When a word like "addiction" is pasted right after the words "internet" and "game", you know it's not going to be all that great. This new article on CNN discusses addiction to using computers and consoles, with a Stanford study recounting just how bad addiction to computing (rather than computers) can get.

Dr. Elias Aboujaoude, head of the Impulse Control Disorders Clinic of the Stanford University School of Medicine, mentioned how their earlier poll of people got to them.

As Aboujaoude notes in the article,

We are seeing more people who lost their jobs because of too much time spent surfing the Internet during work. More relationships are breaking up because of spouses sneaking out of bed to check e-mail in the middle of the night.

While this does seem specifically pointed towards just surfing the net, you have to remember that game consoles are also computers, technically speaking. Previous reports have mentioned that symptoms of addiction have shown themselves when gamers play, and let's not forget the personal accounts of people who've gotten attached to World of Warcraft.

While computer use still doesn't have the "mental illness" tag on its head, the symptoms do happen to be there. Gaming might be good for us in moderation, if one study is to be believed, but fostering good relationships outside individual pieces of tech will definitely help to keep gaming a venue to have fun rather than a place to get a fix.

Xfire finally unveiled the winners of their World of Warcraft Summer Movie Contest last night at a special Machinima event and screening at Stanford University (special because I didn't get invited). The winners, who were chosen by the WoW gaming community, Blizzard, and Xfire from a multitude of entries from around the world, each got to take home a portion of the total US$23,000 pot.

The contest was started to give recognition to outstanding Machinima movies. According to Xfire CEO Mike Cassidy, "Machinima is an extraordinary new art form that allows anybody with time and talent to create great works of entertainment which can be instantly distributed to a global audience."

The finalists for the contest got viewed over one million times on Xfire, so just imagine how many views the overall winners got. Anyway, the winners from each of the contest categories are as follows:

Best Overall & Best Drama/Action
Jason Choi
"The Edge of Remorse"

Comedy
Ryan and John Ebenger
"The Brother's Tauren 2"

Music Video/Dance
Brandon Dennis
"The Anti-Elf Anthem"

Short Film
Jun Falkenstein
"The Ballad of the Noob"

Don't forget to check out the movies. We especially recommend "The Brothers Tauren" and "The Ballad of the Noob." Those two are definitely laugh-out-loud funny and deserve a few viewings.

Remember the unwritten rules we usually have in the real world (no groping of people we don't know, no invading of personal space, no running around naked like a fool)? Researchers have discovered that some of those unwritten rules have followed people online.

Nick Yee and fellow researchers at the University of Stanford looked at the inhabitants of Linden Lab's Second Life to see if the online game's users behaved like people in the real world. Using a program to monitor 1,600 avatars and their social interactions, they concluded that certain social rules have entered into online interactions. For example, male avatars tend to stand further away from one another, and people who interacted in their study had the tendency to reduce their eye contact with people by shifting to one side.

What does this do for scientists? For starters, if it can be determined that people's interactions in a game like Second Life are much like the interactions of people offline, certain online games would be an alternative yet reliable place to acquire social data. Yee and company also mention that the game could very well have a far more diverse pool of individuals to work with.

The only difficulty is in finding out which kind of social concepts travel from the real world into the game world. Risk, for example isn't as big a deal online, and thoughts of death in-game are more of minor inconveniences than the "end" that we know of in real life. This study, at the very least is the first step towards knowing more.

As for gamers, it helps if you're observant. You may just find out that the way you act online can be more or less like the way you act in the real world... so we better learn to behave!

Second Life is a 3D virtual world that is conceptualized and built by its residents. What they can and cannot do is limited only by their imaginations. In maybe over the 200,000 or more inhabitants this house built by Seifert Surface, will raise your penchant for the unknown and the unexplainable.

He takes on his inspiration from one of the Big Three of Science fiction - along with Isaac Asimov and Arthur C. Clarke - Robert A. Heinlein's "—And He Built a Crooked House—" published in Astounding Science Fiction in February of 1941. It delves into what the main character (Quintus Teal) thinks is a brilliant idea to save on real estate costs - build a house shaped like the unfolded net of a tesseract.

The moment you step into Seifert's house you'd immediately be transported into an alternate reality. The madness begins when you push the button by the foyer and start going from room to room as shown in this video.

“It’s the eight cube sides of a four dimensional hypercube,” Seifert explains. “Just like a normal 3D cube has six square sides, and a normal 2D square has four line sides, so the sequence continues. And just like if you were an ant walking on the faces of a cube, if you go four times in one direction, you end up back where you started. Also, if you make three ninety degree turns, you come back where you started.”

The only question left is, how it's done. The rooms are programmed to literally move, so that the person that is inside the house is always in a hypercube. And that he’s a grad student of three dimensional topology and geometry at Stanford. That's how.

“When you step into a room, the other rooms cluster around it so that they’re always connected together the right way. But it only works for one focus.”

For Stanford PhD candidate Nick Yee, MMORPG's aren't just about fun and diversion; they're a socio-psychological phenomenon with potentially huge implications for society.

Who are MMO gamers? What are the "rules" of the MMO culture? Has this become a new hunting ground in the search for a mate, another battleground in the war between the sexes - or both? What type of social activities and societal diseases are showing up in the virtual world of online gaming?

The answers may surprise you. Nick Yee has been studying MMO gaming for going on seven years, and among some of his more surprising discoveries:

• Only about 25% of MMO gamers are teenagers. In fact, the "typical" MMO gamer is aged 26.
• Half of all MMO gamers have full-time employment. 36% of these are married, and 22% have children. Despite this, they manage to find 22 hours per week to devote to gaming, and a full 60% say they have played for as long as 10 hours in one sitting.
• Contrary to the stereotype of the lonely, dysfunctional nerd who has no life, 80% of all MMO gamers play with people they know and with whom they are in some kind of relationship (family member, friend, lover, or other).
  

As to the "why," Yee has been unable to come up with a single answer. In fact, one major appeal of MMO gaming is that it has something to offer to nearly everyone. Some play for power, others for the opportunities to socialize, still others are attracted to the creative dramatics. There are as many reasons for playing as there are games.

Yee's research is ongoing. If you would like to participate in his study, click the Read link below.