How Do You Tell If You Are A Gaming Addict?

This is my feature for Internode this week.

Have you ever sat in the doctor's surgery and played a PSP or DS to pass the time? I know I do it. How would it be if your doctor became concerned with the amount of time you spent gaming and labeled you a gaming addict? Don't laugh. This could be just around the corner. The American Medical Association (AMA) is going to vote on whether gaming addiction is labeled as a disorder, leading to the basis of how to diagnose and treat gaming addiction through medical practitioners in the US. Yet, the precedent to classify gaming addiction in the US isn't so much based on medical science, it is more an exercise based around political points scoring by the AMA. This does not necessarily represent the actions of a concerned number of GPs attempting to improve public heath. Upon closer inspection what you find is that the AMA's report is its own worst enemy because within it you will find not a damning indictment on the addictive nature of video gaming but the attempts by a group of individuals to shape public opinion with a thesis that holds no merit.

So, how exactly do you classify video game addiction and what kind of treatment is such an unusual disorder going to require? The publicity behind the notion of video game addiction has grown over the last five years. Everquest would have to be the game which should largely be considered the catalyst behind creating the notion of video game addiction. While the MMO genre was established by the time Everquest hit the marketplace it was this game which popularized the genre. Ultima Online is one of the oldest serving MMOs, however, the game didn't receive the same amount of negative publicity as Everquest. So many people spent so much of their spare time playing this game that it was given the nicknames "Evercrack" and "Neverest." There were a couple of well documented suicides assocated with the game as well. This type of negative publicity created wider interest in the gaming industry with Psychologists and Doctor's weighing in on the argument of whether gaming can be a negative experience.

To read the rest of the feature go to internode ...