By Dane Secor
There is a new addiction spreading across the globe. It can cause sleep deprivation and loss of appetite and lead to negligence of work, school, families and loved ones. The addiction has already been a reported cause of death in South Korea.
The addiction is World of Warcraft.
When junior Annie Rizzuto created the Facebook group, “World of Warcraft Has Stolen Away My Friends and Significant Other,” it was a joke between her and a few friends. It grew to include people she hasn’t met, and she says through the group she has heard many stories of addiction.
“You hear things like, ‘My boyfriend turned down sex because he wants to play World of Warcraft for eight hours because he’s level 60 now,’ ” Rizzuto says.
Although she says she hasn’t personally tried Warcraft, she has felt the effects.
“With one guy, we had to actually do an intervention because he played so much that he wasn’t going to class,” Rizutto says. “We actually had to physically drag him out and someone had to go to class with him to get him to go.”
She says Warcraft damaged the social lives of students in her freshman year residence hall and even ruined relationships. Rizzuto knew a couple freshman year who were so into the game their relationship fell apart.
Psychologist Hillarie Cash, who the Washington-based Internet/Computer Addiction Services, says video game addiction isn’t a new phenomenon. She says she was first alerted to the potential addiction when she treated a client in 1994.
“I had a young man come to me because he was depressed and his marriage was falling apart,” Cash says. “He had lost jobs.”
After working with him, she found out he couldn’t stop himself from gaming. At the time, Cash says, very few people noticed the problem of video game addiction and she started to develop it into a specialty.
The addiction to video games has an effect on the brain that is similar to drug use, she says. Playing games can elevate dopamine levels and stimulate the pleasure pathway, which leads to addiction.
“Video game playing, particularly World of Warcraft, in terms of the high people get and the withdrawal they go through, does look similar to someone who is hooked on speed or amphetamines,” Cash says.
The self-esteem boost people get from games is also a strong addictive factor, she says, but players gain a false self-esteem.
“You can level up and become a fabulous, powerful wizard in the game, but it doesn’t translate to real life,” Cash says.
World of Warcraft is especially addictive because of something gaming companies refer to as “the stickiness factor,” a rating of how long people will stay with a certain game. Cash says she believes psychologists are being hired by manufacturers to maximize this factor.
Senior Jessa Trapp says she has been playing World of Warcraft since November 2004 and although she has heard stories, she doesn’t think video game addiction is a large problem.
“Most people realize there is a real world and they have responsibilities separate from the game that they have to take care of,” Trapp says. “People know that you need to get your homework done, you need to study. If you have an exam the next day you should probably take a day off.”
She says Warcraft took a lot of the elements that are popular in other games and put them into one, which makes it especially appealing.
People also pay real-world money for items in the game, Trapp says.
“I had a guy friend who sold his character about a month ago for $650,” she says.
Trapp also says she knows people who have trouble managing their time and have missed class to play. One person got so involved in the game he dropped out of college.
“He met a girl through World of Warcraft and this was combined with the fact that he was raiding every day and he was the leader of a large guild,” she says.
Cash says college offers a particularly tempting environment for people to start problematic using.
“So many students are vulnerable because they are out from under the control of their parents,” she says. “They’re enjoying their freedom and they have complete access to the Internet.”
One college student Cash treated became psychotic due to a lack of sleep.
“Over Thanksgiving break, he actually played for 36 hours straight, became psychotic, violent and ended up in a psychiatric ward,” she says.
The student was eventually able to recover with sleep and medication, but he had a profound addiction.
Cash says people need to engage in more real-life social activities to prevent addiction, restrict their computer use to two hours per day and set limits on themselves.
“We have to have people tell each other, ‘I don’t want to get lost in this World of Warcraft,’” she says.
