There's a vast distinction between a game causing an addiction and a person being predisposed to becoming addicted. I can become addicted to any repetitive actitivity; it doesn't matter whether it's playing Civ3 (or EQ) or jogging. The difference lies in the definition of psychological disorder. Make no mistake, five days without sleep or dropping out of school for a semester to play a game is a disorder. A disorder is defined as a harmful dysfunction that is atypical, disturbing, maladaptive or unjustifiable. I contend that the game itself is not the cause of the disorder. More likely it's a lack of self control with a root in depression, social anxiety, low self esteem, or a disassociative personality disorder in conjunction with a game that gives delayed rewards that causes "addiction." You can go to http://www.geocities.com/morrison94/ to see the Diagnostic and Statistica Manual for Psychological Disorders and then compare the exact symptoms to the manual.
but in this sense all capitalists are assholes. anyone that's in business to make money (and that's the purpose of every business) will try stomp all over anyone that gets in their way. granted, holding the copyright on what's being used makes that stomping a lot easier. as for the victems, props to them for trying to make a buck, but being enormously popular doesn't make something legal. coughweedcough
Slashdot Mirror
There's a vast distinction between a game causing an addiction and a person being predisposed to becoming addicted. I can become addicted to any repetitive actitivity; it doesn't matter whether it's playing Civ3 (or EQ) or jogging. The difference lies in the definition of psychological disorder. Make no mistake, five days without sleep or dropping out of school for a semester to play a game is a disorder. A disorder is defined as a harmful dysfunction that is atypical, disturbing, maladaptive or unjustifiable. I contend that the game itself is not the cause of the disorder. More likely it's a lack of self control with a root in depression, social anxiety, low self esteem, or a disassociative personality disorder in conjunction with a game that gives delayed rewards that causes "addiction." You can go to http://www.geocities.com/morrison94/ to see the Diagnostic and Statistica Manual for Psychological Disorders and then compare the exact symptoms to the manual.
but in this sense all capitalists are assholes. anyone that's in business to make money (and that's the purpose of every business) will try stomp all over anyone that gets in their way. granted, holding the copyright on what's being used makes that stomping a lot easier. as for the victems, props to them for trying to make a buck, but being enormously popular doesn't make something legal. coughweedcough