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Suing Sony for Everquest Related Suicide?
daoine writes "The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel has a story about how Sony could be sued by the mother of an Everquest player who recently committed suicide. The lawsuit itself doesn't seem all that interesting (she's aiming for warning labels) -- but it is interesting that Sony won't release any of the game data citing privacy policy, even if it could help unlock what exactly drove the guy to end his life."
Wouldn't Everquest qualify as a symptom of the illness, and not the underlying cause?
I mean, geez, have you seen an Everquest player around your local dorm/apartment lately? Some of those mofos are pretty scary.
...It was bound to happen sooner or later.
He had already had numerous seizures.
He had hawked a lot of his posessions, quit his job, and was spending 12 hours every day playing "ever-crack".
His mom should be the one to look at. I call it negligance on her part.
Nobody has ever killed him/herself solely because of a video game. An external factor like depression or mental sickness should be looked at before pointing your finger at a game maker. If it's his mother suing, didn't she notice his change for the worse in regards to his demeanor and social avoidance the last few months of his life? Was she somehow unaware of his mental condition, something Sony was obviously acutely aware of. It sounds disrespectful, people need to stop pointing the finger. I'm not sayng pointing it at themselves, I'm saying that the most troubling aspect of suicide is that you are left with no one to place the blame on.
This touches on something on my mind the past few days, because yesterday was my birthday (believe it or not), and one year ago yesterday an old friend of mine hung himself. A few months later, my close friend's grandfather killed himself as well. I've known a few more suicides as well (they just flock to me...).
Someone's decision to end their life is NEVER the result of the influence of a freakin' game.
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even if it could help unlock what exactly drove the guy to end his life.
I Am Not A Psychiatrist, but....
Overwhelmingly suicide is the result of mental illness and/or substance use. (More than half of all suicides in the US are alchohol related). Think about it, if a guy has a heart attack while shovling snow off the driveway, learning more about the snow crystals doesn't tell you about his heart attack. He had heart disease, and the exertion of shoveling caused one of several bad things to happen inside is heart. Mental illness is a disease state - suicidiality is a symptom of the disease.
One might want engage in a bunch of Freudian analysis of this guy's game play, but, odds are, the levels of seritonin activity in his brain were out of whack. Did Everquest create stress in this guy's life that incresed the intensity of his suicidiality? (this would be the 'shoveling' int the heart attack metaphor) - maybe. But real life is generally a hell of a lot more stressful.
However, I do have a problem with this blaming of Everquest! It's not a games fault someone does this... if a game can push someone over the edge, then that person was already severely unbalanced and the trigger could have been anything. In this case it appears to have been the game...
I have more issues with the parent who waited until after he died to get involved:
He sacrificed everything so he could play for hours, ignoring his family, quitting his job and losing himself in a 3-D virtual world where more than 400,000 people worldwide adventure in a never-ending fantasy.
Should this kind of behavior not be setting off all sorts of alarm bells here? Why did it take his suicide to provoke a reaction?
"Shawn was playing 12 hours a day, and he wasn't supposed to because he was epileptic, and the game would cause seizures," she said. "Probably the last eight times he had seizures were because of stints on the computer."
Woolley knows her son had problems beyond EverQuest, and she tried to get him help by contacting a mental health program and trying to get him to live in a group home. A psychologist diagnosed him with depression and schizoid personality disorder, symptoms of which include a lack of desire for social relationships, little or no sex drive and a limited range of emotions in social settings.
I hate to say it, but this sounds like it's largely the parents fault. It doesn't sound like they did enough to prevent him playing and get him better integrated.* Why was that computer even available? If he's having seizures from playing that machine should not even be available to play on!
* - I say sounds like it. I could be wrong... a parent cannot always prevent such actions of their children. The best they can do is try.
"They do not preach that their god will rouse them, a little before the Nuts work loose." Kipling, 'The Sons of Martha'
Years ago, it was Rock 'n' Roll. Then it was Dungeons and Dragons (anyone remember the Tom Hanks movie Mazes and Monsters?) Now it's computer games. The simple fact of the matter is that certain forms of entertainment tend to appeal to certain types of people, and that for some people, it goes from entertainment to escapism to all-out addiction. Does that make gaming inherently evil? No. Does it make game manufacturers responsible for creating an environment in which people can immerse themselves?
That seems to be the point here. I would argue that Sony is no more at fault than NASCAR is for unsafe teenage driving. The vast majority of people out there can distinguish between fantasy and reality. Those who cannot have serious mental problems and require serious care and support. Unfortunately, in the United States the infrastructure for dealing with mental health issues varies greatly from state to state, and a lot of places are not equipped to handle people with social and behavioral disorders. Sony is no more at fault for creating an online multiplayer universe than Ford is for building a car that can go fast. Unfortunately, Sony is an easy target here. The real solution, however, is not to go after symptom, but rather the actual disease. I feel confident in saying that if not Everquest, something else would have taken its place. The only real solution is proper identification and treatment of social disorders, an area still vastly underdeveloped and carrying too much of a stigma to be effective.
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Something cleverat least as far as the witholding of information goes. My father committed suicide 11 years ago, and one of the last things he did was get sent to a detox center to "dry out". It didn't work, and we wanted to get his medical records and other information about him from the center so we could piece together, as best we could, what the path was that he was on.
The center was having none of it, politely and compassionately but firmly refusing to release any of his information. This is primarily because they don't want to expose themselves to lawsuits, which can be tremendous, if there's any shred of a sign that something could have been done - which, with 20/20 hindsight, there always is.
If our society was less litigous, things like this might be more likely, but despite the fact that we weren't looking for anyone to blame, just for understanding, and even offered to sign a promise not to sue under any circumstances, they still had to say no. My lawyer told me I can't sign away my right to sue in any legally binding fashion, even of my own free will.
It's not their fault, and I don't blame them, but there's a hole in the picture we have of his last weeks that will never be filled in. The information is out there, but we're not allowed to get it under any circumstances or at any point. The fact that the family of the victim, whose interest in that kind of information is primal, primary and undeniable, is the ONE group of people who can't get it is just a testament to how whacked we all are.
Of course, the system is that way because so many of us feel that there must be a REASON why someone commits suicide that could be traced to something blameable outside of them. There's a real risk that I could try to sue the detox center, the school where he taught, the whiskey manufacturers, the gun manufacturers, the gas station where he filled up the night before... it's just absurd. My father killed himself because he was depressed, and his alcoholism didn't help. He wasn't victimized by anybody in ways that could be reined in by legislation - and TEEN suicide is tragic and widespread, and happens for reasons we often can't begin to fathom.
Suing a game company because a suicide victim played the game before killing himself is just as absurd as anything I might have tried to do. He didn't kill himself because he played a game. However, the game company SHOULD be able to release the information to the victim's family without fearing being blamed or sued into nothingness; plenty of people play that game without killing or harming themselves or others. Unfortunatly, the state of our hyper-litigous society means lots of good people are kept in the dark about things like this by simple financial necessity, because we all look for other people to blame/sue for our misfortunes. It's madness.
-- http://frobnosticate.com
You're just mad because you don't have any mentally ill relatives who are likely make you rich off of a rediculous^Wwell-justified lawsuit!
For me it usually happens with programming, though, as most games can't keep me occupied long enough to have that happen (Alpha Centauri, SimCity, and their ilk can do it pretty easily, which is why I avoid those). I'll just start kind of "thinking" in the language, and then I know it's time to take a break. :P
Al Qaeda has ninjas!
That is not too far off, in Germany a judge (of all people) who lived on Mars-bars and Coca-Cola during the day, recently sued the makers for causing his diabetes (an article).
Lars T.
To the guy who modded me down from perfect to terrible Karma - Apple haters still suck
I'm curious about something. I'm not suggesting doing anything illegal, I'm just curious. Has anybody in your family or your family friends considered getting a job at that institution for the purpose of slyly grabbing the records? They probably don't leave the records just lying around, but then again, maybe they do. Some of those places aren't exactly Fort Knox about security. Most of the places I've temped had info that was supposedly highly secret, but any temp off the street could get it.
No incentive to play? The brains own chemicals, including a beautiful array of endorphins (home-grown morphine) and adrenaline, are a much stronger incentive and return than nicotine or virtual money.
Many non-chemical things can be addictive. EQ is one of them. It gave this kid pleasures he couldn't get elsewhere, that he knew of at least. If not, why would he play it? Why would anyone?
People are addicted to EQ. And TV. And food. And sex. And cannabis. The mechanism is pretty much the same, you don't need a chemical that is physically addictive like nicotine to have a psychological addiction to it. With physically addictive substances like nicotine, there is more interplay between the psychological and physical components, but it's very easy to become psychologically addicted to something that produces pleasure. Have a look at some B.F. Skinner papers, or talk to someone who actually studies science- any sane person could tell you that being addicted to a game is very possible, and this kid probably was addicted to it.
However, unless Sony did something to trick him into playing it for that initial month (which I find almost impossible), they're not to blame. He is. It's his body, his mind, his life, and if he choose to try to live in the EQ world, that's his own deal. Wasn't harming anyone. If anything, the psychiatrist and mother would be partially to blame, for recognizing that this kid had a problem with the game, and many other psychological problems, and should've intervened. But it's too late for that.
Sony isn't to blame, but cigarette companies aren't to blame when kids on their own decide to start smoking, provided a kid would do that in an environment without all the cig adverts. They'd still do it, some of them. And they'd still die of lung cancer. And they'd still uphold the American Way (tm) and try to blame someone else for their problems.
This mother's action to sue Sony isn't about retribution, or even money so much. It's about her shifting the blame from herself to Sony. Internally, she knows she is partially to blame for her son's suicide. She doesn't admit it to others, but she feels it. She feels that if she "prove" that Sony is really to blame, that those feelings will stop plaguing her, and the blame will rest on Sony's shoulders, not her own.
Working toward a usable PDA environment in the spirit of Newton OS: Dynapad
Mothers overreact; we all want someone to blame when somebody dies; when a friend or worse a child kills themselves we're prone to blame ourselves.
On the matter of not divulging his private data I fully agree with Sony - I wouldn't want my mother poking around in my private stuff, even if I am dead - frankly it would be for her own good.
Online interactive games are very addictive, but there is no special design involved really, they're compelling in themselves. Single player games are too. How about this, when I get into a good book I let everything else slide.
Addiction - you die, quit or go insane. Really? Not true, certainly not when it comes to a physical addiction. Even psychological addiction, there are degrees, it is never all or nothing. And unfortunately the small minority go off the deep end one way or another; we can never save them, although it is always worth trying.
I have a problem with considering interacting over a network to be non-social. Funny how hardly anyone makes that claim about the telephone, but I recall such gripes arose when it was the new thing. You know many people suffer a great deal in direct face to face socialising, many even when using the telephone, and before the internet they would not interact with other people at all - if you haven't been there you cannot comment on what it is like. Socialising via a safer medium is far better than no socialising at all, but typically psychologists and social workers have a narrow view of the world, what is right, what is not, what is normal and what is abnormal. Most often they have no concept of their patient's world because they have never been there.
And frankly I've yet to meet a drug counsellor who was qualified to comment on anything. I'm still waiting for the day when I meet one who actually has the remotest clue about addiction.
I'd love to play this game, but I have never done so for two reasons...
1. I realize that the real world is more importiant than a make believe virtual world. Placing more importiance in the latter will lead to destructive results in the previous, like ignoring your family, playing instead of working, not to mention poor personal hygiene. Eventually, you will have to deal with it.
2. Having a good character means having to compete with the other players in game, so that means you have to be a fanatic to have a comparable character with 80% of the other players. Then we're back at the problems induced by #1.
However, I do not attribute this to the makers of the game at all, they made the best game they could and it worked! If the player cannot control himself and play the game in moderation, then he is at fault. This lady seems to think they could have made the game less addictive, well, doesn't that imply that the game would not be as fun? Like I said, it's hard to play the game in moderation though, sort of a paradox.
Of course, I could be worng, since I've never played. But I know people who do and they spend way more time than I ever could. So I assume I could never have as good of a character.
T
Entertainment is not supposed to be addictive.
Psychological addiction is a personality thing, and ANYTHING can be `addictive' psychologically: Reading books, running, swimming, gambling, watching TV, watching soap operas or Jenny Jones. Of course we come to the point of defining what "addiction" is, and contrary to many people's opinions: Addiction is not that someone spends more time doing an activity than you would enjoy -> Your opinion of the enjoyment of something is not relevant to someone else's enjoyment. Addiction is also not when someone spends so much time doing something that they neglect the things that you feel are important : i.e. Maybe they don't WANT to work 60 hours a week, or get an MBA, or read the combined works of Chaucer. Maybe they don't like going to the bar on Friday nights, and maybe they actually enjoy the social atmosphere of an online game. Hell, it is fair to say that someone might be living the dream life working at Burger King, playing EQ all night : If they're happy and that's their goal, then that's fantastic, and that's more than can be said about many people who live very productive lives, miserably slogging along until the day they die.
Instead, addiction (at least to the generally mentally healthy) is personally defined: If someone spends so much time at something that they feel personal shame about letting other things slide, and this turns into a cycle of shame and procrastination, then that can be called addiction. At some point all of us have gotten into this "funk", and it's just a part of life.
I guess my point is this: I see all the "this guy had no life" comments and that disturbs me: This guy probably had a more active social life than 90% of the people out there who spend their lives in a stupor watching TV, but as I mentioned: It's not my position to judge them. Growing up my favourite hobby was computers, and it astounded me how often people would give me their opinion of how wrong it was to spend hours in front of the computer, but rather I should be doing more socially accepted time suckage wasters like watching football or the latest episode of the Cosby Show. The sad thing is how many people buy into this "life is conformity" mentality.
As someone who suffers from pretty severe depression, I might be able to shed a bit of light on the matter.
/.ers are reading this and getting the impression of me as a whiner with a martyr complex). But it's very much a case of being, more than anything else, hopelessly lost in the world. Think the Endurance without Shackleton. Think Donner Party... of one.
This woman is seeking blame for something where there is nobody to blame. This man's head was thoroughly fucked up, and the game does not qualify as a cause.
The problem with people like me (and I assume him) is that we *can't* take responsibility because the depression destroys initiative as well as creating massive social anxiety. Social interaction is often an exercise on a par with going bungee jumping without inspecting the rope. We want to do something about our condition, but the fear that any attempt to get better will fail and leave us worse off than we started makes it not seem worthwhile to bother.
Online social interaction is a godsend to people in this situation because we (not so much me as others, but I'm not immune) can be ourselves without the difficulties of trying to adapt ourselves to social situations that we are unable to understand. The impersonal online world allows us to be the kind of person we are deep down without the crushing fear that prevents us from being ourselves in real life. Honestly? Everything I am typing now I can only say because I'm typing it. If I were to tell this to someone face-to-face I'd never be able to get it out coherently.
The fact is that people in this situation (at least speaking for myself) can never feel fully accepted; barring some miracle we always feel as if we are on the outside looking in, no matter how accepted we are outside of our own heads, and the hope has been sapped from our lives. It's hard for people who have never experienced this to understand (and I do realize that a rather large number of
So I feel for this guy. I think I know where he was, and I think his mother is a fool for trying to pin blame. This guy needed to be outright hospitalized. As far as he knew, there was no way out.
/Brian
There's a really good penny arcade that addresses what your talking about
As for the kid its really tragic. I'm sure Everquest will be painted in a horrible light after this, or not. Though much like the kid who killed himself because his D&D character got cursed, the kid probably had other problems.
Yes Francis, the world has gone crazy.
Its a hobby like any other. Some people get immersed in their hobbies and some take them casually. To make a judgement on what that hobby is is silly.
My boss plays/reads/talks/lives about golf 24x7. Same thing.
My brother-in-law can't get enough of anything relating to NASCAR. Same thing.
A guy I used to work with did nothing but work on his "tricked out" Honda. Same thing.
My ex-roommate read, fiction, all the time; did nothing else. Same thing.
Comic Books, Trading Cards, Fantasy Football Leagues, March Madness -- the list can go on and on.
Escapism is universal.
A radio maverick jumps to internet only. The Future of Rock n Roll
Read between the lines and you'll see that it's nothing more than a cash grab based upon the circumstances surrounding the person's suicide.
It raises one interesting question. If the person in question was diagnosed as having severe psychological conditions, why wasn't his activity being monitored more carefully?
Hypothetically speaking, if a person loves to play with butter knives, should the manufacturer [of said knives] be sued because there was no warning label stating "Sharp object. May kill." on it?
While I can sympathize with the mother, I don't think that she has any just reason for pursuing this issue.
First, I don't see mention of this guy being manic depressive. Depression is diagnosed in people who have Major Depressive Episodes, while Manic Depression is diagnosed in people who have MDEs in addition to Manic Episodes. The combination of depressive and manic episodes is usually worse than just depressive episodes.
Second, 'schizoid' is a vague term. It suggests schizophrenia, which is absolutely debilitating. A person with schizophrenia doesn't just get addicted to Everquest, he has hallucinations that make him think he IS in Everquest.
What he did have was Schizoid Personality Disorder (or rather, that's what he was diagnosed with; personality disorders are notorious for their poor accuracy in diagnosis). It's important to note how serious this disorder is, since most people have never heard of it. Diagnosis requires four of the following:
AFAIK, personality disorders are thought to be born-in. After reading this, it should be pretty obvious that Everquest was certainly NOT the CAUSE of death here. He had plenty of other problems to worry about. The mother might argue that Everquest made his problems WORSE, but I don't know why Everquest would be any more likely to cause a person to commit suicide than, say, reading or chatting on the internet. You can 'addict' yourself to just about anything, from watching TV to playing golf to reading. Almost any commercial activity that you could get addicted to tries to draw people back for more -- I don't see why, for example, American Airlines should have a sticker next to its frequent flyer program warning about possible addiction simply because the program tempts people to keep flying with American.
I had a similar experience as a depressed teen. I logged off a chat room one night and went to bed. Shortly thereafter the police were knocking at the door. One of my chat room friends, 3,000 miles away, was frightened for me and had called them to check on me.
I wasn't planning to kill myself that night, but knowing someone cared that much was a help to me.
Interesting. This could be similar to Ozzy or D&D getting sued for teen suicides, or it could be more like the cigarette analogy they make in the article.
Personally, I believe that video games are being created today with an addictive component designed in from the start.
I tried Diablo II by Blizzard, and the game literally amounted to nothing more than an attractive new way to roll dice. You click on a monster, it dies, maybe you get a half-decent item from it, and repeat. As the woman in the article said, you either die, go insane, or quit. You definitely never win.
The issue is not that video games are addictive. It is whether the companies are leveraging and spreading the addiction for their own profits. That is the cigarette analogy, and I can see how it would apply.
Dear ixel, Shawn was not diagnosed with the mental problems until 6 months after he started playing Everquest. He started playing Everquest after he left home. I did all I could do to try and stop him, but he would not listen to me. I could not get any agency to help or commit him to anything, because they said "he never actually threatened to commit suicide", so everything they did for him was on a voluntary basis. I tried everything I could to help Shawn. He was an adult, and there was only so much I could do. He had was addicted, and like any addiction, could not walk up and leave it, even if it meant having seizures, because he played the game. Until you have lived in my shoes, and know what really went on through this, do not criticize me, as a Mother. I loved my son, and did not want this to happen, but there was nothing else I could do. Perhaps, you should have some compassion to the families who have to sit and watch what happens to their loved ones, after they get addicted to this game. Sincerely, Liz Woolley
This is probably too late in the comment thread to get any attention, but...
I am part of a theater company that travels to colleges in the US to do a non-judgemental artistic residency on the topic of addiction. In a series of workshops and a professional theatrical productions, we present the issue from all angles, using verbatum text of interviews with real people as the source for all our dialogue.
The show is called "the Quick Fix" (pardon the website: I'm remodeling), and it primaraly seeks to examine the underlying causes of compulsive/addictive behavior. As I said before, we don't make judgements or present ourselves as having an 'answer'. We just listen to people (via interviews) and re-tell the stories, albeit with a little theatricalization thrown on top (music, dance, lighting, a bit of humor) to make it all a bit more interesting.
As an active participant in the online world, I've been trying to find an EQ or other online-activity addict to interview for some time. If anyone would like to talk to me (IM, email, irc, whatever) and maybe tell their story, contact me through my homepage (outlandishjosh.com) or at joshk(at)thequickfix.com. Your anonymitity will be respected.
Howard Dean for president
As I recall, cocaine induces a state of anhedonia (yeah, spell check it before you look it up to see if I'm abusing the right word). In effect, regular cocaine users permanently affect the neurotransmitter levels in their brain, such that they need cocaine to achieve even formerly "normal" levels of happiness. My details are fuzzy, since I rarely attended Psych 101 in college ;), but how is that not physiological addiction?
-J
Anyone who's played BG2 may have noticed one of the tips while a new level is loading: "while your character doesn't have to eat, remember that you do". I got a laugh from that (i was afterall well into a 10 hour clicking binge), but wow i wonder if it wasn't the layers who stuck that it ;)
in Canada its illegal to shelf citrus beverages which contain caffeine (Mountain Dew up here is decaf). Our government has declared covertly addictive products to be illegal. I believe games such as EQ qualify as covertly addictive. I can imagine policy banning certain psychologically addictive elements in these games, or at least "stickers" labelling them as such.
Personally, I think this would be stupid. It would, however, be consistent with the other policies of my government. (I have only been of voting age for one election, and I voted for some other clowns).