According to one of my previous lecturers, addiction or addicts is a very very horrible word to use for someone who is hooked on something, especially in gaming. This is coming from the same guy who helps Ben "Yahtzee" Crowshaw from time to time.

You know what, I would have to agree with him on that front, not because you wouldn't call those kind of people addicts, more to the point that they don't actually admit to actually having a problem and believe that everyone in real life is out to get them to do one thing or another.

I'm not here to throw rotten tomatoes at World of Warcraft even though I'm one of those who just simply can not be bothered to actually play the game and fork out money to play a game when I would be simply be doing something more worthwhile... say like... Designing... so everyone who were about to bag me out for abusing a game which I can not be bothered playing, you'll have to bag out someone else... say like someone within your inner circle who's killing your bandwidth when playing WoW

Sure that those who plays games for an extended amount of time would be deemed to be addicts, due to the signs of what an addicts goes through, with a large amount of resources attempting to fix the problem, but there may be no actual cures to act like a silver bullet, but usually the best way to cure it would be something which hits them like a bombshell for say.

If they don't react to it, then isolation may be a fix. It isn't as simple as keeping them away from the game but as many games nower days requires internet connection; they may try and venture off in search for the gaming habitat. Start the rolling ball and once it gets critical, something going to change, but that's a hefty but interesting gamble as not very many has attempted it yet. If anyone's tried it, let me know.

Now comes the next problem of what to call people who are hooked excessively into gaming. Well, we can use the known term that's quite tame and we could possibly have two subgroups... The Hardcore Gamer. I know it would slur the original term coined by gamers, but then again... two groups, competition gamers and extreme. Some could argue that there should just Competition gamers and Extreme Gamers.

Competition Gamers is an obvious one... they can earn a living through it. Extreme... well, you can guess... plays games to an excess.

All this talk about Excessive gaming, but how to identify.. because there are some which are deemed to be excessive which isn't actually that excessive at all... but then again... it is near to case per case face value, so as a sorta general guideline. In excess of 8 hours per day over a stretch of 5 days, disruption to normal day to day activities, confinement to one area and violent behaviour when driven away from those activities. Some could argue the lack of social interaction, but there are many games which people do interact socially to complete an achievement then some will argue that they are playing with their friends, which does throw that theory out the window.

Send me your thoughts and hopefully this will be a social unity on this subject before the extremes on both sides do get out of hand.

Threats are usually treated accordingly... punched, kicked, prodded and thumped by many parties involved