Cyberdependence and Cyberaddiction Becoming A Problem?
By William on Sunday, January 13th, 2008 at 11:36 AM PST In Gamer Life
A recent study by British and German scientists resulted in the conclusion that some online video-game players suffer from “cyberdependence” or “cyberaddiction”. According the the results, approximately one in ten online gamers show strong signs of addiction. Of course the most addictive of all games according to the study is World of Warcraft.
I’m not sure if that means that WoW is a bad game for society or it’s just simply a well made game. I also still find it hard to throw video game addiction into the same category as drug or alcohol addiction. The primary difference I have seen when it comes to game addiction is the fact that there is rarely any kind of denial phase. We know we are game addicts and accept it. I also tend to believe that everyone in the world needs at least one addiction and gaming is far from being one of the worst you could possibly choose from. Some individuals like myself are simply born with addictive personalities and we need something to always fill a void. It could have been much worse. I could be smoking crack or something.
Via Playfuls.com
I would say, as an ex-WoW player, that WoW isn’t a “well made game” – but rather a game made to be addictive.
A lot of people like to point to MMOs, but it can be any game (though there are elements in MMO design that can be particularly addictive i.e. carrot on a stick design). And also whether or not their addictive behavior is destructive determines how much attention is given to an activity. Gaming doesn’t receive much attention because on average the person isn’t hurting himself anymore than a couch potatoe does to himself. There is the worst case were the person forgets to eat and die, but those are kinda rare (I’m not making that up either).
Gambling addicts have major financial problems with their behaviors and drugs addicts destroy their bodies. So those get a lot of attention and have laws to keep such behaviors under control e.g. gambling outright banned in many states, tobacco/alcohol is legal, but everything else is banned.
However, gaming addiction is addressed in china, cause china’s where all these news stories of kids dying from forgeting to eat when they’re doing their 4 day gaming marathon, they have a law that games need to have some kinda lockout to prevent someone from playing for a certain amount of time. That just happened maybe in the past year or so. It’s kinda like how casinos need to kick someone out if they’ve been there too long (or is that they just need to ask?)
There’s quite a few more addictions we can list off..
pornography, internet, sex, food, alcohol, tobacco, etc..
Is it OCD or is it an addiction?