Somalier vs Alcoholic?
Cocaine Enthusiast vs crackhead?
Professional Gamer vs Me playing everquest in 1998?
NUANCE!

Many of us fell to Evercrack. When i logged off for the very last time I had 1 year of game time. I knew it was time.

I literally lost friends and at least one ridiculously hot kind sweet girlfriend to that godforsaken piece of programming.
I feel like you and I are survivors of a great and terrible war.
Anyone that disagrees obviously wasn't there man.
Semper nektulos

I had my own guild in EQ and met my wife in EQ... we both quit cold turkey when she moved in. I already got the best loot, whats the point of playing after that? (plus we started a D&D group, so it was really pointless)

I'm p sure I lost at least one boyfriend to WoW. 7 years clean this fall.

You call me if you need me to talk you off that ledge.

War was the inevitable result of you choosing to date multiple boyfriends.

Based on the other article just posted, anyway, but I just skimmed it, may have missed some nuance.

No no, that article was on polygamy. Polyandry is a-okay.

Ah right, that's what I get for skimming. Makes sense - judging from my extensive research, lonely single women never get up to anything more dangerous than pillow fights.

It was FFXI for me, I had severe depression at the time and the game was feeding off of every unhealthy aspect of that and my anxiety and such. I finally walked away when I realized it felt like a chore and I was getting zero enjoyment out of it. Later I got into WoW but I felt like I could take it on my own terms rather than being beholden to finding a party and letting them down and all of that fun anxiety stuff.

Who can resist MMOCHOCOBO?!

Nobody, until WoW came along with its "you can just solo stuff! You can log in for ten minutes and feel like you did something! There's interesting things to explore and find!"

Congrats on quitting! The behavioral design of modern MMORPGs is beautiful and terrible.

Second only to actual porn. I'm chafing.

My last account had a /played of 2 years and 35 days. Creation date was december 20th of 99, i got the account banned for good in jan of 03...

So yeah. I had no life for a good minute.

So you played 16 hours per day every day for 3 years? How?

Working from home/living off savings and sleeping 4-6 hours per night.

I basically spent all my waking hours in game.

I still remember the adventures of Ceciliantas.
http://www.thedauntless.com/cecil.html

Randy and His Addiction - South Park


Randy "Wine Tasting" - South Park

I feel like a blonder, beardeder, pudgier version of Randy. Now I just need to win an Emmy.

Depends on your affluence and state of privilege in society.

That was fast. It was only floated out as a potential issue in the DSM-V fairly recently.

Saying "They'll come after professional gamers!!!!" is being silly and reactionary. A huge part of the diagnosis process is looking at overall functioning and context. No one diagnoses surgeons with OCD because they wash their hands a lot at work. Believe it or not, psychologists and psychiatrists can discriminate between pathological gameplay and professional gameplay.

This is really important. Not that I put much stock in diagnoses - they are just mentalistic, recursive labels - but by adding it to the ICD and DSM, you can increase awareness of the issue, you can spur more research in the issue, and you are more likely to get insurance coverage for the issue (which, in turn, means more assistance/treatment to those that need it).

I was mostly joking. But was thinking the exact opposite not somebody going after professional gamers but professional gamers gaming the system. "Hey i can get disability while i work on my video game skills."

and all it takes is one counseling session a week.
"I can't help myself Doc, League of legends is a curse! A CURSE!!!"

Oh enough of them definitely will, or at the very, very least there will be enough finger-pointing, belittling, and scare-mongering from the mainstream media, who've never really understood computer games as a recreational activity, that the general population will make the same assumptions as you. After that follows legislation. At best, there will be legislation about the types of psychological tricks and content a game can safely have (setting up a government-funded-if-not-controlled body to do so), at worst the legislation will restrict people's freedom to play computer games without the oversight of a small number of for-profit private companies, those with enough existing money to lobby the government, in the name of "keeping your children safe". Given the choice between 1) making society at large better and people happier, and 2) repeat business or punishment, I'm willing to put a bet on which way it'll end up going. I guarantee Jack Thompson is reading about this and intellectually jerking himself off so hard right now.

We should be working towards post-scarcity anyway not demonizing a handful of abusers.

Actually we should be working towards both. The abusers should be demonized but we should be working towards post-scarcity as well.

Why? All you're doing is demonising poor people for not following a work ethic that the upper class don't hold to themselves. I would rather have millions sitting at home smoking weed and playing video games off the government dime while society advances than them slaving away for shit wages doing menial work that could easily be done by an AI just to keep from starving. All so we can keep up the appearance of some bullshit lopsided work ethic? No thank you.

You're assuming that the people that fall into this category are only capable of working jobs that earn shit wages. I'm assuming that they have the ability to rise to not earn a shit wage or are wasting talent that they already have that would earn them well above a shit wage.

I'm not assuming that, I'm saying that's not alternative you're offering. The US (and I'd bet the UK as well) has a hefty history of what happens when you attack abuses of a social safety net. The outcome is a consistent shrinking of that safety net while the lower classes of society get left behind.

You're comment certainly pointed to you assuming that. If not, then how can you justify supporting someone staying on a safety net when that person is capable of earning a living (not at shit wages)? They just suck up money that should go to those that truly need it.

Because we shouldn't need to earn a living. That's basically the point of post-scarcity.

Yea generally the line for 'disorder' is where it impedes one's ability to survive & thrive.

How is gaming obsessively different than doing anything else obsessively?

In another article about this:

"Contrary to what was predicted, the study did not find a clear link between potential addiction and negative effects on health; however, more research grounded in open and robust scientific practices is needed to learn if games are truly as addictive as many fear."

Also, don't count on this clinical description appearing in the US anytime soon. Some haven't even adopted ICD-10 yet, let alone ICD-11.