Certain interest groups have unique opinions on video games, as we've learned over the years. Video games grow increasingly popular, and some people are understandably scared.
And so they react accordingly. Earlier this year, Sven Rollenhagen of Sweden's Youth Care Foundation likened World of Warcraft to drugs, calling it the "cocaine of the computer games world." A teenager suffered convulsions from playing too many hours, and that, of course, sparked a whole lot of feedback.
Without any sort of marketing, his organization has received inquiries from schools, social services, addicts, and families, prompting them to release English materials for interested parties.
"We were bombarded with calls and emails from around the world from people who thought they or someone they knew might be addicted," he said.
And the man genuinely believes video game addiction is destroying future generations and is working on founding the Centre of Computer Game Addiction. He hopes that all his efforts will prevent the further growth of game addiction and avoid the "incredible waste of resources." And by resources he means productive young people.
I’m worried we’re going to end up with a lost generation. Generally we’re talking about boys and young men who end up playing games so much that other aspects of their lives like family, work, school, relationships all fall by the wayside.
If you extrapolate from the number of calls we received or simply from the millions of games that are sold around the world each year, you start to see how big the pool of potential addicts is. I believe we’re dealing with a problem of pandemic proportions.
These are smart guys, highly intelligent, capable of being anything – doctors, engineers, whatever. But they find themselves tempted by computer games and end up just wasting time in front of a screen.
Dang, Rollenhagen, we're talking about video games here, not prostitution. Though I have no doubt there are those who would love to see video games added to the Bible as a sin. Really though, should we be worried about video game addiction wrecking our society? I do start feeling wonky if I stop playing video games for more than three hours: bad shakes, cottonmouth, cramps, chest pains, migraines, hallucinations...
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