Video games: cause for concern?

Originally Posted by Kaiten

Frankly I think it's easier to sink too much time into online usage, try spending a whole night doing shit online; it's frighteningly easy.

On a similar note, I was playing Guild Wars the other day. I hadn't played in a while because my video card crapped out on me months back and I only just recently got a new one. Anyway, they must have included this in one of their more recent updates, because up until a few days ago I had not seen this before. I had been playing on a certain mission that is fairly long when I saw a little notice with the rest of my text in the bottom left, saying:

"You have been playing for 1 hour."

An hour later...

"You have been playing for 2 hours."

And another hour later...

"You have been playing for 3 hours. Please take a break."

To that, I just had to laugh. Perhaps this is more common with MMORPGs like Guild Wars or World of Warcraft, but I can see the same thing happening with other games too. It's a case-by-case thing, I think. I fall under 'hooked' too, but I'm sure there are others that can handle it just fine.

The problem is when people take it to such a level that it makes me look like a casual gamer. Like those stories you hear of people dying from cardiac arrest because they played some MMORPG for 72+ hours straight in some internet cafe. Staying up all night playing a game every now and then is one thing. But 72 hours or more straight? (I know I'm exaggerating--at least I'm pretty sure I am--but we know there are people out there that have done stuff akin to that.) That's just ridiculous. I think it's people like that that have to be addressed first. But I agree with Kaiten: pretty much any hobby could have this effect, gaming just happens to be among the more relatively common ones and has been receiving more attention of late.

You don't hear news stories of kids losing sleep over building their Gundam models or Yu-Gi-Oh decks.

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