Parents Neglect - D&D named.....

[Kae'Yoss]

Don't know exactly who you are calling 'all of them'.

I guess the two parents, and the two children.

The children obviously need help because they're starved and have lousy parents, so they need to be fed and treated properly, and unless those parents show real regret and improve considerably, they'll need someone else to take care of them.

The parents need help because they're obviously very wrong in the head.

I play DDO (gasp) and am very active with my guild doing raids and other time-intensive activities in the game. I also have a happy marriage, a good job (outside the home), and time to exercise and cook and enjoy social interactions with others (in real life).

I am a typical MMO player.

Maybe you're like that (well, actually, unless you lied to us, or to yourself, you're definetly like that). And maybe the typical MMO player is like that, too. But People with issues playing those games do exist, and we're not talking about two or three people worldwide.

I personally know 4 people who were adversely affected by WoW (though some worse than others):

One guy, one of my Ex-DMs, started to lose his appetite for D&D after starting to play WoW. And the whole group suffered because of it: He'd cancel games - frequently, usually an hour or less before the game started, and for reasons that sounded too much for excuses - when he did come the first hour would be spent talking to the other DM in that group, who also played, and they were talking about WoW exclusively in that our. One day he was 2 hours late because a "Lieutenants' Meeting" lasted longer than he expected (of course, he didn't think he should tell us that it would be longer, and of course he didn't even think of telling the others that he had prior commitments).

The next guy is the other Ex-DM. As I said, the first our of each gaming session (those we did have), would be spent talking about WoW. He also has quarrels about WoW with his girlfriend (which also plays in that group), and I stopped going to parties he hosted long ago because if you didn't play WoW, you could as well talk to the plants.

In the end, I quit that gaming group when yet another game was cancelled last minute because of something. Those two were the light cases.

Another guy I know quit playing WoW after he realised that the game messed him and his life up big time. He never regretted his decision.

The last case involves someone who's now in therapy for his addiction to WoW. I won't say that it was all the game or his reaction to the game (he was very unpredictable before that), but after he started playing, he just didn't bother going to work because of it (and was, of course, fired at once).

Similarly, people who play so much WoW that they don't shower for several days.....is WoW causing this, or are they people who are already prone to obsessive fixations, and tend to be socially reclusive, consequently being more likely to focus on something like WoW to the exclusion of personal hygiene?

Sure, much of this is the person, but as has been mentioned above, WoW and games like it are created to encourage becoming addicted, with methods that are a lot like those that make people compulsive gamblers.

I must say that of the people I know played WoW and were the worse for it, all but one was all but socially reclusive or lax with personal hygiene!

 

[tzor]

But the real question is whether this is demonizing D&D or demonizing video games. D&D is mentioned in passing, and the ire is clearly on the nature of the video game.

I mean if you play a video game so much you neglect to feed your child your a nut case. I don't think you can do that in a P&P D&D game. There you might run the risk of over feeding your children ... on munchies.

 

[werk]

I personally know 4 people who were adversely affected by WoW

Absolutely, I know people like that too, EQ, WoW, alcohol, drugs, cars, sports, gambling pretty much anything that people like can be taken to the neglectful extreme. I never really blamed the hobby itself...it was always the people.

But I think this is a lot like working tech support. When all you hear is people breaking and complaining all day you can easily begin to think that's the way it is...your product is really poor and has a lot of problems. But when you see that less than 2% of customers ever call tech support you get a little perspective.

Just as it is easy to say that all gamers are stinky fatbeard chronic masterbaters living in moms basement on mt dew and hot pockets, it's not generally true. It's true, they are out there, and they are definitely the most memorable, but not the true story or the whole picture by a long shot.

 

[Elf Witch]

But then by your arguments, it seems that we should ban everything that is potentially addictive. Video games are but one thing that people with addictive tendencies could focus on. We'd have to ban everything fun, everything interesting, everything exciting, everything intriguing, everything gossip-worthy, everything tasty, everything and anything that elicits an emotional or biological response.

It's more a matter of people needing to help each other out, than any obtuse notion of 'video games = t3h 3v1L'.

Lets get one thing straight I never ever said anything about banning anything. I also never said video games were evil.

There is nothing wrong with having a drink now and then or going on a cruise and playing the slots or playing vidoe games or having sex.

But I do think it is important to recognize when someone has gone from normal enjoyment of something into addiction so that they can be encouraged to get help.

 

[Pagan priest]

There are two types of addiction. Physical and Social. Some dependants (like cigarettes) are comprised of both. The physical addiction is by far the easiest to kick. For cigarettes it lasts around 3 days, whereas the social addiction lasts for the rest of your life (still a much argued point, some say only a few years).

Videogaming is purely a social addiction. Thats why i dont think there is any excuse for the mother of these children. I can understand why she might have issues stopping, but playing to the point where her flesh and blood are starving?

I have the impression that you might have skimmed over some of the previous posts. The point that was made in several of them is that there is no real distinction between what you call the physical and social addictions, at least in terms of effects they have and the difficulty in dealing with them. The parents (both of them) were addicted to the gaming. Addicted. At that point, it WILL require an outside influence to break them out of the addiction and back to proper parenting roles. If this were not the case, then the children would not have been starving in a house with food in the pantry.

 

[apoptosis]

Another point is that more and more things tend to be categorized as diseases or afflictions, when in fact they might not be (IMHO). Perhaps the most disturbing thing is that I have heard, a while back, of a drug one could take in order to become "more sociable". This, if true, I find disturbing.

And "addicition" is a strong word. Drugs, cigarettes, alcohol? Sure. Sex, social status, money? Maybe. Video games, TV, rock music? Hmmm...

If you are talking about anxiolytic medication helping those with Social Anxiety Disorder, you are way off base. SAD can be a terribly debilitating disease and can cause severe impairment (heck a nobel prize winner would not go accept her prize because of it).

While journalists tend to exaggerate the findings of studies, the study authors generally do not. While i take popular accounts of studies into question and I critically review all studies (i deal with psychiatric and neurochemistry research and clinical trials), I definitely would take scientists opinions over the lay publics about 99.9999999999% of the time (ok i am exageratting i would only take it 99.99%)

 

[Col_Pladoh]

Mental addiction is hardly the same as physical addiction, is it?

Cheers,
Gary

 

[apoptosis]

Mental addiction is hardly the same as physical addiction, is it?

Cheers,
Gary

Yes and no. Addiction science is pretty complicated (i work in anxiety, depression and schizophrenia and am far from an expert in addiction science)

It is not really a fine clear cut difference. Many of the "addiction" are classified as impulse control disorders (which in turn are really part of teh OCD spectrum while OCD is an anxiety disorder) and not "addictions." while substance abuse disorders are classified as such.

There are similar neurochemical pathways that are acted on by both of these (the serotonergic and domapinergic) and their is neuronal restructuring that occurs in both "mental" and physical addictions. Physical addictions though are connected to withdrawal symptoms that are not generally associated with "mental" addictions.

 

[Kae'Yoss]

Absolutely, I know people like that too, EQ, WoW, alcohol, drugs, cars, sports, gambling pretty much anything that people like can be taken to the neglectful extreme. I never really blamed the hobby itself...it was always the people.

My point is that there is a "them" to some degree. I'm not saying that they're the majority (even though the majority of WoW players I personally know are jerks - but that's hardly decent statistical proof)

 

[Col_Pladoh]

...

... Physical addictions though are connected to withdrawal symptoms that are not generally associated with "mental" addictions.

IMO that can be summed up as physical addiction is both a body and mind craving that id not satisfied has adverse physical effects on the addict. A mental addiction is simply the demand fulfillment of a desire, likely indicating a lack of will power and/or extreme egocentrism, the failure to satisfy that desire affecting the mind of the addict, and that possibly causing further adverse physical effects.

FWIW,
Gary