Slashdot Mirror
First-Person Account Of Video Game Addiction
The Evil Couch writes "Jive Magazine, an entertainment magazine based in Atlanta, has just released a feature article that the editor has spent over a year investigating on gaming addiction. Starting from being on the outside of the gaming community, she has gone from being a somewhat normal person, to being one of the higher level characters in Anarchy Online. 'People have worse entertainment addictions than playing computer games. If I am going to be addicted to something, I would choose online gaming over drugs, bowling, gambling, television, or being a baseball fanatic easily. I don't have to wear ugly shoes, lose my hard earned money or do the wave next to someone I don't know and that just about makes it a no-brainer for me. It IS after all just a video game, like Neal describes in his great novel, Snow Crash. It is just another amusement park.' Sounds like a happy ending to me."
Ouch!
Karma: Censored (mostly affected by decency laws)
Considering the audience, I don't think we need to read an article to understand gaming addiction...
"the editor has spent over a year investigating on gaming addiction." I wish I could call my playing to much video games something scientific like that. *sighs, goes back to playing PS2*
chmod 000 -R /usr/bin/games /usr/local/games
It worked for me.
And in our upcoming story about heroin addiction, we'll have an interactive special feature where you can enter your zip code and find the location for the dealer nearest you!
One might ask the same about birds. What ARE birds? We just don't know.
"I once had the Everquest on my back. . ."
Welcome to the new 12 step program of GA - Gamers Anonymous. Please feel free to stand and introduce yourself.
I am Casio282, and I'm a gameoholic. My wife told me I spent too much time on the computer playing games. She said I was dropping out of life for a game. She said I was giving up on being a social being.
I told her that the game was played over the modem and I was being Massively Social in my MMPORPG of choice.
There are lies, damned lies, and statistics.
While I agree that games are "better" being addicted to than most drugs (coffee, anyone?) I really can't agree with the conclusion of this article. Gaming addiction can be expensive as hell (especially if you're on dial-up and pay per minute, as we do in Sweden). I had a brush with this sort of behaviour when my brother was playing Ultima Online every day for about half a year -- although he eventually just got tired of it. Any activity which holds you from interactive with other people for a very long time is quite harmful to you, even if you don't actually *like* people.
and I am a Slashdotaholic.
pfft.
Get Firefox!
Hi,
I'm GigsVT, and I'm addicted to water.
It started out innocently enough, a drink here or there at the water fountain in school. Then all my friends started doing it too. It was hard to resist the urge to drink.
Luckily I found this site before it was too late. I have since quit drinking water, and am proud to say I only drink rum or vodka these days.
I've had enough abrasive sigs. Kittens are cute and fuzzy.
Question is, when're they going to start legislating games? I mean, if Evercrack and MUDs are the "hard" games, then what about so-called gateway games? Are they going to make Pacman illegal because it can lead to more severe game abuse? And they do have anecdotal evidence that video gaming can lead to violence and other crimes. Who knows, people might start committing armed robbery because they can't afford the next Evercrack expansion.
The above is not a comment on the "War on Drugs." If you take it as such, you're a low-down good-for-nothing hippie crack dealer terrorist who is against democracy and everything else the US stands for.
If not all sentients are human, couldn't it be possible that not all humans are sentient either?
This coming from a guy whose username is "Scotch". Sounds like an addict to me!
Essentially, this woman just conveyed that she is an addict, but justifies her addiction as healthy, as she could be doing something worse...??!
Well, I'm glad I'm addicted to nicotine. Without cigarettes, I might be smoking crack! Thank god I found this addiction before I moved onto something more serious, like bowling or television.
-agent oranje.
I play alot of videogames, so its not that foreign to me ... But MUD addiction seems to center around some serious pathologies (and I supppose alot of other non-chemical addictions). It's always the same kind of person who is attracted to MUDs, dark, depressed theatre geeks who need to escape reality. Anybody who you can walk up to and say, "Hey how you doin today?" and they reply "Great! I found the key of zathros today." has serious problems not related to videogames :) In the end I just gave up on her
Religion is a gateway psychosis. -- Dave Foley
What does tape have to do with addiction?
XML causes global warming.
This girl I was interested in spent easily 12-18 hours/day playing muds.
So did I. But our computer rooms weren't open longer. I'm so happy I didn't study at the Uni of Warwick in the UK, where they were open 24/7. I knew a guy there who slept in his car for a year. Many people didn't leave the labs for days (can sleep on three or four chairs). Etc.
One of the worst of them eventually married some American woman, and last I heard, was working for Microsoft.
So let that be a warning!
(hi guys, I'm sure some of you will read this :-))
I believe posters are recognized by their sig. So I made one.
Happened to one of my college buddies too. When they kicked him out, he screamed "They can't do this to me! I'm a wizard!"
It's funny... as past history. Not such a giggle at the time, as I remember.
If you were blocking sigs, you wouldn't have to read this.
I've never been into MMORPG, but I have had some marathon sessions with Sim City and Civilization and any good FPS. My trick to setting an alarm for myself is to ignore my bladder for as long as I can. Having created a competing need that escalates in realtime, I have an unavoidable time limit: going to the bathroom == turn the game off. At some point "just one more turn" no longer outweighs "I'm about to piss myself".
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I remember that. And afterwards, didn't they take out their kidneys and sell them?
-Dave
If you stop and think about it for a second, your real life addiction is ruining your roleplaying life. You've already missed several quests, and your traveling partners have moved on to another part of the world. We really need something to break people's addiction to the "real" world, as it takes so many roleplaying lives, its an epidemic. "Social Interaction" has become like a drug to some roleplayers, and they are quickly flocking to this addiction. It is a proven fact, also, that 100% who exist in the real world eventually die. You heard me right! 100%! This is a terrible statistic, and we must do something about it! The "real" world addiction ends here!
im addicted to computer games AND drugs...worst part about it is they make a perfect combination.
They used them to create potions of Tasha's Uncontrollable Hideous Bladder!
Who wouldn't? Those potions sell for three platinum a piece!
Considering NineNine has posted 1575 comments on Slashdot, you may have a point =)
--
Overcaffeinated. Angry geeks.
There won't even be people left to post comments at /.
Snow Crash (a computer virus that infects hacker neural code).
...but I think I'd enjoy a side-scrolling, third-person account of video game addiction more myself. Even Metroid is first-person now...
Green-voting, republican-registered, socialist-libertarian.
from the article: Three years ago at a nightclub I bumped into an old friend of mine who went by the nickname "Iggy". I was really amazed to see him because no one had seen nor heard from Iggy in over a year. Many of his friends had all wondered what happened to him.
Man, that is so 100% what happens to me about every two weeks. My answer is not "everquest", it's "girlfriend".
How we know is more important than what we know.
Cripes, I though /. would be the last place to be overriden by pathetic, thoughtless, bigoted, stereotyped opinions.
You must have missed the Jon Katz articles.
deus does not exist but if he does
I spent my entire Sunday playing Leisure Suit Larry 6. Sure, I could have been out flirting with real women all of that time... but the next time I have to light a cellulite burning lamp of knowledge to bone a chick with transparent pants in the penthouse I break into, I'll know that my zipper can be used as a match strike plate. I think it pays to devote a percentage of ones time to mastering the arts. It shows you care.
Yeah right, like Unix ever had any addictive games.