Gaming is big business but it has its downside. People have died from gaming and the world is recognizing that game addiction is serious and spreading fast. Mental health professionals opine that gaming can destroy lives, keep students from focusing on learning, workers from working, and women from their duties. There are instances where gamers have not left home for years.

Games like EverQuest, Dark Age of Camelot, and others are popularly referred to as heroinware. And symptoms of addiction according to Computer Addiction Services at McLean Hospital are: obsession with the game; inability to stop; neglect of family and work; lying to hide activity; problems with studies and work; health problems, muscular as well as vision related; neglect of personal hygiene; as well as sleep disturbances.

The games provide social interaction to lonely people, gamers gain acknowledgement as well as power denied elsewhere due to their gaming expertise, and the game weaves a spell on the mind—one gets so absorbed by the virtual realities that it is hard to get away.

More in next topic...........

regards
Jerry

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But, doesn't the gaming business continue to grow regardless?

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I wonder if they will find a gene specific to addictive gamers that causes them to fall into this category...

or is this just another in our long line of disorders we invent to classify people.

Games are not the problem here, people are the problem. Games are just tools and they can be used for many ends. For years, doctors have been using games to treat conditions. The Wii is being used for therapy.

If people have issues with socializing or getting out of an online game, that is a problem with the person, not the game, and needs to be addressed as the level of the person.

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I agree with EILT.
I think it's usely the people that have a crazy imaganation that don't no the differance between real and virtual.

I think that games are kind of new to this century and people don't know how to deal with this kind of technology so they kind of have a mental breakdown and spend way to long playing games.

Also games are mostly based on things that normal people don't get to experiance like a character in world of war 2 or a great hero in a fantasy world and i think that some people start to believe its true.

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“Love is all fun and games until someone loses an eye or gets pregnant”

It is people not games

O i forgot to put this in my last post but they even use game engines and some proper games for learning in schools and private learning schools.

I have even heard they make recruits in the army and new airplane pilots to play games like Call of duty 4 and flight simulators

So games cant be that bad

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“Love is all fun and games until someone loses an eye or gets pregnant”