“You’re ruining it for the rest of us!”

July 16th, 2007

This is apparently true, and it isn’t good. A couple obsessed with some online video game almost let their kids starve to death: Police: Babies starved as parents gamed (MSNBC.com).

The article basically sticks to the facts and is fair. And the events are an argument in favor of at least recognizing that video game playing can be a problem behavior for some people. I’m still not in favor of labeling video games as clinically addictive, despite the article’s link to discussions on the subject.

No, video games are not the problem; it’s the people themselves (in this case the parents) who are the problem. Yes, more kids are abused by drug-using parents, and those cases are all too often completely ignored. Maybe ’cause we’re jaded. Maybe ’cause we’re scared of thuggish drug users but not nerdy gamers. But that doesn’t mean we can’t pretend that no problems exist.

Most people who play video games use them very healthily. Most people who drink alcohol use it healthily, too.

So what to do?

What do the non-alcoholic friends of people with a problem do that genuinely helps? What do you do when your friends spend all their time and money at casinos?

What doesn’t work is calling the problem behavior a disease (it doesn’t help). Outlawing it doesn’t do any good either. And since I don’t have friends who have what I recognize as addictive or compulsive problem behaviors, I don’t really have any experience.

But what does work?

(Tangentially: I wonder if this is actually an argument for more voice chat in online games. I am not thrilled by voice chat in MMORPGs, ’cause I fear it will interfere with my ability to roleplay. But making the people you’re gaming with real and facilitating players actually getting to know one another may enable the same social support online that people get when they have healthy groups of real-life friends and coworkers.)

Entry Filed under: Popular Perception, Addiction, Problems