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| MOO’s and MUD's |  Most people prefer MOO’s and MUD's as role-playing games. These are virtual worlds were players exert some level of control over how the environment is viewed by others. A new form of these games provides a graphical interface, where players can create personal embodiments like small cartoon characters that interact with other players in both a visual and text enhanced manner.
One of such environment is Time-Warner's Palace . At the lower part of the hierarchy are the basic needs such as the need for procreation. A high level of flirting in the Palace, with the added abilities of gender swapping and complete anonymity not found in real life. The another level is social realization. Some people will come and go rather quickly but there usually exists a core of regulars that all know each other by name. It is this invitation to cooperate with friends that can become for some, so reinforcing that they start to ignore real life opportunities to fill this need.
The next level is the need for interactivity. Playing games one has learned how to participate in role playing environments. They offer instant feedback and acknowledgment. One can get the results of ones efforts to influence others and the environment very quickly. Building a personality, from scratch and having it become known and then being rewarded with the gain in status one has earned can be a very gratifying way to fulfill this level of need.
Extra status can be reached by becoming a magician, one who has special power over other players. The highest level is the need for self-actualization. This includes the effort one puts into evolving as a unique individual as well as an attempt to come to terms with one's mortality. It may seem difficult to imagine how possessing such a lofty goal could contribute to a pathology.
The internet offers users unique opportunities to work out questions of identity and perhaps even realize inner interests, attitudes and aspects of their personality that were previously hidden. The implication of this insightful analysis of how the Internet can satisfy basic and advanced human needs is that many people experience being thwarted in their attempts to gain satisfaction at a specific level of need in real life and may find the internet is the first interpersonal medium that satisfies these drives.
This would be strongly reinforcing, to the point that such an individual might not look to real life interactions for need fulfillment for some time. An analysis of how modern culture and societal structures fail to provide adequate, comprehensive means of basic and advanced need fulfillment would be instrumental in defining more precisely what kind of personal deficits in this area are likely to be an antecedents to internet addicting.
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