Gaming Addiction

In the year 2002 a teenage boy named Shawn went into a Sony store and bought the latest “MMO” (massive multiplayer online game) called Everquest. Only a few months into playing this game, his mother saw him “remove himself from society and quit his job to move back home to live a virtual life he found much more fulfilling” (Sony Everquest Connection). However, as Shawn’s addiction to gaming increased he developed epilepsy and even had multiple grand ma seizures. Shawn chose to continue playing this game against the doctor’s recommendation not too. A few weeks later Shawn’s mother found him dead in front of his computer, the music from Everquest was still playing; he had committed suicide. I, an avid gamer myself, have enjoyed electronic gaming since I was a child from your simple Tetris to the complex real-time games today. However, I have never been let my life become consumed to the point of its existence being determined by a video game. I have observed how over time games have become more and more realistic increasing the number of people falling into the trap. I want to explore the questions of: where has this new addiction come from, how will it be treated, and how will it affect society in the long run?
While I was surfing the web browsing through many articles about video game addiction I found one by the Aspen Educational Group dealing with the rapid increase in gaming participation and addiction especially in teenage boys. With further reading I learn that the Aspen Educational Group is a worldwide leader in helping adolescence addition’s as well as character development. However the part that shocks me the most is that the “participation in massively multiplayer online role-playing games (MMORPG’s) has skyrocketed from less than a million subscribers in the late 1990’s to more than 13 million worldwide in 2006” (VGA). That reminds me of a very popular game many of my friends play called World of Warcraft. It is an extremely popular massive role playing online game where player’s can interact with each other from the four corners of the globe. I want to find out just how far WoW (World of Warcraft) has become the new crack cocaine. According to the credited gaming industry website WoW grossed over 60 million in profits last year and has over 6.5 million users worldwide. Completely astounded I wonder what the average player was like and how much an “addicted person” would usually play. I furthered my research of this topic discovering an article by a Stanford graduate student called Nick Yee who created an internet investigation called the Daedalus Project. His research indicates that the “average player is 26 years old; most hold full time jobs. Seventy percent have played for 10 hours straight at some point, and about half considered themselves addicted.” Both articles made it seem like video game addiction is becoming more common place and is a widespread epidemic. I start to disagree because I truly believe that addiction has much more to do with the individual person and their mentality. It is too rash and bold to pronounce video game addiction as a widespread epidemic. However, I begin to wonder if any credible sources feel the way that I do.