S. Korea's Stress-Driven Online Gaming Addiction

techsoldaten writes "The Washington Post is running an article about the ever-increasing problem of videogame addiction in South Korea. From the article: 'The situation has grown so acute that 10 South Koreans -- mostly teenagers and people in their twenties -- died in 2005 from game addiction-related causes, up from only two known deaths from 2001 to 2004, according to government officials.'"

Re:Is it the games?

[Aglassis]

It says in the article that most of the gamers die due to sitting in cramped positions for hours. Apparently it disrupts their blood circulation.

It seems to me that if they went out for smokes, a lot fewer gamers would be dying. At least in the short term.

We have a major lesson here: get up and take a walk every couple of hours.

Pretty Safe Addiction;

[Ruff_ilb]

Just TEN PEOPLE died?

Sorry guys, not that significant. How many people die every year due to any sort of drug related addiction?

A hell of a lot more.

Dupe. Marathon gaming still a problem. (plz read)

[iamcf13]

This item appeared earlier here. I don't have the exact URL to it though....

For those 'afflicted', they see it as the only means of escape from a stress-filled, dead end life into a world where they have the power to do just about anything. For a handfull of people, that is all they have to live for hence their marathon gaming sessions and (sometimes unfortunately) subsequent death.

If society at large wasn't so materialistic and cash-driven (gotta make a buck no matter what the cost), the stress levels would go down dramatically so people wouldn't do marathon gaming anymore as a means of escape from their 'pitiful' lives. Perhaps they could do 'great things' that would benifit society worldwide as a whole without the relentless pressure to 'grab cash' along the way just to stay alive....

in the meantime

[Robocoastie]

In the meantime far more people get injured playing or by fights or even killed over their constant passion for Monday Night Football and yet we see no articles about it because "oh that's normal..." It's just more of the "us vs. those weirdos" mentality.

Industrial rat-race?

[Somnus]

Individuality and inspiration are grossly undervalued resources in many Asian cultures. So is reason, but it's not as obvious.

Acceptable Addiction vs. Unacceptable Addiction

[reporter]

The articles hints at two forms of addiction.

1. One form is simply that a game player likes the computer game. The player might spend hours on playing the game. A good example of an absorbing game is Netrek of the early 1990s [netrek.org]. Many geeks at UC-Berkeley spent hours on playing this game instead of working on their Ph.D. dissertations.
2. Another form is a means to escape an abusive household. The article at the "Washington Post" states, "'I can understand my son's suffering,' she said. ' He could never satisfy his father and was failing at school. But when he plays his games, he becomes an undefeatable warrior.'" When parents physically or emotionally brutalize their children, the victims try to flee to safety. In a Western nation, most people oppose child abuse and would offer to help the victims of abuse.

   In Korea, the story is quite different. In Korea, you would consider someone with different blood [adoptkorea.com] to be inferior and to be not worthy of your help. The overwhelming majority of adopted Korean orphans are adopted by Westerners. The typical Korean could not care less about orphans -- or abused children. In this kind of cold, brutal environment, an abused child has nowhere to run. So, the child escapes into on-line gaming: a fantasy world where the abused child can have the wonderful childhood that he cannot have in real life.

The first form of addiction is probably acceptable, but the second form of addiction is not. The second form is a terrible cry for help.

Re:Not {justabout the deaths

[Charcharodon]

The problem with video games is they are excellent "success simulators". That feeling of self worth, even if artificial, is very satisfying. Throw in another condition such as OCD and you end up with people selfdestructing online.

At last. . .

[LunarCrisis]

At last, someone who knows what they're talking about.

FTA:
"Game addiction has become one of our newest societal ills," said Son Yeongi, president of the Korea Agency for Digital Opportunity, which offers government-funded counseling. "Gaming itself is not the problem. Like anything, this is about excessive use."

And later:
"There is nothing wrong with kids relieving stress through games," Chin said. "But parents need to watch for the warning signs of addiction. If a child gets violent when told to stop playing a game, that's one of the first indications that there's a problem."

It's refreshing to see a take on this which doesn't involve video games being the spawn of the devil.

Re:Is it the games?

[GrumblyStuff]

This just in: Excessive amounts of ANYTHING is bad, mmkay?

Re:Dupe. Marathon gaming still a problem. (plz rea

[TwentyLeaguesUnderLa]

Well, the "society" is just a collection of individuals. Individuals and their views. To change a society, you have to influence the people in it.

People generally want to be respected and liked by their peers. And "in a materialistic society", part of the way people are judged is material wealth. It's hard to decide to not be materialistic when that means people you know will look down on you.

Yes, it's definitely an individual problem, not "just" a societal one - if you pick your friends right, you'll know people that won't think less of you because of your house size. But the more materialistic societies make it that much harder - the same people that would be able to resist in one culture would collapse and go with the crowd in a different one.

However

[porkThreeWays]

Looking at raw numbers, its not a lot of people. It's sad they died, but freak accidents happen all the time.

However, they were very easily preventable. Online gaming communities should make time more aparent to players. If an account has been active for 4 of the past 5 hours, the account should be locked for an hour. It would take maybe 2 hours to write, test, and rollout. This doesn't need to be a law, or regulated, or any of that. Game companies should see this killed some people and as a courtasey to the public, implement some sort of feature. If it saves one life, it would be worth the tiny amount of time to implement.

The bigger story is that almost 3% of 9-39 year olds there are addicted to video games. And that 10% are borderline addicted. That is a huge amount of the population. Sure, they aren't dying, but it is bad for the country and economy if a huge chunk of your population are basically useless because that's all they live for. The death's are sad, but the addiction rate is the real story.

How can people even acomplish this feat?!

[APLowman]

I, personally, am astonished that people can FORCE themselves to SIT until they DIE.

OK, serously, how the hell can you find something enjoyable for more then a few hours. I play games all the time; I even read Slashdot while flying in WoW, but I cannot play that game for more then 8 hours with out dying(in game) from lack of attention to my health bar. it just stops being fun after a while and becomes a chore. What do I do? I LOG OFF and DO SOMETHING ELSE! I can see being stuck longer then you want in a raid or something but not 50 hours. I'd be like you guys have wiped over and over for the past 12 hours... bye!

I don't claim to have a life, I sit around and play games all day, but I get up off my ass every few hours even if it's to roam aimlessly becuase I have to walk. i just don't understand how life could suck so much that you don't move for 50 hours. I guess life in S. Korea is allot crappier then here in the US.

Online Gaming is worse than drugs

[CrazyJim1]

Once you get a taste of Online gaming you want more, but you need harder and harder stuff to fit your bill or you get bored and aggitatted with the gaming industry. With drugs, you just take more and you get your high. Online gaming is so new that there isn't enough to satisfy a hardcore gamer's addiction, so they turn to things like walking outside which renders more FPS than the best video card. ITs the less than hardcore gamers that give addicts a bad name. They play and play without realizing the game they're can be broken down into imbalances, paper rock scissor decisions, repetitiveness, or level capping. These addicts without vision are the one's at true risk. A regular hardcore gamer just isn't satisfied anymore. Can I get a,"I can't get no satisfaction" from the hardcore gaming crowd?

Re:However

[Sycraft-fu]

Except that something like that is going to piss people off and make them go play another game. I don't play World of Warcraft all that often any more, maybe once every other week, but when I do, it's usually for a number of hours. Just how I like to do things. I'll spend a Saturday playing and can be logged in for 6 straight hours. Now I'm not always at the console, I'll get up to go to the bathroom, get food, or just to stretch a bit, but I'll stay logged in the whole time (it is inconvenient and unnecessary to log out). If you start kicking me off I'll just get mad and sign up with someone else. Never mind that I could just go and play another game.

This whole nanny ideal where technology or the government needs to watch out for us in every little way is stupid. Yes, people are dumb, they do things to an excess. It is not the job of everyone else in the world to solve that problem via regulation because it doesn't do any good anyhow. You do not cure an addict through force, they can only cure themselves by choosing to.

The real answer is to understand what leads to game addiction, what the signs are, and for people who care about the addicts to confront them with their problem and help them through it. It's no different than alcohol addiction. Most people don't get addicted to alcohol, some do. The answer is not to ban alcohol.

Re:Beware MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

Seriously, this is just shit from people who don't understand, like, or play games.

I've been console gaming since the Atari 2600, PC gaming since 1989. Coming out of it I was honstly surprised by how much time WoW had been consuming and how much I had neglected other things. Seriously, online friends are nice, but after a retrospective rational analysis WoW did more to hurt my productivity, creativity, social life, and health than anything else ever has. I'll admit that my play time was above average, but people need to be made aware of how much the game blinds you so that they can make their own rational decisions. Other hobbies are easy to enjoy in moderation, MMORPGs seem designed to promote long term obsessivness like nothing else that's not a drug. You don't realize what you're giving up.

Re:Beware MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

There's nothing wrong with playing WoW. It's a great game, but that's all it is -- a game. The moment it becomes your life and 'real life' becomes a game you hardly want to play anymore, you're screwed man.

more dangerous even than killer weed!

[misanthrope101]

Just TEN PEOPLE died?

Sorry guys, not that significant. How many people die every year due to any sort of drug related addiction?

Well, that's about ten people more than die of marijuana overdose every year, and we send you to jail for selling that, don't we?

Heroin vs RPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

As I sit here I am in my 3rd treatment center for heroin. However, I also was an Everquest addict when I was in high school. In my personal experience, they have had some interesting parallels and interesting differences. I'm going to spell out some of the differences, as I feel that this problem isn't being taken seriously enough. This is just my personal experiences, and in no way does it describe everyone.

-Isolation as a result of everquesting all day was even more severe than my worst run on heroin. Heroin alienated my friends, but when I was everquesting, I didn't have any friends to go back to because they were all online. Heroin could be combined with school, and even if it suffered, I was still making it to my classes mids and finals. Everquest/rpgs and school are mutually exclusive - You are either doing one or the other. If you are gaming all day, that is ALL you are doing.

-Self delusional thoughts on heroin and while playing everquest seemed to be similar in ways. In both worlds you feel like you are the master of your universe. The problem is, that feeling gets so strong, both things seemed to be better than experiencing actual life. A fantasy world was way more enjoyable at the time in both cases.

-Health - Now these two were almost exactly the same. Heroin doesn't "damage" your body (except in cases of overdose), so the health concerns are from personal neglect. In both cases, I would stop showering, brushing teeth, eating as little as I could to stay alive.

I was an everquest addict before I ever tried drugs. I finally quit playing before college after seeing friends fail out because of everquest. When I finally tried hard drugs (ie opiates), it seemed like I feel right into it at once, I had a learned behavior with addiction. I used to joke when I started heroin that smack wasnt as bad as eversmack. I don't have the answers though, I just wanted to demonstrate any kind of addiction is bad.

Hope this is insightful.

Re:However

[Sycraft-fu]

So download an alarm mod. There's plenty of mods out there that use the ingame clock (it has one) to do things like buzz you after a certian amount of time. Of course it shouldn't be necessary. Just listen to your body. If you are thirsty, get a drink, if you are stiff, stretch, etc. You shouldn't need a reminder for that, your body lets you know.

Re:Beware MMORPGs

[Anonymous Coward]

These have it as a lifes work.

Yes, especially if you're a competitive and goal oriented person you can lose yourself. That's what I'm warning people against - I knew I was playing a lot, but it's just a game right? I didn't realize what an impact it was having on the rest of my life. And I didn't play the most, by far. There are people out there who have spent 90-95% of their free time in WoW since it launched. It's something informed consumers should be aware of.

I had never played a MMORPG before and didn't think I would have problems with one. I did. If you haven't tried one yet it could happen to you, especially if you end up unconsicously using the game as a means to escape real world problems. It's pretty easy to do.

Re:Is it the games?

[DRM_is_Stupid]

Reading fiction or watching TV can actually be enriching and mentally stimulating, if you pick challenging things to read or watch. No MMORPGs can really say the same thing.

Actually, recent studies show that gaming gives the brain more mental stimulus than reading or watching TV because it requires a level of human interation. This is because the gamer has to try to figure out what the opponent's thinking. This type of stimulus helps prevent people from developing a short tempered personality.

Re:Is it the games?

[svkal]

You don't think what you are watching on TV might matter, do you? I don't think that the GP was implying that watching TV is always mentally stimulating and enriching, but rather that it can be, and I have to agree with him: a good movie or an informative documentary, tends to be much more intellectually advanced and mentally stimulating than a MMORPG. (In my experience, a good novel tends to be better than most things on TV in terms of stimulation of the mind, but I do feel that TV as a medium is unfairly disparaged as culturally worthless simply because some programmes might justifiably be deemed so.)

Oh, and if online gaming prevents people from developing short tempered personalities, then judging from various chat channels in online games I think we can all agree that the medium is certainly finding the people who need it the most.

Re:Is it the games?

[Guysmiley777]

...helps prevent people from developing a short tempered personality.

I don't believe that. If you've ever watched someone play AB or WSG in WOW, you'll see just how short tempered players can get.

Re:Is it the games?

[Jon_E]

right - long term recovery generally involves gradually replacing addictions with other ones .. most AA meetings I've seen people move pretty quickly to coffee and smoking addictions .. the trick though is to find better addictions over time. Perhaps moving next towards programming addictions with good opensource projects and perhaps kernel development.

We're all addicted to things .. it's just a matter of determining if your addictions are destroying your life and others or enriching your life and others. It's always a long term process to get there.