Of WoW addiction and what experts say
Remember Maressa Hecht Orzack? Well, we don’t expect you to remember her so we’ll refresh your memory a bit. She hogged the QJ limelight a few months back as that clinical professor at Harvard Med School who helps addicts break the habit. By addicts, she is referring to those who have grown so addicted to playing games like The Sims, Everquest, and World of Warcraft.
Recently, The Orange County Register ran an article about gaming addiction and basically, it focused on people hooked on WoW. They even pulled some anonymous quotes from a site called wowdetox, here is a sample of a quote allegedly posted a by WoW addict:
WoW and cigarettes are incredibly similar in a lot of ways: Addictive, bad for your health, and it makes the companies a lot of money. The people at Blizzard must be laughing at the world as they rake in the dough from the addictions of millions.
This is an issue too juicy to pass up, so Ms. Orzack shared her thoughts on this. She said that:
Those who might be addicted represent a fraction of the WoW player population but even if 5 to 7 percent of 8 million players are addicted, that’s still a fair number…People can stop using a substance but most people use a computer in their daily lives.
I don’t know about you, but I just hope that instead of ranting about the problem, experts should think of a solution for it (and by solution we don’t mean shredding CDs on national television). With that, what could you say about this? Do you have an interesting workaround for this kind of “addiction”?
Via Spong
Remember Maressa Hecht Orzack? Well, we don’t expect you to remember her so we’ll refresh your memory a bit. She hogged the QJ limelight a few months back as that clinical professor at Harvard Med School who helps addicts break the habit. By addicts, she is referring to those who have grown so addicted to playing games like The Sims, Everquest, and World of Warcraft.
Recently, The Orange County Register ran an article about gaming addiction and basically, it focused on people hooked on WoW. They even pulled some anonymous quotes from a site called wowdetox, here is a sample of a quote allegedly posted a by WoW addict:
WoW and cigarettes are incredibly similar in a lot of ways: Addictive, bad for your health, and it makes the companies a lot of money. The people at Blizzard must be laughing at the world as they rake in the dough from the addictions of millions.
This is an issue too juicy to pass up, so Ms. Orzack shared her thoughts on this. She said that:
Those who might be addicted represent a fraction of the WoW player population but even if 5 to 7 percent of 8 million players are addicted, that’s still a fair number…People can stop using a substance but most people use a computer in their daily lives.
I don’t know about you, but I just hope that instead of ranting about the problem, experts should think of a solution for it (and by solution we don’t mean shredding CDs on national television). With that, what could you say about this? Do you have an interesting workaround for this kind of “addiction”?
Via Spong
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