Article:
Should We Take Gaming Addiction Seriously?

[Addiction - The state of being enslaved to a habit or practice or to something that is psychologically or physically habit-forming, as narcotics, to such an extent that its cessation causes severe trauma.]

As gamers we have all heard the stories that frustrate us, filled with social jargon such as World of Warcraft being the "cocaine" of the video game world. Let us stop for a moment and shift aside all of the nonsense to take a look at it from an objective point of view as those in the spotlight - the gamers we are.

While there are games such as World of Warcraft that are designed to get you to spend lots of time playing, it is a ludicrous notion that they can have the same effects as narcotics. Although, this does not make a case of addiction any less serious as the definition suggests - it can spawn from any practice. In South Korea in 2005, a 28 year old man reportedly died due to a marathon session of Starcraft for 50 hours.

"They are the types of games that completely engross the player. They are not games that you can play for 20 minutes and stop" - Professor Mark Griffiths

I loathe "Professionals"; they often make invalid statements and use statistics that have no bearing to an individual user. Of course, there are games that you can't just play for 20 minutes and stop. People read books, watch television, play sports, browse the internet for hours on end and the tie between all of these statements is that none of them are actual drugs; it is down to the user to decide when to stop.

So what is the difference between a compulsion and addiction? When does one become the other? Well, last summer Dr. Jerald Block outlined four symptoms for hopeless addiction in relation to addictive computer use and these are:

- Forgetting to eat and sleep

- Craving more advanced technology

- Leaving a computer results in genuine withdrawal

- Becoming argumentative, fatigued, or isolated from society

Okay, 3 of the 4 above make sense but "craving more advanced technology" is stupid. If craving more advanced technology is a symptom of computer addiction, then it's likely half the world is addicted whilst the other half treat them (for extortionate money). The other three symptoms lead me to wonder whether gaming addiction is a psychological or social disorder.