Video Game Companies and Game Addiction.

@mjorh:

SO mature people are not capable of a lapse in judgement ?

Yeah they are. Judgement can be clouded by whatever shitty impacting your personal life ... i consider someone stupid when he ruins his life because of an addiction to a videogame, not someone who had some other issues which led him to be a drug addict or game addict etc ....a strong person can handle any shit tho ..

@mjorh:

Thats exactly how all addictions work...... something has to be wrong with you for any addiction to stick..... be it drugs or video games....

Eh? again you can not as a mature normal-minded person who have a normal understanding of responsibility get addicted to a game. Games is not drugs and have a very real response.

Again again again and another again you are misunderstanding a correlation with a cause.

What causes a person to get a behaviour that can resemble that of a addiction is some kind of mental problem, be it permanent mental issues or tempoary problems in their daily life.

Aside from going to work and normal bodily functions, yes. But I was even calling out of work at times just to play it. It really is quite simple to understand. Just because YOU don't get addicted to something doesn't mean that no one else can.

You don't just "suddenly" become a drug addict or an alcoholic, either. You try it once, then you do it again, then a few more times, and unless you already have that immense self control, you're going to keep coming back to it. No normal well-adjusted person is going to become an alcoholic after one drink.

Problem with your analogy is that Drugs and Alcohol have a real physical and readable response. Games don´t

So again we are back at the core , a normal well-adjusted person would never "invent" a similar response by playing a game. If you actually get a craving or lose self control while playing a game, its again not the cause, its just a symptom of the real problem, be it real life problems and you use games as an escape or mental issues.

But i understand why people want something called gaming addiction, because addiction implies that you are not to blame and that its not your fault. Instead of facing facts and face the problem head on.

Not really Lulu.

With drugs and alcohol there is a physical effect, both during and after the buzz has worn off. Addicts will experience withdrawal which is a real physical manifestation of the addiction.

That will never happen with a game.

It can be argued then that you are to blame if you succumb to drug or alcohol addiction. It's your fault for not limiting your intake of these substances. It's your fault for not seeking help when you know you need help. How many fully functional people do recreational drugs and drinking? Those people know how to deal with those substances. The ones that go full-on addict fail to know their limits. They fail to actively seek help. Same goes with people addicted to gaming. Gaming addiction exists, just not on the same level or for the same reasons as substance addiction.

To say that there is no effect isn't quite true. I will agree that physical responses such as shaking and sweating won't occur, but the pull of the game does. Again, it took me seven times to quit FFXI and each time, I felt it calling to me in the back of my head. I knew the negative effects of playing that game, yet, I would start it up again. And again. I experienced a form of withdrawal. I didn't feel right unless I was playing that game.

I think the bigger issue is what we see right in front of us. I'm older though so games to me are just games. Just a time killer every so often and still play them sometimes. I like gta because it reminds me of being a kid and a troublemaker and you can kind of mess around with stuff in that game and have fun. But nowadays there is so much of this stuff and kids spending their lives doing this stuff when they are just games. I ran into that with wow a while back. Forums and all that and particular people take this stuff too seriously. I can understand wanting to learn things and how this stuff works. I went to school for CS, have a CS degree and was the same way and work in IT but at the same time these developers create cesspools of crap on the internet and Blizzard even got into a lot of that themselves attacking people and doing some pretty nasty stuff probably because they are guilty as charged. Some of this stuff is just too much when they are games and waste of time mainly and a time killer I play for fun to kill some time sometimes. When sites like gamespot and marketing and all this stuff on top of stuff it's a bit much for what these things really are.

I more feel bad for kids who's parents kind of let their kids just waste their lives doing this stuff and get caught up in internet drama and hype and all that stuff. Gamespot is really terrible that way. Having entertainment and games that work and are fun I don't see any issue with that. No different than going to movies every so often. It's when this stuff is being forcefed like it is and people treat it as a way of life is a bit much. I grew up a gamer too. Managed a game store all through highschool. Learned programming in college. I get the culture and everything but at the same time get a life too.

i didn't say that, but it didn't look like you were addicted

Oh, it was bad. It was one of the darker moments in my life. Really, there wasn't any reason why I should have wanted to play that game as much as I did. I mean, I was going out with friends every other night but it got to the point where I preferred to play the game than hang out with them. I even shut my cell phone off and the first thing I did when I got home was turn the PS2 on and connect (was back on 56k) so the home phone wouldn't ring. I didn't want to be disturbed. Like I said, my friends had to show up on my doorstep to check on me because they literally thought something bad happened to me. That's what caused me to quit the first time, but dammit if I didn't get started up again a few months later, and that was even worse.

That sucks, but you still went out with your friends. So you didn't shut out completely