Slashdot Mirror
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."
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.
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.
----------
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
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
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
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
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).