The Effects of Gaming Addiction

Addiction can form on just about anything. The phrase addiction is used in numerous situations to explain a fixation, urge, or extreme physical dependence or psychological reliance that can overtake the individual. An activity that someone enjoys can be made excessive and turned into an addiction. There are several games systems out there such as the Sony Playstation or Microsoft's Xbox that contain several games that can lure a person in till the point of addiction. A few popular games that have addictive qualities are World of Warcraft, Everquest, and Halo just to name a couple. Individuals usually addicted to these games will spend their whole waking hours playing and their social life will soon exist of just the individuals that they play with in the virtual world. The sequel to Everquest, Everquest II, actually added the feature into the game that allowed you to order pizza while playing. You would enter the command "/pizza" while playing and this will get you the Pizza Hut website which would allow you to order pizza. This makes it easy for gamers to play for hours on end and game designers add features like these to keep them addicted.

There are individuals who give up everything in order to play in a virtual world where they can pretend they are someone or something else. They will quit their jobs and shy away from friends and families and put all their time into the game. There are people who get so addicted that if they lose their character, items, wealth, or admittance to the online social clubs referred to as guilds that some gamers actually commit suicide. This addiction leads many openings for individuals to gain wealth from others addictions. In the games hard to find items, resources, or high level characters can go for quite a lot of money in real life. Characters for the popular game Everquest can sometimes be found on Ebay selling for thousands of dollars. I actually had a friend who sold one of his characters for $1,300! The addicting qualities to the game cause many individuals to stay up for days at a time without sleep in order to collect certain items or to finish quests in the game. As they become more addicted than interaction with friends, family, and the overall general public has no real significance to them anymore. They will start to make excuses that they can not do things in order to get home faster to play the game. The friends and family will see their game playing as harmless in the beginning till it grows worse and more noticeable.

As the addiction consumes the person than all of their time and resources will be put into the game. The virtual world will become the place that the person feels most comfortable and secure and everyone else will become less of a priority as the individual tries to get their game character to the next level. The addiction will cause grandparents to forget about their grandchildren, a parent to neglect their child, and a husband and wife to grow apart all over a tiny piece of plastic that is stuck into a game system. A piece of plastic will take the place of another living human being. The game will become all the individual needs and desires in his or her mind. The addiction is like any other addiction and sometimes friends and family have to step in to help the individual. This also sometimes requires seeking outside professional help. Games should come with a warning level of the risks and hazards that it comes with. It can kill or destroy a person's life. There are groups online that gamers can go to seek help and explanations about their addiction. There is an Online Gamers Anonymous which is there to help gamers with addiction to get through it and give that person a support system. The first thing you should do if you start to notice signs that you may have a problem is to seek help and try to get a hold of your addiction. It is important that you have power over your addiction and it doesn't claim power over you!