Tweet2Play launches Slot Machine on Twitter

Red 5 Games, an Austin-based casual games developer, has launched Tweet2Play for Twitter, a classic style three-reel slot machine game that plays in the 140 character text-based world of Twitter. Here’s how it works: users follow Tweet2Play on Twitter, wait for instructions from the site and start off with 25 free “spins.” To play those spins, users will send a direct message to Tweet2Play with the word “SPIN” and the site makes a spin for you and sends you the result. Every time you win, the site sends a link with a chance to win a real prize.

Users can earn extra spins by including “#Tweet2Play” in an update to get credit. The site will send users a note with a thank-you and the number of free spins it has added. The number of free spins per update is determined by the number of followers you have. Getting help and figuring out your ranking is handled by sending direct messages to Tweet2Play with the commands “HELP or “RANK” to get the desired result.

Get started by visiting www.twitter.com/tweet2play.

1 in 10 Young Gamers Addicted, Says New Study

While Douglas A. Gentile’s latest research on the affects of violent video games on children may help him sell more books (Media Violence and Children: A Complete Guide for Parents and Professionals, Violent Video Game Effects on Children and Adolescents: Theory, Research, and Public Policy and Media Violence and Children: A Complete Guide for Parents and Professionals), it’s tough to believe the data when experts in the field around the country disagree with the findings. The latest research, based on a nationwide survey 0f 1,178 U.S. children and teens (aged 8 to 18) found that 1 in 10 of respondents were addicted to video games.

Here’s the data from the sample: The surveys were conducted in January 2007 by Harris Interactive and involved around 100 children at each age ( 8 years old to 18 years old) represented in the sample. Using an online questionnaire, the survey asked questions about video game usage, lying about video game usage to friends and family, a decline in grades and studying, anti-social behavior like fighting at school, etc. The survey also diagnosed which percentage of children had been diagnosed with attention deficit disorder or ADD, though how it gleaned this information is not explained at length. Gentile adapted this criteria used to diagnose pathological gambling in adults. Gamers were classified as “pathological” if they exhibited a minimum of six out of 11 criteria.

Those that were identified as “pathological gamers” apparently played more frequently and for more time, received worse grades in school and were more likely to report having trouble paying attention in school versus those non-pathological players. More health problems like hand and wrist pain was reported within the group as well. Pathological gamers were also twice as like to have been diagnosed with ADD - 25 percent versus non-pathological gamers.

The survey results and Gentile’s conclusions appear in the May edition of Psychological Science.

Other psychologists around the country see this study as flawed for a number of reasons: Cheryl K. Olson, co-director and co-founder of the Center for Mental Health and Media at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston thinks that adapting an adult survey about gambling for use with children is problematic:

“It’s one thing for a child to fib to his mom about how long he’s played a video game,” Olson said. “It’s another thing to lie to your wife about gambling.”

She also questioned whether kids as young as 8 can accurately complete a self-administered questionnaire.

Dr. Michael Brody, a psychiatrist in private practice in Potomac, Md., and chairman of the media committee of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, thinks an addiction to anything in children is usually a sign or symptom of other issues:

“What you usually find with these kids is this is just the tip of the iceberg,” said Dr. Michael Brody. “Underneath you usually find a lot of depression and anxiety. To put a label like ‘video game addiction’ is too superficial.”

But my biggest problem with this research is simple: Gentile is going into this research with his mind already made up and he’s entrenched in an organization that believes something that has yet to be proven. I don’t want to say that this is his bread and butter, but it’s true: he runs a media research lab at Iowa State that focuses almost exclusively on how various types of media are bad for children; he’s written several books on the topic - including some that may be used to teach future psychologists that media is bad (without any solid evidence) and is director of research for the National Institute on Media and the Family in Minneapolis.

You can certainly do research with preconceived notions about the end result, but you cannot shape those results based on those notions when the data is inconclusive. For example, if 25 percent of respondents are diagnosed with ADD, wouldn’t problems with paying attention in class, falling grades and an infatuation with video games be symptoms of that, as opposed to an addiction?

I am all for an honest study that provides conclusive evidence either way, conducted by someone who is doing actual research instead of cherry picking results to prove something.