Filed under: News items
Last week CNN ran an editorial story about online game addictions. Its the typical story about how bad online games can be, and how this addiction can destroy a person’s life. The article itself has some good examples of this, from both Final Fantasy and World of Warcraft.
In particular, a specialist at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery at Proctor Hospital, talks about a young man in his twenties. This poor fellow has lost numerous jobs, his girlfriend, and is quite the recluse since he became addicted to World of Warcraft. It’s quite the unfortunate tale, and I’m sure we’re all sympathetic to his plight.
Many of us have someone in our family, or otherwise know someone who has dealt with an addiction. They can be a difficult period in everyone’s life to deal with. Addictions to WoW and other games in the genera can be no less serious than an addiction to gambling. The results are all the same: people loose their jobs, their families, and can become severely depressed. When that happens disastrous things take place, such as the young man that lost his life in South Korea last year.
The article on CNN doesn’t go into any great detail about what you can do if you think you or a loved one has an addiction to WoW. It does give some tips to family members, but CNN is hardly the place to go to for medical advice. Instead, don’t bother with anything else then going right to your doctor. Any doctor, at any clinic, anywhere, can at least point you in the right direction.
I’m sure a few of our readers out there have dealt with this in the past, either directly or indirectly. What have you done? What stories do you have to tell?
Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments
by kurt, on February 21 2008 @ 4:52 pm
Well, WoW requires a lot of time. Gaming of old–pen and paper DnD for example–also required reading, writing, drawing, creativity, and imagination, and an active DM and other active, available players. I think maybe a handful of times in my entire life (back in the 80s mainly) could all of my friends and I get together and play a marathon 17 hour game. Other than that, we managed to get together on weekends or sometimes more during school breaks. But nothing–nothing compared to what you can do w/ WoW.
WoW is to old style gaming what television is to reading. Any kid can sign in and learn to play just like he can learn operate a TV, but a very young kid would probably be unable to understand many of details contained in typical AD&D gaming books.
So, all of the time being blown on WoW is equivalent to just watching the Tyra Banks show around the clock in as far as RL skills acquired through a hobby.
No RL skills are being acquired, and it requires massive amounts of time.
I don’t play–I never got the MMO bug, thank god, but everyone already knows that WoW requires massive amounts of time and people appear to end up throwing their entire lives down the drain. There are so many stories of people getting hooked into MMOs. It’s very similar to gambling. People with lives (like me) know out the gate that there’s no way I can afford to devote more than a few hours on Sat and Sun to a hobby. Doing so, I’d get no where in WoW. Spending just a few hours grinding would be a chore, not a pleasure.