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In light of gamers in Korea dropping dead in Internet Cafes after 4-day stints on their favourite games, it made me wonder whether games are really as stress relieving as they make themselves out to be.
Take a typical working day for any person. It involves getting up, looking for socks, feeding self, catching up on the news, nothing really stressful there (apart from the socks). And if finding the socks makes you too anxiety-ridden, there's nothing like a good session of Tetris or Bubble Bobble or Frequency to blow those undergarment hunting nightmares out of the window. Nothing sinister there, then.
The stress of commuting to work, whether it be on foot, car, train or other mode of transport is a well known phenomenon, resulting from time to time in pedestrian rage, road rage, rail rage and so on. Nothing that a good stint on Grand Theft Auto 3 or State of Emergency wouldn't cure.
And of course the pressures of work itself can be instantly allieved by a prolonged session of blowing your boss away in Timesplitters 2, Silent Scope, Agent Under Fire or, if he's particularly ugly, Turok Evolution. You can even use a cheese-wire on the catering staff at your works canteen by firing up Hitman 2.
Games seem to pander for practically every stress inducing situation around. But DO they? Are life's pressures so great these days that games just don't cut the mustard like they used to? Is there ONE game out there that could cater for all stresses? I think not.
The problem is this: Some people just don't want to face up to their lives. Whether it be their environment, their relationships, their family, their personal circumstances; for some people games are the ultimate diversion from dealing with problems that they 'should' really face up to, playing games is the easy way out. But things CAN and DO go wrong. Some gamers get so immersed in their games that one game in particular suddenly 'becomes' their life. Everything about that game controls them from that point. They are the ultimate roleplayers.
Half Life/CounterStrike and its other variants is possibly one game if this type to quote. For many players, this game IS their life. Their whole being revolves around the game. All their social interactions are with other players online. They literally live for the game. And in one particular instance a player is assumed to have died from stress when playing it. (That must have been an amazingly tense shootout).
Other titles that have this effect on people are generally found on the PC, and generally fall into the Online category. And are usually Massively Multiplayer. I personally know many people whose lives revolve around a game called Legend of Mir. Many people on this website will be familiar with people playing Planetarion who seem to have no life at all apart from playing the game. Quake and the Unreal Tournament series of games also have their devout followers, as do Diablo, Never Winter Nights, Baldur's Gate...I could go on.
But here's another problem: Consoles.
Lots of people own them now, and lots of people play games. And what are the consoles gradually doing? Yep, starting to go online. Which means that there will be a plethora of new titles coming out that should fit the requirements for recruiting potential 'obsessive gamers'. The possibility exists that more and more gamers will discover that 'perfect game' which to them represents 'life', into which they can throw themselves whole-heartedly allowing them to ignore all other facets of their lives.
'Obsessive gaming' is a small problem, minute compared to the millions of other problems that exist, but with consoles going online this problem could grow. And it's too late to do a great deal about it. The easiest way, with hindsight, would have been to educate future gamers at school about the psychology of gaming, why we do it, the potential pitfalls, why the pitfalls exist, how to overcome them and so on. In my day the closest we ever got to facing real life problems was the Home Economics class, but for some wierd reason this just involved cooking. No changing plugs, no jump starting a car on a cold day, no window repairs courses, no dealing with debt modules, no healthy environment units or anything remotely like it. Just cakes and the occaisional bit of flaky pastry. Nothing really helpful when it comes to dealing with your first day out of the proverbial nest faced with finding your own place.
So ignoring hindsight for now, I'd suggest starting with some form of help-line for gamers that think they've got a serious problem with gaming. Perhaps an online forum for addicted gamers would be the best way to do it, so they can discuss how addicted they are, trade urls for their favourite games, and so become addicted to another game that a mate told them about. Hmm, maybe not such a great idea.
Perhaps we should be tackling the pressures that cause this kind of stress in the first place? Maybe. But how do we identify them? Research needs to be done. Problem gamers need to be identified. Polls need to be taken. Data needs to be collected, qualified, analysed and interpreted. Perhaps one of you lot out there looking for a project for your A Level or Degree Course might like to base one on a study of gaming addiction; the causes, the symptoms, the cures.
If we do something now, perhaps more needless deaths and more needless addictions can be prevented. But with XBox Live just around the corner, and Sony possibly following suit in the near future, gaming obsession could become a big time problem for many more gamers than it is currently.
Take a typical working day for any person. It involves getting up, looking for socks, feeding self, catching up on the news, nothing really stressful there (apart from the socks). And if finding the socks makes you too anxiety-ridden, there's nothing like a good session of Tetris or Bubble Bobble or Frequency to blow those undergarment hunting nightmares out of the window. Nothing sinister there, then.
The stress of commuting to work, whether it be on foot, car, train or other mode of transport is a well known phenomenon, resulting from time to time in pedestrian rage, road rage, rail rage and so on. Nothing that a good stint on Grand Theft Auto 3 or State of Emergency wouldn't cure.
And of course the pressures of work itself can be instantly allieved by a prolonged session of blowing your boss away in Timesplitters 2, Silent Scope, Agent Under Fire or, if he's particularly ugly, Turok Evolution. You can even use a cheese-wire on the catering staff at your works canteen by firing up Hitman 2.
Games seem to pander for practically every stress inducing situation around. But DO they? Are life's pressures so great these days that games just don't cut the mustard like they used to? Is there ONE game out there that could cater for all stresses? I think not.
The problem is this: Some people just don't want to face up to their lives. Whether it be their environment, their relationships, their family, their personal circumstances; for some people games are the ultimate diversion from dealing with problems that they 'should' really face up to, playing games is the easy way out. But things CAN and DO go wrong. Some gamers get so immersed in their games that one game in particular suddenly 'becomes' their life. Everything about that game controls them from that point. They are the ultimate roleplayers.
Half Life/CounterStrike and its other variants is possibly one game if this type to quote. For many players, this game IS their life. Their whole being revolves around the game. All their social interactions are with other players online. They literally live for the game. And in one particular instance a player is assumed to have died from stress when playing it. (That must have been an amazingly tense shootout).
Other titles that have this effect on people are generally found on the PC, and generally fall into the Online category. And are usually Massively Multiplayer. I personally know many people whose lives revolve around a game called Legend of Mir. Many people on this website will be familiar with people playing Planetarion who seem to have no life at all apart from playing the game. Quake and the Unreal Tournament series of games also have their devout followers, as do Diablo, Never Winter Nights, Baldur's Gate...I could go on.
But here's another problem: Consoles.
Lots of people own them now, and lots of people play games. And what are the consoles gradually doing? Yep, starting to go online. Which means that there will be a plethora of new titles coming out that should fit the requirements for recruiting potential 'obsessive gamers'. The possibility exists that more and more gamers will discover that 'perfect game' which to them represents 'life', into which they can throw themselves whole-heartedly allowing them to ignore all other facets of their lives.
'Obsessive gaming' is a small problem, minute compared to the millions of other problems that exist, but with consoles going online this problem could grow. And it's too late to do a great deal about it. The easiest way, with hindsight, would have been to educate future gamers at school about the psychology of gaming, why we do it, the potential pitfalls, why the pitfalls exist, how to overcome them and so on. In my day the closest we ever got to facing real life problems was the Home Economics class, but for some wierd reason this just involved cooking. No changing plugs, no jump starting a car on a cold day, no window repairs courses, no dealing with debt modules, no healthy environment units or anything remotely like it. Just cakes and the occaisional bit of flaky pastry. Nothing really helpful when it comes to dealing with your first day out of the proverbial nest faced with finding your own place.
So ignoring hindsight for now, I'd suggest starting with some form of help-line for gamers that think they've got a serious problem with gaming. Perhaps an online forum for addicted gamers would be the best way to do it, so they can discuss how addicted they are, trade urls for their favourite games, and so become addicted to another game that a mate told them about. Hmm, maybe not such a great idea.
Perhaps we should be tackling the pressures that cause this kind of stress in the first place? Maybe. But how do we identify them? Research needs to be done. Problem gamers need to be identified. Polls need to be taken. Data needs to be collected, qualified, analysed and interpreted. Perhaps one of you lot out there looking for a project for your A Level or Degree Course might like to base one on a study of gaming addiction; the causes, the symptoms, the cures.
If we do something now, perhaps more needless deaths and more needless addictions can be prevented. But with XBox Live just around the corner, and Sony possibly following suit in the near future, gaming obsession could become a big time problem for many more gamers than it is currently.
I can see the more unscrupulous dealers cutting good collections of games with 3DO titles. Smuggling Army Men games would be simple as well, seeing as most people are capable of memorising 20 lines of source code.
I did a bit more research on this topic and found a two year old article entitled "Online Gaming Addiction" by Alex "Epic" Blonski. He summarised by saying:
"Next time you log on to one of these games, I want you to take a look around the room. Do you see pages of hint guides, food, empty pop cans, and garbage littering the floor? Do you really think that the world inside this box we call a computer is more important than the world we must function in every day? We are given the choice to enter the virtual world you see on your computer screen, but we are forced to function in our world every day to survive. Online games are a nice distraction from real life. They give us contact with people from all around the world that we might not otherwise meet. They provide rich fantasy worlds with lots of interesting characters. They give us a chance to be heroes in a world not too distant from our own.
Now think about the amazing world you are missing. Your parents love you for who you are. Your friends love you for who you are. Your siblings and offspring love you for who you are. What more do you need out of life?
A little fresh air and a nice new wizard staff wouldn't hurt..."
But then he ruined it. The article finished with 7 related links to, guess what? Everquest, Diablo, Asheron's Call and Diablo II, not exactly helpful.
There was another link to a forum discussing how to cope with gaming addiction, and the 26 replies weren't exactly conclusive, varying from 'do a bit of homework' to 'take a week long break, but then I find I play twice as much the next week to catch up'.
This article, as already stated, was two years old. And get Gaming Addiction still exists today, perhaps even more so. It doesn't look as if anyone has seriously tackled the problem yet.
I did a bit more research on this topic and found a two year old article entitled "Online Gaming Addiction" by Alex "Epic" Blonski. He summarised by saying:
"Next time you log on to one of these games, I want you to take a look around the room. Do you see pages of hint guides, food, empty pop cans, and garbage littering the floor? Do you really think that the world inside this box we call a computer is more important than the world we must function in every day? We are given the choice to enter the virtual world you see on your computer screen, but we are forced to function in our world every day to survive. Online games are a nice distraction from real life. They give us contact with people from all around the world that we might not otherwise meet. They provide rich fantasy worlds with lots of interesting characters. They give us a chance to be heroes in a world not too distant from our own.
Now think about the amazing world you are missing. Your parents love you for who you are. Your friends love you for who you are. Your siblings and offspring love you for who you are. What more do you need out of life?
A little fresh air and a nice new wizard staff wouldn't hurt..."
But then he ruined it. The article finished with 7 related links to, guess what? Everquest, Diablo, Asheron's Call and Diablo II, not exactly helpful.
There was another link to a forum discussing how to cope with gaming addiction, and the 26 replies weren't exactly conclusive, varying from 'do a bit of homework' to 'take a week long break, but then I find I play twice as much the next week to catch up'.
This article, as already stated, was two years old. And get Gaming Addiction still exists today, perhaps even more so. It doesn't look as if anyone has seriously tackled the problem yet.
As the Greek government did, only for slightly different reasons.
The gaming market would eventually resemble the drugs market. Dealing in Class A games could result in a life sentence. The government would claim for harsher sentences for class C games, for fear it woudl lead to harder stuff, like Activision titles.
Sniffer dogs would have to be retrained to the smell of half finished pizzas and coffee. I suspect things would become easier for customs however, as only very talented individuals woudl be able to smuggle a game via insertion about their person, at least without serious discomfort.
The gaming market would eventually resemble the drugs market. Dealing in Class A games could result in a life sentence. The government would claim for harsher sentences for class C games, for fear it woudl lead to harder stuff, like Activision titles.
Sniffer dogs would have to be retrained to the smell of half finished pizzas and coffee. I suspect things would become easier for customs however, as only very talented individuals woudl be able to smuggle a game via insertion about their person, at least without serious discomfort.
XBox-DTox, has a nice ring to it, huh? :)
Maybe British Telecom have actually identified this problem already, leading them to penalise people for being online so much. Or maybe it's because they were losing so much money because people though that 'be online for as long as you want to for a set price' meant exactly that, when in fact in actually meant 'be online until you've racked up enough hours for our liking and then we'll charge you for the time used after that'. Probably the latter case, having worked for BT in the past I think I can safely say the words 'benevolent' and 'generous' don't apply to that company.
How about if the problem of 'obsessive gaming' became so big that the Government decided to intervene, regulating the amount of time anyone could be allowed to be online or to play games? Yikes!
Maybe British Telecom have actually identified this problem already, leading them to penalise people for being online so much. Or maybe it's because they were losing so much money because people though that 'be online for as long as you want to for a set price' meant exactly that, when in fact in actually meant 'be online until you've racked up enough hours for our liking and then we'll charge you for the time used after that'. Probably the latter case, having worked for BT in the past I think I can safely say the words 'benevolent' and 'generous' don't apply to that company.
How about if the problem of 'obsessive gaming' became so big that the Government decided to intervene, regulating the amount of time anyone could be allowed to be online or to play games? Yikes!
So you'd have a sort of 'levelling down' clinic?
The samaritans would need more training, too. How do you go about consoling someone who's been booted from their clan?
The samaritans would need more training, too. How do you go about consoling someone who's been booted from their clan?
In light of gamers in Korea dropping dead in Internet Cafes after 4-day stints on their favourite games, it made me wonder whether games are really as stress relieving as they make themselves out to be.
Take a typical working day for any person. It involves getting up, looking for socks, feeding self, catching up on the news, nothing really stressful there (apart from the socks). And if finding the socks makes you too anxiety-ridden, there's nothing like a good session of Tetris or Bubble Bobble or Frequency to blow those undergarment hunting nightmares out of the window. Nothing sinister there, then.
The stress of commuting to work, whether it be on foot, car, train or other mode of transport is a well known phenomenon, resulting from time to time in pedestrian rage, road rage, rail rage and so on. Nothing that a good stint on Grand Theft Auto 3 or State of Emergency wouldn't cure.
And of course the pressures of work itself can be instantly allieved by a prolonged session of blowing your boss away in Timesplitters 2, Silent Scope, Agent Under Fire or, if he's particularly ugly, Turok Evolution. You can even use a cheese-wire on the catering staff at your works canteen by firing up Hitman 2.
Games seem to pander for practically every stress inducing situation around. But DO they? Are life's pressures so great these days that games just don't cut the mustard like they used to? Is there ONE game out there that could cater for all stresses? I think not.
The problem is this: Some people just don't want to face up to their lives. Whether it be their environment, their relationships, their family, their personal circumstances; for some people games are the ultimate diversion from dealing with problems that they 'should' really face up to, playing games is the easy way out. But things CAN and DO go wrong. Some gamers get so immersed in their games that one game in particular suddenly 'becomes' their life. Everything about that game controls them from that point. They are the ultimate roleplayers.
Half Life/CounterStrike and its other variants is possibly one game if this type to quote. For many players, this game IS their life. Their whole being revolves around the game. All their social interactions are with other players online. They literally live for the game. And in one particular instance a player is assumed to have died from stress when playing it. (That must have been an amazingly tense shootout).
Other titles that have this effect on people are generally found on the PC, and generally fall into the Online category. And are usually Massively Multiplayer. I personally know many people whose lives revolve around a game called Legend of Mir. Many people on this website will be familiar with people playing Planetarion who seem to have no life at all apart from playing the game. Quake and the Unreal Tournament series of games also have their devout followers, as do Diablo, Never Winter Nights, Baldur's Gate...I could go on.
But here's another problem: Consoles.
Lots of people own them now, and lots of people play games. And what are the consoles gradually doing? Yep, starting to go online. Which means that there will be a plethora of new titles coming out that should fit the requirements for recruiting potential 'obsessive gamers'. The possibility exists that more and more gamers will discover that 'perfect game' which to them represents 'life', into which they can throw themselves whole-heartedly allowing them to ignore all other facets of their lives.
'Obsessive gaming' is a small problem, minute compared to the millions of other problems that exist, but with consoles going online this problem could grow. And it's too late to do a great deal about it. The easiest way, with hindsight, would have been to educate future gamers at school about the psychology of gaming, why we do it, the potential pitfalls, why the pitfalls exist, how to overcome them and so on. In my day the closest we ever got to facing real life problems was the Home Economics class, but for some wierd reason this just involved cooking. No changing plugs, no jump starting a car on a cold day, no window repairs courses, no dealing with debt modules, no healthy environment units or anything remotely like it. Just cakes and the occaisional bit of flaky pastry. Nothing really helpful when it comes to dealing with your first day out of the proverbial nest faced with finding your own place.
So ignoring hindsight for now, I'd suggest starting with some form of help-line for gamers that think they've got a serious problem with gaming. Perhaps an online forum for addicted gamers would be the best way to do it, so they can discuss how addicted they are, trade urls for their favourite games, and so become addicted to another game that a mate told them about. Hmm, maybe not such a great idea.
Perhaps we should be tackling the pressures that cause this kind of stress in the first place? Maybe. But how do we identify them? Research needs to be done. Problem gamers need to be identified. Polls need to be taken. Data needs to be collected, qualified, analysed and interpreted. Perhaps one of you lot out there looking for a project for your A Level or Degree Course might like to base one on a study of gaming addiction; the causes, the symptoms, the cures.
If we do something now, perhaps more needless deaths and more needless addictions can be prevented. But with XBox Live just around the corner, and Sony possibly following suit in the near future, gaming obsession could become a big time problem for many more gamers than it is currently.
Take a typical working day for any person. It involves getting up, looking for socks, feeding self, catching up on the news, nothing really stressful there (apart from the socks). And if finding the socks makes you too anxiety-ridden, there's nothing like a good session of Tetris or Bubble Bobble or Frequency to blow those undergarment hunting nightmares out of the window. Nothing sinister there, then.
The stress of commuting to work, whether it be on foot, car, train or other mode of transport is a well known phenomenon, resulting from time to time in pedestrian rage, road rage, rail rage and so on. Nothing that a good stint on Grand Theft Auto 3 or State of Emergency wouldn't cure.
And of course the pressures of work itself can be instantly allieved by a prolonged session of blowing your boss away in Timesplitters 2, Silent Scope, Agent Under Fire or, if he's particularly ugly, Turok Evolution. You can even use a cheese-wire on the catering staff at your works canteen by firing up Hitman 2.
Games seem to pander for practically every stress inducing situation around. But DO they? Are life's pressures so great these days that games just don't cut the mustard like they used to? Is there ONE game out there that could cater for all stresses? I think not.
The problem is this: Some people just don't want to face up to their lives. Whether it be their environment, their relationships, their family, their personal circumstances; for some people games are the ultimate diversion from dealing with problems that they 'should' really face up to, playing games is the easy way out. But things CAN and DO go wrong. Some gamers get so immersed in their games that one game in particular suddenly 'becomes' their life. Everything about that game controls them from that point. They are the ultimate roleplayers.
Half Life/CounterStrike and its other variants is possibly one game if this type to quote. For many players, this game IS their life. Their whole being revolves around the game. All their social interactions are with other players online. They literally live for the game. And in one particular instance a player is assumed to have died from stress when playing it. (That must have been an amazingly tense shootout).
Other titles that have this effect on people are generally found on the PC, and generally fall into the Online category. And are usually Massively Multiplayer. I personally know many people whose lives revolve around a game called Legend of Mir. Many people on this website will be familiar with people playing Planetarion who seem to have no life at all apart from playing the game. Quake and the Unreal Tournament series of games also have their devout followers, as do Diablo, Never Winter Nights, Baldur's Gate...I could go on.
But here's another problem: Consoles.
Lots of people own them now, and lots of people play games. And what are the consoles gradually doing? Yep, starting to go online. Which means that there will be a plethora of new titles coming out that should fit the requirements for recruiting potential 'obsessive gamers'. The possibility exists that more and more gamers will discover that 'perfect game' which to them represents 'life', into which they can throw themselves whole-heartedly allowing them to ignore all other facets of their lives.
'Obsessive gaming' is a small problem, minute compared to the millions of other problems that exist, but with consoles going online this problem could grow. And it's too late to do a great deal about it. The easiest way, with hindsight, would have been to educate future gamers at school about the psychology of gaming, why we do it, the potential pitfalls, why the pitfalls exist, how to overcome them and so on. In my day the closest we ever got to facing real life problems was the Home Economics class, but for some wierd reason this just involved cooking. No changing plugs, no jump starting a car on a cold day, no window repairs courses, no dealing with debt modules, no healthy environment units or anything remotely like it. Just cakes and the occaisional bit of flaky pastry. Nothing really helpful when it comes to dealing with your first day out of the proverbial nest faced with finding your own place.
So ignoring hindsight for now, I'd suggest starting with some form of help-line for gamers that think they've got a serious problem with gaming. Perhaps an online forum for addicted gamers would be the best way to do it, so they can discuss how addicted they are, trade urls for their favourite games, and so become addicted to another game that a mate told them about. Hmm, maybe not such a great idea.
Perhaps we should be tackling the pressures that cause this kind of stress in the first place? Maybe. But how do we identify them? Research needs to be done. Problem gamers need to be identified. Polls need to be taken. Data needs to be collected, qualified, analysed and interpreted. Perhaps one of you lot out there looking for a project for your A Level or Degree Course might like to base one on a study of gaming addiction; the causes, the symptoms, the cures.
If we do something now, perhaps more needless deaths and more needless addictions can be prevented. But with XBox Live just around the corner, and Sony possibly following suit in the near future, gaming obsession could become a big time problem for many more gamers than it is currently.