Slashdot Mirror
Video Game Addiction Saves Lives
EzRag writes "Here's a nice bit about a guy who saved a household of people from a fire, all thanks to his late-night video game addiction. Does this mean I can count all my hours of playing Chron X as community service work?"
Pah, that's not addiction.
Addiction to a game is when you notice a fire and think "well, just play a little more, then I'll take care of it..."
I have a good friend of mine who has a really horrid family life. Father works in the north pole for some government satelite project and is only home 2 weeks out of the year, every year. When he is home he dissappears for the majority of those two weeks, drinks constantly, cheats on his wife, and gambles all his money away in Vegas.
My friends mom is a wreck because of this, she doesn't trust any of his friends, and right now they aren't making enough money to pay for their house, meaning my friend may have to leave school, forfeiting his education to get a job and pay the bills.
However, with all this drama at home he is one of the most easy going, light hearted guys I know. I blame this all on his video gaming habits. I'm thoroughly convinced that if he weren't able to dive into alternate lives through his PC monitor every night for the majority of his life, he would be angry, depressed, and probably would have snapped and killed someone by now.
Maybe my explanation doesn't paint the appropriate picture, but you get the idea. In the end, games are also a great way of dealing with stress in the real world, and can definitely benefit those in need of some vacation from reality.
"I torched my home for DAoC, and all I got was this lousy T-shirt"