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."
i wonder how long it took to prepare that brief...
Lawyer: Hey - does anyone have the old AD&D suicide brief? cool, thanks.
s/AD&D/Everquest/
s/TSR/Sony/
there, done.
... hi bingo
Shawn Woolley - who was overweight, worked in a pizza restaurant and lived alone in an apartment the last months of his life - may have depended on EverQuest to provide the life he really wanted to live.
Couldn't have been that he was a schizoid depressive maniac who didn't have any friends. Must be the game.
(Leaves comparisons to Black Sabbath and D&D to other posters....)
From the article:
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.
Sounds like most Slashdot readers are in danger,
Now maybe video games will take the heat for teen suicide and Ozzy can get some rest.
She is angry that Sony Online Entertainment, which owns EverQuest, won't give her the answers she desires.
In other words, she'll appeal and appeal until Sony caves in and settles.
"The manufacturer of EverQuest purposely made it in such a way that it is more intriguing to the addict,"
Well, *duh*. Entertainment is supposed to be enjoyable...And *newsflash!* Enjoyable things are addictive! Like sports...taking walks...shopping...sex! If it wasn't, then we as humans wouldn't seek it out so often, and it wouldn't enrich our lives - We'd turn into very dull people.
Not only that, but it's in Verant/Sony's financial interests to make the game enjoyable and addictive. Since it's on a subscription-based model, they need people to *want* to continue to play, so that THEY can to continue to make money.
*FWAP* - The sound of 1,000,000 Slashdot readers simultaneously slapping their foreheads in disgust...
"Mod, mod, mod...and another troll bites the dust."
the kid was 21 years old, an eppileptic, and clinically depressed, along with a few other psyhological disorders. IANA[insert profession here], but to me it's clear that the game was part of the problem as he was playing 12 hours/day, and once thought the characters were chasing him, but mom and the psychologist continued to let him play it. Sony's lawyers will also be quick to point out the Columbine case.
The One Rule Of Chess You'll Ever Need: Don't play someone who carries a kit in their bookbag.
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
Sony (rightly) believes that giving this case the time of day is in a way admitting possibility of fault. The simple fact is that people commit suicide over a lot of things. If someone reads a book and it depresses them to the point that they kill themselves, it's not the fault of the author. Likewise, while it's very sad that this person killed himself, it's in absolutely no way Sony's fault.
Sony (again, rightly) believes that their game data is irrelevant to the case. What would be a lot more telling is an analysis of any possible psychological problems the boy had that led to his suicide.
Lendrick
I gotta agree with you on that one. Yes I'm a programmer, and I know a lot IT related people read /. too, I (as some others here surely), have also played computer games for 12+ hours straight. Maybe even 12h/day for an entire week, but after that, I'm just washed out: head-aches, sleep-deprivation, undernourishment, aven after a week I can physically feel these symptoms... I usually stop playing such a game when vision of said game appear in my sleep... that's just too freaky for me.
Then of course reality slowly kicks back in and urges me to spend the next week in a bar with friends (whom I actually call, Mark, Eric and Fred and not Kueller, Vodobass and toString) thus leading to more hadaches, sleep deprivation and undernourishment I guess.
Then I usually find a job.
how does one change his
... it's compulsive behavior. Almost anything can be compulsive. Picking your nose, eating your hair, sucking your thumb, washing your hands fifty times a day, sex - they can all be compulsive, but they're not addictive.
To compare video games to things that are really addictive like smoking or crack is silly. Worse than that, it gives you an excuse not to deal with your compulsion properly. It's way to easy to say "oh, I can't quit - I'm addicted". Nonsense. Go on vacation somewhere where you have better things to do than EverQuest and you'll find your "addiction" wasn't nearly as strong as you'd thought.
As for this poor guy who committed suicide, that's sad. But he obviously had deeper problems. If EverQuest hadn't existed he would have latched on to some other way of escaping from his real life.
It is tempting, if the only tool you have is a hammer, to treat everything as if it were a nail. - Abraham Maslow
This is no different from the whole "Doom killed my kids" thing. The parents obviously feel horrible, and can't face the fact that their negligence and/or poor parenting directly contributed to their childs demise. Therefore, someoine else must be to blame. Even if he killed himself because of events in the game he OBVIOUSLY didn't have a very solid seat in reality. She should go to jail for child abuse.
Just my 2 cents.
Has anyone looted his corpse yet? And, are we sure it was a suicide? Maybe he was on a PK server...
Its possible.
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.
Well, the leader of the group will do it, then the rest of his party will laugh and split up the loot on his corpse. Sometimes it sucks to take the lead!
bbh
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'
In a related story, area cocaine and crack dealers are now affixing their product with warning labels to avoid similar lawsuits.
But seriously, has it gotten so bad that companies have to warn consumers that their product is of too high quality?
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Books make people do bad things too.
I once read that book "The Diceman" and then did something bad, which resulted in one of my friends not speaking to me anymore. That was definately the books fault.
And didn't the guy who shot JFK read "Catcher in the Rye?". So that was the fault of a book too. And those insane terrorists were influenced by the Koran, weren't they? So books cause terrorism.
So, definately a warning label is required on books. "Warning: Reading books might make you do bad things". Something like that.
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
First is the usual "we can't understand the gamer" / "games kill" stance. This isn't anything new to the Slashdot crowd, I'm sure. Heck - I've been in the middle of a lot of these things through my entire life (D&D, Arcade games, FPS Shooters, MUDs, Paintball, etc). So yea. Shake your head at in awe. Collectively yawn. Nothing new here.
Where it becomes interesting is that this is NOT a kid. This was a 21-year old adult. Living on his own. He had been diagnosed with several conditions (eplileptic, depression, schizoid personality disorder) but it doesn't appear that he was a ward of his parents or anyone else. He was his own person. His own responsibility.
Sony is right in refusing to release information on his account. This information belonged to the player alone. Unless there is a legal reason to do otherwise (ie: police investigation with appropriate warrent), Sony would be breaching their customers privacy by releasing any details.
Everquest boasts a user population of over 300,000.
.sig
The national rate for suicide is 1 in 10,000.
If only one person committed suicide after playing Everquest,
then Everquest players are 97% less likely to commit suicide.
I'd guess there are 30 suicides among Everquest players each year,
but the families don't think of blaming Sony for them.
-- this is not a
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!
"We're trying to whack them with a verdict significantly large so that they, out of fiscal self-interest, will put warning labels on," he said. "We're trying to get them to act responsibly. They know this is an addictive game."
For the love of Pete, people. Cigarettes are addictive because of nicotene, which is a chemical agent that acts on the brain. Warning labels go on cigarettes because the smoke causes long-term damage to one's lungs, and more. Lawsuits are being levied against the tobacco industry because they've been knowingly increasing the levels of nicotine in their products to increase addiction, marketing to children who may not be aware of the dangers of the product, and have for years denied any knowledge of the dangers their products cause.
None of these arguments apply to video games.
It's a virtual world, people. The problems here are as old as IRC, BBSes and even Ms. Pac-Man arcade machines. Heck, gamblers have for centuries had the same problems. If it's fun, people can and do get addicted. But that's not Sony's fault, nor is it (to be bluntly honest) their problem.
Sony is NOT deliberately manipulating their games or online worlds to make people play longer. They are NOT adding subliminal messages saying "Play more EverQuest" or installing Trojan horses that log you on when you're trying to do productive work. They don't offer any incentive to play, other than virtual money and level powers. The fact that people sell high-powered characters on eBay for real money is something Sony has even tried to prevent in court themselves.
They know the game is popular, but there is no way a sane person can argue they are KNOWINGLY addicting people to this thing.
Elizabeth Woolley of Osceola: I hate to say it, but the game had nothing to do with your son's suicide. The suicide and his addiction to the game doubtless had the same cause -- "A psychologist diagnosed him with depression and schizoid personality disorder," according to the article -- but you cannot hold Sony responsible for keeping him from playing as often as he liked.
The game is popular, it is fun, but it's not designed to be addictive any more than any other video, board, or card game. With all due respect to your tragedy, you're looking for blame in exactly the wrong place.
...for a while, anyway.
I mean, this guy was an epileptic, schizoid, overweight, sex-deprived (what the hell is 'sexual anorexia' anyway?) manic-depressive who worked at a pizza place. His life really sucked. Who can blame him for wanting to escape into a world where he's fit, good-looking, powerful and respected? And who knows, maybe playing EQ was the only thing that kept this guy interested in living as long as he did?
He obviously needed help, and it's very sad that it ended this way. Apparently there weren't any people around who were willing to take enough of an interest to get him the help he needed, but why blame the game?
The obvious answer is that his mom knows that she should have helped him, and didn't, but doesn't want to accept it so she'd rather blame the faceless corporation that may, arguably, have brought this guy what little joy he had.
Note to ACs: I usually delete AC replies without reading them. If you want to talk to me, log in.
I'd say that I miss objective journalism, but I've become cynical: I no longer believe there ever was any.
Ellen
mods metamodded as "Unfair"
I usually stop playing such a game when vision of said game appear in my sleep... that's just too freaky for me.
Unfortuneately, many people don't. Check out this application for one of the 'Uber' EQ guilds.
http://www.fohguild.org/html/recruit.php
Note some of the downright anti-social requirements, such as a level 60 avatar, and the 'right' class. Most damning of the lot is this, which is a direct quote from the page:
- We raid generally 6 days a week. Attendance to at LEAST 5 days is required. If you are busy with work or school or any other outside responsibility and do not feel you can make it 5 times a week, this is not the right guild for you. Raid times vary on the weekends, but generally our weekday schedule is from 4pm PST until 10pm PST.
There are people with too much time on their hands out there. There are also people like this, who have abandoned real life in favor of the alternative.
The next Slashdot story will be ready soon, but subscribers can beat the rush and slashdot the links early!
A Shaman named Rathgar once told me, "There's three kinds of people who play this game, elves, non elves, and me." Looking back I think there are only two kinds of people who play. Normal people and abnormal people.
I personally witnessed the self destruction of more than one person while playing the game and I saw many people put trust in people who they didn't know only to lose all of their in game posessions. For those people who would spend 12 hours a day for more than a year in game only to lose it all because they thought they had a friend it is very devistating. No more different than giving someone you meet in real life the key to your apartment only to come home one day and find all your stuff gone, save a few pennies scattered on the rug.
Everquest is addicting and there is a point where you realize, at least there was for me, that you've spent nnn hours in game and have yyyy treasure. You can quit now and lose it which makes you realize that the nnn hours were all pretty much a waste or you can keep playing until you find something better to do with your time that will make you forget about the waste of nnn hours and the loss of yyyy treasure. Some people quit and come back to the game several times before quitting for good. Others will do something to get banned from the game to ensure that they will be quitting for good. I think this is where you see people getting ripped off by so called friends because the people who do this are caught and they do get banned.
I think Everquest can be a very dangerous game for some people. It is only a game but it has people interacting and bad people do play it. I definatly wouldn't let a child play it and would advise against a mentally ill person playing it as there seem to be enough of those playing already. On the other hand, I have heard great things about how some people with physical handicaps have used the game to give them a life they couldn't normally have.
'Same speed C but faster'
I graduated high school with Shawn from Osceola in 1998. He seemed like any other geek/nerd, myself included. I don't think anyone I went to school with, especially in such a small town, knew that Shawn had any of his diagnosed problems. From what I understand, most teenagers suffer depression, and many have internet addictions. I feel that if Shawn's mother knew of his many problems, and is atiment enough to sue over his game-related suicide, she should face herself for not having done more to prevent it. Quoted from the article, "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." There are things called interventions. I think that most people understand that a game is a game, including Shawn. If his mother knew it caused seizers in him, maybe she should've removed him from the situation, being it's such a huge issue to her now. I guess the big thing here is prevention. Shawn was diagnosed with unstable clinical problems, not due to a computer game. The internet is a place for geeks alike to feel welcome and accepted. I've expericed the same. Perhaps Everquest was the only escape and joy Shawn had from his problemed life.
Wine is fine, but whiskey's quicker Suicide is slow with liquer Take a bottle, drown your sorrows Then it floods away tommorows Away tommorows
Evil thoughts and evil doings Cold, alone you hang in ruins Thought that you'd escape the reaper You can't escape the master keeper
'Cos you feel life's unreal, and you're living a lie Such a shame, who's to blame, and you're wondering why Then you ask from your cask, is there life after birth What you saw can mean hell on this earth Hell on this earth
Now you live inside a bottle The reaper's travelling at full throttle It's catching you, but you don't see The reaper's you, and the reaper is me
Breaking laws, knocking doors But there's no one at home Made your bed, rest your head But you lie there and moan Where to hide, suicide is the only way out Don't you know what it's really about
Wine is fine, but whiskey's quicker Suicide is slow with liquer Take a bottle, drown your sorrows Then it floods away tomorrows
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
Nah, the worst game for this kind of thing was the original X-Com: UFO Defense. I'm not talking about the standard stuff, like ducking for cover every time I walked out to my car, or instinctively evaluating every room I walked into for the tactical possibilities. One time, after playing for about 8 hours, I saved my game and went outside for a food run. I saw a couple of guys across the street - and I promise you a little red box with a "2" apeared in the lower right corner of my peripheral vision. You old-school X-Com players will know what I'm talking about.
Addiction is defined as "a continued behavior despite mounting negative consequences." There is nothing in that definition which requires a physiological dependence for addiction to take place. Also notice that there is a clear line between a compulsive behavior and an addiction; namely the requirement that there be negative consequences which get worse over time.
There are plenty of gambling addicts who would take offense at how you've minimized their disease. Having spent some time around problem gamblers, I can assure you that they are in just as much pain as the problem drinkers and drug abusers...and causing just as much pain to those around them.
One last thing -- addiction is largely a matter of genetics. If your family has a history of addiction, you run the risk of having those same genes. Your only real choice is whether to trigger the addictive behavior with your choices or not.
"she says i'm lousy conversation. as if that's supposed to help."
Then Jay is a pretty ignorant chemical dependency councellor, because you can fuck yourself up in a lot fewer than 15 weeks by binge abuse of anything. The Government actually says that cocaine isn't actually that big a deal. The problem - as with any addiction - is binge abuse and the associated screwing up of your life and that of those around you. Yes kids, doing anything for 36 hours straight can fuck you up. Cocaine, alcohol, EverQuest, hacking, screwing, car mechanics, drinking water, praying.
At some point we have got to stop making arbitrary decisions to slap "good" and "bad" labels on various substances and activities. Because - with a few noticable exceptions - the problem is generally the abusive behaviour and not the substance or activity being abused.
OK, let's look at the cocaine analogy, because it keeps getting raked up. Cocaine (a non physiologically addicting substance, as used by the President of the United States) was used widely and legally for fifty years by perfectly ordinary average people, until a series of frenzied newspaper stories in the 1910's stirred up an irrational campaign to have it banned because of all the "Negro Cocaine Fiends" running around raping white women (the police also increased the standard caliber of their guns from .32 to .38 because "The cocaine nigger sure is hard to kill," if you want to know where that scene in Alien Nation came from). This, of course, does not form part of standard drug education in schools, because drugs are bad, and we can't give any context that might dilute that message, like "Drugs are bad (when abused by people with abusive personalities)".
Similarly, there is a very real danger of games going the same way. It only takes a few genuine and tragic reports of binge abuse to trigger a frenzy of supposition and speculation that leads to knee jerk legislation that will never, ever be taken off the books, because black markets and Wars on Whatever are great for incumbent governments looking for a long term unwinnable but popular crusade. Remember, circa 1900, the vast majority of the population enjoyed cocaine, in small, dilute quantities, just as now, the vast majority of the population enjoys playing games, computer or otherwise, with no ill effects. If we don't learn the lessons of the past, then in eighty years, we might be in a world where Disney games are the only legal ones and people gather in dirty back rooms to share virus ridden copies of Quake 13 in huge debilitating weekend binges. It's unthinkable? Ask anyone from 1900 about the possibility of cocaine being viewed as more dangerous than a rabid pit bull with a flick-knife, and they'd laugh in your face.
Let's have some consistency. If EverQuest really is dangerous when abused in binges by sad, desperate people with no life or hope, then let's ban it outright, because god knows that's worked in the War on Drugs, right? If not, legalise cocaine and put a warning on it to only buy approved, over the counter non-cut (virussed) versions, and not to binge abuse it, especially if you have a medical condition that makes you very succeptible (like epilepsy or schizophrenia with games).
And while we're at it, if I go on a 36 hour prayer binge and start having hallucinations, do we put a warning label on rosary beads? If not, why not? Because paranoid solipsistic visions are "good" when they feature commands from Baby Jesus, whereas the same messages coming from EverQuest Eric are "bad"? Hmmm.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I've seen this elsewhere today, but it cannot be overstated...
Everquest uses a randomized rewards system, meaning that you do not consistently get responses for repeating the same behaviour. If you kill a monster you may get experience, but not always. This is intermittant reinforcement which is a highly effective method of conditioning behavior. And, like advertising*, it works works very well whether you believe it is affecting you or not. Just repeat, over and over, stimulus-response, stimulus-response... there is a reason for the nickname Evercrack!
* If you don't believe that you are affected by advertising, spend a few days working at a direct marketing company or ad agency... it is very scary how effective ad 'tricks' can be on any audience. The only advertising question what is the right stimulus for the audience.
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
My, oh my. The title did read:
And now, as if by magic, it reads:
OK, we're getting the idea. Thing is, this is the web. It's all cached somewhere. Maybe an idea to acknowledge the correction when you screw up, rather than trying to cover it up. You're writing for the record here, guys.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
If people can't take care of themselves then let the government do it. If someone dies (because he/she shouldn't have been doing it in the first place) then blame the manufacturer!
Like the case where a moron used his lawn mower to trim his bushes and lost some fingers or arms. He sued the maker of the lawn mower (and won) because the company didn't put a warning label on the mower telling him not to do that.
As the mother says in the article: "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."
If he wasn't supposed to be playing then why did you let him play you stupid bitch? (man that frustrates me!) Who was going to make him stop playing the game? The police? FBI? Sony? Guess what, lady. YOU were the only one that knew about his condition. YOU were the one that let him keep playing (even after you knew that he was playing 12 and 36 hours in a row). YOU were the one who neglected to do anything about his game playing. The fault is yours, not Sony's.
Wake up and smell the fucking coffee!
"A plan fiendishly clever in its intricacies"- Homer Simpson
I know this guy was an adult (age 21), but still this case reeks of every case from Columbine to the next one we will read about - lack of any sort of intervention by parential figures. People, get a clue, if you don't have involement in your siblings lives, regardless of age, you are doing more damage than any game can ever do.
RonB
It is human nature to take shortcuts in thinking.
Picking your nose, eating your hair, sucking your thumb, washing your hands fifty times a day, sex...
Clicking Refresh on April Fools hoping for real news.
No sig for you!!
...and the game would cause seizures
I'm an epileptic. Have been all my life. I've had my brain picked constantly from the age of two by neurosurgeons and neurologists from far and wide. I've had a segment of my left temporal lobe excised in a failed attempt to remove scarring causative of epilepsy. I think I've read everything there is to read on epilepsy, and I simply do not know how a game can cause it. Certainly, photo-sensitive epilepsy (i.e., the variety of epilepsy in which light can provoke seizures) can be provoked by viewing of a monitor, especially at a lower refresh rate. The same goes for flourescent lighting. But I've never known a photo-sensitive epileptic who could not come up with any solution to the monitor problem. And "the game" isn't provoking the seizure in that case anyway. If that were the case, the mother should be suing her monitor manufacturer, or perhaps just giving herself a whack in the head for letting her unprecedentedly and dubiously photo-sensitive son use a screen of any sort. Sleep deprivation can often increase the frequency of seizures - it was in fact subtly recommended to me by a neurologist when I was once under observation for two weeks, waiting for a seizure to occur so that the neurologists might observe it that sleep deprivation might speed up the process - and MMORPGs can deprive one of sleep, but that doesn't precisely constitute "the game" causing seizures, either, anymore than ill-health due to sleep deprivation constitutes Everquest causing the common cold. Frankly, I think the mother is just looking for pity, here. And she's making specious arguments about her son's serious medical condition in order to further her profit-seeking. You don't have to be any sort of medical professional to conclude that Everquest doesn't "cause", in any precise sense, seizures.
You've never been bullied much, have you? Or faced inescapable injustice?
I agree with the basis of your statement, but not the qualification. People can push others to very desperate acts. Even a very strongly willed individual has their breaking point.
But I do not believe that the case in this article falls into this scope.
Get off it
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.
I could easily say, going to work everyday and posting on slashdot is a waste of life, I could say the only way to enjoy life is to go to raves and parties every night.
Who am I tell other people how to spend their lives?
Its people like you, constantly telling this weak minded person that their lifes a waste, that most likely caused this guy to commit suicide in the first place.
Imagine everyone telling you how you are wasting your life because you refuse to live like they do,
lets see, doctors, teachers, people like you, your own mother, a weak minded person can easily be influenced by other people and might commit suicide.
My advice to you, never tell anyone their life is a waste.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
I'm sorry he's dead... no, wait, I'm not sorry he's dead. He was the one that was dumb enough to sit in front of a computer screen being completely unproductive 12 hours a day.
I am a theoretical mathematician... I suppose that means you won't be sorry when I am dead.
God is real unless declared integer
Yeah, the D & D suicide attacks are specious, and we know it. Lawyers fight for their clients, not for the truth.
http://www.religioustolerance.org/d_a_d.htm
Michael Stackpole calculated expected suicide rates by gamers during the early years of Dungeons and Dragons. He used B.A.D.D.'s estimate of 4 million gamers worldwide. Assuming that fantasy role game playing had no effect on youth suicide rate, one would have expected about 500 gamers would have committed suicide each year. As of 1987, B.A.D.D. had documented an average of 7 per year. It would appear that playing D & D could be promoted as a public health measure, because it would seem to drastically lower the suicide rate among youth.
Emphasis mine.
A social game means you're dealing with people. Sometimes that means you despair over a bad relationship, but despairing over loneliness is a far greater risk.
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First of all, the mother isn't suing Sony saying that EQ caused her son to kill himself. So you can stop the speculation on whether she'll win, because it isn't an issue.
Second, Everquest is addictive. Not chemically addictive, but neither is marijuana, which is the perfect comparison.
Smoking pot makes you not really care about the world. You smoke a bowl and just sit around doing anything. No sense of "I should be doing something productive" or "hmm...sitting around here playing video games isn't really that fun, maybe I should go see what my friends are up to".
It's exactly the same thing with Everquest, except it works in a different way. You log on, you play the game, and you accomplish things in the game. You gain a level, or you get some new item, and that makes you feel like you've accomplished something. And you have. Getting to a high level in Everquest takes hard work and long hours. And because it takes the same sort of qualities that real accomplishments take to achieve, it seems like you're being productive.
To summarize: pot makes you do nothing but smoke pot because you don't care about accomplishing anything. EQ makes you do nothing by play EQ because it seems like you're accomplishing stuff.
Success in Everquest is a lot easier than in the real world. There's no random setbacks, your sword won't suddenly break, you can't get fired from your job, some dot com isn't going to collapse right after promoting you, and so on. It gives you a chance to socialize with people without the hassle of actually making friends.
Everquest is a perfectly fine diversion, but it's very very easy to get caught up in it and it become more than a diversion. What'll I do tonight? Well, I could go out to a club, have a few drinks...but...maybe I won't have a good time. I'll just play Everquest. Anyway, I started playing Everquest a lot while I was unemployed. Why not, since I didn't have anything else I needed to do? But the thing is that that sense of accomplishment from the game keeps you from being motivated to go accomplish anything in real life, so I'm quitting at least until I have my real life more in order.
Son, speaking as a psychologist (IAAP) I can tell you right here, right now, that counseling alone will do dick for just about every psychosis, most neuroses that are more than mild, and most forms of depression. In these instances, which constitute the vast majority of what we term 'mental illness', drugs are absolutely required. Counseling might help in combination with the drugs, but the drugs are almost always necessary.
People who blather on about 'being strong' and 'not being drug dependent' were either never serious cases or are utter morons. Don't presume to offer an authoritative opinion on something you know nothing about, especially when that opinion essentially devalues the experience and the quality of character of everyone with a serious mental illness.
Max
My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
Oh, please.
My wife was diagnosed with a "Chemical Imbalance". The only way for her to be "better" was to take medication.
She decided that she hated the way that the medication made her feel, and she decided she was going to seriously stop. She started eating better, exercising, and getting rid of her inner demons through serious talks. She went through therapy, and she came out of it with the chemical imbalance cured. All tests came out perfectly normal. It baffled the doctors, because western medicine doesn't teach that the body and mind can heal themselves.
Try learning a bit about holistic medicine. Your patients will thank you.
When encryption is outlawed, ?o'AZ-,++o+i++##4AoA+-/-C++bI+/.+~
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
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).