Slowly but surely, people are finally starting to gain an actual understanding of gaming, and it's a nice thing to see. The BBC recently reported on gaming addiction with some insight from Keith Bakker, the head of a clinic in Europe targeted at helping gamers. 90% of gamers who spend long hours gaming, he says, aren't addicts at all and addiction counseling isn't the right treatment. Compulsive gaming is a social problem, not a psychological problem.

This is a sentiment many gamers (the non-compulsive kind, mind you) have held for a really long time. Games aren't the problem for young gamers. Poor parental care is a problem, environment is a problem. Communication is important. Healthy environments are important. Games for teenagers tend to be an escape, a place to go where you don't necessarily need to deal with real problems at that age, like social issues, personal troubles, stress and anxiety.

When this article was first submitted as a tip to WoW Insider, we laughed at it because of its cheesy headline: "1 in 3 World of Warcraft Players Attracted to One Another." People can form personal connections on the internet? Paging the obvious police! Or, as one blogger wrote, "Coming up, Channel 13 takes you inside the APA -- and what you find there might startle you: up to 75% of all Americans say that they prefer grape jelly to accompany peanut butter on their sandwich."

But when I actually read the article, I found that it wasn't all torrid e-romances and "ZOMG, don't people know that WoW isn't real?" There were some pretty interesting facts there, all taken from a UK study of 912 self-selected MMORPG players. Notable tidbits:

• Forty percent of respondents said that they had talked to people in MMOs about personal issues that they wouldn't discuss with people they knew offline.
• Forty-three percent of respondents had met with online friends in offline situations.
• Twenty percent of players said that their gaming had a negative impact on their relationships with non-gamers.
• Yep, "one in three" players found themselves attracted to another player. And it might surprise you that this was much more common among female players (42 percent) than male players (26 percent.) And what really surprised me is that ten percent of players said they had developed a physical relationship with someone they met in-game! Wow.
• The average respondent played online games 23 hours a week.

So what conclusions did the researchers draw from this study? A lot of gamers -- particularly women -- use online games as a way to socialize and meet people in a non-judgmental environment. And if over forty percent of gamers have met their guildmates in real life, and ten percent have actually gotten into a live, flesh-and-blood relationship because of gaming, we can't all be maladjusted, antisocial rejects.

What do you think of this study? Has WoW helped or hindered your social life?

A tipster informs us that researchers at the University of Texas at Austin are conducting a study to try to determine the "personalities and motivations" of people participating in World of Warcraft and other online games. And they're asking for our help! So if you have 10 or 15 minutes of free time, why not go fill out their MMORPG Survey? (Or if learning about the personalities and motivations of yourself and fellow players doesn't interest you, there's another study running at the university that seeks to understand how people interact in online environments. However, I've got to warn you, that one will take 20 to 30 minutes of your time.) The survey itself looks like a standard personality test, and, I have to say, is pretty uninteresting. However, I'm quite interested in seeing what sort of results they come out with in the end -- and if you're as curious as I am participating will only lead to more varied results in the end.

Update: There is a great deal of discussion in our comments about the possibility of this site being a scam of some sort. While I agree that the domain name of the site is fishy, the content looks completely legitimate. (And, yes, I did run through this on my personal computer before passing it on to you.) With the original and subsequent e-mails we've received about the site, I would say it's legitimate. However, I have removed the link to the site pending further verification.

Update 2: After trading e-mails with Austin Harley (yes, through a valid University of Texas mailing address), one of the researchers involved in the study, I am convinced that this is, in fact, a valid project. Of the odd hosting arrangement, he says:

A good friend of mine offered to build a web page for my site and link it to an already functional database he had. He said this would be easier on him than building one off a webpage on the utexas server so I happily agreed since he was really doing me a huge favor. I had no idea so many people were worried about a potential scam or that my site would cause such a stir.

Update 3: To further assure anyone's concerns, I have talked to a member of the UT faculty overseeing this project, who, again, assures me that this is a legitimate study.