Questioning “Marathon” Video Gaming Sessions

This one has a video! Not to mention, it also has a story about how a kid started playing Everquest, started withdrawing from his friends and family, and then killed himself two days before Thanksgiving, his brains blown out in his chair with the game running on his computer.

Is Everquest a killer? Hardly. Or, in fact, I’d give it a definitive no. The kid didn’t know how to handle a failed relationship, which was started in-game, apparently.

The Los Angeles Times ran a story today, following in line with nearly every single U.S. based publication this week, about the American Medical Association possibly placing a label on video game addiction as a verifiable psychiatric disorder. And regardless of whether it is defined as such, this is yet another sign that the face of video games is distorting into a hideous, ugly demon to point your finger at.

There obviously is something to be said about people’s lack of self-control and the way behavior surrounding intense gaming is similar to behavior in drug addicts, but I have a feeling the classification by the AMA may do more harm than good.

Who knows, perhaps treatment will cure us all, and the sinners will be saved.