4A
NEWS
THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, MAY 6, 2008
VIDEO GAMES (CONTINUED FROM 1A)
into her house on one condition
— he couldn't bring the computer.
"I had to do it. I was out of money," Lewis said. "It sucked, though. I didn't know what to do with my day but go to work."
Lewis returned to school in the fall as a part-time student at Coffeyville Community College, and a part-time employee at a cabinet factory. He still doesn't own a computer. He gets his homework done either at school, a library or a friend's house.
"I figure I better not get one, just to be safe," Lewis said.
However, Lewis doesn't accept that he was addicted to the game.
Lewis said he hadn't played "World of Warcraft" in a year, and has lost 20 pounds since quitting.
IS GAMING AN ADDICTION?
Addiction has both a dictionary definition and a medical definition. In common usage, people describe things that they like as something they're addicted to.
"Some people would think that, I could see why," Lewis said. "But really, had I given a crap about anything else, I could've quit. I proved that by quitting."
"When they say video game addiction, they're saying there's kids who love using video games so much that they're doing it much more than anything else in their lives," said Stuart Gittlow, doctor of addiction psychiatry, and a
member of the American Medial Association Council of Science and Public Health. "But that's really not the way the medical field looks at it."
One psychology textbook calls addiction a condition that "occurs when a person has become physically or psychologically dependent on a substance following use over time."
Doctors also recognize what they call addictive behaviors. Michael Brody, a child psychiatrist and professor of American studies at the University of Maryland, defined addictive behaviors as when a person needs more and more of a substance or behavior to keep him going, or when the person becomes irritable and miserable if he does not get more of the substance or behavior.
In June 2007, the AMA edited a report on the effects of video games on significant users over extended periods of time to describe the behavior as "video game overuse" instead of "video game addiction"
According to a national survey conducted by the Entertainment Software Association in 2005, the average gamer is a 30-year-old male, who averages between seven and eight hours of video game play a week.
"The only thing that we did was have the wording changed, so that it was no longer' video game addiction', with video game addiction being a defined term that applies
to certain physiological illnesses" Gitlow said.
The AMA also decided against including video game addiction as a mental disorder in its Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, or DSM, because it needed to see more research on the physiological effects on significant users.
The AMA's report on video game overuse said that the pattern of behaviors was most similar to that of pathological gambling, which is recognized as a disorder in the DSM.
"With the Internet and gaming addictions, as with all process addictions, the person can and does get high off of this addiction," Camacho said. "The brain is chemically changed, so when a person is getting ready to get active in their addiction — say they're getting out school and getting ready
Tanya Camacho, an adult addiction counselor at the Illinois Institute for Addiction Recovery, said in a telephone interview that she thought gaming overuse was an addiction, and that the patients she helped were legitimately addicted to video games.
"It's probably one of the most recent addictions to come to light, and as with alcoholism 50 some years ago, people aren't believing it's an addiction." Camacho said.
Camacho said those addicted to video games were using them as a means of getting high.
to go home and get on the Internet — their body and the chemicals in their brain release the same chemicals as the drug addict who is heading toward their dealer's house and getting ready to shoot up."
WHAT HOOKS YOU TO A GAME?
Massive Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games, or MMORPGs, have the most addictive potential of any game because the game is never over. Users can constantly play the game to attain a higher level or to master their skills.
With MMORPGs, players are able to choose an avatar, or virtual character, that represents them, or who they wish they were. The avatar casts spells or attacks others at the user's command.
Online multiplayer first-person shooter games are also very popular, and potentially addictive. They put the user in control of a soldier with guns, grenades and other weapons with the goal of destroying enemy forces. Popular games in this genre include "Call of Duty 4", "Halo 3" and "Counter Strike: Source".
In addition to fantasy elements, comparative achievements also play a big role on the potential of
Camacho said the fantasy aspect of video games made them easy to get hooked on. She said that the most common game her patients obsessed over was "World of Warcraft," with a community of more than 10 million users.
video games to hook players. Many games have a level or ranking system that rewards players for accomplishments completed during game play. Video game makers have also programmed in achievement points, which give users bragging rights over others in the gaming world. Some of the achievements are hidden and require great skill to accomplish. These are referred to as Easter eggs in the gaming world.
Josh Fry, KU alumnus and one-time producer for Gamer Nation, a television show about video games that used to air on TechTV said, "Game makers put Easter eggs in there to give users more of a 'hey-I-found-this' feel. Getting them is a test of your skills, so accomplishing it is bragging rights for them."
One of the most famous Easter eggs in gaming is found in "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction." After defeating the game's final boss, players get the opportunity to play a bonus level against demonic cows wielding poleaxes.
The online networks for X-Box 360 and Playstation 3 allow gamers to talk with each other through headsets, and some computer games also have this feature.
Most online video games offer a chat feature, which allows users to communicate with each other as they play.
Another attractive feature of multiplayer games is social networking.
TRAGIC EVIDENCE
Video game addiction is real and personal to Liz Woolley, founder of Online Gamers Anonymous, or OLGA, an organization aimed at helping video gamer overusers by providing them with information and support to help them stop. Woolley's son Shawn had an obsession with Everquest, a game he literally died playing.
"I am in AA [Alcoholics Anonymous], and he was acting just like every other addict I know," Woolley said in a telephone interview from her new home in Tennessee.
Shawn began to play more and more, and eventually became socially withdrawn. Woolley said He didn't have social contact with anyone, not even family or friends. Woolley said Shawn even left in the middle of his brother's wedding to go back home and play more "Everquest." He also quit taking his prescription medicine for epileptic seizures.
Woolley took her son to therapists, but they did not treat his gaming as an addiction. One therapist told them that the problem was all in the mother's head. She finally got Shawn into a group home with no computers, where she said he became more social and took his medicine. However, things took a turn for the worse when he left the group home and got a new apartment and computer.
"He got the computer and that's
highly addictive games
DOOM
Today's first-person shooter and network multiplayer games
owe a lot of their success to "DOOM." It was a landmark game, and has been voted most influen
influential and best game of all time by gaming magazines. Plenty of nostalgic gamers still play "DOOM," which was released in 1993.
Everquest
MMORPGs have existed since
the early
90s, but
they didn't
become
a main-
stream
video
game
genre until
"Everquest" came out in 1999. Its variety of playable characters and forms of play paved the way for other games in the genre. The addictive game is also called "Evercrack" by its hooked users.
Final Fantasy
games
The "Final Fantasy" series has been a staple of role playing
for more than two decades now, and it has a large, loyal fan base.
The series has been known for its deep storylines and character development. The games test gamers' endurance, sometimes requiring as many as 40 hours to complete.
This game puts players at the helm of Roman armies in
Rome: Total War
wartime, combining real-time tactics and turn-based strategy. It lets players control
everything from battle formations to culture to economy. It has unlimited replay value, so gamers can always come back to it.
The Sims
ing"The Sims."The series of games lets players control the lives of an individual or family
Like playing God? Then you'll
— everything from the characters' hob
bies to their bladders."The Sims" gives gamers the opportunity to control lives the way they wish they could control their own lives.
World of Warcraft
Blizzard Entertainment's "World of
Warcraft" took the MMORPG genre and made the genre its own. It now has more than 10 million
subscribers. The game has even made its way into popular culture. An entire episode of "South Park" revolved around the main characters playing the game, and featured characters and landscapes from the actual game.
What's better than slaughtering
aliens? Slaughtering them with
Halo
high-tech weaponry. And that's just the series' campaign mode.
The sci-fi first-person thriller
shooter's
online multiplayer mode lets players battle it out to prove themselves as the best in the world. Destroying smack-talking twelve-year-olds can be pretty rewarding too.
Starcraft
Blizzard makes the list again with its real-time strategy game.
with its real-time strategy game.
the real-time strategy game is still popular with players 10 years after its release
The game is most popular in
South Korea, where tournaments of the game's competitive multiplayer mode are broadcast on television.
Grand Theft Auto
Why follow a linear storyline when you can do whatever the hell you want? That's the idea
behind "Grand Theft Auto" game, which has made them so popular. The series broke
open the idea of letting gamers roam cities freely instead of going from mission to mission all the time. The series' popularity has encouraged many other game makers to adopt the free-roaming gameplay.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
A bicycle taxi driver moves along through a damaged area of Yangon on Sunday following cyclone Nargis. The death toll from the devastating cyclone has risen to almost 4,000.
10,000 feared killed after cyclone
ASSOCIATED PRESS
YANGON, Myanmar — Myanmar's government said Monday more than 10,000 people were feared killed in a cyclone that unleashed 12-foot tidal surges and high winds that swept away bamboo homes in low-lying coastal regions, cutting off electricity and water in the country's largest city.
The ruling junta, an authoritarian regime which cut the nation off
from the international community for decades, appealed for foreign aid to help in the recovery from Saturday's disaster, the country's deadliest storm on record.
Residents of Yangon, the former capital of 6.5 million, said they
The casualty count has been rising quickly as authorities reach hard-hit islands and villages in the Irrawaddy delta, the country's major rice-producing region, which bore the brunt of Cyclone Nargis's 120-mile-per hour winds.
were angry the government failed to adequately warn them of the approaching storm and has so far done little to alleviate their plight.
Some in Yangon complained the 400,000-strong military was only clearing streets where the ruling elite resided, while leaving residents, including Buddhist monks,
to cope on their own against the
huge tangles of uprooted trees.
"The government misled people. They could have warned us about the severity of the coming cyclone so we could be better prepared," said Thin Thin, a grocery store owner.
我国北部寒湿地区之一
"There are some army trucks out to clear the roads, but most of the work was done with a dah (knife) by the people. Some of these tree trunks are 4-feet thick," said Barry Broman, a retired U.S. State Department officer who was in Yangon when the cyclone struck. "Thousands of trees were uprooted. All the roads were blocked by the trees."