Thursday, February 26, 2009
Addicted: How Do You Quit an MMORPG?
I found another interesting article regarding addiction to the internet, or more specifically, MMORPG's on digg.com. MMO's and MMORPG's tend to take over people's lives, they're known for destroying relationships and livelihoods. Unlike substance abuse, addiction to MMORPG's are hard to counter. This article basically talks about the dangers of MMORPG's and how to quit this dangerous addiction. In the past, in China, there were accounts of Online gamers that died after a 3 Day Online Marathon.
I have a lot of friends that are addicted to internet gaming/MMO's/MMORPG's and with this in mind, I thought about the parallel between substance/drug addiction and internet/gaming addiction. Unlike chemical addictions like alcohol, cigarettes and other substances, the addiction to an MMO is not physical. However, it is both emotional and psychological. The MMO tends to fill in a gap hitherto left vacant by an unfulfilled social life. MMOs can, in many ways, bring some sense of false emotional satisfaction to the user. The addiction to MMOs can be difficult to overcome. Being an avid gamer, I stopped playing MMO's because it was too time consuming and reality hit me hard and I realized I have to focus on "real life." But with that being said, Asian countries suffer greatly from internet/gaming addiction and there are actual MMO treatment clinics that opened up in China and other Asian Countries to counter this addiction. Furthermore, another article talks about how the Chinese Government will soon begin a mandatory program which will see all online video game players registering their real information for anti-addiction monitoring purposes. I hope that the US doesn't get too addicted to MMO's or MMORPG's. But if this trend reaches the America's, I won't be surprised if MMO treatment clinics opened up here as well, I always feel like we're the last country to receive foreign/international products/problems. What do you guys think?
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Internet addiction is only overcome by going cold turkey for at least 3 months. By that time,if you ever go back, you wil have gotten used to the sunlight again and eating real food, not microwaved.
>>former mmo junkie (now I just jump from beta to beta and convince myself there will never be one as good as the first one)<<
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