/ 8 January 2010

Addiction or simply a harmless pastime?

Addiction Or Simply A Harmless Pastime?

You know your gaming habit has got out of hand when you start wearing a nappy to allow you precious extra minutes at the screen.

So says Brian Dudley, the director of Broadway Lodge in Weston-super-Mare, western England, which earlier this year became the first addiction clinic in the United Kingdom to welcome gaming addicts.

“We are now seeing some people devoting their whole lives to gaming,” says Dudley. “Some spend 18 hours a day playing on their computers. Immersive role-playing games such as World of Warcraft and Call of Duty hook people and allow them to live in a fantasy world. The online element to the game makes them believe falsely that they have lots of friends.”

Ever since video games became a fixture in our homes in the early 1980s, there has been panic about their effect on increasingly sedentary populations. But are computer games just a hook for addictive personalities? Without extensive research, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get a definitive answer, says Dudley. And the gaming industry is dismissive of the notion that gaming could be harmful.

The Entertainment and Leisure Software Publishers’ Association (Elpsa) says: “Playing video games is simply another daily activity that can give people pleasure. It is not a physical addiction.”

Addiction is not the only worry. Since the launch in 2006 of the Nintendo Wii, there have been regular reports of people suffering from injuries. But it is injuries caused by repetitive actions that seem most likely to manifest themselves during excessive gaming.

Michael Rawlinson, director general of Elpsa, says that the “industry believes that video games should be enjoyed as part of a healthy, active and balanced lifestyle”. In October last year the UK department of health’s Change4Life programme endorsed Nintendo’s Wii Fit Plus for its health benefits.

It marked quite a departure from a Change4Life poster that was distributed across the UK in March last year. It showed a young boy slouched in front of a screen holding the controller to a games console. The headline read: “Risk an early death, just do nothing.” —