employees I know of who play online games the entire day. Work is a break from the gaming experience.”

That could be said of Jay Severson of San Jose, a 21-year-old programmer for EUniverse Inc., a network of entertainment Web sites based in Wallingford, Conn.

“A lot of times I say I need to work from 8 to 5,” Severson said, “but then end up playing all day long and saying at 9 p.m. that I have to get some programming done.”

Severson has been one of the top-ranked Quake players in the world, according to the Champions League for Quake, a Web site that tracks more than 1.3 million players, many of whom face off several hours a day over the Internet.

“Because I have other responsibilities, and have to pay the bills and go to college, I spend a lot less time than I used to,” said Severson, who now plays 20 to 30 hours a week.

But it’s not just the games themselves that are addictive. Sometimes it’s the gaming subculture, said James F. Hettinger, director of corporate development at Interactive Magic, a Research Triangle Park, N.C., company that produces online flight simulators.

“Some 37% of the time people spend online is in conference rooms--not playing the game but interacting with other players,” Hettinger said. “It’s almost like the game is a pretext for social interaction.”

Indeed, that was part of the appeal for Mulvihill. “There’s a camaraderie among players with codes of honor and lingo,” he said. “You start to see familiar faces and become friends with people.”

A similarly large community populates Web sites that feature trivia, familiar board games and puzzles. The online game site Uproar, with Web versions of TV trivia shows such as “Wheel of Fortune” and “Jeopardy,” enjoys its peak usage from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m., said Sean Ellis, vice president for marketing of E-Pub Inc., Uproar’s parent firm, with users playing an average of about 36 minutes per visit.

“People are coming in for a quick break, but some of them are not able to break away as quickly as they hoped to,” Ellis said.

A 1998 study by Interactive Digital Software Assn., a trade group in Washington, found that 21% of online players log on from work. The majority of players are over 25, and women players predominate.

According to Media Metrix, which measures Web traffic, about 2.4% of all those with access to the Internet at work--551,000 people--visited https://www.uproar.com in March.

At Microsoft’s MSN Gaming Zone (https://zone.msn.com/), one of the most popular game sites on the Web, an average of 20,000 users are logged on at any time during the working day, staying on for an average of two hours per visit.

For many players, a quick respite from work can become the cyber-equivalent of a three-martini lunch--and as hard to recover from.

Mulvihill stopped gaming, in part, because “even when I quit, I’m sort of in a daze,” he said. “It takes me time to get back into reality.”

At Severson’s previous employer, lunchtime play was tolerated until a number of employees consistently failed to get back to work promptly.

That company, like many others, began using a network-security “firewall” that bars employees from Internet games. But sophisticated users often defeat the barriers, said Seema Williams, an analyst with Forrester Research in Cambridge, Mass.

“Remember who’s running all the servers,” she said. “These are high-tech game geeks of the company.”

Other companies have taken a more drastic step: eliminating all games.

Daniel E. Parker, information systems administrator at the Sedalia, Mo., plant of Hayes Lemmerz International, said he received many complaints from employees that a senior manager was fixated on Solitaire--the old standard that comes pre-installed on Windows PCs. Parker said the manager at the wheel supplier repeatedly lied about playing--even after being detected by network surveillance software. He was fired.

“Everybody recognizes that you can’t really keep people from goofing off,” Parker said. But in an effort to stem the tide, he deleted all games from the plant’s PCs.

The ban has brought mixed responses.

“We may have made something into a problem that before wasn’t much of a problem,” he said. Now, many employees complain about co-workers who have reinstalled games on their PCs, creating the need to sweep all machines at least once a week. All of the perpetrators, Parker said, seem to be casual game players.

“It would certainly be very difficult to document whether that’s made a difference in productivity, but I have to believe it has,” Parker said. “It has certainly put in people’s minds that we’re concerned about what they do on their PCs.”

Sterns predicts that many more companies will implement such bans--not because of productivity concerns, but to protect against discrimination lawsuits.

“I’m waiting for the addiction lawsuit, where a company finds an employee on the Internet, then busts them and says ‘You’re out of here.’ Then the employee files suit under the [Americans With Disabilities Act] and says, ‘I can’t stop; I’m addicted to these games,’ ” he said.

Fenwick & West clients have received such threats from game-addicted employees, though none has actually sued.

To be sure, the majority of gamers are only taking a brief break from their workaday worries--not being hypnotized by the screen. But according to a 1998 study by West Hartford, Conn., psychologist David Greenfield and ABC News Online, about 6% of Internet users develop an addiction, and a majority of them are regular gamers.

The numbers are roughly comparable to addictions to drugs, gambling or alcohol in the general population, Greenfield said.

Kimberly Young, a psychologist and president of the Center for Online Addiction in Bradford, Pa., finds the comparison to alcoholism apt: For game addicts, working at a computer all day is “like an alcoholic trying to work at a bar.”

The temptation felt by obsessive players is exacerbated by a sense of timelessness when playing, Greenfield said. The plan to play only a few minutes melts into hours, and the willpower fades away.

“There’s always been a duality of wills,” Mulvihill said. “I love my work and being with my girlfriend, and I love being in the games. But the games destroy the other.”

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Times staff writer Charles Piller can be reached at charles.piller@latimes.com.

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