in all honestly fellas, get a sport and pick up an instrument. Find ones that interest you. I've got an addictive side with games but I beat it by doing judo. Diversify your obsessions and you'll be happier. You end up with more to do as well. When you get bored of the comp you can just pick up the gat and work on your blues or whatever. Sports give you friends with common interests, snowboarding gets you girls, etc. Aside from clinical cases, it's all just common sense. I've been playing games hard since the Amstrad (I was about five), As I got older I found sports. Some stuff is just more fun than gaming no matter what you do (but then again, different strokes). Comfort zones and all. Now I just play whenever I've got nothing better to do. It keeps the enjoyment levels high as well.

The examples provided are anecdotal, and though there are examples of extreme behaviour occurring relevant to the situation, this does not automatically indicate causation, or even correlation, these could merely be extreme outliers. For example, the kids that have died and/or killed over WOW may already have psychological predispositions towards compulsive behaviours or other abnormal mental function. As such, any studies observing addictive status need to isolate a single variable and control for addictive/obsessive personality traits. It could be that the kids that get addicted, would've gotten addicted to something or anything else. I'm not disputing whether gaming is addictive or not (as almost anything invoking pleasure can be), I'm saying there needs to be clear research indicating HOW addictive gaming is relative to other sources of neurochemical release (drugs, hookers, eating crayons). Also making a point to control for personality types (addictive personalities may be more inclined to head towards gaming for example, which means there's actually a separate issue operating here). Furthermore, given gaming is addictive, how difficult is the process of 'curing' said addiction? I personally think substitution would work fine (give someone a sport to play, get them invited to parties, whatever). This could result in a paradigm shift (changing behaviour affects the underlying thought processes, or schemata) whereby they care less about reaching level 70. This can be cognitively reinforced by demonstrating the change in quality of life/emotional wellbeing after six months, now that they've got x, y, and z in their lives to motivate them. At the moment this article has only offered me anecdotal examples (Scientifically speaking, meaningless) backed up with an inconclusive study (again, scientifically speaking, meaningless). I want statistics, not journalistic quips. These have the potential to create public opinion based upon sensationalist (unrealistic) information. Again, I'm not disputing the presence of the disorder, I'm disputing the magnitude, and, importantly, biasing factors (predispositional behaviours notably). That being said, it's good this issue is broached, earlier the better. ::EDIT:: I just found the bit about Loton's study. I retract the bit about inconclusive studies, but the rest of it stands.